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“This is the first time we can really say that something that will improve someone’s quality of life from a visual standpoint will also help with poverty alleviation, which is an enormous finding,” one expert noted.

Below, we share a fresh interview with the co-founder and CEO of The Investor’s Podcast Network, Stig Brodersen.

All this, and more, in just 5 minutes to read.

— Matthew

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Trivia

Stig Brodersen: Investing, Leading, and Markets

A lifelong learner

For most of our community, Stig Brodersen needs no introduction. A value investor, author, former college professor, and owner of investment company Stig Brodersen Holding, Stig co-founded The Investor’s Podcast Network in 2014, just as the podcasting scene was taking shape.

In this conversation, Stig discusses his general investment philosophies, lessons learned, how he structures his day, how he leads our team of about 25 people, and much more.

What is your first memory of money?

I had a piggy bank as a kid where I collected loose change. When I was 8 or 9 years old, my mother asked me what I wanted to spend my money on. I’m sure she thought I saved up for a toy or something like that. I distinctly remember telling her that I had already started saving up for my retirement(!).

Delaying gratification has always been easy for me. It is likely too easy, and I often have problems “living in the moment.” On the flip side, it likely also means that I’m wired for long-term investing. It’s been over a year since I last bought a new stock, and I wonder if I have been overtrading. In life and investing, extreme patience is a virtue, but ironically, the opposite is also true.

Tell readers about your road to being fascinated with the investing world.

At age 19, I took a gap year and traveled to Australia and New Zealand. It was quite an adventure, and I, for some reason, picked up a book about card counting. I taught myself how to count six decks of cards, which is very useful when you play blackjack. This led me to poker, which was less mechanical and more entertaining than BlackJack. When I returned to school, I quickly realized that poker could put me through school.

After my finance degree, I thought my grades were important, but the commodities day trading company where I got my first job upon graduation couldn’t care less. They wanted to hear about my poker skills, and they felt it was more useful for trading than my academic skill set. Ironically, they were right. In the intraday energy markets, I learned that the markets weren’t as efficient as I had learned in school.

I quickly found that I didn’t like having a boss and a corporate job. Some friends and I had a few beers and talked about how to make more money, so we didn’t need a day job. I fired up my computer and looked at Forbes 400 for inspiration.

At the top was Bill Gates, but being the least technical person on the planet, it didn’t seem to be a good career trajectory. Warren Buffett was number 2 on the list, and I instantly got hooked. It seemed like you could sit on your ass just reading and making money, which seemed very appealing to me. TIP was started not long after I learned about Buffett.

Of course, there was much more to it than that, but it suited my personality much better than the corporate life with day trading. At the time, I also got married, and the lifestyle of buying and holding forever on a stock made more sense to my family life than buying and selling assets within seconds.

I do think that day trading and poker, in particular, have been very useful as a value investor. When you have made your living in no-limit hold ’em poker, it’s a little easier to hold on when the market tanks 10%+ in a day during COVID. It feels like a very slow day at the poker tables.

What is your favorite part of running TIP?

The daily interactions with the team. I’ve always loved empowering others and giving them opportunities to grow. When I started TIP, my day job was teaching at the local college, and I sometimes miss the interactions with my students. With the team, I feel I can continue to teach and build relationships over the years and, hopefully, decades.

You’re a big reader. What are a few of your favorite books?

“What Every BODY is Saying” has been very impactful for me. My fascination might come from my poker background. In poker, but just as much in the business world, you can learn more from reading the body language than what a person says.

What other resources or tools do you recommend for individuals looking to improve their financial literacy and investment skills?

Never invest in a company unless you read their financial statements. If you don’t want to read it, you should likely not invest in individual stocks, and you would do better investing in the MSCI World All Country index through an ETF. You would do better than almost all active asset managers, anyway.

The best things in life are free, and all list companies have to file their financial results. The quarterly and annual reports contain the information you need to make an investment decision. Most people would never buy a house without seeing it first. It’s similar to reading annual and quarterly reports.

Similarly, can you briefly touch on how “Small Giants” relates to how you’ve structured TIP, with its intimate feel and setup?

I love Small Giants, and the book describes much better in words what I want to do with TIP than I ever could. TIP is by no means a charity, and we need to tie a good business case around everyone and every business project. With that said, the focus is on “optimizing for happiness.” I am not a good capitalist, and I knowingly make many business decisions based on what optimizes happiness for the team, which no company opting for profits would ever do. I’m selfish that way - when the team is happy - I’m happy, and there is a wonderful feedback loop.

I learned long ago that the best part is not to reach the destination. The best part is the journey, and TIP is just that. A journey with the listeners and the TIP team. Good investment returns are the means to happiness. Nothing more and nothing less.

What is your investing motto, if you have one?

Look for 15 uncorrelated asymmetric bets.

How much prep goes into an interview you conduct?

It’s quite different, and it’s hard to measure. For example, in my annual interview with Mohnish Pabrai, I always go through all the content on his channel that had been uploaded since our last interview, which could easily take 30 hours. But for episodes with Mohnish Pabrai and other guests, if they are recurring guests, I have an ongoing outline.

For example, a few times a year, I’m fortunate enough to have the opportunity to interview Lyn Alden. In a way, I didn’t spend much time on those interviews, and in other ways, you can say that I spent more than a hundred hours. When I read about macro, and there is something I don’t understand, which happens all the time, I often have plenty of questions that I type up. So when I get around to the time I have Lyn booked for an interview, I usually always have my outline ready.

But the structure is not like: “I’m going to spend 2o hours preparing for the interview.” The way it goes is that I might have read 6 books for macro, and for some of the books, I would have no questions, and for other of the books, I might just have typed one a few questions. Then, I would have read a few of her blog posts and 20 issues of The Economist since our last chat, which have all either helped me come up with a question or have given me background information to provide a different perspective to an interview.

What do you hope the audience derives from our work at TIP?

Protect the downside in investing and follow a strategy that optimizes your personal goals and, in turn, your happiness. Don’t think about benchmarking. If you are an average investor for a long time, live with your means, and don’t do anything stupid, you can’t avoid becoming wealthy.

Can you describe your personal investment philosophy in a few sentences?

Only invest in what you understand. It’s better to be an inch wide and a mile deep than the opposite in investing.

The holy grail of investing is to have 15 uncorrelated assets that are asymmetric bets. I’m not yet there.

How has your investment strategy evolved over the years?

I used to focus on growing my capital, whereas today, I focus more on preserving capital.

For me, a full position is 10%, and I let my winners run. When I get new capital, I put that money into my best idea below the 10% threshold.

How much cash do you like to hold, if any?

I like to be fully invested. I tried sitting with cash on the sidelines, but I’m not smart enough to deploy it at the right time, and I pay a lot in opportunity costs for doing so. I have two ETFs I put money into if I can’t find high-quality individual stocks to invest in at the right price. I have decent expected returns from ETFs, and it’s mentally easy for me to sell that another individual stock where I have more biases.

What are your thoughts on the current state of the stock market?

The US stock market looks expensive, but something is always cheap somewhere in the public markets—if not in the States, then globally.

What are your favorite hobbies outside of investing?

I still like to play poker when I’m on the road. I also like watching football and cycling.

One of the wonderful things about hosting We Study Billionaires and our Mastermind Community is that you make friends everywhere in the world. One of the many friends I met through TIP has met me on four different continents, and we’re meeting up again soon in London.

What does a typical day look like for you as CEO?

My weekdays are almost always the same:

8-9: Read emails and respond to Slack messages.

9-10: Breakfast and chat with my wife.

10-11: Deep work in front of my computer.

11-noon: I go for a walk. I typically listen to audiobooks and podcasts, or I think about an operational or strategic problem that needs solving. Three times a week, I jog rather than walk, but I still read while doing so.

Noon-12:30: I jot down notes from my walk.

12:30-1:30: Lunch break and a nap if I’m lucky.

1:30-5:00: I usually spend this time on up to two meetings and lower-intensity work. When I don’t have meetings or prepare for them, I read books and financial statements. I don’t like having meetings for more than 2.5 hours per day. As an introvert, it drains me. Also, if I need to have more than two meetings, I have usually not done a good job of delegating and saying no.

5-6: I usually go for another walk, reflecting on my meetings. It’s also a good time to respond to messages to the team, the TIP Mastermind Community, and what else is in my inbox. When possible, I respond with audio messages and not in writing. I find it to be more personal and time-efficient.

6-7: Dinner with my wife.

7-8: Walk with my wife.

8-9: I either read or work on the lowest-intensity tasks. Often, I use this time to brainstorm. This is the time of the day when my conscious mind is most tired, but my subconscious mind really starts working, and I come up with solutions I couldn’t earlier. This is a good time to jot down notes and then wake up the next morning and reflect on them with fresh eyes.

9-10:30: My wife and I typically watch TV and relax.

10:30-11:30: This is a great time to read books and financial statements.

If I’m lucky, I spend more time reading on weekends than weekdays, as I usually don’t have meetings.

The job description today is less operational than it has ever been. My most productive time is typically when I walk or jog. We’re 25 full-time working on TIP, and my finest job is to hire, mentor, and train the best people and then get out of their way.

When you work with your passion, it doesn’t feel like work. I’m typically always in a state of work. When I relax, I recharge to work most efficiently, but there is also something to be said about never feeling as relaxed as when I work. I never take vacations where I don’t work, but when I am on “vacation,” work ironically relieves the most stress for me.

Working with wonderful people can be relaxing and give you the energy to work even more. Then, you can also argue that much of what I do is not really “work.” For example, I often read books that are not related to investing, business, or anything that is useful for TIP. And I might do that throughout what you call “normal office hours.”

I like to keep my calendar open and don’t plan meetings too much ahead of time if I can avoid it.

Is there a dream guest you'd love to interview on the podcast?

It’s a cliche, but Warren Buffett would be at the top of the list.

How do you see the future of podcasting evolving in the next few years?

Creating the best possible content will be more important than ever in a world of AI and abundance. I also think that podcasting will be even more host-driven than ever before. It could be tough for a culture like we have on TIP if it wasn't because we had such a wonderful team.

I have multiple times been asked whether we would buy different podcasts and put them under the TIP banner. I have never seen TIP like that even though it would be a great business strategy if you optimized for dollars. I don’t want to deal with the egos that would come from hiring prominent podcast hosts for our network. We reverse this on TIP. Once a year, our support team grades our hosts, and they have to meet a certain threshold of being nice to work with. It has never been necessary to let any host go because of this, but it’s the first thing I say to any host that joins TIP. They will be “homegrown,” and our support team is the star. They decide on the hosts and not the other way around.

What can listeners expect from The Investor's Podcast in the coming months or years?

We want to double down on creating more and better value-investing content. We have previously considered whether we should be a podcast network in general, but we realized that the very core of TIP is value investing and should continue to be so.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

I realized that the journey was the best part. I once thought it was once we had XZY million downloads, or XZY team members, or made XZY millions of dollars. Whenever we achieve a new milestone and set a new goal, I realize the journey is the best part.

Dive deeper

For more about Stig and TIP, visit our website or check out Stig’s collection of popular investing books.

Recommended Reading: Carbon Finance

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