Why did Markets Reject the Reject Shop?

Adam Keily: [00:00:52] 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 I'm joined, as always by my little older brother and real-life economist, Thomas. Hi, Thomas. [00:01:05][13.1]

Thomas Keily: [00:01:05] Good, Adam. How are you doing? [00:01:06][0.7]

Adam Keily: [00:01:06] I'm very well, thank you. Hey, before we get started, just quickly, I want to make special mention that our comedian versus economist, Facebook and Instagram pages are live. Thomas, we are blowing up. We're going viral. I mentioned the Instagram page last week on the show. We are five bagging on last week. We are five X at least. Well, um, yeah, we're up to about one hundred and twenty four followers. [00:01:33][26.4]

Thomas Keily: [00:01:33] Wow. [00:01:33][0.0]

Adam Keily: [00:01:34] Which, you know, you got to start somewhere. So if you are looking to stay in touch with this, that's a good, good place to do it. Thomas has been pumping out some amazing charts this week, so charts as you bag. Then they hit us up on Instagram or Facebook. Just search comedian versus economist or look for C.V podcast, I think is the handle. But don't forget, you can email us if you like to. We love getting your email cve@equitymates.com or on the website. equitymates.com/cve. But a massive show coming up for you today. I feel like it's deja vu again. Deja stock. Maybe we've got another name stock on our hands. This time it's AMC. Last time it was GameStop, Amc blowing up now going all over the place. We're going to talk about China's new three child policy, which is up from the previous two child policy. We'll find out what's happening with the reject shop. Maybe their crazy prices were just too, too low. And for a bit of fun, later on, we're going to take a look at a sculpture of absolutely nothing, which is just sold for nearly twenty-four thousand dollars. But first, Thomas, I know you were excited last week. GDP numbers came out. I didn't pay any attention. I'm hoping you did. What did we learn? [00:02:50][76.1]

Thomas Keily: [00:02:52] It was good. The result was a strong result. Well, I think the story doing the rounds is it's we're one of the few countries now to have fully jumped over the covid hole out the other side. So GDP is now higher than it was in December. Twenty nineteen. That was the last quarter we had that was unaffected by covid. We're now slightly above that level. So we're back, we're over that hump. And we're one of the few countries in the world that can claim that honor. It was a yeah, it was a big result. We got is one point eight in the quarter. Economists generally expecting one point five. So that was a strong result. Markets got a little bit of a tickle out of that. [00:03:33][41.4]

Adam Keily: [00:03:38] Many economists that get excited about point three percent, like we were going to talk about and say we're talking about game stuff in the past. You know, people are looking at these stocks and they're going up 60 percent, down 20 percent. Look at the crypto market. It's like, you know, Bitcoin's down forty-eight percent. Dogecoin is going up 300 percent. Meanwhile, over at the economics factory, oh, it's going up to point three percent. It's not that I'm sure it's important. I'm sure in the big scheme of things, three-point three percent is significant. Why is it significant or is it just that it's indicative of where we're at? And that's a good thing. It's a good story. [00:04:14][35.9]

Thomas Keily: [00:04:16] It's it says that the economy is, you know, better than expected. We you know, we knew it was strong. We're expecting one point five in the quarter. You know, you can kind of annualize that. So every quarter, four quarters in a year, times that by four, you get six percent. So growing it like a six percent per annum kind of pace. You know, that's not exactly right. But, you know, more or less. So that's a really strong result. That's a very fast pace of growth. So, yeah. So one point eight is even better than that. So it's like we were expecting it to be strong, but it came in even stronger than that. So it was like had that effect of like we're expecting good news and we got extra good news. So. [00:04:54][38.7]

Adam Keily: [00:04:55] Yeah, right. And is that good news for who is that good news for. Is it good news for me? Is it good news for investors? Is it good news for the markets generally? Is it good news for inflation? [00:05:06][10.9]

Thomas Keily: [00:05:09] Like you can typically think about the economy and the measure of GDP that measure as being a sort of a proxy for the share market, because all of our companies, other organizations that produce all our stuff alongside the government. So if we're producing more, that generally means that our companies are producing more and selling more. If they're selling more, they're probably going to be making bigger profits. And that generally means that we can expect, you know, it's a good sign for our share markets because it is a good profit environment. We can think about it like that. Yeah. So that in that sense, it's sort of it's a bullish signal for share markets overall. Yeah. And in terms of inflation, there's nothing there that really gives us a strong read on inflation other than that you have the economy is running. Hotter than anticipated, so increases maybe the short-term risk for inflation, but I wouldn't let's not go there. I wouldn't worry too much about it. [00:05:59][49.6]

Adam Keily: [00:05:59] Well, if you want to know about inflation, I bought a cucumber the other day. Cost four-point sixty for one cucumber. Cucumber. Yeah, well, supermarket. Well, so is your inflation story. Yeah. [00:06:13][14.0]

Thomas Keily: [00:06:16] Well is it organic or something? [00:06:17][1.2]

Adam Keily: [00:06:19] Well, it might have been. Wow. Yeah. I went to the supermarket. We did a few things I don't often like. I don't often go to do the supermarket, the grocery shopping. Um so I'm maybe not as skilled in the fine arts but um. [00:06:33][14.1]

Thomas Keily: [00:06:34] But how big was it. Like three or four feet. [00:06:36][1.8]

Adam Keily: [00:06:38] It was, it was a regular-sized cucumber but that didn't even last. Right. The kids didn't eat it and then it stayed in the fridge and it went off in like two days. Wow. Yeah. So maybe it was organic. It didn't have all the preservatives, it wasn't injected with hormones or whatever was good. Disappointing. But I thought at the time I bought it I was like, is that inflation? Is that, is that the tangible effects of inflation. [00:07:02][24.3]

Thomas Keily: [00:07:03] Well UN measures are [00:07:05][1.6]

Adam Keily: [00:07:05] just an expensive cucumber. [00:07:06][0.9]

Thomas Keily: [00:07:07] There's an interesting chart I'll share to Instagram. You check it out. But UN food, the UN has an index of food prices there now as and they've been on a tear away since the start of the year. They're now at the level they were when the Arab Spring launched. [00:07:22][15.0]

Adam Keily: [00:07:22] What's the Arab Spring? [00:07:23][0.6]

Thomas Keily: [00:07:24] That was a sort of like an uprising in some of the Arab nations against sort of dictatorial regimes Syria that that whole movement, like there, was a across the region. There were a whole bunch of protests. [00:07:35][11.0]

Adam Keily: [00:07:36] How long ago? [00:07:36][0.4]

Thomas Keily: [00:07:39] What wasn't in 2009, 2010. [00:07:41][1.7]

Adam Keily: [00:07:42] So I was alive as well, like other maybe a historical event. This is just another one of those things that I've I've just missed. [00:07:48][6.4]

Thomas Keily: [00:07:49] Yeah, no, probably one of the most important, like the whole Syrian crisis. It was the direct result of the Arab Spring. Right. The Arab uprising. Um, yeah. But there's a sort of a theory going that the food prices are back where they were at the Arab Spring, which means that people are feeling the pressure and potentially leads to political instability. [00:08:08][19.5]

Adam Keily: [00:08:10] Yeah, well, now that I'm paying too much for cucumbers [00:08:11][1.9]

Thomas Keily: [00:08:13] already, the fact of the matter [00:08:13][0.8]

Adam Keily: [00:08:14] is, is an uprising coming out that you're [00:08:16][1.9]

Thomas Keily: [00:08:17] just one more interesting story out of GDP. There wasn't so it wasn't Heap's there. We didn't know. [00:08:21][3.6]

Adam Keily: [00:08:22] One more interesting story. [00:08:23][1.0]

Thomas Keily: [00:08:24] It was a good result that that's kind of as much as we need to go. But one of the interesting things that we did, we're expecting a strong result out of commodities because commodity prices had been so strong. But commodity, uh, commodity exports actually detracted from growth over the year because volumes are down. So prices are up for iron ore and that sort of thing. But our export volumes are down so that they are actually a negative contributor to [00:08:46][22.7]

Adam Keily: [00:08:47] tell me the supercycle from the story [00:08:48][1.4]

Thomas Keily: [00:08:49] that didn't last long. [00:08:49][0.6]

Adam Keily: [00:08:51] Well, yeah, we only talked about three weeks ago and we were hearing this commodity supercycle over the middle of June and the same year. That sucks. Yeah. Is expecting a lot more from the supercycle. [00:09:04][12.1]

Thomas Keily: [00:09:04] Well, I think it's still still a good, good story for the miners. But in terms of like GDP growth, it wasn't it wasn't the story this year. In fact, the one analysis is showing that it was stamp duties and renovations that solely carried the economy in the last year. [00:09:23][18.7]

Adam Keily: [00:09:24] So stamp duties and renovation, right? Yeah. Yeah. People buying houses and people filling them with stuff. [00:09:29][5.0]

Thomas Keily: [00:09:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Saying that accounted for zero point nine percentage points of the one point one percent increase in GDP over the past year, according to the Urfa. [00:09:38][8.6]

Adam Keily: [00:09:39] Wow. That's pretty significant. [00:09:40][1.0]

Thomas Keily: [00:09:40] Yeah. It's like almost all of it. So there's some people going like that doesn't look that broad based. Like if you talking about a growing economy, you want it to be coming from more than just houses and the selling of houses and the doing up of houses. [00:09:53][12.9]

Adam Keily: [00:09:54] So that's yeah. It's a bit too narrow, a bit too narrow. But once they finished putting on the Jacuzzi then we could be in trouble. [00:10:02][7.9]

Thomas Keily: [00:10:02] Yeah, potentially. Potentially. But I mean, that's over the year. So I think the growth over the last quarter or the last six months is more broad-based than that. But still over the year. All about all about houses. [00:10:14][11.4]

Adam Keily: [00:10:14] Interesting. Well, I'll tell you what it's all about in the US markets at the moment, it's all about AMC. So we had GameStop earlier in the year, GameStop, which was a buying frenzy in the GameStop stock or stocks, as a lot of people like to refer them to off the field by the Wall Street bets. Read it. And now it's how they've turned their attention to AMC. AMC has been on a roller coaster ride. Just I think I think it's up at the moment still, but it's kind of in that volatile space whereby the time you're hearing, they said we're. On a Monday night. By the time this episode drops on Wednesday, it could likely be 20 percent up or down, at least from where it is right now, which is around about 50 hours. The best headline I saw from the last that a couple of weeks was AMC shares finally for 18 percent after movie theater chain warned investors they could lose all their money. So, you know, when you when you're putting together your investment thesis and you're thinking about a stock and you think, well, I lose all my money, if the answer to that question is is possibly or probably yes, then that's a no for me, for my investment portfolio. Tom, what do you be making of it? Well, that's what [00:11:32][77.4]

Thomas Keily: [00:11:32] we learned from Hertz, wasn't it, that you could be a bankrupt company and still attract share investors? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the stock phenomenon is interesting and it's not going away. And I think that's what's really interesting. I think, you know, Hertz was a really unusual story, but it was relatively small scale before and didn't sort of blow up too much before it sort of petered out. GameStop blew up in a huge way and still is still kicking like the GameStop is still kicking this to people back in GameStop. It's not like it was just a joke. And then everyone had their fun and walked away, which I think most people were expecting. And the same with Dogecoin that like that's you know, it's off. But it's like there's still people back in the dodge. [00:12:13][40.8]

Adam Keily: [00:12:14] always going up again. I mean, as soon as Elon Musk tweets about, it, fires up another 20 percent and then Peters off or drops off when he tweets about it again, it's almost like he's like controlling the market. It's like he's. [00:12:26][12.0]

Thomas Keily: [00:12:26] What did you see Anonymous come after him? [00:12:28][1.6]

Adam Keily: [00:12:28] I did, yeah. [00:12:29][0.6]

Thomas Keily: [00:12:30] I released a video attacking him. Hmm. Yeah. Uh, crazy times. Yeah. So, yeah, the meme stock phenomenon is not going away, and um, and it's got more legs. A meme stock has more legs than I think most people expected that happened. And so Amzi it's you know, it's ridiculous. It people pointed out saying like it's a movie theater company in the middle of a lockdown. People are really struggling. The company is really struggling. The outlook's terrible. People like, yeah, we know we don't care. We're just going for it. And like, I think this is what is new that the retail investors, one, there's enough of them. And two, that they're able to move in a coordinated way in a herd, in a herd like way, not in an aimless way, but in a kind of a coordinated, directed way. And that's a really new phenomenon. Like we've never really seen that in the markets. Hmm. And it's sort of like it's in a way it's technology-driven in the sense that retail investors are now in the market through the trading apps like Robin Hood and all of that. But they're also coordinating over things like Reddit. Um, you know, so like fifty years ago, there just wasn't even the possibility that a story like this could gain that kind of traction and keep going, would have had to get through the gatekeepers in traditional media who would have shut it down really quickly and said, all these guys are idiots, don't listen to them. Um, yeah. So so it's it's a really new phenomenon. And I don't think the market as a whole and regulators really have an idea of how to handle it or what to do with it. Now, it's pretty [00:14:04][94.5]

Adam Keily: [00:14:04] tricky because as you know, I mean, you have to know where the next one is. I know that they're talking about BlackBerry as well. BlackBerry seems like there's still a reasonable company like that. Yeah, um, they're into cybersecurity now. They used to make mobile devices for anyone that might be might be new to the scene. But, you know, they used to call them crack berry because they are that addictive and pre iPhone. So really it. Yeah, well, um, well, the president at the time it was it must have been the Obama Obama had a crack berry. Really. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But yeah. So but then they also said when Apple came along with their iPhone and so people stopped using stop using BlackBerry. But yeah, there must be a few. I was thinking of Kodak the other day, like Kodak. I think that was talked about at one stage as a, as a meme stock all these kinds of stocks. Nokia I think was another one, stocks that kind of used to be popular, that people have this nostalgic sense around, that they want to kind of get on board with and [00:15:00][55.7]

Thomas Keily: [00:15:01] need to have like a nostalgia ETF. [00:15:02][1.2]

Adam Keily: [00:15:03] Or you could be on to something now, wouldn't it? [00:15:05][1.8]

Thomas Keily: [00:15:05] Wouldn't that be good? Just like [00:15:06][0.9]

Adam Keily: [00:15:07] no, because of the basic fundamentals. [00:15:09][1.8]

Thomas Keily: [00:15:10] all companies of the 90s. [00:15:11][1.0]

Adam Keily: [00:15:13] we're just getting him. Is that how's it going? How's my ETF tracking that? Turns out they're all just livestock's. They're still going nowhere. Um, I think the best thing was that that, as I tell you, that the AMC have offered free popcorn to shareholders who hold this stock. It's, uh, it's one way to go from it. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure Berkshire Hathaway did the same promo. If you bought books, if you bought some Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares and you got a free Coke for Joe. But I did hear that AMC issued some new stock. Mm hmm. I don't know. I don't understand what that means. I had that just create some stock and sell some stock. And what did it dilute? Does it dilute the existing stock? [00:15:13][0.0]

Thomas Keily: [00:16:05] Look, I'm not across the details. I don't know. I don't know how they did that. But that's what I presume is right. I mean, remember, Hertz did this. Hertz actually had to go to their bankruptcy judge to say, look, our stock, Stonecrest, is going off. Yeah. Can we issue some new capital? And then had to issue a prospectus said, look, we're pretty much bankrupt because [00:16:23][18.2]

Adam Keily: [00:16:24] that's the other investment thesis I think I like to include in my thesis is, is the company bankrupt? Yeah, it [00:16:30][5.7]

Thomas Keily: [00:16:30] performs very well. [00:16:31][0.7]

Adam Keily: [00:16:31] That filter. Mm. Yeah, it's a screen. [00:16:33][2.1]

Thomas Keily: [00:16:34] Yeah. So that caused a bit of a stoush because this is the existing investors would be like, oh hey, don't, don't be diluting our shares. Yeah. And the CEO is like, well I need the money because then I can actually do some stuff and then actually become a profitable company. [00:16:46][12.4]

Adam Keily: [00:16:47] But is that, that's not is that that's not the motivation. That's not even the intention of the people who are buying is that they're not going to do they even care what happens to AMC? Do they care about the movie theater business or are they kind of like, oh, well, I'm buying some stocks because I believe in the company and they need some money so they can put in some, you know, some digital screens or more comfy seats or whatever? They're like. I don't care what you do. I'm just on board to you [00:17:10][22.3]

Thomas Keily: [00:17:10] I'm cashing out at the end of the month. Yeah. I mean, we don't know. We don't know. Like, we don't have enough data. As I said, the story is it's just a bunch of punks making crazy bets on Wall Street with no idea what they're doing, backing losers because it's hilarious and then making heaps of money and sticking it to the system. Yeah, and that's the narrative. But like, how deep is that? Like, how many people are actually like that? How many people are, you know, are doing that? I mean, I would expect it's almost entirely a speculative play in the sense it picks up how to read it and that kind of crew. And then smarter money looks at it and goes like, well, there's momentum there. I'm going to write some momentum. [00:17:52][42.1]

Adam Keily: [00:17:53] Yeah, all the algorithms kick in and. Yeah, yeah, yeah, take it off. Is it also due to the amount of money that's in the system at the moment? You know, there's been a lot of stimuli and like would we be seeing these phenomenon phenomena if there wasn't so much kind of people, people seemingly may be at the moment have more money to spend or to speculate with? [00:18:15][22.1]

Thomas Keily: [00:18:16] Yeah, yeah. I think it must be a factor. It must be a factor. But if you look at some survey data on what people plan to do with their stimulus checks, and it wasn't overwhelmingly going into investments like a lot of it was to pay down debt or to buy stuff or just stick in savings. It wasn't, you know, so there was the thesis, particularly with Bitcoin, was, you know, once the stimulus checks land, everyone's going to buy Bitcoin, Bitcoin will pop. And that just didn't happen. And I don't know, we haven't really seen a stimulus check the effect in any asset market. Yeah. So, I mean, it must be a factor. But I think I think it is more structural. It's more the rise of the retail trade. It's more than coordination that's happening through forums like read it. I think it's more of a structural thing, which is why I think it's not going away. Like I think there is there is probably a cyclical component to it with all the cash that's on hand at the moment. But it's also there's also something structural here as well. [00:19:18][62.0]

Adam Keily: [00:19:19] So. All right. Before we get to a break, let's just check in with China and what's happening over there. They've just gone from the two-child policy where you could have up to two children. They've just announced a three-child policy, which brings them into line, ironically, with my kid's birthday party policy, no more than three kids at any one time. The birthday parties is what's driving that. So I did a quick bit of research. Twenty sixteen was when they went from one child to two children per family. [00:19:48][29.7]

Thomas Keily: [00:19:50] Yep. So and so they brought in the one-child policy in nineteen seventy nine. Yeah. [00:19:53][3.5]

Adam Keily: [00:19:54] Ages ago. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean not in you know Ming Dynasty ages obviously it ages for most of us. Yeah. Ages ago. And so they did that because the population was out of control was booming. So they said yeah yeah yeah. [00:20:12][18.6]

Thomas Keily: [00:20:13] I think I think they were worried though. So where the population was going. And I think they were just generally worried that they weren't going to be out to feed everybody right there. Gonna have so many people. You couldn't feed them. And Australia had the same story. Like we were worried about food, our ability to feed people in the 70s. We didn't think we were going to couldn't grow the population anymore and then ended up agriculture became massively more productive. [00:20:33][20.3]

Adam Keily: [00:20:34] Yeah, right. Um, OK, so, so they into twenty sixteen they went to two children. But then from what I've read, um people at that time were like, like I can't afford two children, like it's too expensive. Um, I don't have we don't have the money to pay for the second child, we don't have to your point, you know, it's tough to feed a family of four out of it, feeding a family three so that they're trying to grow the population again by having these two-child policy. And I was like, well, that's too expensive. We can't afford two kids. And they're like, all right, I've got three kids now. You're missing ten kids. You have ten minutes. So I could work like a glove. [00:21:18][44.4]

Thomas Keily: [00:21:18] But there was a survey on the Xinhua, which I forgive my pronunciation, which is the official news site. Um, we said, are you ready to have another child? And of the thirty one thousand respondents, twenty nine thousand said would never even think about it. Only three percent. And then the poll was censored like it was removed. [00:21:39][20.5]

Adam Keily: [00:21:40] Right. Yeah. Yeah. So where does it so is it a good move then or not or is this just is it is it sort of a hidden hope approach to population growth? [00:21:49][9.4]

Thomas Keily: [00:21:50] I mean, the thing is that you just can't turn this stuff on a dime. Like because it's like the kind of how many children you have is so sort of socially determined. That sort of depends on what's going on around you, what kind of infrastructure is in place to support it. You know, you've had decades of one child, so everyone's sort of geared around having one child. And then you can't you can't just sort of turn that around sort of socially. And then you have the economics of it where it's it is expensive to have another child and you're trying to get ahead to believe child care and education is expensive and education is relatively expensive in China. Um, so, yeah, it's not something that you can just turn around with a policy measure. And it's and China's demographics is a real challenge for China. So their working-age population. So the number of people, sixteen to sixty-five as a percent of the population that peaked back in 2010 and has been declining ever since. So China's got an aging population and then I think it's it's total population is expected to peak sometime in the next ten years and then it starts falling. Right. You know, so the Chinese population actually goes into decline very soon. Yeah, well, and that really and the working populations already declining. [00:23:05][75.6]

Adam Keily: [00:23:06] So, is that the economic sort of view then? It's a bad thing because presumably if your population declines, then that's not necessarily a bad thing, is it? Because you know like it's only declining. Like if conditions improve for those that are there, then isn't that a good thing? [00:23:23][17.4]

Thomas Keily: [00:23:25] Yeah. Yeah. We have this concept of per capita GDP, which we look at, and one of the criticisms of Australian GDP or Australian economic growth is that it's been largely driven by population growth. So per capita income hasn't been particularly impressive. And sort of like in twenty eighteen, there's a per capita recession. So GDP per person was actually going backwards. Yeah. So it's not a problem if but if you're working-age population is falling as a share. That means that more working people are supporting a larger number of non-working people. And that's a bit that seen as a bit of a problem or that that's a real that's a challenge. And that's sort of where China is going. And it's and they're following quickly behind Japan and Italy in terms of having an aging population. And it just means you can't really grow the economy that much will get that much done because so much of your economic activity is going to support you, your elderly. [00:24:17][52.1]

Adam Keily: [00:24:17] You're interesting. Mhm. Oh, I believe I can get some more kids. You know who it is. Good news for a... [00:24:25][7.9]

Adam Keily: [00:24:26] Chinese Wiggles. There's a Chinese wiggles around on the Internet. I guess what you can if you want to invest in the Chinese Wiggles, you can buy Disney because Disney owned the license to the Chinese Wiggles where they go. [00:24:43][17.0]

Thomas Keily: [00:24:44] And action will [00:24:45][1.0]

Adam Keily: [00:24:46] refers to the community with no financial advice. They don't take financial advice from our podcast. We're going to take a short break right here and get a word from this week sponsor. We'll be back with more comedian versus economist after this. [00:24:58][12.1]

Adam Keily: [00:25:28] Welcome back here on comedian versus economist, what you're listening to the show, why don't you go onto iTunes or Spotify wherever you listen to the podcast, leave us a writing. If you like the show, leave us a comment. We love to get your thoughts and feedback or if you'd like to send us an email cve@equitymates.com Or head over to the website equitymates.com/cve . Thomas, we're talking reject shop right now. And am I right? Their shares have just tanked recently. They are down 11 percent. [00:25:57][28.8]

Thomas Keily: [00:25:59] They got a wallop. Yeah, they had had bad, bad results. Um, yeah. Report basically just not selling enough stuff right now. Not moving enough units. Markets were very disappointed. Share price got hammered. [00:26:14][14.4]

Adam Keily: [00:26:15] You know, what they need to bring back was that they need to bring back the unauthorized CDs that I used to sell, though. [00:26:20][5.7]

Thomas Keily: [00:26:26] Yeah. [00:26:26][0.0]

Adam Keily: [00:26:26] That really dried up then. Yeah. Um, an ad for like a long time ago on YouTube. And this is the unauthorized CDs, like from all your favorite artist, Guns and Roses and whatever, five dollars they just like these days without covers. Uh, that's how you get the customers in. Mm. GNP three rip offs. But anyway. Yeah. So what's uh what's happened to them. [00:26:54][28.0]

Thomas Keily: [00:26:56] Partly it's cost pressures so uh stuff coming out of China has become more expensive. So that's, that's squeezing their margins. You know, it's a two dollar shop. It's not a two dollar thirty shop. It's hard to increase your prices when they're anchored in the round numbers. [00:27:10][14.0]

Adam Keily: [00:27:11] Inflation's a killer. Yeah. The two dollars show. [00:27:14][2.3]

Thomas Keily: [00:27:14] Yeah, that's right. Know nowhere to go. [00:27:16][2.3]

Adam Keily: [00:27:19] Yeah. They really overplayed their hand on the low inflation and yeah, they're now paying four dollars for coffee mugs they have to sell it to. [00:27:27][7.5]

Thomas Keily: [00:27:31] saying it's, it's foot traffic is the problem. So we know that the CBD stores are struggling because the CBD is struggling to come back to life. But it's also in the shopping centers that the so the their stores aren't selling well. So it's interesting to sort of wonder about why, because you would largely expect that it's a good environment now for the retail sector. So GDP's expanding. Consumers are super confident. They're flush with cash. Unemployment's low and heading lower. Wages are starting to see some sort of sign of picking up. So it's a good time for a consumer. So you'd expect retail to be doing well so that they have such a disappointing result is enough to sort of make a few analysts that I've read sort of pause and go like, OK, maybe we've been overplaying our hand here with the retail rebound. Maybe it's not going to be as strong as we were expecting. That's part of it. It may also be the case that we're looking at some kind of structural change in the way consumers are spending in their spending habits, that rather than going to two dollar shops during covid, people realize that they can get their world's best dad coffee mug online and have to go into the shop. So they've that so they've gone to online maybe that they're feeling so flush that they're not feeling they need to go to the to dollar shop and get the bargain basement shop there. They'll go to, I don't know, Kmart, whatever their competitor is, the sort of mid range shot. So I don't know. So it sort of points to some interesting things. I think from an investment perspective, there's a bit of a question. So maybe just playing the retail rebound broadly without looking at the sort of company specifics might be a little bit of a risk that maybe we need to, as investors say. Yep, we think it's a good a good outlook for retail, given how healthy the consumers are and how healthy household budgets are. But maybe we need to be looking at the specifics of the company and how they're tracking against consumer spending patterns. [00:29:29][117.1]

Adam Keily: [00:29:29] Yeah, whereas you said it's stamp duty and renovation's. That was that was providing the bulk of GDP. Probably not, you know, two dollars laundry liquid. [00:29:40][10.8]

Thomas Keily: [00:29:41] Yeah. Do they do kitchens at the reject shop. [00:29:43][2.1]

Adam Keily: [00:29:45] They might do good. Yeah. Oh interesting experiment. See if you could build a kitchen out of products only from the rejection of one. And the other problem is that the slogan used to be that all you need is loose change and everything is Pavlovna and no one's got loose change. You know, people don't want loose changes like, you know, used to be able to just go now. Everywhere is like you just have everything's easy. It doesn't feel like you're spending five dollars or ten dollars. You know, everything feels like two dollars to you. Look at your bank statement and realize probably you're going to reject shop. Mm. I want to finish with this because it kanafani so we talked a few weeks ago about NFTE and. Some of the crazy prices that Naftogaz were fetching for what effectively seemed like not much people were selling some fairly kind of trivial JPEG zone and, you know, pieces of art. There were digital [00:30:40][54.6]

Thomas Keily: [00:30:40] pet rocks in different shades of gray, [00:30:42][2.1]

Adam Keily: [00:30:44] indifferent shades of gray. Yeah. Uh, there's there's a joke there about rocks and Fifty Shades of gray. I'm going to stay well away from the ride so. Well, yeah. So now an artist has come out and unfortunately or maybe fortunately, he didn't go with an NFTE, but he's come up with a sculpture of nothing. Um, he's produced a sculpture that doesn't exist. You can view it. You've got to view it in a one meter by one meter box. You've got to keep it in the box. But it's nothing, it's empty. And he said [00:30:44][0.0]

Thomas Keily: [00:31:22] it's you've got to go in a box and have to view it. [00:31:24][2.0]

Adam Keily: [00:31:24] You've got to go in the box [00:31:25][0.8]

Thomas Keily: [00:31:26] way saying, [00:31:27][0.1]

Adam Keily: [00:31:27] no, I don't think so. Well, you probably can. There's plenty of room in the box in there. Um, yeah. And that is an Italian artist. And he has auctioned off an invisible sculpture for nearly twenty four thousand dollars. Sixty seven year old out of Salvator girl sold an immaterial sculpture, um, which is just it's a blatant rip off. Right. Of that other guy that did four minutes and 33 seconds of silence, which in itself was ridiculous. Yeah. What was his name? [00:32:05][38.0]

Thomas Keily: [00:32:06] John. Yeah. John Cage, I think. [00:32:07][1.4]

Adam Keily: [00:32:07] Rage in the cage. Yeah. All right. Four minutes to his four minutes in 30 seconds of silence. It was this stupid thing about that was that it was a three movement composition for me. The of is I couldn't look on the Wikipedia page. It was three it was a three movement composition, which it's like that's just taking the piss, isn't it, Eddie? Surely so. So this guy's obviously taking the four minutes and 33 seconds of silence and thought, you know what, I could make that into a sculpture. I could take that and I could form it into a sculpture that no one can see. [00:32:46][39.2]

Thomas Keily: [00:32:47] Um, so, yeah, [00:32:50][2.4]

Adam Keily: [00:32:51] the world's gone. The world has gone mad of all the things that you could buy. So I'm surprised you didn't offer it as an NFTE. [00:32:57][5.8]

Thomas Keily: [00:32:58] Uh, given where things are at, I mean, I guess they have some kind of ownership certificate of the nothing. I mean, the owner. [00:33:06][7.7]

Adam Keily: [00:33:06] Well, yeah, the police force has been stolen. Uh, can you give us a description? No, it was over there. It's prostrations. [00:33:19][12.6]

Thomas Keily: [00:33:24] It's prime for insurance fraud, isn't it? [00:33:26][1.9]

Adam Keily: [00:33:26] Oh, someone has stolen my sculpture. [00:33:29][2.9]

Adam Keily: [00:33:30] Yeah. And frauds like knockoffs, cheap knockoff copies, imitation sculptures of nothing is a business [00:33:37][7.4]

Thomas Keily: [00:33:38] idea for the reject shop. Yeah. Like cheap five dollar knockoffs [00:33:41][3.7]

Thomas Keily: [00:33:44] consensual five dollar each. [00:33:44][0.0]

Adam Keily: [00:33:47] Oh, man. So look, if you're looking for an investment, you know, you want to invest in some artwork, maybe steer clear of the twenty four thousand dollar sculpture of nothing. Um, because art and I feel like I feel like it's not gonna end well [00:34:02][14.9]

Thomas Keily: [00:34:03] that people value is what people will pay. [00:34:06][2.7]

Adam Keily: [00:34:06] That's right. Yeah. You go. That's in today's lesson. OK, thank you very much for joining us. That'll do us, for this week. Really appreciate you tuning in. Love it. If you went and left writing and a review, check out the podcast on both Instagram and Facebook. Now send us an email of cve@equitymates.com or equitymates.com.cve. And we look forward to talking to you again next week. Bye for now. [00:34:06][0.0]

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