Top Shelf Conversation
Jillian Jaccard Murrish - Alternative Credit
Jillian Jaccard Murrish stops by The Business Brew to discuss co-founding and running Pier Asset Management; an alternative credit firm. Pier delivers fixed income yield by investing in alternative credit, which they define as all nonbank lending. Typical loan sizes in Pier’s portfolio are loans less than $250,000. This was a fun conversation and touches on an asset class that hasn’t been discussed much on this program. As always, nothing is investment advice and do your own due diligence!
Rob Koyfman - Fintech Founder
Rob Koyfman stops by The Business Brew to discuss his background, starting a Fintech business, building teams, and much more. Rob’s experience includes stints and Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and macro roles at Luxor Asset Management and Tekne Capital Management. This was a fun conversation for Bill. We hope you enjoy meeting the person behind our first sponsor.
Tren Griffin - Giving to Get
Tren Griffin stops by The Business Brew for a fun conversation about his career, investing, and life. Tren is an author of 7 books, had a front row seat to Bill Gates’ career, sold ½ of his business in the .com bubble, deeply studied Charlie Munger, and now works at Microsoft. This conversation spans Tren’s career, his advice regarding giving to get, the importance of being brave, and much more.
Tren, thank you for joining The Brew. It was a pleasure speaking with you. We hope you enjoy the discussion. You can find Tren on Twitter @trengriffin and read his work at www.25iq.com
Louisa Nicola - Enhancing Performance
Louisa Nicola stops by The Business Brew to discuss her time as a triathlete, recovering from a major injury, and how she got curious about the power of the brain during her rehab from injury. Today, Louisa is Director and Head Neuroscientist at Neuro Athletics. Her firm helps athletes and hedge fund managers monitor their sleep, diet, etc. in order to help them achieve their maximum potential.
You can follow Louia @lousianicola_ on Twitter or read her writing at https://substack.com/profile/32674240-louisa-nicola
David Gardner - An Investing Fool
The one and only David Gardner stops by The Business Brew for an interview Bill has been looking forward to for over a year. David is a Co-Founder of The Motley Fool. He is best known for his Rule Breaker investing strategy but Bill knows him as a person that forced Bill to contemplate how he looks at investing.
You can find David’s Rule Breaker podcast at https://www.fool.com/podcasts/rule-breaker-investing/, follow him on Twitter at @DavidGFool, and sign up for The Motley Fool at https://www.fool.com/.
See also his podcasts with Invest Like The Best https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/david-gardner-finding-companies-that-break-the-rules/id1154105909?i=1000392148108 or https://open.spotify.com/episode/4bwyONARX4WeVcsPYosiuR?si=H8lR4qlwTgS92N5u6IQ2mA
Wealth Track https://wealthtrack.com/category/guests/david-gardner/
Jonathan Boyar - Intrinsic Value Opportunities
Jonathan Boyar stops by The Business Brew to discuss his investing philosophy. Jonathan is the President of Boyar's Intrinsic Value Research LLC., an independent research boutique established in 1975 that counts some of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, mutual funds and family offices as subscribers. He is also a Principal of Boyar Asset Management, which has been managing money utilizing a value oriented strategy since 1983.
He has been interviewed by Barron’s, Welling on Wall Street and GuruFocus. He spoke at the 2017 London Value Investor Conference, the 2017 GuruFocus Value Conference and the 2017 International Value Investing Conference. He is also a contributor to the latest edition of Harriman’s Book of Investing Rules: The Do’s & Don’ts of the World’s Best Investors. He is a senior contributor to Forbes as well as the host of The World According to Boyar podcast.
Stinson Dean - Talking Lumber
Stinson Dean (@lumbertrading on Twitter), owner of Deacon Lumber, stops by The Business Brew to discuss the current lumber market, what happened to lumber in 2020, and how the market got to where it is.
This is a long conversation, but deserves the length.
Stinson goes deep into what it means to trade physical lumber, how he manages risk, why he is hedged, and much, much more.
The goal of this conversation was to have a calmer conversation about lumber than what may have occurred just a year ago.
Lumber is an extremely volatile market and Stinson is a fantastic person to discuss the market with.
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Album art photo taken by Mike Ando.
Please see https://www.mikeando.com/
Jason Wild - From $80k to $1.7Bn
Jason Wild is the founder and President of JWAM, an SEC-registered investment adviser with over $1.7 billion under management. Jason found investing during his last year of pharmacy school.
Taking Peter Lynch seriously, he invested every other paycheck in pharmaceutical ideas he thought were undervalued.
His theses were correct far more often than they weren't and he made himself almost a half million dollars in the market.
After proving his competence, he started a fund with a mere $80,000.
Today, that fund manages over $1.7Bn.
Jason's initial strategy focused on specialty pharmaceuticals.
His knowledge base enabled him to assess asset bases and M&A quickly (and correctly).
After pitching a company on an M&A opportunity, and getting nothing in return, Jason decided to take matters into his own hands.
He decided to purchase Arbor Pharmaceuticals for $2.5mm dollars and built the company via M&A. After 3 years, KKR bought a portion of Arbor; valuing the enterprise at $1.1Bn.
Today, Jason is Chairman and Interim CEO of TerrAscend Corporation, a cannabis company with multi state operations in the US.
His official Bio is as follows:
"Jason Wild is the founder and President of JWAM, an SEC-registered investment adviser with over $1.7 billion under management. After starting his first fund in 1998 with only $80,000 AUM, Jason achieved early success by leveraging his background as a pharmacist to find undervalued specialty pharmaceutical companies and by managing the firm’s investments for long-term growth. After building a strong track record as a stock picker, Jason expanded his investment universe and applied his experience and extensive healthcare network to private market opportunities. He has since established himself as a highly respected investor and sought-after partner for both public and private companies."
Adam Robinson - A Unique Mind
Adam Robinson is the Co-Founder of The Princeton Review, a NY Times Best Selling author, and a US Chess Federation life master.
He currently works as a global macro advisor to the heads of some of the world's largest hedge funds through Robinson Global Strategies.
Bill has wanted to interview Adam since he heard Tim Ferris interview Adam at The 92nd St. Y.
You can find one of his episodes with Tim Ferris at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSyMmleisQM.
See also Adam's interview with Shane Parrish at https://fs.blog/knowledge-project/adam-robinson-pt1/.
Finally, Adam recently did a 4-hour interview with Kevin and Fred.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU_AM9VDgFs.
In this episode, Bill follows up on some of the thoughts Adam gave Bill via various interviews.
They start out talking about the concept of "things that are blatantly obvious and those that make no sense."
This was one of the first concepts that Adam said where Bill said "wow, that's an interesting way to frame investing thoughts."
Following that conversation, Bill follows up on many of the issues that he's wondered about as he's found as he's listened to Adam. This is a wide-ranging conversation that covers a lot of investing and some life.
Elliot Turner - Growth At A Reasonable Price Defined
Elliot Turner is a co-founder and Managing Partner, CIO at RGA Investment Advisors, LLC.
RGA Investment Advisors runs a long-term, low turnover, growth at a reasonable price investment strategy seeking out global opportunities.
Elliot focuses on discovering and analyzing long-term, high-quality investment opportunities, and strategic portfolio management.
In this episode Elliot joins The Business Brew to discuss his days as a Phish podcast host, being a business analyst, his thoughts on the COVID 19 policy response, why he gained conviction through March 2020, Twitter, and creativity as an investor. Elliot is incredibly generous giving knowledge to the investment community and sharing his work.
He's one of the investors Bill really admires.
Tobias Carlisle - A Modern Walter Schloss
Tobias Carlisle is a well known author. He's written extensively about value investing.
In our view, Deep Value is one of the best investment books ever written.
He is also the founder and managing director of Acquirers Funds, LLC. See acquirersfunds.com
We hope this interview answers some of the tougher questions people have for him regarding “value’s” underperformance. And, more importantly, we hope to introduce a really unique individual to the investing community.
We are grateful for his appearance on the pod.”