Greg interviews Frank Holmes, of US Global Investors. Frank grew up in Toronto, Canada and went to Western University. He became a successful investor in mining companies, metals and commodities, and bought a majority share of US Global Investors and moved to Texas in 1989. His funds have received dozens of awards over the years, and he has since launched several ETFs including JETS which has grown to over 1.5 Billion in assets this year since the COVID pandemic started.
Frank speaks about what it takes to be a successful fund manager, and how he sees the financial environment through a scientific lens. He discusses how important it is to use data that is available, but also to see things first hand on the ground. Frank believes that the future for Gold investments is very strong given the current environment, and he is working on several new projects to allow retail investors and the “Robinhood” crowd to participate.
Greg interviews Frank Holmes, of US Global Investors. Frank grew up in Toronto, Canada and went to Western University. He became a successful investor in mining companies, metals and commodities, and bought a majority share of US Global Investors and moved to Texas in 1989. His funds have received dozens of awards over the years, and he has since launched several ETFs including JETS which has grown to over 1.5 Billion in assets this year since the COVID pandemic started.
Frank speaks about what it takes to be a successful fund manager, and how he sees the financial environment through a scientific lens. He discusses how important it is to use data that is available, but also to see things first hand on the ground. Frank believes that the future for Gold investments is very strong given the current environment, and he is working on several new projects to allow retail investors and the “Robinhood” crowd to participate.
0:13
Welcome back to another episode of fun views podcast. I'm your host Greg Pop's. Today's guest is Frank Holmes. Frank grew up in Toronto, Canada and went to Western University. He became a successful investor in mining companies, metals and commodities. His funds have received dozens of awards over the years, and he has since launched several ETFs, including the Jets ETF, which has grown to over 1.5 billion in assets this year alone since the covid. pandemic started, Frank speaks about what it takes to be a successful fund manager and how he sees the financial environment through a scientific lens. He discusses how important it is to use data that's available, but also to see things firsthand on the ground. Frank believes that the future for gold investments is very strong given the current environment, he is working on several new projects to allow retail investors and the Robin Hood crowd to participate. Hope you enjoy the interview. Frank Holmes, thanks for joining me on the fund views podcast. I really appreciate you jumping on here. And joining me today to talk about your background, investing the markets, gold,
1:17
you know, jets and everything else that that we're going to talk about. So first question.
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Tell me what got you into investing? What got it got you into the markets? You know, years ago, when I was a little guy was always entrepreneurial. I had a paper route. And I took it from 19
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people to 270 delivering the star newspaper in Toronto, downtown Youngstown area. So that entrepreneurial spirit always paid for things. And then I was involved with bossing people to rock concerts and hockey games. So it was a that set me through university that so these are entrepreneurial, I wouldn't direct you in investments, because I thought I had good intuition. And if I had to wishon that would help me with the picking stocks and making money with it.
2:10
Yeah, essentially, that that was always my view, when I started digging into investments to right is that, you know, investing is a lot like gambling, but with the added bonus that you can, it's educated gambling, you can have an edge on other people, if you're if you have good intuition, you know what you're doing?
2:26
You don't that's a great thing to say like I as a YPO event, I always travel with young presidents organisation. And I spent a week at Harvard every year with 180 CEOs from 50 countries. And in the big operative word around dinner last year, we always just one dinner. And it was What makes you so successful. And everyone around the table when it came down to we're lucky we work hard and it was synchronicity. And if you call young in the psychology of synchronicity, that all the billionaires talk about their focused energy. And if you really are focusing of the energy, and other things come to you, and you don't know why you pick up the book. And there's the answer. You don't know why you met this person. But there's the answer. And I'm a big believer, as I've gotten older, and I was a young guy like you, I really didn't, you know, understand the importance of synchronicity, I understand intuition. But the synchronicities become more significant to me. Yeah, that's, that's great. that's a that's a good, good word to use, I guess to explain that.
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So tell me about so you had your paper route, and then you, you know, built that up and bossing people around. And so what college Did you go to and tell me about that? Watch days, I'm an inner city kid. My Guardian father was an Anglican priest for St. Bartholomew's church in downtown Toronto. My mother was a social worker, and then also seven. So it was a total pandemonium. And I went to, and I went to Jarvis collegiate, which is the oldest school in Canada. And back in the 70s 30% was Chinese. We had the smallest volleyball team and basketball team, that we won all the national math sciences competition.
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So from there, I was going into pre med I was going to want to be a doctor, and I realised that socialised medicine was being coming in and they're going to cap which you could make and so I switched over to business because I was an entrepreneur I already had, I always funded myself and, and so I found it very useful that I took sciences. Biology relates a lot to new companies, disruptive companies, entrepreneurial companies, these biological models allow you to understand and chemistry is a release or an absorption of energy exothermic or endothermic reactions, you meet someone you feel good or you feel bad deal, your opportunity. So you have this flow of energy back and forth, and then physics, the force is equal to ma mass.
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accelerating. So when you have the GDP of America, the biggest GDP in the world, even though it only has less than 5% of the world's population, but the biggest GDP in the world, it has huge mass. And to recognise that, and so it helped when I went into economics and business, all of a sudden, you're applying those different disciplines?
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That's great. Yeah, it's interesting, I always think economics kind of, for me open my eyes to see the world in a different light, but I never thought of the science part, you know, coming coming into their into play.
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So what then what was next in the, in the timeline of of your younger days, you eventually went to Western right? I went to Western I was my first year was a McMaster the medicine.
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And then from there, I went to here on college, which is a second oldest College in Canada that created the Western University campus around it. I and and I loved it, it was a great experience, a much more community than I had when I was at McMaster led a study, study study. And there was no real camaraderie as a social network. Whereas you had that when you're at Western. So I really loved it, my experience was, and to this day, I still give money back for scholarships, like you're on college, the building a brand new facility. So I'm very excited about what they're doing. And I have scholarships for young men and women that need money. Be they always have to maintain a B plus average, and play a varsity sport because I know how hard it is to do both. So I will fund them for school. So it's right or ship for that. So I love like you're on.
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Yeah, that's great. It's a so so was Western as prestigious as back then as it is now. How has that changed in your in your mind? I know today, when I think of the top three top five business schools in Canada, it's always in that in that in those top names. He was always premier was number one and came out of Western Business School, you automatically made 20 to 30% more. It was the first school in Canada to adopt the Harvard case study method. Yeah, yeah, it's funny these days, every everyone I talked to in the in the United States that they grew up here and doesn't know much about Canada. The only school they really know is McGill. And I think that goes done a great job marketing down here. But then schools like Western and queens and you know, Rotman, they, they're not as well known down here.
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Beautiful, right? In the schools here. They look at McGill as being Ivy Lee. Yeah. Yeah. It's very, very strange to me when I when I realised that so so what how did you get your first job out of college? What was the was the exposure that kind of got you into the industry? What would you do to get that that position? I went around, I get many introductions. And I remember what I learned from one company to another, I always parlayed the the new knowledge I had from the street. I didn't know a lot of the law firms. I didn't know a lot of the brokerage. I didn't know the industry as a whole.
8:10
But I ended up getting a job at a boutique firm called merit. And I was, I thought the reason for my decision for that rather than mother metal or wood Gundy at the time was that there was six guys that were all ethnic. And they all were making a million bucks a year and I'd never been around to be that close to be like the junior kid being mentored under their eagle's wings of these individuals. And so with that, my first boss Ronnie woods, he was a he went to Columbia in New York City was a scout for the Jays for part time. A he first talk he taught me about was Berkshire Hathaway. It was just a wonderful journey. And, and married at the time was was very big in the junior resource sector. Okay, so that's what kind of pulled you into the the Mining and Metals kind of industry. It did. And there's a friend named Eddie God who was a pilot that really got me caught up with history and gold. I understood a lot of geology, from site daycare, in the sciences. But I think that understanding that the history of gold is an asset class. And and then I was so blessed to be mentored by Seymour show like neg Goodman peerless on, we're all friends and their advice. So being with a small boutique, I had that opportunity. And then you had the sort of competitive nature within all the firms. You ran for office for the investment news Association in Toronto, and I will I end up winning at becoming an officer and it was a head of education. I got to meet all these CEOs like you do. A great way of being a young kid in my 20s and they would come and speak so the hottest oil company was
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Don't petroleum and smiling jack came to Toronto to come and speak to 300 people. And I learned from that. And then I taught the Canadian securities course, and one Stock Exchange listing committee. So I had a very rich experience that was working 60 to 80 hours of work week. But I didn't get about it. I loved it
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sounds like and you had a lot of exposure to different areas, right? It's not 6080 hours in one, one topic. One thing, right, you you had a little bit more broad based knowledge of how the as you said, when you went in there, you didn't know how the financial industry works, but I'm sure you did when you when you left. I did. And it was some amazing journey, my first 13 years. And then I saw this GST tax coming in. And I saw
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my I was doing very, very well. I mean, economically was, I could never think of Wow, even to this day. It's though I was I was doing but I was creating new products, I was creating new platforms.
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I've been able to capture most of the institutions in America for gold stock trading
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firm had the We Are the market makers for most of the gold stocks, that was all strategically built out. So it was a it was a wonderful experience. But the taxes and the cold winter, I like cold only to ski.
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I don't like it. And warm weather, you know, I I ran nine miles on
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on Sunday in the like in Miami. It doesn't bother me, I enjoy it. So I moved down here with two little boys. My wife, and we started on this career. And I became the CEO from a managing partner at merit I left started my career here. Great. And and so what caused you other than, of course, the cold weather and then the taxes coming in? are good enough reasons. But is there anything that that caused you to move directly to Texas? Was it the job that pulled you there was it
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there I had the opportunity.
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I and and I love the state of Texas, so country within a country. And I think those are the three big things and I was going to be was gonna be my show. Yeah, and I want to build something I want to create something that a purpose. And I didn't think at the beginning, no one cared about gold, the first decade of the 90s. I came here at night.
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And nothing really, it was we have one year of gold. We are the number one goal. We're number one fund in 89. I was a deal. We're the number one fund in all funds in America. Wow, it was gold. Next year it was last place is so volatile.
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It was always South African gold stocks at the time. And and all of a sudden I had to become CEO learn the industry. And by 1999 no one wants to touch resources. Everything was was technology and that I had no Chief Investment Officer. So I took on that duty. And I started bringing in disciplines I learned from Canada. I'm very quad driven. And so those disciplines start to work out. And then we had the supercycle in the buildup for commodities around the world. And China took on Russia took off. And we were there. And we won numerous wars like 30 some odd Awards for Best fund of the Year for one year, three years, five years. And and we caught that huge run and we went from basically nothing to $7 billion in assets. Wow. That's great. So So would you do in around that time to the early days, we'll go back a little bit to the early days when you know, as you mentioned, South Africa and shares, shares trading on gold and everything else did you have to travel there live? Did you have any stories, you know, to share on it? You know, your travel, the travelling is give you one little thing I did do I started running marathons. And
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so I would when I was going to Europe, I did Rome I did London did Paris. I try to did New York several times and try to time you know doing those things. So are some of my unique experiences of running. I think it's something like 18 marathons
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when you add them all up, but going to South Africa, and I would reach out to YPO people meet them the presidents of the organisations. So I was very lucky that unfortunate that I could get in at the very top being a major gold fund manager. I could get to any CEO. So I went underground visit these places to get to understand the social stresses all through Africa as a keynote speaker was my hub start the Indaba conference and
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Let's Sandy Lawrence, who's from Miami that had this vision and we partnered but it was her business. And, and so she did exceptionally well a building and dhabas massive today that's held in Cape Town every year in February. But that was, you know, that journey. But what I did see in early 90s was the boom in China. And it was curious about who's buying all the gold, and with the China like 94, and we launched the first China opportunity funds, and then the other file, you know, these things never take off. But I started Eastern European fund because we're I grew up in Toronto, a astronomers are so multicultural, that that I had many Ukrainian friends and polish friends. And yes, you recognise and my Chinese friends, so I learned a lot about China in high school, and then, and then in high school, also, my Ukrainian friends Gilberto den, yep. Samira, and if your policies you don't have a, you know,
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Eastern Europe is now starting to move into the EU. And there was this long term plan of how it would all become one big nation. And so I started the first Eastern European fund. Well, it quickly went to 12 million. Russia defaulted. Everything collapsed with the $4 million, went sideways for four years and then went to a billion dollars in assets. Yeah, so I've been there the experiences going over and seeing the roads, a super highways, I tell the stories in China, first time to Beijing. Everyone was in those mouse suits. There were very few cars.
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But I was blessed with Robert Freeland. In a deal. were involved with the 90s. And we went and had dinner at the Great Hall of Chinese people with Deng Xiaoping, son. Well, that room, I mean, it was just amazing. And you learn how they had their own Highway in the communist countries, the centre Lane was where cars only went. And that was only government. Otherwise, everyone had bicycles. And I and so they're rich experiences with the food that people and you have to read lots of stuff about history. I wish Netflix was back then like it is today, because there's so many great historic historical documentaries. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and further to that the data that's available, are became available throughout the late 90s, early 2000s. On on everything happening in the world, right there. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Does this data do a justice? Or do you have to be there on the ground to really see kind of what's going on in the country?
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Just both in
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the two operative words, highly successful people have have, what they call their their, their,
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their IQ and their EQ. So it's what's the CIA like to call it your explicit knowledge? Are you really skilled at being a doctor, at being an airline pilot, you have this, this explicit knowledge, all the books, you've passed all the tests. Now, if you're a pilot, how many times have you flown, because it doesn't matter, if you get your licence doesn't mean you're a good pilot, and invalid. That's why they changed the hours that they had to go up to 3500 hours minimum, before you became a really competent pilot. So that's your tacit knowledge. I'm a big believer that you have to meet people. And you have to go to the countries, you have to be curious. You have to have that explicit knowledge. You've read about it, and then you meet people, you talk them about it, and you find out how things are today, their feelings, etc. And then that that fusion that takes place between explicit and tacit knowledge gives you that competitive advantage. Yeah, yeah. I think you're, you're onto something there. I mean, it's, you got to have both sides, right. You can't just have one or the other. You cannot, you know, some people are very EQ driven. You know, mostly in sales.
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They're EQ driven, but they don't have the technical ability. And then the opposite. You have people with technical ability that don't really have the EQ and they, you know, you need both do the geeks. Yep.
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So, you know, what's next? What was next on your list in the early 2000s? He went from managing a number of mutual funds, and then tell me about kind of your your drive into the ETF world. And what spurred that kind of, we saw that there was a sort of supercycle in commodities a lot ended in 2008. You saw that? You look back at the G 20 countries as a group. They be the sort of their paradigm shifted from being focused on world trade. Everything was a drop regulations and tariffs to stimulate global economic trade, because it was the largest lifted people out of poverty. global trade was so significant peace and prosperity for global trade is the best way not welfare checks, but people working with a purpose
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taking people out of poverty, they'll changed and all of a sudden that g 20 became synchronised tax and regulation.
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And and that paradigm was really important to sort of witness. And the barriers to trade, like we have today for people going across borders is starting to show up with money. The anti money laundering laws grew and grew and grew. And it became more difficult. All of a sudden, people from other countries do not buy mutual funds in America. And so we started seeing mutual funds were slowly declining. Even if you're a top performing fund, in the amount of fun flows was nothing, I would get 50 million in a day. Now I make it 500,000 on a big bigger year. So why is that and then became this ETS was growing? And, and I missed the boat ETFs you know, I was late in that game. And if you're not number one, or you're not the only person, like the first mover advantage is hard to actually assets. And I've been flying all over the world. I noticed after 2014 that all of a sudden, my options to fly had shrunk by 30%. The price of my tickets had gone up. And my board was asking me what are you going to do for next trick? Yeah. And I had to get the ETF business. So I applied the quantum mental approach. I went to the airlines because there was no other airlines ETF. I said they got to be making money. Because I see my tickets going up, can I get back. And that was sort of the the emotional genesis of going there. There was an ETF called FAA. But that was ridiculous to call it that. And it wasn't quite driven. So we created a unique way called Smart beta 2.0. That is, the portfolio is as important as the individual stocks you're picking.
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And the portfolio is recalibrating, based on mean reversion. And momentum. Got it. Interesting. And the stock picking the factors, half of the factors are looking for the stocks with the greatest momentum. And the other factors are looking for who's the cheapest value? Yep. And so that's that, when you do the cheapest value, it's autocorrelation mean reversion. The other rest is inertia. So you're playing laws of gravity and laws of inertia. If you're looking at physics as a metaphor, and that's what makes it so special. So we said, let's test it against the US against the New York Stock Exchange global airlines index. And we spent thousands of thousand hours and we finally figured out the magic recipe. And it outperformed over 90% of the time. And year to date. We've launched it five over five years ago, and has performed the new york stock index after fees too. So really proud has done what it's what it was destined to do.
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And it went nowhere quickly went to 100 million, and then long lines back and forth. But this year was something unprecedent. Again, really, Greg, it's unprecedent that the assets fell by 50% in the first week of March. And then for 70 days, almost a billion dollars came into it. Wow. And I was scrambling trying to figure out everyone crazy, like where's the money coming from? I knew that there was a bunch of guys shorting American Airlines. So they bought us as a hedge. I understood that, but the volume starts to really go up incrementally. Yeah. From 30.
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Yeah, so we had we had something like 40,000 Robinhood investors alone. That's what I was thinking. I was I was thinking of Robin retail Robin Hood crowd right. And they and they learn from podcasts, and YouTube. They're that's what they're, and so I didn't realise the degree and I started going on YouTube and finding this person that's called DJ aviation, Greenport minute segments on the airline industry latest news with Boeing with this, and it was informative. I could do that in four minutes and would take at least an hour to get read the report from the big banks. So I really like this find out this kid's got 300,000 subscribers. He's 19 years old.
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That sums up her generation. Yeah, I'm going all these young people that were used to experience the world couldn't do any travel now, but they knew the cheapest place and knew the hotels. They knew how to navigate the internet. All of a sudden they started buying and it grew and then I sort of fine tuning the marketing the storytelling with the Internet, and it ended up becoming now it's like over $1,000,000,005 since March is gone into jets. That's crazy. I mean, good for you guys. Absolutely good for you guys. Right and I'm sure you've been kept pretty busy. Well, you know what the other big change was after
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Leaving from the first 20 years, leaving Canada living in the US. There was hardly any big change with the number of brokers, the people you knew that faces but the ETF worlds different. Three years after I launched jets I launched go au, which is my client base gold stock picking with royalty companies, the only product and it's done exactly it Oprah in model backtester say, could it outperform the GD Xj, and it did 90% of the time. Perfect, then I'll test that before I go in the marketplace.
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And not just say, Hey, this is a good idea. Let me make sure it really is viable. So it you know, it gets in the marketplace, and then slowly but gradually goes but when I've got to go launch it to get the seed money, get the story told all the gatekeepers changed. Everyone from London? Yes. I was just shocked. Right. So the turmoil of disruption. It's not just to hear about Tesla cars, what it's doing. It's also in the capital markets and the formation of money. It's morphing and changing so quickly.
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It's funny, and that goes back to what I mentioned to you before the show and why I why part of the reason why I started fun views was because when I was looking for a job, that first job out of school, I thought I wanted to be a sales trader. And what convinced me otherwise was having you know, half dozen to a dozen calls with sales traders telling me you don't want to be a sales trader, it's it's being automated, you know, you're going to be basically going head to head for the same job with someone with 30 years experience as a trader and you fresh out of school. They're not going to I mean, yeah, it's gonna be extremely difficult. And, you know, that's the the world today, right is automation. And
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we had something else that came in called mythic to, you know, mythic two is, yep, yeah. Yeah, your mythic two basically, is European socialism. And we too, did not want to have investment conferences unless the government's going to control it. They want to control all the taxes, all the formation of capital projects is really interesting to observe. But it started impacting a lot of New York, big banks. And, and so what that did is it they cut a billion dollars of research reports out, Eliot Spitzer's came in.
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And he was a big game changer. But what that happened is that more, more and more cuts of regulations of salaries meant less than less research coverage. So now is replacing as YouTube and podcasts like what you're doing the interviews of people that are curious to invest, etc. I've just noticed a new renaissance of Peter Lynch went up on Wall Street, the guy that really phenomenal track record 29% kegger, for over a decade at Magellan fund that put the fidelity's name everywhere
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he goes, he's he's a great great one up a wall street said, this is how the little guy can win. And now you have Robin Hood that says hey, there's no Commission's Yeah, there's there's no commissions, but there's, they take some off the spreads ran this my what I what I've been told, there's always this you see, but people don't realise is to have a market, you have to have some put up capital, if there's not a decent enough spread, for that capital for the risk you're taking, you won't put up capital. So the regulations have squeezed out all the brokers are putting up capital, it's now being put up by Citadel, it's all quite driven. Yeah. And so there is market making, but this is how it's done in a digital world. And there's so much like negative immunity that millennials are all stupid, etc. My experiences, they all made a lot of money on going you and Jess. Yeah,
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absolutely. And, you know, what's crazy is with, with all that data, and all of the stuff that that, you know, we see in the news and podcasts and YouTube and all of the Instagram and everything else that, you know, people are able to learn how to trade or how to manage their own finances, you know, more effectively, and with with ETFs, for instance, that are super, you know, low fees, and, you know, liquid and it gives them that the ability to play their own thesis of the world and put it to put it to the test. So it's interesting, it's really interesting to see what what comes down the road. I have a couple of mutual funds, I was trying to streamline because it supposes that it's a dinosaur and the regulatory costs are just outrageous and the inconsistencies. I mean, he would think they would be in this beltway party would be much about streamlining decreased economic activity. So anyway, I wanted to create something there's no other mutual fund and it's called luxury goods. Us value x is the ticker. And but luxury goods have done exceptionally well. I've heard that actually. Yeah. Yeah, Costco. You know, the biggest is Tesla, a company business in the
30:00
smaller one is Ferrari. But you you can you can pick these stocks. They seem to be much more resilient.
30:08
Yeah. Then Then brand loyalty is there, right? brand loyalty is there and economics, you know that and the other part was interesting studies on millennials is the checks they got from President Trump. Somebody's like 5% with into the market. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty, pretty impressive.
30:29
That
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great, so. So during this time period, obviously, your firm went through all these, you know, ups and downs and trying to hire people and reducing staff. And, you know, when when you're looking today, is there any anything you're looking at any skill sets that you look for in, in kind of people that you're looking to hire, I have seven values. And you can hire people that are
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very, very smart. I've had a couple of kids that were piano gold medalists for state taxes, went to Julius school, worked at Morgan Stanley.
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They, they lack,
31:08
focus, work ethic. They, they are curious about their own friends, but not about their job to the degree. So I really think the bigger part for young people, they've got to really have some core values to be competitive. Some of them feel entitled that I should make six figure income and work 35 hours a week. You know, that's just not going to happen unless you inherited money.
31:36
And I think that I my values, my seven values, I was just refreshing that all the employees that have to make sure they use them and think about them. I think from that end initiative, initiative, it's really important. Curious learning proved to be performance inspired, you know, that when you see an athlete perform, you see magician perform, or great acting, or great fun performance or great company that you're inspired. And that inspires you to learn and to be attracted to that it has an energy to it. That's that's important parts that I am a big believer in.
32:16
Yeah.
32:17
Makes sense. So and, you know, in that you do outsource things that you wouldn't normally outsource anymore. Is there. What do you What's your thoughts on that you have outsourced, went into the ETF side partner with the US Bank Corp as a part of like outsourcing all that regulatory infrastructure costs and mutual fund the world that, you know, that world has become so much commoditize. So a lot of work have outsourced. But the investment managers, you know what, there's a great story of Charlie Munger talking about
32:52
with
32:55
Mark Howard Marks, and great fund manager to see very successful beginners and, and their comments are what makes someone even they went to Ivy League schools or they went to Western, it doesn't really doesn't really matter that much of they're going to be a good fund manager, unless they have second level thinking. Yeah, second level. And and I think you have to be really curious, and performance inspired to have that second level? And you question. So when COVID Doc, everything stops, and I had to go out of the house. And there's all the shopping malls are all empty cars, you can see it except for Home Depot. So I call a guy here and say run a model. Tell me what the numbers look like. And go lo and behold, by it, it's by any company that's announcing they're hiring workers, they explode. Amazon went out their margin, they're hiring 100,000 people, great performing stock zooms, hiring people.
33:57
chipolte a hire 10,000 people they had perfected their outsourcing of food, and California Pizza went bankrupt. They did not perfect it. So is is that second level thinking. And that comes back to actually Peter Lynch's book went up in Wall Street. And it says a retail investor can actually outperform most money managers, if they doesn't say it in his book. But if they had this second level of thinking, that is, I really like this, this iPhone, I'm going to buy the stock. What a win. That was when they first came out the first podcast so you bought the stock, your $10,000 became worth a million dollars. It was a huge, huge win.
34:41
You can think of it this way. Netflix, I think was a big one everyone saw I mean, at first, you know you had naysayers as always but but everyone's using it. Everyone's watching it. It's bounded, you know bounded doing something right.
34:57
So just for listeners and type of investing
35:00
Notice Like I said, I noticed my flights are gone and up this options to fly. Someone's got to be making money. Smell it, I can smell roses like a spell. So I was making money and the barbecue smells lovely. Let's go find out who's doing it and how they're doing it. And guess what? Voila. Justice created. Yeah, that's great. And so another another area somewhat I don't want don't say controversial but but contested is cryptocurrencies. What are your thoughts on cryptocurrencies Bitcoin? What What do you think's going on there? It's been a couple years since it's been really hot in the headlines, but I don't think it's gone away. Definitely not. No, it's not gone away. I think the ecosystem is, was another big buzzword I really had to learn. And then that there's 10,000, scientists, whatever around doing Bitcoin nodes, and and on a candidate comes aetherium with 30,000 people around the world. Yeah. It is remarkable. You don't have 30,000 people following
36:04
mining stocks. Yeah. Even ETFs, you don't have really focused 30,000 influencers like this. So I was trying to launch an ETF in crypto, and I realised that $1,000 an hour legal bill, it was not going anywhere, because and rightfully so, the SEC was concerned, some hacker gets some coins, and it sells them to an ETF plus the New York Stock Exchange. So that wasn't going to happen. And the same thing is in Canada went to Canada met with the OSC they call a launch pad and quickly realised that wasn't going to happen. And I had all this knowledge and our friends mine from Vancouver called me and said, What about creating this company? And and I said, Well, yeah, I think I'll put up $5 million. And it was the fastest hundred million dollars on paper ever made. I couldn't believe it, you know, just that 5 million was zoomed up. And then I was euphoria for about three months raise $200 million, three deals, fidelity put in over 100 million dollars. I mean, it was just and it was the first public company to do crypto mining on sighs
37:08
this day is has the biggest volume, it's still the best performing and of the stocks. And when did you launch that? Why did you invest in it? It came out in 2000. If you go back in a team, just before, you know, before Bitcoin ran to 19,000 Yeah, or 18 or 17. It was around there. I remember that. I think it was 17. I remember going to a Bitcoin or cryptocurrency event in Miami, which seemed to be you know, where everything crazy and extravagant happens. But I think that it really took off the following year, you know, yeah, the, the peak was December 1718 was the following year 90 was the bottom of a family. So it was the last quarter of 2017. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. That's when the conference was in Miami. And I remember going to that thing. And it was on on a, you know, 350 foot yacht. It was pretty. Everyone had a great year in cryptocurrencies and they wanted to spend the money so different, you knows a different of people. And so it's so silly. All right now, the new the new hot buzzwords called defy decentralised financing. And that's helped the hive high better record aetherium production this past quarter. And so I you know, I'm very happy for it. So rather than having an ETF I have high blockchain. Great.
38:39
Great. So, what's next? What do you see out there? You know, in the, in terms of other new areas, emerging economies? Or, you know, where would you Where would you look to in the future? Maybe not today. But, you know, a year from now or six months or, you know, two years from now, I think we're going to have a great gold market. And I don't think that's over.
39:03
And I think there'll be some other unique products around there to come out with I'm going to be so careful because I'm working on is very special and exciting.
39:12
But it's you'll have to when you come with these things, you got to have a good name for the fund. If you think of that it's amazing to see Yeah, you have to have
39:23
it be the only person if you're the first to join let other people trying to come and copy you. That first mover advantage is so important. Yeah, that makes sense.
39:33
Great.
39:35
So um, anything else you want to talk about or mentioned on the on the podcast before we wrap it up?
39:42
Yeah, I think one of the biggest parts for anyone that's investing and listening
39:48
studies have been done at universities and like funny woman about compliments and encouragement and you need almost five Pat's in the back for be kick in the pants or you grew up dysfunctional.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai