The Pros and Cons of Passive ETFs vs. Active ETFs

Bryce: [00:00:31] Welcome to get started investing in this podcast. We cover all of the basics that you need to start your investing journey. Joining us for the very first time, is this the very start of your investing journey well before you dive into this episode with us? Our feed is designed to go from the very beginning, so we strongly recommend that you scroll up and started episode one here at Get Started Investing feed. Unpack all the jargon and the confusing bits. We hear your investing stories with the goal of making investing less intimidating, and we want to have a good time along the way. My name is Bryce and as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy Ren. How you going? 

Alec: [00:01:04] I'm very good. Bryce. I am excited for this episode because we get to talk about investing with friends. 

Bryce: [00:01:12] Yes. 

Alec: [00:01:14] It should be a good one because ETFs are hot topics for across whatever investor you are, whether you're a very beginner all the way to the biggest hedge fund in the world. Remember when we looked at their holdings and all of their biggest holdings were just, yeah. 

Bryce: [00:01:30] Right. 

Alec: [00:01:31] So ETFs are super popular, but with this explosion of popularity has come so many choices and it's almost getting confusing at this point. We we have a joke in here that at some point there'll be more ETFs than actual stocks listed on the stock exchange. 

Bryce: [00:01:48] While the trend is certainly going that way, that's for sure. There are plenty of ETFs out there to choose from now, and it can feel overwhelming. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:01:56] And so we're going to try and unpack that choice in this episode because some of the old rules of thumbs that apply to ETFs, those lines are starting to get blurred and may no longer apply. But first price, we're excited about ETFs, but we're also excited about. I couldn't think of a straight transition that FinFest we. 

Bryce: [00:02:15] Are excited about to invest around. It is a massive week here for Equity Mates because tickets go on sale for our Fin Fest festival in October here in Sydney. So if you haven't yet registered for the event and you want access to Earlybird tickets for only $37, make sure you are registered and you'll get an exclusive code sent to your inbox on Thursday, the 9th of June. So head to Equity Mates dot com slash fin fest to register and you will get exclusive access to a limited number of early bird tickets. It's going to be an awesome day. We've got plenty of sessions that cover every level of experience in terms of investing. So whether you are an absolute beginner or haven't even started or feeling like you're an expert and want to pick ten baggers, we're going to have sessions that cover it all and don't panic. It is not all investing chart. There's going to be plenty of entertainment, food, bars. It's just going to be a great day to celebrate investing and to catch up with the community. We are super, super excited. 

Alec: [00:03:16] And so Fin Fest is powered by steak. They're our major sponsor for the event, so thank you to them for helping us put it on. Go sign up. This is going to be the biggest thing that Bryce and I and the team here have done. Yeah, it's going to make us all break up. 

Bryce: [00:03:29] Yes. So hopefully it doesn't break us. So make sure you come.

Alec: [00:03:34] But look until we're broken, let's keep let's keep talking, investing and the context for this discussion. This episode was really a conversation we were having in the office about the number of ETFs out there and how the idea of passive ETFs and active ETFs, that distinction sort of no longer applies. There's now a massive spectrum. And, you know, obviously people are looking at the market at the moment and potentially seeing some opportunity. And so we thought this was a good time to just remind everyone of what's under the hood in an eight. 

Bryce: [00:04:10] Year love that I've been trying to get it under the Hood video series The Great for so Long. 

Alec: [00:04:14] Bros has visions of actually getting like a prop car and in like a mechanic shop. So any mechanics out there in Sydney? Yeah. Well, for Bryce, it probably has to be like the inner east of Sydney if he is not one to travel far. 

Bryce: [00:04:28] That is true. 

Alec: [00:04:30] But let's set the same price even in our time doing this podcast, the ETF wave has like has just it's swept every year.

Bryce: [00:04:40] It has absolutely gone berserk. You're right. We've seen an explosion of ETFs not only here in Australia, but absolutely around the world. So total assets under management. In other words, how much money is invested in ETFs at a global level is $11 trillion, which is just huge. But here in Australia it's not small, but it's 113 billion. 

Alec: [00:05:04] So not. 

Bryce: [00:05:05] Small. Not small. 

Alec: [00:05:05] One person one positive. I think we lag statistic is that yeah yeah. So they that global number comes from them 2027 trillion and then 2021, ten and a half trillion. 

Bryce: [00:05:20] Wow. 

Alec: [00:05:21] It's just like that. That's trillions of dollars flying in in one year. Wow. Yeah. Like it only crossed the trillion dollar mark in. 2009, certainly coming out of the GFC. And then since then it is just ten extended. Wow, decades. 

Bryce: [00:05:36] I would like to say it's all the Equity Mates funk because the rise in the investments of ETFs coincides with when Equity Mates started in 2007. But unfortunately we can't. But anyway, there are also thousands of ETFs or exchange traded products listed globally, close to 300 here in Australia. So plenty to choose from. 

Alec: [00:05:58] I tried to find how many exchange traded products were listed globally, but I couldn't find a source for just that number and I wasn't about to add up 196 stock markets. But I think I think some some I read in the thousands, some I read in the tens of thousands, which seems a lot, but I guess there's a lot of markets. So with this explosion of ETFs, a thousand, 10,000, 100,000, who got over. 

Bryce: [00:06:22] The. 

Alec: [00:06:22] Line? Even just if we look in Australia in the 300 that are here, I think last year we did something where we the number in my head was 242. 

Bryce: [00:06:32] It's pretty bang on. 

Alec: [00:06:33] Yeah, but I think it's increased from there. And the year before I found a source which it had just crossed 200. So again, growing super quickly and we all when we think about ETFs was first ETF. 

Bryce: [00:06:45] You think of I actually think of the Vanguard eight or not Vanguard but BETASHARES. 

Alec: [00:06:50] Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, that's still yeah, I think of like those Vanguard ones that the fire community love. Yeah. Yeah. Just the index based, you know, track the ASX 200 and tracked the S&P 500. Yeah. Or the all MSCI all world index passive that in most people's mind is what an ETF is. I remember even when we were starting Equity Mates, that was a pretty safe assumption. If it was an ETF, it was passive. And then and I say a listed investment company, it was active, but that distinction no longer applies. And then the whole like passive, very active no longer applies. There's a whole bunch of like semi passive, somewhat active, passive aggressive ETFs out there. So that's why we want you to leave this episode with. But let's start with passive ETFs. Price Yes. 

Bryce: [00:07:39] The OJ just.

Alec: [00:07:41] Most people are aware, but let's give a quick 1 to 1. If people have just come to Equity Mates and are just just confused by how many times you said ETF in the first 10 minutes. 

Bryce: [00:07:50] What do you want to know. 

Alec: [00:07:51] Well, what other one. 

Bryce: [00:07:52] ETFs. 

Alec: [00:07:53] Yeah, what defines a passive area? 

Bryce: [00:07:55] So a passive ETF is one that essentially tracks an index. It doesn't pick stocks. That's in in its basic form. It's a collection of stocks that make up an index. And in one simple investment, you can get access to that index. 

Alec: [00:08:10] And the logic behind the passive ETF was revolutionary at the time. Yeah, and the time wasn't that long ago. And we kind of just take it for granted now. But what's the logic that in the sort of sixties and seventies led to this explosion of passive investing? 

Bryce: [00:08:26] It comes down to that investors can make a great return out of just following the market. And you don't have to pick stocks, I guess, or throw darts at a dartboard to to be a successful investor. And it was started by a guy called Jack Bogle who started Vanguard. Yeah, Vanguard. 

Alec: [00:08:47] I think it's not just that you can make a lot of money passive investing. I think it was also that active managers didn't outperform over the long term or like very few did. So why would you pay them to even try? Yeah, because so many of them failed at it. There was a famous book in 1973 book, a random walk down Wall Street where they the author argues that a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at stock listings would do as well as the pros. Now, I don't know how they did like a double blind controlled study for that, but that's that sort of the movement that emerged and that that holds true today, like the data bears out that very few large cap fund managers outperform over the long term. 

Bryce: [00:09:36] Yeah, well, here's a stat that I actually pulled last night and I have found it. We were talking about this offline. So lost over the last couple of years, we've seen a huge bull market. And for those that have just tuned in, that essentially means that the market in general has been experiencing great growth and upward trajectory. And you would assume that a lot of professionals could do really well in a bull market. However, of all of nearly 4000 active managers in the US, almost 60% underperformed against the market. 

Alec: [00:10:07] Over what time period. 

Bryce: [00:10:08] Over that, those two years of the bull market. So I know it's not a long term, but it's just in. Yeah, yeah. 

Alec: [00:10:17] Yeah, yeah. Well, if we zoom out a little bit further data from S&P Global from the 2010 decade, so 2010 to 2020, fewer than 15% of active. Give us large cap funds, beat the market. Yeah, yeah. And people will say, well, the market was near impossible to beat over the last decade because it was just Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft pushing the market higher and higher. And like, that's a fair point. But so that is the logic behind passive ETFs. And Vanguard was obviously right at the forefront of this revolution, but we've seen so many follow. Obviously, like Betashares has been a big Australian one. Vaneck has come from overseas. BlackRock bought iShares State Street has SPDR like the biggest asset managers in the world are right on the forefront of this ETF wise innovation. 

Bryce: [00:11:10] Yeah so some of the more famous ones are in that. You mentioned at the top of this show, we've got the MSCI All World Index. That's an index that tracks some extraordinarily. 

Alec: [00:11:22] Like 2000 stock. Yeah. Oh, no more. Yeah, yeah. 

Bryce: [00:11:26] Huge broad base exposure. 

Alec: [00:11:28] Oh, oh. 

Bryce: [00:11:29] Oh, oh. Then you've got ETFs that track the S&P 500, the top 500 companies in the U.S. Then there's ETFs that track the Nasdaq, 100 top 100 tech companies, the ASX 200, which is the top 200 companies here in Australia, and the Footsie 100, which are the top 100 companies over in the UK. 

Alec: [00:11:49] So if we just pause there, that was the start of ETFs. That was that was the OJ of ETFs passive indexes. You just with we buy like one trade and you buy a little bit of the whole market. In one trade you buy Australia's 200 biggest stocks. That was where ETFs started. Then we saw sort of the next shift in that evolution and that was thematic ETFs. Yes. So thematic ETFs, what are they? 

Bryce: [00:12:17] So these are ETFs that give you exposure to a megatrend or a thematic. So the underlying stocks that make up this ETF are all involved in or built around the thematic. So for example, we're seeing megatrends around climate change at the moment. So there's ETFs that give you exposure to a bunch of stocks that are, you know, innovating in the climate change space. There's semiconductors, which we've spoken about on the show, companies that are involved in the manufacture, distribution of semiconductors, robotics and global automation, cryptocurrency, you name it. The ETFs that are now built and targeted for these megatrends and nations that are are appealing to investors. 

Alec: [00:12:57] I'm saying that megatrend is the most overused word in investment cycle these days, and I'm getting pretty sick of it. It's on my radar as an overused time just putting it out. This is ASX Investor Day. I know everything was a megatrend, so I think one of when everything is a megatrend, nothing is a megatrend. 

Bryce: [00:13:14] Well I think one of our. Yeah. Anyway invest. 

Alec: [00:13:19] Are we going to ban the word. 

Bryce: [00:13:20] We should ban the word, but it's in one of. 

Alec: [00:13:21] Our marketing materials, a light ban. So these thematic ETFs importantly are still passive. So, you know, I robotics and Global Automation ETF, there isn't a fund manager making active buy and sell decisions. Rather, it follows an index that's created by a company like S&P. The index is rebalanced every quarter. So just like your standard market passive index that every quarter as stocks get bigger and smaller, they rebalance them. So it reflects what is happening in the market. These get rebalanced every quarter, but they're not active. And you mentioned some of the big themes, but there's a hurricane as a thematic ETF for everything. You know, there's like global banks, there's agriculture. We used to play a game fake or real ETFs. Yeah. And some of the thematic ones, they were crazier. The one that I always remember was slim. So the ticker was slim. Yeah. And it was the global obesity ETF. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was tracking companies that would benefit from the world getting more obese. Yeah. And from people's efforts to lose weight. Yeah, yeah. 

Bryce: [00:14:31] That should be a session that's in first strike or cycle.

Alec: [00:14:34] Really. Yeah. And so, so that was the sort of the next wave when you conceptualising all of this choice in the ETF landscape you have the first pillar is passive market indexes and then the second one is passive thematic. 

Bryce: [00:14:50] That's all you need to know. 

Alec: [00:14:51] That's all you need to know. Now here's a stat for you. By late 2019, passive strategies had swallowed up more than half of publicly traded assets in U.S. equity funds. 

Bryce: [00:15:02] Wow. 

Alec: [00:15:03] So passive is massive. 

Bryce: [00:15:05] Passive is huge. 

Alec: [00:15:06] And what happened was over the fence, all of these active fund managers, these hedge fund managers and private, unlike unlisted fund managers, were looking at ETFs and saying, I want a piece of that which introduces a third pillar. Active ETFs. 

Bryce: [00:15:23] Activates. Here we go. Active ETF. So, so active. ETFs. This is where you actually have an investment team that chooses the stocks and they create the basket of stocks themselves and they actively manage that basket of stocks. And you, through one trade, get access to this active management. So it's different to what Ren said, where there's an index of stocks that are rebalanced only every three months or half a year whenever it may be. This active management is where or activates is. You have a team working behind the scenes to choose the stocks on your behalf. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:16:02] And they can buy and sell whenever they want as much as they want. They there are some rules that govern like what their fund, the fund's rules are, you know, if they're an Australian shares fund they'll only invest in Australia, but they're not passive, their active, they're actively making buy and sell decisions. There is a reason why it activates a good. It's because before the active ATF there was the listed investment company and Bryce has some incredibly strong feelings about losses. So so we put 2 minutes on the clock and just let your and.

Bryce: [00:16:33] I don't even think 2 minutes ran but listed investment companies in a simple explanation is where I'm investing in the company of a fund manager and the fund manager has their own business of managing funds. 

Alec: [00:16:49] I think the simplest way to do it is, rather than Apple selling iPhones, imagine if Apple just had the money that it had and just was investing in stocks. You know they would like suck out somehow fund is let's get rid of that we're just going to become stock market investors and if you buy Apple shares, you're backing Tim Cook to be a really good stock market investor. Okay, fine. Make sure that's a listed investment company. 

Bryce: [00:17:14] That's a list investment company. My issue with it, though, is that Apple might be incredibly good at at investing and do really well. However, the stock price itself is still determined by the market. So they could do if no one likes Apple as a fund manager yet they are really good at it, which would be which would be weird. But that is the reality. Their stock price won't perform. 

Alec: [00:17:38] So just to put it really simple work example, if Apple has $100 in share in in shares that it opens with a listed investment company, its share price could be anything. It could be $80, it could be $4, it could be $150. It's whatever the market pays. But with an active ETF, if Apple has $100 in shares, yeah, the unit price is going to be $100. 

Bryce: [00:18:01] That's right. Yeah.

Alec: [00:18:02] Yeah. So it just means that for investors that want access to these fund managers, an active ETF is, I guess, like more directly correlated to their performance because it doesn't have the ebbs and flows of the. 

Bryce: [00:18:14] Market. 

Alec: [00:18:15] Deciding the share price. 

Bryce: [00:18:16] I think it's a great innovation, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:18:20] And like there are other reasons why active ETFs have made sense. The traditionally, if we wanted to get access to some of these superstar fund managers, they had, you know, you had to have $25,000 minimum investment or $50,000 minimum investment with an active ETF that goes away. And it also means that, like, there's less paperwork and stuff where you can just sell out units of an active ETF whenever we want, rather than having to fill out a pages of paperwork and make it into a fund manager to get our units back. 

Bryce: [00:18:50] Yeah, I mean, we talk about making markets accessible here at Equity Mates and Activates definitely do that in terms of getting the best investors in the world. 

Alec: [00:18:58] But they have added to the confusion in the ETFs based because the idea of an ETF now isn't just a passive vehicle as it started, there are now active fund managers. Yeah, and there are some really famous names who are doing that. So Ark Invest is probably the most famous over the last few years over in the US. Cathie Wood back here in Australia, Magellan, Fidelity, Perpetual, like all of the big fund managers, also like Vanguard and stuff. Betashares, I'm pretty sure they now have active Jeff's as well. Yeah. Yeah, generally and this when you're trying to figure out is my ETF active or passive, go on the website because it will be very clear. But also generally you say in the name of the ETF, if it says Bracket Managed Fund, then it's a active ETF. This is my call out to the ASX. You should have clear naming conventions so people aren't as confused. 

Bryce: [00:19:53] Well, we've got a couple of bone to pick with the ASX, so we might pick it up, pick that out later. But then we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to take just redefine some of the key differences between active and passive so that it's very clear talk about some hybrids and then close out with what our key takeaways are from from all of this explosion of growth in the ATF space. So let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. So when we we've covered a fair bit of ground, so let's just take a bit of a pause and just be very clear about passive and what it means and active and what it means for those that still feel like a little bit confused and overwhelmed. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:20:35] So passive. They do not pick stocks. They follow a index, they follow something. Someone else tells them what they have to buy and how much of it they have to buy. And they just hold the they rebalance that at the end of every quarter or six months. They don't try and outperform the market. They just take whatever the market gives them and they generally have lower fees. So that's passive. It's just buy and hold and get whatever the market does. Then there's active and they have an investment team picking stocks. They are buying and selling those stocks whenever they want. They do this the active because they want to outperform the market, but because they have to hire more people and they have to do more analytical work, they generally have higher fees. And that's the distinction that has sort of existed for the last few years as passive and as active. But now what we're saying Bryce to just get make it a little bit more confusing for people like you and I, is that there are now funds that blur the line between active and passive. A quote from Morningstar Passively managed products are coming out increasingly with active options, and actively managed products rely on increasingly sophisticated sets of passively derived data sources. And then from Bloomberg, rather than black and white choice active is getting more passive and passive is getting more active. 

Bryce: [00:21:58] What the hell is that? Yeah, a lot of jargon there, I think. Firstly, it's not bad news that what we're saying here, I think is the key takeaway. So don't feel like that what we're about to jump into is a Oh my gosh. 

Alec: [00:22:13] Well, I don't think we're going to jump. I think we're just going to dip our toes in the water. Just this should just be a be aware way because there are 300 names if you Google ASX eighth that could come up. Yeah. And they're just not all the same. Yeah. So hopefully this episode helps you understand what you want because then you can navigate it a little bit more effectively. 

Bryce: [00:22:34] Yeah. As with everything, you know, there's always innovation and we're now seeing it appear in the ATS space beyond just passive and active. And you mentioned there again that we are seeing some new concepts emerging in Pace AG Is that what we're calling it? 

Alec: [00:22:49] Yeah, passive aggressive is it's a passive, passive house. 

Bryce: [00:22:52] Act. So you might see some ETFs that fall under the direct indexing. And from memory, direct indexing is rather than invest in an index, they actually buy the components of the indexes. 

Alec: [00:23:08] Yeah. And then you can like exclude things. 

Bryce: [00:23:10] Yeah. So you're not.

Alec: [00:23:11] So it's like I want to exposure 500, it's like I want exposure to the ASX 200 but I don't want the bank sack.

Bryce: [00:23:17] Yeah. 

Alec: [00:23:17] So I think you can really personalise it as well. There's it's not big in Australia. There is a company that I haven't looked into at all, but I just saw it when I was searching. Nucleus Wealth just launched direct indexing in Australia. No idea about them, but it's coming. But there's also like super niche thematic ETFs all like. 

Bryce: [00:23:37] Like your slim one, for example. 

Alec: [00:23:39] Yeah, yeah. And some of them might be passive, but then they might be active factor investing, which is where, you know, like you might say, I want stocks that show more growth characteristics. So I only want stocks that are going to grow revenue at 20% a year or something and that might be a growth factor. And then there's like a niche ETF that only gets those ones a strategic beta. Like there's just a bunch of jargony buzzwords that are now coming into the ATF space that is sort of blurring that line between active and passive. And there are some some examples that have listed in Australia. Both Vanguard and BlackRock have a factor multifactor ETF. So there's some that are sort of blurring that line a little bit more. 

Bryce: [00:24:27] So there's that.

Alec: [00:24:28] So is that so? I don't think we need to go too far in it. I think the reason we wanted to do this episode is because when we were chatting about it in the office, it was clear that a lot of the rules of thumb that we learnt when we were starting investing and we didn't even start that long ago, I know I'm no longer really applying. So the idea that ETFs a passive is throw that out the window. The idea that there's a clear distinction between active and passive, throw that out the window. And instead what you should not throw out the window is the idea that only invest in something that you understand. And if the ETF has a whole bunch of buzzwords and jargon in the title that you don't get, throw that out the window or take the time, I think, to know what it means. 

Bryce: [00:25:11] I think the one thing that holds with ETFs, no matter what it is, passive, active or active, is to always look under the hood. Yes, you always look under the hood. And what we mean by that is go to the website of the ATF, have a look at the page of the ATF, have a look at the companies under it, have a look at how much they're charging in management fees. Get an understanding of what this ATF is. Tyrone's point, you need to understand what you're investing in it just because it's easy to invest in ETFs. There's so many now you need to understand what it's trying to achieve. 

Alec: [00:25:47] You know, the the really confusing part of the market is and it opens a whole can of worms to it. No, I think it's worth saying, is anything related to climate or ESG? Because we've sort of spoken about a spectrum of ETFs, we've talked about the passive market ETFs than the passive thematic ETFs. And then the sort of blurred lines maybe factor, maybe a little bit more managed ETFs and an active ETFs. And they're well now they're now like climate and ESG ETFs that go across that whole spectrum. There are some that just by the market but exclude the worst companies like tobacco makers and stuff like that, there'll be a thematic index that someone else makes that follows. Like climate leaders. Yeah. So they'll passively follow. Yeah. Then there are some that might be a little bit more actively managed, and then there are like full blown, actively managed sustainability funds that are buying and selling and you know, got teams of analysts and they all will, when you look them up on the ASX website will all have similar enough names to be confused. So that's probably a space where it's it's going to be really obvious that there's a lot of products that sound similar but are managed in different ways. 

Bryce: [00:26:58] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's a it's a big it's a big world out there investing a lot of a lot of jargon to kind of get your head around. 

Alec: [00:27:07] And I think I think the unfortunate thing is we can't say, like, if you want a passive sustainability ETF, here's what you should look at. Yeah, but there are people that are licenced that can. So obviously financial advisors are out of reach and difficult to access and expensive to access. But this is where if you're confused, at least try and reach out to a financial advisor and see if they can help. That's it. Yeah, that's. 

Bryce: [00:27:33] It. All right, Ren Well, it's always a pleasure to chat stocks with you. I hope that we've been able to shed some light and and help you listening along at home, understand a bit more about the world, the exploding world of ETFs. And it's a trend that is highly likely to continue in the future as more and more funds become diverted and pushed into into ETFs and more retail investors come into the space. 

Alec: [00:27:58] So and I guess the final thought is like you could just ignore it all if you want to. Like especially the fire community, they buy two ETFs. Yes. The what is it, Vaseline and or something? Yeah, yeah. If I got those wrong apologies. But yeah, you don't you don't have to know all of this. You can just have the ones that work for you and sleep well at night. 

Bryce: [00:28:21] That's it. That's it. So if you didn't listen to our episode over on Equity Mates Investing podcast yesterday, we chatted with Roger Montgomery, who is the chief investment officer at Montgomery Investment, all about his thoughts on the current market conditions. We're trying to get through a lot of the experts that are friends of the show to help get an understanding of how they're thinking about it. So make sure you go and check out Equity Mates Investing Podcast. Similarly, we've got plenty of podcasts in the network to cover your investing journey if you're looking for an understanding of the macro environment and business conditions. Canadian Economist is another great one. 

Alec: [00:28:58] This might be a little bit self-serving given that we were on it, but last week on the dive we spoke about Justin Timberlake's hundred million dollar payday. Yes, if you want to know how he got $100 million and what he had to do for it and what it tells us about the music industry more generally, the business of music or the investment case for music are gone. Listen to that. On the dives fade.

Bryce: [00:29:19] Yes, check it out. I loved doing that episode, but Ren fin fest Equity Mates dot com slash fin fest. Make sure your registered tickets go on sale this Thursday the ninth. You have to be on the list to get access exclusive access to early bird. Otherwise you're gonna to be paying standard price which is still going to be incredibly accessible.

Alec: [00:29:37] It will be worth it, but you'll always be like, why didn't I just sign up to that name? Yeah, like what? What was I so busy with that I couldn't have been in early.

Bryce: [00:29:45] Exactly. And the 20% you'll save on early bird compounded over ten years is going to be potentially your retirement funds. 

Alec: [00:29:52] It's going to be enough to buy a house. Yeah, exactly. In the metaverse. 

Bryce: [00:29:56] Anyway, Ren, it's great to chat and we'll pick it up next week.