How to not get mauled in a bear market

Adam: [00:00:25] Hello and welcome to comedian versus economist. We demystify the world of money and help you get a handle on the bigger picture. My name's Adam and we're joined, as always, by my little older brother and real life economist Thomas. Hi, Thomas. 

Thomas: [00:00:39] G'day. Adam, how are you doing? 

Adam: [00:00:40] I'm doing very well. Thank you. Welcome to the show out there. If you're joining us for the first time, maybe a friend sent you. Hopefully they did. We would love it if you did that. We are trying to get as many people to listen to the show as possible. So if you could tell just one person, that would be amazing. Every every little bit helps. I did notice, Thomas, we're up to 991 Instagram followers. I think 1000 is the definition of viral. If I'm not mistaken, if I've been listening to the kids. Right. So yeah, nine to go and then we are officially viral. So tag them. I tell them about TV. Tell them Thomas sent you whatever it takes. And don't forget Finn Fest happening October 15th. If you haven't got your tickets yet, tickets are available first release tickets on sale now for just $47. It's going to be epic. Spots are limited. Those are getting quick. Finn fest is powered by a stake. And Thomas, big news today. Happy birthday to our mum sending you lots of birthday love from your favourite son. Mom, we obviously don't need to say who that is. Suffice to say, it's hard to imagine any parent wanting their child to be an economist when they grow up, so. 

Adam: [00:01:59] Did you ring? 

Thomas: [00:02:00] No, I didn't. 

Adam: [00:02:04] Had a big weekend. Let's hope she stays up late these days. All right. Big show coming up. Let's get into it. Tom, as I have done a bit of research, I've been looking into bears. And if you are confronted by a bear, if the bear charges your best advised to stand your ground, you cannot outrun it. Don't scream or you speak in soft monotone voice and wave your arms to let the bear know you are human. Thomas I'd like to find out if the same advice applies to a bear market, because we're confronted with one of those at the moment, and solar farms in the Northern Territory are sitting idle. Thomas Doing nothing. Maybe it really is harder to grow sunlight than we thought and face off, or at least hide your face next time you go into K-Mart, because it turns out they're scanning your face when you enter the store. We're going to find out why. But first, the Fair Work Commission has done a fair job with a fairly decent wage rise for fairground workers and others. Thomas, where we fair any better as a result? 

Thomas: [00:03:11] Yeah, well, it's sort of a good result for people on the minimum wage. They've got a 5.2% increase, the biggest in 16 years. Yeah, so that's not a bad outcome. But remember, the inflation's latest CPI is running at 5.1% headlines. So that's just a touch over that and expect it to go north of that. So really, the minimum wage is just keeping pace with inflation. So in real terms it's holding steady. But this time next year will probably be negative. So means a fall in real wages for people on the minimum wage. 

Adam: [00:03:42] Who's getting that boost then? The 5.1%. 

Thomas: [00:03:45] 5.2 is going to the moment wages. Yes, they've done something interesting this year where they have split it up, which they don't normally do. So normally they just set an increase for all awards and that for minimum wage and up and you know, like airline pilots are on an award as well. The awards like 200 grand or something but. 

Adam: [00:04:03] And the best landing. Only giving out two tokens. They keep working. If you haven't won the best landing award yet and you pull it out, they give up, then give up on your dream. Yes, I know. So normally the. 

Thomas: [00:04:22] Commission adjusts awards across the board, but this year they've given 5.2% to people in the minimum wage and then they've done something else interesting where they've given 4.6% or $40, whatever's more. So if you've got three tiers, so if you're on the minimum wage, you're getting 5.2%, if you're earning less than $869, you get 40 bucks. And if you earn just.

Adam: [00:04:50] Right. 

Thomas: [00:04:51] Yeah. 

Adam: [00:04:51] Just 40 bucks for two. 

Thomas: [00:04:53] Yes. Yeah. And if you're earning more than $869 a week, then you get 4.6%. 

Adam: [00:04:59] Right. What's the idea there? 

Thomas: [00:05:00] Well, the idea is it's more progressive in the sense that the poor get more. So if you're earning less, $40 is going to be is more than 4.6%. So is it. So with 5.2 you go to the minimum wage and then $40. Everyone earning less than $869. Yeah. If you're earning less, you're getting more with this kind of this kind of system. Yes. They haven't they haven't done this in a while. But yeah, that's what that's what they've decided to go with this time. 

Adam: [00:05:25] People and people. This is a good idea or this is not a good idea. 

Thomas: [00:05:30] Oh, it's it's a little contentious. I mean, obviously, yeah. Obviously the unions and the people earning minimum wage, they're happy with it. They think it's a good result. NEWMAN Unions said it could have could have been more sort of some of the people in the business press were a bit unhappy. So Robert Gottliebsen saying it's have created a nationwide expectation of a 5% wage write which will act as a flamethrower to inflation. 

Adam: [00:05:55] All right, well, he's not winning any awards then, is he? Yeah. So if we give out a 5% pay rise, his argument then is that it creates more demand in the economy when we're trying to cool demand by raising rates and doing all those other things. Exactly. 

Thomas: [00:06:11] I don't that's not the argument that you could make. That argument is not particularly strong. It's not huge. But the argument is more that this is a cost that businesses have to bear. Right. And as costs go up, then that'll get passed on in inflation. Into inflation as those costs rise. Right. That sort of. And that's why yeah. That's typically the argument that people in the business press argue for when they're trying to, you know, make sure that people don't get big wage increases, that that is going to lead to inflation. Yes, it's bad for business, but we're really concerned about inflation. That's why we're arguing about it.

Adam: [00:06:48] The CEOs of these big businesses that take often massive pay rises and massive bonuses, are they behind it or are they like sort of keeping shush on the matter. And look at them? I think that's a yeah. 

Thomas: [00:07:07] They tend to let the business the peak in business groups and industry groups speak on their behalf. So the Australian keep. 

Adam: [00:07:14] A safe distance. 

Thomas: [00:07:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Adam: [00:07:16] Also good advice when confronted by a ban. Yeah. 

Adam: [00:07:22] So, Thomas, the ASX got hammered last week. Seems like the bears are everywhere. Bears are scary. Should we be scared? Yeah. 

Thomas: [00:07:32] Yeah. And yes and no. I mean, last week was was a bit of a was a bit brutal for the ASX, the biggest weekly loss since the COVID crash of 2020. So pretty grim as all sort of all came out of the US. The US inflation's running at 8.6%, which is a 40 year high and that sort of put markets and made them a bit nervous. The Fed came out and hike rates by 0.75 percentage points, which is the largest increase in 28 years. That caused a bit of a sell off in the US, that followed up in the in Australia with the ASX sold off 5% on Wednesday. So that was a big, big downturn sort of across the board banks, energy, technologies, everything, everything's getting hit.

Thomas: [00:08:17] Yeah, so we get, we're definitely in bear market territory now. So yeah, ASX is, is getting is getting hit pretty hard. S&P 500 in America is down 24% from its peak. The Nasdaq's down 34%, so it's pretty huge. Bitcoin had a brutal weekend as well, dropped under 20,000 USD for a while there. That's now down 71% from its peak in 2021. 

Adam: [00:08:41] Wow. You'd be disappointed in that. Yeah. You're a big phoney. You are a big proponent of cryptocurrencies.

Thomas: [00:08:47] Yeah, no, I'm, I'm just going to buy the dip once we get there then. 

Adam: [00:08:52] Moon Yeah, I mean the interesting. 

Thomas: [00:08:55] Thing with the analysts is saying this is a side note saying that in 2018 Bitcoin fell 83%. So saying yeah, that's like yeah, we just, it's just history repeating it and it will bounce back if that's true and I don't know how true it is, but that would put a price target of around 11,000 USD for Bitcoin, down 20% where it is at 20,000 where it is now. 

Adam: [00:09:17] It took a while to bounce back to, didn't it, like it's seven nothing until COVID and then everyone's like crypto is on we we're going to if we're going to beat this. V to whatever disease it is, we're going to need some crypto currency to deal with it. So the big question I guess is when will the bear market end? Like we've been heading downwards since the early start of the year. Are we at the bottom? Do we know where the bottom is? How can we see? 

Thomas: [00:09:47] It's it's very hard to know. Typically, one thought I have around it is that like a lot of it's been been triggered by sort of a reaction to central bank movements, the Fed and RBA hiking rates, the general shift in tone globally towards tighter, tighter monetary policy. But humans are typically good at avoiding slow moving disasters. Yeah, I think so. 

Adam: [00:10:12] Other than the stock market gradually being eaten away, what's another slow moving disaster or really slow volcano?

Adam: [00:10:23] Well, that's like climate change. 

Thomas: [00:10:26] They're not doing so well at climate change.

Adam: [00:10:28] Avoiding dealing with it is look a bit like. 

Thomas: [00:10:30] Peak oil that we were worried about that. But then that turned out to be not a thing peak food. We were very worried in the seventies that we just Australia just would not be able to grow enough food for a population of 12 million. And it turns out we can feed 24 million without a drama crust across the year now. Yeah. So it could be because we react so we can adjust and as the crisis builds, we can, you know, help get out of the way. It maybe doesn't apply to all things. I'm still nervous about how climate change is going to play out. But, but, but I think, like, the point is that like we're talking about, if you look at where markets are pricing interest rates to go from here and people are freaking out about that. And then the sort of that involves a picture of central banks hiking rates full bore into an epic recession and then just keep pushing and pushing. And that's not what's going to happen that, you know, they meet monthly for a reason. They sort of they adjust and then see how it plays out, adjust and see how it plays out. And if the wheels really start coming off, then then they'll take a breather. So in that context, I. 

Adam: [00:11:33] Don't pay a lot of attention, but some of the stuff I've heard out of the US is they're pretty like pretty much like, look, we're just doing whatever it takes to get inflation under control and we're going to adjust. This is like all bets are off. We'll send the we'll send the economy, economy into the ground if we have to, to get inflation under control. So I hear you saying that that meeting monthly and whatever, but at the same time, they're like every month that is getting together going, how are we going? Not still no good, right? A rate rises. 

Thomas: [00:12:02] But if you get into a deep recession, that's not consistent with inflation, with consistent inflation. And at the moment, it's all supply shocks, it's all supply chain disruptions, energy prices. Those things will come out of the inflation data unless they keep going up and up. Give me. And like commodity prices just. Today, you know, they've come off the boil. I expect energy prices will as well. They can't keep going up from where they are. So the inflation shock enters the system and then once once prices, even though they just plateau out, you know, if oil prices stay where they are, which is very high, but if they stay where they are and don't change, then they they're contributing nothing to inflation. And if they return to normal, which is probably what they're going to going to do, then they start taking subtracting from inflation. 

Adam: [00:12:52] Right. So, you know, so my question, when will it end? We don't know. 

Thomas: [00:12:56] We don't know yet. 

Adam: [00:12:59] Well, soonish, but maybe not. 

Thomas: [00:13:01] I mean, this is this there's people in the markets now saying this, that the adjustment to monetary policy that is priced in is roughly has already been priced into the market. Mm hmm. That the falls so far are forward looking and involve a normalisation of monetary policy and things. Things getting back to normal. Mm hmm. And that's already priced in. 

Adam: [00:13:21] Because there are still some people saying that it's transitory, right? Yeah. Not everyone's agreeing that it's. This is permanent inflation. No, no, like I think it was. Is it Janet Yellen? Is that the one in the United States? Yeah, she was come out today or yesterday saying no, still still thinks this is transitory.

Thomas: [00:13:38] Yeah. I said I'm not sure I've got time for that argument. Like is the thing about energy prices, like they've got to keep to keep contributing to inflation, they've got to keep going up and up and up and it's just not possible. And I think a lot of the supply chain disruptions are starting to sort themselves out with sort of managing around what's happening in the war in Ukraine and what that's done to wheat prices. We're adjusting. It takes time to adjust, but we adjust. That's what markets do very well, is they absorb shocks and adjust quite seamlessly sometimes. So take some time. But at that thing, that's what we're seeing. 

Adam: [00:14:10] So the big question I've got when I talk to our friends and whatever they like, where do I put my money? Like, how do you know where? Like, we can't eat it on cash because inflation is eating away your cash. You can't. The market's going down or has been at least till now. Where? What do you do with it? Where do you hide it? 

Thomas: [00:14:29] It's really tricky. I mean, I'm interesting. Chris Joye wrote an article in the AFR the other day, which is interesting saying like everyone says, cash is bad and inflation environments, but you've got sort of as interest rates go up to two to combat inflation, then you sort of your basic term deposit starts paying more and more like cash. Cash under your bed is losing value, but cash in a term deposit is doing okay. Hmm. It's not the the dead end, the dead beat option that people talk about it being just holding holding cash. You don't just stick it under your. 

Adam: [00:15:00] Bed, but then you can't deploy it. If it's in a term deposit, you can't deploy it when Etherium turns the corner and starts heading north. You dump it all back into the back in bitcoin spot account. So. Yeah, yeah. No, it's. Yeah. 

Thomas: [00:15:17] Investing is hard. Yeah. But I mean if you go back to the start of the year or to like the peak a few months ago and said to me, you know, where should I hide my money? Like to this to me in the future. Like I couldn't give you an answer. Like there hasn't been an asset class that's survived the, the sell off in the past couple of months. In broad terms, you know, like the specific companies have done well or specific things have done well, but not not broadly like bonds. Bonds haven't done well, the share market hasn't done well. Crypto hasn't done well, property hasn't done well. None of the sort of the.

Adam: [00:15:52] Gold is there. And if you take it for gold goes well I think so. And the digital gold hasn't, hasn't panned out. 

Thomas: [00:16:04] Yeah. Even commodities are commodities down though. I don't know how that would compare to like a month or two months ago, but you know they're a bit of a sell off today, so.

Adam: [00:16:12] Right. 

Thomas: [00:16:12] Yeah. So yeah, there isn't, there isn't sort of this particular round. There hasn't been anywhere to hide. But then I don't know. Going forward, it's, it's a bit tricky to know. 

Adam: [00:16:22] So how do people time the market then like is that. Well they can you they. 

Thomas: [00:16:26] Don't really like it it's very hard to time like I read something to the day saying uh, Jonathan Philpot from Wealth Management in the US is saying the S&P has declined has to has had declines of between ten and 20%. That's happened 29 times since the end of World War Two and saying on average only took four months to recover those losses. So it's not that long in the scheme of things. It feels it feels really hard when you when you're seeing your portfolio getting smashed. But typically, it only takes four months to bounce back. 

Adam: [00:16:59] It feels really hard. It's it's not as hard as explaining to Anna what's happening to our portfolio is that she left it in Morocco, who had. Really regretting the day. You know, I do a finance podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Argument whenever. The thing was, Rosie said. We're going to get him. This is we're missing out. 

Thomas: [00:17:29] The other point this guy makes is that, say, like, well, it takes four months to recover the big recovery. Days typically happen very short. Shortly after the bottom of the market. So it bounces back quickly. But you don't know when that bottom is. But if you're waiting for a clear signal that the market's turned, you're going to miss those big recoveries and you're going to potentially lose money. So. So his his point is, like you don't try to time the market. It's very hard. No, no one can. No one's got a crystal ball. 

Adam: [00:17:58] This reminds me of my Beat the bomb days on triple everyone's favourite ring out trying to beat the, you know, $100. $200 and to go stop. And it's just. This it's this market's got a radio game show written all over. All right. Let's take a break here. Grab a quick word from this week, sponsor and be back with more. Going to be talking about the energy crisis as well as facial recognition technology coming to a shopping centre near you all on comedian versus economist right after this. Welcome back here on Canadian versus Economist. You can send us an email if you like CV at Equity Mates dot com or get us on Facebook and Instagram at CV podcast. Only nine more. Follow us on Instagram before we hit the magical 1000 mark, which totally meaningless but still fun nevertheless. Thomas We covered off the energy crisis a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure everyone as well across skyrocketing electricity prices. Have we fixed it now where we. 

Thomas: [00:19:06] No, no, we haven't fixed it, but we're getting some more plans. 

Adam: [00:19:13] And some more data. So plan your plans. 

Thomas: [00:19:16] And then the federal government said last week, end of last week, the federal government's Energy Security Board design released a draught plan for a draught plan, not an actual plan, just to draught one for a new capacity mechanism. Yeah. So in this one, we're going to pay electricity generators not to produce stuff. Actually, that's it. We're just going to pay them to have stuff available when we need it rather than just produce it. So currently electricity generators get paid to produce. We're going to pay them to keep some redundancy in their capacity. 

Adam: [00:19:50] So just like we at home might just turn the heater on when we need it and use some power, they're just going to have the coal stations just sitting there till is enough heaters on and then fire them up.

Thomas: [00:20:03] I think. I think that's right. Yeah. It's just making sure there's, there's enough yeah. There's excess capacity in the system. That's, that's sort of the plan, what the mechanisms going to do. There was a lot of talk about whether coal or gas generators would be included in that. So whether they would pay fossil fuel generators, too, to stay on and just have that capacity, the board said it will. Having that in the mix was important. They refused to rule it out, but the states will have the final say in what what goes into it. So Victoria's Energy Minister Lily D'Ambrosio came out and said, yeah, they're happy with the flexibility. It's always been clear for us that a capacity market wouldn't make payments to fossil fuels. It's got to go to zero emissions technologies. So that's how Victoria is going to work the mechanism. 

Adam: [00:20:51] So what they're saying, well, we're only going to pay for solar or whatever. 

Thomas: [00:20:55] Yeah, we, if we, if we have to pay for extra capacity in the system where we're going to do that with, with solar and wind farms and things like that with zero emissions take.

Adam: [00:21:03] We're saying to the energy producers, don't stop producing energy unless we need it, but then the states then have to top up the shortfall. Is that what you're saying? 

Thomas: [00:21:12] No. The states managers will manage the security, the capacity mechanism. And so when they're paying, the states will decide which generators to pay in their state to provide these excess capacity. Good. 

Adam: [00:21:26] Alright, so we'll all this work. Will it fix the problem. 

Thomas: [00:21:29] I don't think so. Not, not reading my reading of it. I don't even think it really actually addresses the problem.

Adam: [00:21:35] It certainly makes the problem more complicated. I feel it makes it very complex. It makes it much harder to know what the problem is, which might be useful, particularly for politicians. 

Thomas: [00:21:45] No, that's right. I mean, it sort of potentially just gives more like some of the critics are calling it coal keeper because it's just paying, paying, paying the fossil fuel companies to keep, you know, not even just to stay alive. Not even actually produce anything. Yeah. One like if you want to increase supply, if that's a problem. Like when we had my mate Tim on the Energy Economist a few weeks ago, the thing he kept pointing out was that it's really about infrastructure, that there's all this there is a lot of like solar farms and renewable tech projects ready to go. They're just waiting for the infrastructure that allows them to connect to the grid. And that's where the bottleneck is. It's in that connectivity to the grid. So the ABC was running a story during the week which is interesting saying that there's four big solar farms have been built in the NT over the past few years, but all of them are sitting idle and not complete, not supplying energy to the to the grid. Right. So the panels are in place. They're in a field, the sun's hitting them and that energy's not going anywhere. And it's substantial. So there's not any energy as a 25 megawatt facility near Katherine and 210 megawatt solar farms at Badger Mountain. And then another company, Rim Fire Energy, has a ten megawatt facility at Batchelor.

Adam: [00:23:01] So they're just like they're just reflecting light back into space. Maybe that's maybe that's why you hear China detected aliens this week. 

Thomas: [00:23:09] I did hear that. 

Adam: [00:23:10] Aliens are just like, whoa, stop shining light in my. 

Thomas: [00:23:16] Yeah. So it's a bit like the use of light is really the problem then like create, create the systems to bring all that potential tech online, just get that infrastructure in place seems to be more logical, right? 

Adam: [00:23:29] So we're just we're just waiting on an extension to hook up to the. To the solar farm. 

Thomas: [00:23:33] Yeah, pretty much. That's. Him. 

Adam: [00:23:36] Come on. 

Thomas: [00:23:39] Let's just go. Mo's got his phone plugged into it when you. Get away from the accent. Says he's fine off the solar farm.

Speaker 1: [00:23:50] The other thing. 

Thomas: [00:23:50] Is, is that supply is not actually the problem. Like the national electricity energy market is oversupply. Supply is greater than demand right now. And I've got a chart. I'll share it to the to to Instagram that we have an excess of supply. The problem is the price. And the reason price is a problem here is because energy prices are set on a global market and we're paying global prices for for our energy. 

Adam: [00:24:14] Can't we just stop participating in the global market?

Thomas: [00:24:19] If you had a domestic reservations. I mean, we talked last last time we touched on this. This is one of the proposals that could fix it is a domestic reservation, which is what Western Australia has. The energy prices are much lower than than the East Coast. Yes. So as a domestic reservation would fix that problem, would fix it for us. Yeah. And that would support the local industry in manufacturing which you know could be a good thing is a lot of you know, the real danger here is that a hollows out the Australian economy, that a lot of businesses that rely on energy to survive, which is, you know, almost all businesses really, they just go broke because they can't afford to pay it. While the mining companies are selling, you know, 75% of their gas goes to China, ensuring that the Chinese government funds, you know, has has direct support for Chinese industry. So the manufacturing sector is doing well, but ours potentially gets hollowed out so that there isn't a coordination here, which means that it seems to me to make the Aussie economy a bit vulnerable. It's not a great situation.

Adam: [00:25:20] Who's who's going to fix it? I mean, who's the is this is this a business thing? Is it a government thing? Is it a federal government or state government? I think it is. I think you are right, too. 

Thomas: [00:25:31] And you're right. I reckon this is I reckon it's a federal thing because I think it's it's a big enough crisis that, you know, we're talking about the, you know, the viability of the Australian manufacturing sector and we've just come through COVID where we realise that we can't rely on global supply chains completely, that we're quite vulnerable to these big shifts we're trying to. You know, Anthony Albanese ran on a platform of, of making things here and reinvigorating Aussie manufacturing when energy prices are through the roof, that totally kills Aussie manufacturing. So it is it's a nation building to use that cliche. It has that has that implication. And so and I think the federal government has the capacity to to make some real, real serious changes, particularly like as as my mate Tim was saying, like invest in that infrastructure that that brings all these renewable energy projects online, allows them to plug in and then look at either a domestic gas reservation, a domestic coal reservation, or like what the UK Tories have done with a windfall tax, with a tax, the super profits of the resource companies, and then funnel that back to households through through grants and you could funnel that back to Aussie companies as well to help them manage would be a good start. But yeah, but tinkering with the capacity just seems like it's kind of wilfully missing the point to me. 

Adam: [00:26:56] Whoever built the solar farm in the middle of the outback, not near anyone's house, I think probably has a lot to answer for as well. Like we wouldn't need so many, so many extension leads if they're just building next to where they were living. But they're now so let's so let's all pull together and maybe I don't know, I gather up, you gather up your extension cords and we'll see if we can. 

Adam: [00:27:23] It. Islands around the world extension leads around the country to the nearest solar farm. Right. Thomas Finally, I'm hearing people are up in arms about facial recognition technology being used at the shops. What's going on? Yeah. 

Thomas: [00:27:42] So I Choice magazine had a had an exposé.

Adam: [00:27:47] GC Yeah. Yeah. 

Thomas: [00:27:48] Last week saying that three major retailers in Australia so Kmart, Bunnings and the good guys at least three there might be more are using facial recognition technology in their shops and not doing a very good job of letting customers know that that's going on. 

Adam: [00:28:05] I think Bunnings has had facial recognition technology for years now or as we call him, Tony, when I go there and Jesus says, Get out. Here straight away. Well, how does he know? How does he know it's me? Is Tony an ally? But as I said, it's. Just to go out the front of Bunnings. Yeah, I guess I kind of assumed this was happening. I don't know. Maybe a hurry to open. Yeah. Yeah. 

Thomas: [00:28:35] Facial recognition. Yeah. I don't know if it was a bit big brother to me. I didn't realise. It's like, you know, like I get it if you like. It's a diamond warehouse and there's like Tom Cruise is going to have a heist and kind of break in. You want some facial recognition tape? Kmart was. 

Adam: [00:28:54] His back the third time this week for Homewares. No, but I mean, I don't know. Maybe. Maybe I've just reached a point of complacency with my with my privacy. Like, I just assume it's out there, like. Uh huh. Yeah. I don't know. What do you do? Shop online that way. That way, instead of your face. They're only getting, you know, your browsing history, shopping preferences, your shoe size, you give money, marital status, your name, address card, you know, like everything about your face if you go if you shop online instead. Well, like, I think we shouldn't overstate how much we're giving away by letting our face appear in Kmart's shopping feed.

Thomas: [00:29:37] Oh, yeah. I mean, but there's a difference here. Like, I think they talk about, you know, like you kind of you are aware of that. If you read the terms and conditions when you're online shopping, you get some sense of that. 

Adam: [00:29:51] You know, a cookie pop out. The thing that says we use cookies, are you okay with that? Everybody's blithely goes, Yeah, sure. I don't know what cookies are I like. 

Thomas: [00:30:02] I like. I didn't know this was going on. And, you know, I don't know. I haven't really thought into it, but I feel like I would have liked to have been told. And so what choice is saying? Like, the like there's really limited signage. Customers are almost completely in the dark about where, you know, what's going on there. 76% of us. 

Adam: [00:30:20] Are really in the dark. We wouldn't be able to see their faces. 

Thomas: [00:30:28] But that's 76% said they had no idea that it's going on. It's a bit. And the thing is, it's sort of like what choice highlights is, is in a bit of a regulatory sort of grey zone is because you're not supposed to collect any biometric data or particularly biometric data and under the Privacy Act, unless you really need to. 

Adam: [00:30:48] Yeah, I think the problem I mean the Privacy Act all about like you shouldn't be collecting any data that you don't have a, like a a purpose for. So you need to have a demonstrable purpose for why you're collecting data. And that applies to anything like forms or whatever. Like, if you're if you're on the web and you say, Hey, I want you to register for our site, you can't just say, Oh, we need your passport number. It's like, you know, you don't. Buying a toothbrush through Kmart online or whatever. You don't need my passport. And, like, it's irresponsible to collect that information, so. So I don't know. And I think it's a security thing, presumably, isn't it, that they're trying to stop theft? 

Thomas: [00:31:25] And I guess I mean, that's what I when I read their privacy, it it's like, well, who defines need? You know, what if Bunnings says, well, I need to sell it to people. With information. We collect. 

Adam: [00:31:38] It's part of my business model. You can rest assured we'll be selling everyday low prices. Yeah. Okay. Okay, okay. This is the thing. We've we've literally been we've literally been covering up our faces for two years. And everyone was outraged when we had to move to masks. It was like I never worried about my riot card covering my face. And now we take the masks off, the failure of the masks. Everyone's like, What? You're looking at my face. You can't be looking at my face. Like, Make up your mind, baby. What do you want? Uh, or I reckon that probably does for this week. Don't forget to check out all the other great podcasts from Equity Mates Get Started Investing Equity Mates Investing Podcast. You're in good company, talk money to me crypto curious and the dive and of course fin fest happening October 15th head to Equity Mates dot com forward slash fin fest and if you've enjoyed this show and you've enjoyed our. Other shows, then please, please, please tell a friend spread the word. That would really help us out enormously. But Thomas, that's it for us for this week. We look forward to your company again next week. It's bye for now.