Your guide to the small caps offering big returns | Eleanor Swanson

Maddy: [00:00:28] Hello and welcome to your English Company podcast X Investing accessible for everyone. I'm Maddy Guest. And as always, I'm in some very good company with my co-host Sophie Dicker 

Sophie: [00:00:38] Hello, Maddy. I'm excited for today's episode because we are speaking to Eleanor Swanson from Fire Trial and we've kind of ambushed Eleanor at FinFest. 

Maddy: [00:00:49] Well, we've been wanting to get her on the podcast for a long time. I think we've been far. What's the word? Far away. Admirers. It's a virus. That's what I've been looking for for quite a while of her work. She really is quite incredible. And she has a real knack for a good stock fit. 

Sophie: [00:01:04] Yeah, and I think her story is really relatable. Getting into investing as a female millennial. Yeah. Resonated a lot with her. 

Maddy: [00:01:11] Just a heads up. If you are new to investing, what would you recommend that you go back and listen to our summer series investing conversations that every millennial should have. It took place at the end of last year. Eleanor has been in the industry for a long time. She is quite the process. She uses a little bit of jargon, say, which you shouldn't be afraid of. But if you are new, we recommend you go back to those episodes. 

Sophie: [00:01:33] Take us to the Internet. 

Maddy: [00:01:36] Today we are excited to be talking with Eleanor Samson, portfolio manager at Fire Travel Investments. Eleanor has over seven years experience in the finance world and in that time has become quite the expert in Australian small companies. We're excited to learn about all of that and more today. Eleanor, welcome to You're In Good Company. 

Eleanor: [00:01:55] Thanks, Maddy. Thanks, Sophie, for having me on the show. 

Sophie: [00:01:58] No worries at all. Now, we usually start off by getting to know you a little bit better, so wanting to know what's the best thing that's happened to you in the past seven days. 

Eleanor: [00:02:06] Well, I was just saying to Maddie that I've moved into a new place in Coogee, so I feel like I've timed it beautifully with summer kicking off in Sydney right next to the beaches, the restaurants. Yeah, it's an upgrade, so I feel pretty good about the move. 

Maddy: [00:02:21] And I was just saying that I'm very jealous and I need to work on it. So I moved up to Sydney. Eleanor, if you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be and why? 

Eleanor: [00:02:33] So I've actually just finished this person's biography and I am a little bit of a science nerd, so that's kind of where it's coming from. They're also not alive, so I'm assuming that I'm allowed to go into day to day with a person that we bring back to life. Yeah, the person would be Marie Curie. So I just read her biography. It's written by her daughter. And, you know, I'm sure you're aware she's won two Nobel prises. She had a really tough life, and I just think she'd be fascinating to have dinner with. 

Maddy: [00:03:03] When you said you just finished the biography, I thought you meant you finished writing it. And I was like, Oh. Yeah, she really can do it all. I was very impressed. 

Eleanor: [00:03:17] No, I haven't quite got there. 

Sophie: [00:03:18] Do you find that your biography, right, like, is that the type of book that you go to? 

Eleanor: [00:03:22] Not really. Actually, I just find her fascinating. And so I saw it on a bookshelf and had to read it. I'm actually more of a fiction girl. I find, you know, when you're working long hours, you kind of just want something to switch off. So, you know, it's a little bit out of my usual genre.

Sophie: [00:03:39] Yeah, I'm the same. Every time I go on holiday. It might just give me something that I don't have to concentrate on. Thank you. And, Eleanor, if you could be a stock or company, who would you be and why? 

Eleanor: [00:03:49] Yes. So again, this is something I've been looking at recently. We did a bit of work on fund managers in Australia. We wanted to get a bit of beta into our portfolio. We landed on Pinnacle Investment Management and they actually own 20% of fire trials. So I might be a little bit biased but it's a really awesome company. Basically what they do is they seed fund managers. So the great thing about Pinnacle is that they're diversified across asset classes. So most fund managers in Australia, you know, they're either an equity manager or, you know, a real asset manager. And so you don't get that diversification. Whereas Pinnacle, they've got real assets, they've got credit, they've got equities, they've even got agriculture. So when the equity markets go down, it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to underperform and it's really a capital lite model. So to date, for the fund managers they've invested in, they've got a ten X return on that initial capital outlay. So it's a pretty amazing business model and I think it's a pretty good company to be in if you kind of have a positive medium term view on the market, which all of us people that work in markets do have that positive medium term view. So yeah, if I was a company, I'd like to be the pinnacle. 

Maddy: [00:05:04] Well, Eleanor, you say that you've been working in markets and you have been for a little while now, and I think you may have a name for yourself with some pretty incredible stock picks along the way. But I'd love to go back to you. When you were starting out investing on your personal journey, what would you say you think was your biggest motivator for sort of learning about investing and sort of wanting to grow your wealth? I guess. 

Eleanor: [00:05:28] Yeah. I think what really got me into investing was just that I just loved trying to find companies that were going to outperform the rest of the market. And I think it's pretty overwhelming when you're starting out trying to figure out what that is. I heard one of my girlfriends referring to markets is, you know, like reading the star charts. Like it just seems so random. Why stocks move up and down. But at fire travel, we kind of try and keep it pretty simple. And we've got three philosophies that kind of drive how we think about investing. And so one of them is that, you know, every company has a price. So we're very driven by valuation. So, you know, we're not going to just jump into it. You know, I feel like cryptocurrencies were a massive fad that everybody jumped into at the moment. It seems like everybody wants to jump into lithium stocks because of decarbonisation and electric vehicles, and we see a lot of companies in that space that look incredibly overvalued to us. So we're always, you know, trying to figure out what we actually think the assets are worth. And over the medium term, you do get much better returns investing based on valuations. So that's one thing we do. Another thing we do is that we try to focus on two or three key things that are going to drive the share price of a company. If you're looking at a company, there's often huge amounts of news flow. You can get distracted going down a rabbit hole. So we just focus on these two or think like three drivers. And I mean like a good example would be, you know, our media, which is an outdoor advertising company. You know, if we think about what matters for our media, it's going to be what's the ad market doing? You know, how are they going in terms of recovering their revenue, post-COVID and then do they have a good balance sheet to withstand the economic cycle? If you get those three things right, you're probably going to, you know, make the right decision in terms of investing. So, yeah, we kind of have those kinds of few philosophies we think about. The other one is share prices, followed by earnings. So I'm sure you've seen if you've been following, you know, quarterly earnings season in the US, you know, the minute stock downgrades, the share price follows. So we're pretty obsessive with forecasting earnings. It is now a portfolio and making sure that the companies are either going to meet or beat analyst expectations. And if they're not, you know, we probably would seriously consider moving it on because we just know how the share price is going to react. So keeping it simple and kind of following those three key philosophies has really helped me, I guess, uncover what drives a company to outperform the market. And it's made investing a lot more interesting, I guess, because it doesn't feel like some sort of random, up, down, volatile, all over the place based. That's overwhelming. 

Maddy: [00:08:05] Yeah, it's a great strategy, although I have to say I'm not sure what you mean about stores moving all over the place. I think I'm a believer in store science. I think there's a lot of logic to that. 

Sophie: [00:08:18] Now it sounds like you obviously have a very long career in the profession. So I think along the way you would have learnt a lot for you personally and for someone that's listening at the moment. You know, thinking about the market being volatile, you're saying that, you know, you don't see it as such a volatile thing if you've got your lessons in place. Like what is one of the biggest lessons that you've learnt on your personal journey with investing?

Eleanor: [00:08:39] I think one of the key takeaways for me is often you come up with an investment thesis and it can look really incredible in a slide deck or you know, in an Excel model you put in all the drivers and it looks amazing. But at the end of the day, when you're investing in a company, you're investing in people. So you often will hear fund managers, you know, go on and on about, you know, how companies in their portfolio, you know, they've got amazing management teams. You know, they've got an ownership stake in the business. And it kind of after a while, you know, starts to just, you know, sound like they're repeating the same thing. But I do honestly believe that having a good management team in place with the right incentive structure and with the right experience to actually go and execute on the strategy is incredibly important. And we've seen it time and time again. Like if we've had an investment thesis, it sounds incredible, but then the management team hasn't been correctly incentivised in that short term, and long term incentives aren't closely aligned to shareholders. Maybe they don't have, you know, a significant ownership stake in the company. And we just see that, you know, time and time again, they fail to execute on the strategy and the investment thesis often falls apart as a result. So I think one of the biggest lessons from May and some advice I'd give people looking to invest is to do your due diligence on management, not necessarily just the CEO and the CFO and even go to the level below and look at, you know, the head of sales, you know, the chief marketing officer, the chief technology officer. Do your due diligence because at the end of the day, you're investing in a management team to go away and execute on the company's strategy. 

Sophie: [00:10:20] Yeah, it's interesting you say management team because I think that's one of the things that Matt and I always tend to look at and you look at the people's story because it's, you know, not easy to relate to, but it kind of gives you a flavour to how they're managing the business. But what do you like? What would you specifically look for in people that you know, if you're going down to that level of middle management, like, what are you looking for as you're looking for that? They have a good career, a good background. 

Eleanor: [00:10:41] Like, yeah, I'd definitely be looking at whether they've got experience that's relevant to the industry. What's their track record been like? I mean, ideally you try we get great access to the C on the CFO, but we often try and get access to that next layer down of management because often the CEO on the CFO, the talking heads, but the people, the women and men in the life below are the ones actually going out and executing. So it's great to meet with them and just actually hear if they if they're able to speak like what specifically about how they're going to go and execute on something, you know, give you time horizons, give you clear metrics on, you know, what they're looking to achieve, what are their KPIs. That's a really good sign. I find if they are kind of waffling and not giving you specifics, that might be an indication that they don't really have a plan themselves. I definitely look at an annual report and have a look at, you know, management's incentives. You know, they will have hurdles in terms of what they have to hit in order to get paid their bonuses and their long term incentive. So that's very useful to look at. But yeah, I mean, you can even go on LinkedIn, kind of do a little bit of a background check on Mickey being able to keep an eye on, you know, what other people are saying about them. You know, have they got recommendations, good industry contacts? Yeah. I mean, I think during your day, day on on management teams is really important. 

Maddy: [00:12:08] So I was joking the other day that we like to go on Glassdoor and say what people are saying about their employers. It gives you quite an interesting insight, perspective on leadership. 

Eleanor: [00:12:18] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's a good one. 

Maddy: [00:12:20] I'm interested to hear. What perspective do you think that sort of millennials can bring and I guess particularly millennial women, to the investing landscape? You know, what's Eleanor's contribution to. The team, do you think?

Eleanor: [00:12:34] I think one of the nice things about millennials is we're kind of a fresh pair of eyes. I think often, you know, men and women who've been in the industry for decades, you know, they do get a little bit wedded to companies and they can also be a bit jaded by, you know, our past companies, you know, failing to meet their expectations and being really disappointing investments. And then they never want to look at that company again, basically. Whereas, you know, millennials are willing to go everywhere, have a look, consider new business models. So I think that's kind of one of the nice things about millennials. Maybe we're not so jaded in terms of millennial women. I mean, I think women and this is a bit of a generalisation, but there have been studies done that women tend to take a little bit more of a medium term view when it comes to just generally setting strategies, but in particular with investing like we're willing to be a little bit more patient, were they a little bit more willing to hold? Whereas we definitely see this in the investment taming of men, a very short term driven, you know, they like to see short term earnings be, you know, a big catalyst come off and they may be less patient, but I think it's not necessarily a bad thing because, you know, if you get profits, right, in the short term, you will get upside. So I think it's quite a nice complimentary thing that women do take that kind of more patient approach. Men are a little bit more catalyst driven. And then if you kind of mix those two components into an investment team, it kind of balances out quite nicely. So I think that's kind of what a millennial or millennial woman might bring to an investment team. 

Sophie: [00:14:11] Well, that's what they say, right? When you're working at work, it's like they want to hire diverse people because everyone needs to bring their own, you know, stuff to the table. But I think it's a good summary because I mean, for me, I have a lot of friends that are always like, you know, maybe investing isn't for me, but really, if you bring your own perspective and you bring your own experiences, always, there's something in investing for everyone, I find. 

Eleanor: [00:14:31] Absolutely. And I mean to uncover a good investment opportunity. You can't be thinking the same as everybody else, because if you're thinking the same way the market's thinking is probably already in the price. To be different is where you really find that alpha in a stock. You've got to uncover a different angle. You can't be thinking the same as everybody else. 

Maddy: [00:14:51] Well, speaking of discovering a new angle, can you give us a recent example of a stock that you pitched to add to the fund and sort of what helped you build the conviction in that store? 

Eleanor: [00:15:02] Yes. So kind of going back to what I was saying about, you know, one of Charles' key philosophies is about, you know, trying to focus on those two or three key things that matter. That's really helped us with one investment we've made fairly recently. It was the start of this year. It's one of the top holdings in the fund at the moment, and that was in aged care operators. ISTIO And I'm not sure if you've ever looked at any of the aged care operators or that space, but it's kind of a bit of a no man's land. Nobody wants to go there. There's a lot of regulation. The sector has been absolutely hammered over the last five years because governments basically cut funding and it's meant you've had negative jaws because their costs have been inflating ahead of the indexation that the Government's been providing. So people just have steered clear of the sector. It's complicated, regulations changing. And so we kind of took a step back and went, well, this is actually a key piece of infrastructure for the Australian population. We have an ageing population, you know, the population over the age of 85, you know, is set to grow, you know, 4 to 5% per annum versus the normal population of one and a half per cent. So we know that we need aged care operators. The Government knows that operating margins in the sector are way too low and so they need to change that. They need to improve funding in order to attract capital back into the sector so that, you know, Australia has enough beds to support all these people that are going to be moving into that kind of 85 plus age bracket. So if you take a step back, even though it's quite unclear what's happening in terms of regulation, we know where it needs to go. And the other really exciting thing about the aged care sector is that it was not a covered beneficiary, unlike a lot of the other health care names. And so what we're starting to see is occupancy in the sector recovery work and it's really leverage. So every 1% increase in occupancy over 90% equates to about 5 million of a Dafa SGA. So when we see that occupancy improve, we're going to see earnings improve and then in the medium term we're expecting this funding outlook to really improve. And so we just think it's a great place to be. 70% of the valuation of the company sits within its property assets. So you've kind of got a floor under the share price and then the rest is all upside. So yeah, that's kind of how we've uncovered that opportunity is just kind of taking a step back and saying, well, this is important infrastructure, this matters to Australians and therefore we think we can build a pretty rock solid investment thesis around it. 

Sophie: [00:17:31] So I feel like you. I have combined two lessons that I really took away from investing in for anyone listening, Eleanor confessed. So just bring it back to where we first met. The first one is that you can find really good companies in industries that people don't like because they don't touch it. So it's like you can find something good, like a diamond in the rough. And the second is to invest in something that has an inflexion point. So like, if there's money being pumped into a sector, then you can often find good investment opportunities there. And I feel like that really combined two of the lessons that I took away. 

Maddy: [00:18:02] Look at you girl. I think I love it. So how do you actually build your conviction? 

Eleanor: [00:18:10] Unfortunately, I don't feel like there's an easy answer for this, except that you have to do the work, because if you don't do the work, you're just not going to build that conviction. So you've got to be willing to go deeper, read more, think outside the box in terms of research and I talk to as many different contacts as you can to really try and build a holistic view of not only the company you're looking at, but the industry. Maybe think about that industry in different countries. Look at the competitive set, you know, talk to people who work in the industry. Yeah. You've just in order to build conviction, there's no easy way. You've got to go out and do the work. Yeah, that's. That's the only way, unfortunately. I wish I had an easier solution for you. 

Sophie: [00:18:56] Not the answer we want. We're going to take a quick ad break for our sponsors, but we'll be right back to get to your bread and butter, which is small cap investing. Small cap is one of those classic investing jargon terms. Can you break it down for us? What is a small cap stock? And more importantly, why have they become your area of interest? 

Eleanor: [00:19:23] Okay. So when we talk about small caps, we're basically if you think about the Australian sharemarket, you've got some of the top 100 companies, which would be the ASX 100. Small caps are basically anything below that. So yeah, you're probably going from, you know, say three or $4 billion companies still considered a small cap. That sounds huge, but that would still be sitting in small cap land. And then we probably go all the way down to 100 million market cap. And then below that, you're starting to get into microcap territory. So yes, so we're kind of focussed on that part of the market and it's a pretty large universe. We've got about 700 different companies in the small cap universe. Our fund is benchmarked against the Small Ordinaries, which basically goes from that X 100 all the way down to the 300. So there's about 200 companies that's in the Small Ords, but we can also invest below that. So we are a huge universe. How I got into small caps. Well, originally I was working on a large cap fund, but the sectors I were working on had a lot of companies that kind of sat more in that kind of mid space, so small to mid cap. And so I just kind of naturally got drawn more into the small caps. I was looking at media, consumer tech and then at fire travel we were running in our market mutual fund and we had a small cap sleeve in the market mutual fund. And I was working on that part of the fund with another guy called Matt. And then just before COVID, we kind of stepped out of that focus area and launched the Australian Small Companies Fund. And for me I find investing in small caps incredibly exciting because if you think about the ASX 100 like they've done their dash in terms of growth, like the top 100 companies in Australia already, whereas when it comes to, you know, small caps you're trying to find what's that next company that's going to get into the 100 and that's where you get the really big returns instead of, you know, CBA's having a good year if it's up 20%, whereas small caps are having a good year, if it's up 100%, there's just a lot more alpha on offer in small caps. But that being said, there's also heightened levels of risk because the business models on is proven out. They don't have such long term track records or such, you know, strong corporate governance. So you are part of the job we've been investing in small caps is trying to avoid the bonds. So whilst you're trying to find these incredible companies that can grow into the next big Australian companies, yeah, you've also got to make sure that you're really managing risk and doing a lot of due diligence, so it's lots of fun. 

Maddy: [00:22:02] So the natural follow up question that comes to mind is how do you avoid the funds, you know, when you're looking at a company that any sort of things that stand out to you as like, hey, risks that make you think, Oh, I don't want to go there. Or I guess vice versa. Anything that when you say it, it's like, oh, that's something that's particularly interesting that you might take that off.

Eleanor: [00:22:21] Yeah, well, as I said earlier, so we're looking at a huge universe of 700 different companies. So one part of our process is to actually put a company through what we call an investment quality scorecard. So that just allows us to quickly filter out an idea and figure out actually, you know what, that's got too many hands on it. It's got some red flags. Let's park that idea and move on to something else. So we'll probably spend about a day going through this investment grade scorecard and what we're looking at. So there are three components to the scorecard. So the first is kind of back to the previous point we made around management teams who do due diligence on the management team or do due diligence on the board, make sure that they're strongly aligned in terms of their incentives with shareholders who make sure they've got the right level of experience that's suitable for the industry in the company. Another thing we'll look at is financial disclosure. So often with small caps, what you'll see is that they might change around how they disclose things within their segment rules or, you know, they might change some of the key metrics that they're reporting. And that's a little bit of a red flag. If we're having trouble forecasting the earnings for that company, we would put that in the too hard basket. If I can't forecast with certainty based on your history, you know what you're going to do in the future. Yeah, we'll filter that out. We kind of need some regular reporting from that company. The third thing we'll look at is, you know, is the business model sustainable? So if you think about, you know, the buy now, pay later space, there are a lot of kinds of subscale players that popped up. And, you know, we pretty quickly came to the conclusion that it was going to be quite hard for them to get scale and to be around in 3 to 5 years time. So that was a quick and easy, you know, filter out of our investment universe. We just didn't look at them. And so that's kind of yeah, I guess. Howie One one. Way in which we avoid the bombs is just putting them through that quick kind of process to filter out if they're a good investment opportunity or not. 

Sophie: [00:24:18] Matty can probably mention the buy now pay later investment that she made that she's been a bit of a disaster horse. 

Eleanor: [00:24:29] First, you want to talk about those.

Sophie: [00:24:32] You know, we speak openly about our mistakes here because mistakes are all about learning.

Eleanor: [00:24:39] Yes. 

Maddy: [00:24:42] So, Eleanor, if you were to look into your crystal ball and have an insight into the future, what industries do you think will come out on top in the next couple of years? And can you give some examples of some of your favourite small cap investment opportunities in those industries? 

Eleanor: [00:24:59] So we've touched on aged care. I think that's a really interesting industry if we kind of take more of a medium term view. I also think that in the media sector you've got a lot of kinds of traditional media players that, you know, probably a structurally challenging but one that isn't would be its own media. So if you think about, you know, TV losing share, you know, because of Netflix and other subscription services, similar to radio. And so if you want to do a big brand campaign, online's just not going to get the same traction. It's more performance based. So kind of your only option really is outdoor media. And I'm sure you've seen, you know, out on the streets, they've started to digitise a lot of these signs. So they're doing really cool things, like if you want to have an ad that's weather dependent. So I don't know if you want to advertise, you know, an umbrella when it's raining. I mean, that's a really basic example. But, you know, they're doing really clever things to adapt that industry to become more digital and based off, you know, kind of demand. So for example, you know, in the morning, advertising coffee makes a lot more sense than, you know, advertising dinner. So kind of adapting to that. So we think outdoor looks really interesting, kind of more medium term. It's currently about 7% of the ad market. And, you know, the industry's view is that they should get to 10%. So you've got some short term volatility depending on what media ad markets are doing. But medium term, we do think that's a structural grower trying to think what else. I mean, there's a lot of interesting opportunities in the technology space which has been heavily sold off recently. I mean, we really like Life360, I'm sure you guys, we pitched it at our FinFest. [00:26:38][99.4]

Maddy: [00:26:39] We were there. [00:26:40][0.2]

Eleanor: [00:26:41] It is quite a new business model and we think that's got huge potential, you know, in the US market looking at, you know, that SAP family safety, how can you use technology to better protect your family? Yeah, so they kind of I guess three ideas which we think if you look out medium term, they're going to be winners. [00:26:59][18.5]

Sophie: [00:27:00] Well, you said before, when you're looking at a company, you need to have a really holistic view and like speak to people about the company or whatever else. And I will say Matty and I did a went up to the conference for our media and presented as did a little investing how to invest. So I can say all the employees are very money savvy now and they're a great team. They're really great team. So that's your inside of pitch very media. 

Eleanor: [00:27:25] Fantastic. Oh, that's good to hear that you've met with the media team and done that for me. 

Maddy: [00:27:30] Yeah, well done. Out of diligence on the staff. 

Sophie: [00:27:33] And famous female led female led Cathy came to our presentation. 

Eleanor: [00:27:37] So yeah, we love Cathy. She's awesome. 

Maddy: [00:27:39] Well, we almost came to the end of today's chat, Eleanor But before we get to our final question, if people want to learn more about you or about fire trial, can you give us the pitch? Where should they head? 

Eleanor: [00:27:53] Okay. So if you want to learn more about fire trial, we've actually got a fantastic website which our head of sales Call Mackintosh is very proud of. So if you type in WWE Fire Trial Icon, you should get all their info up there. And if you want to learn more about the funds, I mean, I can just give you a quick high level. So we've got four funds at Fire Trail. So we've got the Australian High Conviction Fund, which is our large cap fund. There's about 25 stocks in that fund and they all sit within the ASX 200. We then got the Australian Small Companies Fund, which is the fund I work on, which is the most exciting fund because. 

Maddy: [00:28:32] Of the alpha.

Eleanor: [00:28:33] Sitting there, so much alpha potential. So yeah, so we've got about 40 stocks in the fund at the moment and as I mentioned, we're benchmarked against the Small Ordinaries. A really great thing about our fund is that our index actually has about 35% of it sits within resources. So mining companies, you know, energy stocks and my cohort value manager Matthew Fish, he's actually got a resource background. He used to work with BHP for many years. He's a mining engineer, so we've really got an edge when it comes to that resource part of the market. Another fund we have is the market mutual fund. So basically that just takes. Out there, I guess, exposure to the market. So it basically takes $1 of your money and it goes a dollar 50 long and a dollar 50 short and it takes out that market exposure and that really pulls on kind of our best ideas from our large cap fund, our best ideas from our small cap fund, and that we have short ideas in there as well. And the final fund, which we've launched about 12 months ago now, is the Global Fund. So it's actually got a bit of a sustainability bent. So that fund is actually looking to uncover companies that are trying to improve their ESG credentials because we see companies like Tesla or, you know, companies with that real ESG lens, you know, trade at huge premiums to other companies. So we're trying to kind of capture these companies before they become these ESG leaders. So that's a really great fund if you're looking to get more of a global exposure and you'd like a little bit of that kind of sustainability tool in there as well. So, yeah, ready for fire trail funds? 

Sophie: [00:30:12] Oh, sounds very interesting. I'm excited to check out the fabulous website. I'll give you some feedback if there is anything. 

Eleanor: [00:30:19] That would be great. 

Sophie: [00:30:21] Now, Elena, our final question. We touched on lessons before, earlier in the episode, but we ask each guest the same question to finish out, which is if you had a piece of advice for someone setting out on their investment journey, what would that piece of advice be? 

Eleanor: [00:30:36] I'd say when it comes to investing, you really need to do your research, like there's just no way around it. And I feel I hear a lot of my friends kind of just following the pack and they'll get a stock tip from someone and they'll just go, Great, I'll just chuck some money in that instead of actually trying to understand what that company does. Is it a good sector to invest in? Y Yeah, I just feel like there's no way around it. You need to do your research and if you don't have the time to do the research, like I'd recommend maybe starting out putting your money to work with a fund manager or even in the index. Because the great thing about that is, is it's less you're not punting, you're actually getting a diversified portfolio is that through different market cycles should give you some upside potential as well as some downside protection instead of, you know, what we saw recently, you know, in that sell off where a lot of millennials put their money to work and they were all in the tech sector or high growth companies so well up until it didn't. Whereas if you're investing, you know, with a fund manager or in an index, you're getting that diversification. So you'd have some resource stocks in there, you'd have some banks in there. So your portfolio should withstand this market volatility a lot better. 

Maddy: [00:31:53] It's a great piece of advice. Eleanor Hall, thank you very much for joining us today.

Eleanor: [00:31:57] No worries. Thanks for having me on the show, Maddy. And so far it's been great. 

Sophie: [00:32:00] I think, as I said on this week's episode and on last week's episode, because we spoke about mid-caps as well, I am still researching my mid-caps. It sounds very exciting. 

Maddy: [00:32:10] Yeah, I'm feeling very inspired to do more research, actually. I think with the recent sort of market downturn have really turned to ETFs and have been focussing a lot on that and have almost disengaged a little bit from the markets. But Eleanor has got me pretty excited about the ability to spot new and exciting opportunities when you do your research. So let's do it. Let's do it together. 

Sophie: [00:32:34] As always, you can find us on social media or join us on Instagram @YIGC Podcast. 

Maddy: [00:32:40] Jump into our Facebook group YIGC Podcast Discussion Group. We'd love to hear if you're researching any small cap or mid-cap stocks at the moment. We'll start with Fred. We want to hear from you. 

Sophie: [00:32:51] And please share this with a friend. If you enjoyed and subscribe or leave a review on your favourite podcast platform. 

Maddy: [00:32:58] We will catch you next week. 

Sophie: [00:32:59] Bye.