 Hello everyone, yesterday in my Savvy Investors at VectorVest YouTube show, I interviewed Glenn Tompkins. Glenn is a guy that I have now known for 12 years. He is one of the people that introduced me first of all to the VectorVest system and trained me in it when I went over to North Carolina to work with the company 12 years ago to get a deep dive into how everything worked. And number one, he knows so much about the stock market himself. Number two, he's somebody that has lots of great opinions and thoughts that he's not afraid to share. And number three, he has his own show called Trending Thursdays. He also has another show called the Mid-afternoon Update, etc. So there was loads and loads that I wanted to ask Glenn during the show yesterday. And of course, as you can imagine, I wasn't shy about sharing my own thoughts too. So I wanted to give you a summary of the conversation and the link to the full episode is in this post. So let's take it from the top. The key conversation we had was what distinguishes news from noise in the stock market? So I asked Glenn, what do you think? And he said he's got two tests for distinguishing the two. Number one is, does this piece of news drive earnings? And number two, does it affect the long-term nature of the company, which of course would have an impact on the stock? And he gave a range of examples. And I think they're two very good tests actually. I think that is a great way of determining A from B. But I was just interested to the fact that he has 60 tabs open, he said at any given stage on his computer so that he can keep an eye on what's going on. Now, I don't know how he manages that. I certainly don't. But what he says also is that he looks to see what stories and what conversations are being repeatedly made. And then that's how he determines news from noise. Now, me personally, my news routine is that I love to listen to a stock market related podcast as I'm walking into the office in the morning. And particularly the one that I like to listen to is Wall Street Breakfast from Seeking Alpha. It's sharp, sharp, and it really gets to the heart of what goes on and it draws from other things that Seeking Alpha is doing so that then you get a good sense of where the conversation is at. Also, I think it's very important to not just look at the stock market in isolation. Also, I love to listen to the real yield. It's Sean Bloomberg on a Friday and that is one that's on, well, you can get it on YouTube if you go back and look at it afterwards or of course you can look at it live. But my number one preference for getting my news about the stock market is attending earnings calls. I love going to an earnings call. I think this is where you really get to learn about the company, you get to see about the business, you get to see about their financials, you get, of course, you get an enormously positive experience from the CEO or the CFO or the people who are talking to you from investor relations, etc. But it is very insightful. That is my favourite place to really understand a company. And within that, it's all very interesting as well to listen to the Q&A afterwards, listen to what the analysts are asking. And this is where you can truly learn to get in behind the numbers, to get in behind the narrative. And many of the analysts have been on many earnings calls. So they also will be comparing to, well, last quarter I asked you this, this is your answer. Interesting that this has been what has transpired to thereafter. Now, on the point of earnings though, Glennon came back to me and he said, sometimes he feels earnings can be noise. And I really, I didn't agree with this at all when I heard it first. But his point was, is that the conversation in the news is often about, did the earnings meet in number? Or did it miss, right? Did it miss? Did it have a surprise to the upside, etc. And he said, that can often get away from the real conversation here. He said, sometimes a company can miss an earnings expectation by two cents a share and could have made billions. And the focus is on the two cents a share as distinct to the billions that they've generated. And that I can certainly understand on right. That is where you can have a very, very short-term reaction. And I particularly, I was at the earnings call of Skillsoft, for example, a good couple of months ago, I'm a very interesting company in the area of learning development of which, of course, I have my own business too. So I was very interested in that. And I was interested that they missed their earnings expectations. There was a range of good things that had come out in that earnings report, the stock price dramatically decreased. And then I was looking at it there, just yesterday actually in preparation for the episode, and it's back up again about 28%. I think in the past month, and I will confirm that exactly, and I'll put it on this post. But the point I'm making is, is that there was a massive reaction to that at the time. And since then, there has been a recovery. Now, the news isn't as intense, of course, because it's not, it's not the earnings call. Then we've seen that those buyers and sellers may be taking a little bit less of attention and moving in a different direction. Now, as regards where Skinsoft is going to go after this, that is going to be up to the company and the way in which things evolve and so on like that. But it just is a point that Glenn was raising about the news and the noise that can come with earnings. Now, in addition, we had quite an interesting conversation about AI versus the metaverse. Because I asked the question, what news story did you think was noise? That actually became news. And this is the one that he picked. He said AI. He said AI seemed to have come out of nowhere. And then of course, he said, well, I mean, in reality, AI has been around for a long time, but it hasn't been as accessible until chat GPD launched. Then you saw the meteoric growth of its usage, of the amount of people using it, of how much of a conversation it is in conferences and boardrooms around the world. Then he said, we really got, ah, this is how AI can help me. And he was comparing the AI developments over the past while to the metaverse. Last year, it was all about the metaverse and whether it was meta changing its name, whether it was the decline in the tech stocks, whether it was the first selfie that was taken in the metaverse and various other things besides. I put forward that it's something that Jennifer Vestels mentioned at an event that I am seeing recently. She said the hype about the metaverse is dying, the metaverse itself is not dying. So we got into the nuts and bolts of that. But how an investor looks at the metaverse is different to how a business person looks at the metaverse. Gladly at the point, an investor is looking at the metaverse from the point of view of what industries does that affect. And we brought it back to AI. He said, when you think about AI, a business person is thinking about what skills do I need to recruit now? How is this going to affect my business? How are we relevant? How is our supply chain relevant? Etc. An investor says, what is going to need to happen in order to sustain all of these AI developments? Super computers, more computing software, the difference in the way in which we teach people now about prompting. So who are the industries that are going to be affected by that? And he said, that is how an investor thinks. He also gave suggestions of a range of companies that he's watching who are right in the heart of that. So just want to mention that as well. And again, all of that is in the episode. Now, next thing I moved on to was what really underpins news. What is it that you look for in a stock that if you focus on that, then of course your radar, as you're looking for news, tunes in around that. And he said two things. The ability of a company to make money quarter over quarter, year over year. Now Glenn told me that when I started working with them 12 years ago. So I know he really and truly fundamentally agrees with that and believes in that. And the proprietary indicator in VectorVest that supports that is called RS, Relative Safety. He also then spoke about relative value and that is basically a stock's ability to have long term price appreciation potential and outperform the bond market. This is why I personally think as an investor in the stock market and as somebody that comments on it and invests in it is that it's important we don't look at it in isolation. It of course is affected by interest rates. It of course is affected by the cost of borrowing for companies and governments. Of course it is. So by looking at a stock's ability to outperform it, of course, then you get much more insight thereafter. He also likes the Unisarch function within VectorVest as well, which is where you can tailor your search according to what you want, whether it is high dividend yield, fast growing earnings or technical analysis indicators. Okay, we then had a really interesting conversation about how the stock market isn't binary. On the surface, you buy something and it goes up, you make money, you buy something and it goes down. It loses money. That's it, isn't it? Well, no. Because you can do other things. For example, Glenn is happy to short. I never liked it. I haven't done it. It's not for me. Shorting is when you borrow stocks, sell them and then buy them back with a view to the million and lower price and then you keep what's in the middle. Personally speaking, I'm more an options woman. So I'll give you an example. I could sell you an option. It's called a put option where I would agree to buy a share off you at a certain price at a certain time. And if you don't want to at that time, you can walk away. But you just pay me a premium to lock in that price. The reason that I would do that is maybe I want to buy that stock anyway. And I'm getting paid to wait to buy it or also if it's very volatile, well, then of course, I'm getting paid to absorb the volatility that you want to outsource to somebody else. And in that way, I get paid to wait to buy the stocks that I want to buy anyway. I personally feel that's less risky than even buying in the stock market itself. And it's something I've been doing for years. I actually did my thesis on it in college way back in the day. And then of course, we had to have the obligatory conversation about interest rates, seventh increase in the EU, eurozone, 10th increase in the US, 12th increase in the UK. We had a chat about that as well. And again, that is in the episode. So thanks so much, Glen. It was really interesting to interview you. And for any video, check it out.