 there is so much enigma and mystery all around the world about the PE ratio. If you and all the other investors can just read these two white papers, you can determine the fair or justified P multiple for any listed stock in the entire world. What is the quickest way to compound our wealth? And trust me, when you do this every single day for many, many years, you can actually reflect, go back to these writings and then you realize just how far you have come along in your life. In your opinion, do you think crypto is hope-based investing? Meet Garden Bay, a seasoned fund manager and a well-respected value investor. With over 15 years of investing experience in the Indian equity market, Garden's Stella Weill Partners India Fund achieved a remarkable 42% return in just 17 months since it went live. Garden is also the author of the International Best Seller on Value Investing, The Joys of Compounding, and his book has inspired investors all over the world. Thank you so much, Garden. Once again for being here, giving me your precious time so that I can interview you and really find out about your investing wisdom. I clearly remember when I was reading this book, you talk about there was a period of time that you were able to, you were unable to get the investment job that you wanted and ended up, you actually had a lot of spare time to do a lot of reading on your own and that period of time actually shaped you to become who you are today. So if you don't mind sharing, can you share with us a little bit about that experience back then and how has it helped you to become a better investor? As you have read in the book and from my past interviews as well, there was a phase of one and a half years in the US when I was working at a minimum wage job because I was trying to pursue my passion of getting a stock market job and I did not want to go back to my previous work of investment banking and during those 18 months of work at the hotel, I read every single blog article published on blogs like safalneveshak.com, macrocapclub.com, panduprofessor.com and a few other blogs and the passionate pursuit of lifelong learning had finally begun and it was only in hindsight that I realized just how powerful compounding knowledge as a concept is because the body language derives from self-confidence and self-confidence in turn derives from knowledge. So that is how I was able to ace all the three rounds of my portfolio manager job interview one and a half years later and land a great job with some global investments as portfolio manager of their global equity strategy. So reading definitely helped and even otherwise for all investors, reading is an essential skill because the good investors are those who can make use of the big ideas from the different disciplines and then combine those ideas to arrive at a more rational and objective decision, a more effective decisions. That's what good investing is all about. Our business is all about making better decisions and to make better decisions, we have to educate ourselves on the basics from the different disciplines. You don't have to go very deep into multiple disciplines, but at least the working knowledge of the high level first principles from the different disciplines is essential. Wait, as you are saying at that time, you read so many books, which are what are some of the books that really set the foundation for you and you constantly go back for the key principles, even as today. I think for all Berkshire Hathaway shareholders and followers of Berkshire, I think Warren Buffett's original Buffett partnership letters and all the Berkshire Hathaway annual letters are essential reading. And in addition to this, you should go to CNBC.com. There's a archive of all the past video recordings of the past Berkshire Hathaway meetings. You should go through them as well. In addition to this, these basic stuff, you should also read books like One Upon Wall Street by Peter Lynch, Mastering the Market Cycle and the Most Important Thing by Harvard Marks, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Phil Fisher. These are classics in the investing field. So I think the Berkshire materials and these three books will get you on the right path to becoming a successful investor. And definitely you guys should also read The Joys of Combounding. I really love this book so much. I felt that there's a lot of wisdom, not just in the area of investing, but also in the area of life. And that's where it really taught me a lot because when it comes to investing, the markets can be very, very volatile and emotional. But when I read this, it really gives me a very calming perspective and helped to shake me to become a better investor over time as well. So thank you so much, Garden, for having this beautiful work here. My second question is related to your second book, which is The Making of a Value Investor. Inside the book, you wrote that you have learned to respect the market's wisdom over the years. And there is a reason everything trades at a level that it does and there are multiple yardsticks of valuation. And we all know that actually valuation is something that is really tricky, can be very, very tough. So in fact, there are some businesses that are just constantly being traded at very high value. For example, Costco and all this. So for these kind of companies, how do you know when should we invest if we just look at the P ratio? It seems high all the time. How do we judge that? So we very rightly said that these high quality companies tend to treat it at expensive valuations most of the time in the market. And that's why in The Jobs are Combining, there's a chapter title that the market is efficient most of the time but not all of the time. So let me explain what that title of that chapter means. You get an opportunity to buy into such high quality businesses at a reasonable price in two situations. The first situation is one when the high quality business experiences a short-term headwind and ends up reporting a bad quarter or two. And because of the short-term nature of most market participants, the stock sells off and you get to enter at a very reasonable price because the long-term intrinsic value is not that much affected. But the short-term price gets downgraded by foreselling from many market participants. So that's the first situation in which you can buy into a high quality business at a reasonable price. The second situation in which you can buy into high quality companies at reasonable prices is during a broad-based market sell-off or a broad-based sectoral sell-off. So I'll give you three examples here. In 2018 calendar year, the NASDAQ fell 22% peak to trough in the last quarter and stocks of great businesses like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon fell more than 30% in just three months. Two years later, in 2020, in the month of March, the NASDAQ fell more than 30% and all these stocks again, all these great businesses again fell by more than 30% in just a month. So in 2018, these businesses fell more than 30% in three months. In 2020, these businesses fell more than 30% in just one month. And then let's go two years later again, 2022. NASDAQ fell 35% in the year and all these stocks of great businesses fell more than 35% each in the entire year. So now we're in 2024. Again, the two years clock has started. And this year again, it's not a bad idea to keep some dry powder on the side to capitalize on a potential buying opportunity. Not there's nothing definitive or certain in markets. It's not 100% certain that again, we'll get a sell-off this year. But history tells us that you keep getting opportunities every few years, 2018, 2020, 2022. You got out of five years, you got opportunities in three of the five years. But the problem with most investors is that we just tend to be impatient. We want to be doing something all the time. But like I write in my second book, The Making of a Value Investor, not doing anything when there are no good opportunities available is also good capital allocation. Your job as an investor is that of a capital allocator. So if you don't get good prices, then just wait. It's better to be patient than poor. Absolutely love that. And just like what you said, because sometimes investors can become very hasty because they keep on seeing prices going up. And it felt like, oh my God, I better catch this. I have to go in right now. But just like what you said, opportunities actually do come. We just need to be patient, right? Sometimes just waiting for that one to two years, good opportunities can come in front of us. And that's where we need to also have the emotion discipline to act on it instead of being fearful at that time, right? So my third question relates to some of the other companies, right? You know, like there are Costco that is highly, highly predictable. But at the same time, there are also companies like McDonald's, Starbucks, they are very predictable business. But when I check on their return on equity, the number can be found because an equity is actually negative. And if I'm not wrong, the management actually borrow a lot of money to buy back the shares. So do you think that firstly, is this something that it's considered safe to invest in businesses like this that buy back a lot of shares? Or do you think that it's okay because the company itself has a lot of cash flow? So it's able to support this case. So what's your take on that? So again, Buffett has already taught us the fundamental principle of stock buybacks. If these companies are buying back their stock below intrinsic value or below fair value, then that will create value for existing shareholders. But if these companies, which you mentioned, are buying back their stock at very steep lofty valuations way above intrinsic value, that will dilute the existing shareholders. So it's all the function of whether the company's paying a reasonable price to buy back the stock. You mentioned that companies are borrowing money to buy back their stock. So let's assume that we are in 2020 when interest rates were slashed to 0%. In that kind of a scenario, when stock prices have crashed and interest rates are at 0 to 1%, it is a very smart capital allocation strategy to borrow at dirt cheap interest rates and buy back the stock, which is trading at a depressed valuation way below intrinsic value. That is the hallmark of a great management. That's why we should also look at the interest rate situation, whether is this still the smart move to do so, or it could be a little bit risky to do so during this high interest rate environment. Thanks so much for your enlightenment. Now, my next question, it's a little bit number centric. So I know some investors like to, always like to compare metrics like RIC, which is return on investor capital to a weighted average cost of capital. So based on this ability, we always want to invest in companies that has higher RIC than WACC. So is there any point where it actually correlates with fair value of like a P-Ratio of a company and how do you determine when is it fair? Like WACC, how do you calculate and all this? I'm very glad you asked me this question because there is so much enigma and mystery all around the world about the P-Ratio. Many newcomer investors, new investors in the market, they look at a stock trading at 10 P, they consider it cheap and they look at a stock of a good quality business trading at 50 P and they call it expensive. But investing is never black or white. It's always shades of gray. Investing is a probabilistic activity, but just to specifically answer your question, how do we use this information of ROIC and WACC to determine the fair P multiple of the business? Every investor just needs to read two white papers, which I'm going to share with right now with all of you. The first white paper is titled, what does the price to earning multiple mean by Michael Mobison? And the second white paper is called the P-Ratio, a user's manual by Epoch Investment Partners. And if you and all the other investors can just read these two white papers, you can determine the fair or justified P multiple for any listed stock in the entire world based on an interplay between the ROIC and the earnings growth. So these two white papers will completely clarify everyone's thinking, what is the fair or justified P multiple for any listed stock in the world. If you can, once you've understood the justified P multiple for a business, if you buy the stock below the justified P multiple, then over time, your returns will correlate with the earnings growth, plus you'll benefit from valuation re-rating. And if you buy a stock above the justified P multiple based on these two white papers, then over time, you will benefit from the earnings growth. You'll get the returns from there, but you are at risk of valuation re-rating. So this is the crystal clear concept of how to approach valuation because there's so much noise out there, what is the right valuation and everyone is giving out subjective opinions and their personal opinions on Twitter, LinkedIn, everywhere else. But investing is part science and part art. So nuanced judgment is required. What I've shared with you right now is the science part of investing. And once you've understood the justified P multiple of the company, then the art part of investing comes into the picture where you put your heart of a business analyst, not a securities analyst, like Charlie Munger says, we should be business analyst. You try to understand or gauge the longevity of the business, the competitive advantage of the business because the competitive advantage is what will help the company maintain higher ROIC way above the cost of capital. And that is what creates economic value for shareholders. Wow, okay. I remember when I was reading your book, you talk about these two papers, I have not found the time to read it, but since today you stress the importance of it, I should totally go and find time to read these white papers. So if you don't mind me just delving a little bit into WACC, right? Because the formula of it is really complex. Do you do all those calculations by yourself or do you actually just simply take maybe 5%, 10% above the market premium? Again, let's draw from the wisdom of two of the great investors. Let's talk about Charlie Munger, what he has explained to us and taught us. Charlie Munger says that all wise individuals make decisions in terms of opportunity costs. And investors are always measuring new ideas against their available alternatives. So taking a cue from Munger's wisdom, we can reasonably say that the S&P 500's long-term annual return of 9.5% over the last 100 years can be taken as a reasonably good proxy for an investor's long-term opportunity cost in the market. And for investors in markets outside the US, they can look at the long-term annual returns of their respective stock markets to arrive at their respective opportunity cost, long-term opportunity cost. And this will be a good proxy for the cost of capital in that particular country. Once you've got this as a starting point, then it can be revised up or down depending on the individual business's characteristics. So this is the most practical way to approach back or weighted average cost of capital or cost of capital. Just think in terms of long-term opportunity cost. You get that easily from looking at the long-term returns of your country's stock market. In your book, you also shared that in your humble opinion, the days that one can just take five to 10 years to view on the stock are gone, right? And you believe that two to three years is the maximum feasible period in today's fast-changing, highly disruptive environment. Businesses can take some time to truly reflect whether does it turn bad or not for yourself. Then how do we truly identify the fine line between whether is this a temporary impact on the business or is a permanent loss of its economical? So the last part of your question is the most important. How do we assess whether the economic mode of the business is becoming impaired or harmed? And you look at two things here. You look, two metrics will give it away. So look at the working capital cycle of the company. So if the business is unable to negotiate good terms of trade with its customers and suppliers, it will reflect in the working capital cycle worsening. So your debtor days will go up, your inventory days will go up, and that is a sign of the economic mode weakening because generally these strongly moated businesses tend to operate on negative working capital or very tight working capital cycles. They basically sell goods on cash and they buy goods on credit. That's the sign of our economic mode, which is in danger, looking at the working capital cycle. The second way you can understand whether an economic mode is getting impaired is by looking at the gross margin trajectory of the business because businesses with strong economic modes tend to have pricing power and a strong pricing power is best reflected in a very high gross margin, 75, 80% gross margins. At the end of the day, you spend all your marketing and other R&D dollars from your gross margins, right? So the higher the gross margin, the more leeway for the business to invest in sales and marketing. So the gross margin is sharply worsening. That's also a sign that the economic mode may be worsening, but apart from these two quantitative criteria, there's a qualitative criteria as well, which will help you exit the stock on time. So there's a bad corporate governance practice by the management, if they treat marriage shareholders badly, that's a straight way to get out. And if it's an expensive stock which suddenly reports a fall in profits year on year, then what will happen is because the P ratio is already high and if the denominator, the earnings pressure, if that starts falling, then the P ratio will start going further up. So an expensive stock becomes absurdly expensive when the earnings starts decelerating and falling. So this is another way to quickly get out and ahead of the upcoming derating of the company. So for yourself, like usually when you buy into the stock, you will usually be holding on for like two years and within these two years would be constantly monitoring and like starting the economic mode of the company. And if after two years, if you felt that the company has in the deteriorator or whatnot, that will be some of the key criteria that you just mentioned, right? I generally track these metrics on a one-year basis. I generally give management at least one year to prove to me that they can execute. I think four quarters are enough time to give to a management to at least start executing them. If they're unable to execute even once in four quarters, then you just have to accept that the management is not being able to execute. You sell that stock, get the cash and then deploy into the next opportunity. But I think four quarters is more than enough leeway to give to a management. I also remember in the book, you mentioned that you don't like your portfolio to be too concentrated because it doesn't give you a lot of peace of mind. So for yourself, what is the portfolio percentage allocation that you are willing to invest in any single company? So for the level partners India fund, I generally initiate new positions with the rate of between three to 5%. And I do not allocate more than 10% to a single stock at cost in the beginning. And I also have internal risk management rules in place. So I do not let a single stock become more than 15% of the overall fund by value. And I limit individual industry exposure levels to 30% of the overall portfolio by value. I hold between 20 and 25 stocks in the fund at all points of time. And that's because that is the optimal number of holdings to maximize the risk and return trade-off. So as per an empirical study published in the international bestseller, a random worked on Wall Street by Burton Mulkill, it was shown that as the number of stocks in a portfolio reaches 25 names, the incremental volatility reducing benefits of diversification reach near zero. So this is the sweet spot for an active investor seeking to outperform the market. At 20 to 25 stocks, you have captured almost all of the benefits of diversification, yet the number of stocks you need to know thoroughly is still manageable. So why do you think, for example, I know Berkshire's, you know, like their size is really big. Is that why they can afford to have like, let's say 50 companies at the same time? I think Berkshire, I think if you look at their portfolio today, almost 35, 40% of it is in single stock Apple. So they're pretty concentrated. So if you just look at the top five positions of Berkshire, they're actually pretty highly concentrated. And Buffett and Maghraf talked about this important point that if you just take out the 12 best investing decisions of Berkshire over the last 50 years, and then their track record would be very mediocre. So I think the key to becoming a good investor is to let your winners run and to make your good investments count. So many of us, you know, the moment the stop doubles, we just sell it and book profits. But in order to have a multi-bagger or a 10-bagger in your portfolio, you need to hold on to a 10-bagger in your portfolio. So holding on is key. And since we are talking about your fund, I also understand that your fund actually adopts these Warren Buffett's way of approach, right? Can you just elaborate a little bit more about the fee structure and why do you design it this way? So the Steleval Partners India Fund's fee structure is actually an improvement on the original Buffett partnership fee structure, which was 0625. In my case, I have a 0620 fee structure, zero management fee, 6% annual cumulative compounding hurdle rate, which means that in, suppose in year one, the investor makes zero. Then at the end of year two, until the investor has made 6% into 1.06, 12.36%, till that time I don't know a single penny from him. And finally, there's a 20% performance fee on returns over the 6% hurdle rate. So if the fund delivers 16% dollar return for the year, then the performance fee becomes 16% minus 6% hurdle rate, 10%, 20% of that is 2%. So 2% is the performance fee and the investor's account gets appreciated by 16 minus 2, 14% for the year. And the logic behind keeping this kind of a fee structure, which I'm very happy about, because this is my biggest USP, biggest selling point in my India fund, because there is no other India fund in entire America, which offers you this kind of a client-centric fee structure. Other managers are either charging a 2% management fee or some management fee and a 25% profit sharing over the hurdle rate. But when I ran the numbers over 20 years, between performance fee at 25% and performance fees at 20%, this difference of 5% performance fee when compounded over 20 long years makes a very large difference to the client's eventual network because on an annual basis, it seems very small, but when you compound it over 20 years, it makes a very big difference. So I just thought for the benefit of my clients, let me reduce the performance fee to 20%. That's in a way that you are thinking about for the future clients portfolio growth and you want to make sure you take good care of them and that's why you structure your fees in this way. And if you don't mind sharing right now for your fund, what's the AUM and what's the return so far? So the fund went live on 3rd October 2022 and in the first 17 months, the fund has delivered 42% return in USD after performance fees and the current assets and the management is $11.2 million as of today. Wow, that's amazing. Since you're fun, it's based in, like you only invest in India, right? And I know that for the Indian market, it's pretty tricky. You know, the valuation like what you said, right? It seems to be always high, right? So in a way, how do you spot great companies in India and how should investor approach that the India market valuation is constantly high? Then what can we do about it? So how do you identify good companies or high quality companies? It's the same method everywhere. We need the US, we need India, the objective is the same. Let me define what a good quality business means. A good quality business is one, which has a return on capital way above its cost of capital. That's the first point. The second point, the business has to have some form of a competitive advantage or an economic mode in order to maintain that spread between the return on capital and the cost of capital for a long period of time. And point number three, the business has to have sufficient reinvestment opportunities within the business at high returns on capital. That kind of a business becomes a compounding machine. That's the definition of a quality company. Now, adding the reason why high valuations persist in the Indian stock market, India's stock market is very unique. So the Indian market basically has got the highest level of insider ownership among all the stock markets in the world. As a result of which, there is a supply demand imbalance in its local stock market. The supply of quality equities in the Indian market is very limited. And that is why the handful of good quality companies in India tend to enjoy a very high scarcity premium. They're very scarce and rare. So that's why they tend to have traded very expensive valuations. Plus corporate governance is not really a major issue with most of the listed companies in the US. But in case of India, most of the listed companies either suffer from bad accounting quality or poor corporate governance. So again, the same problem comes back of demand supply. The handful of good quality companies with good corporate governance, they are the ones in which institutional investors like mutual funds and foreign investors can invest and they keep chasing the same set of 100 to 150 stocks time and again. And therefore, simple economics 101, if supply is limited and demand is high, then what will happen to the price? The price will go up over time. So for your fund, do you mainly invest in like mid cap or like small cap or like large cap in India? It's a multi-cap strategy. So right now we have 60% in small caps 20% in mid caps and 20% in large caps right now. But we have sector and market cap agnostic. So in a future bear market, so in a bear market, what happens is the market becomes very narrow and Ernie's growth basically evaporates and vanishes across different industries and across companies. So only a handful of stocks in the market display Ernie's growth, especially among large caps. So in the future bear market, you may see the tilt shifting, the 60% small cap may shift to 60% large cap. We invest wherever we find Ernie's growth at reasonable or fair evaluations. And like I've written in my second book also, I'm even okay with paying a full price, the full justified P multiple or full, or even an expensive P multiple upon entry because even if I don't earn returns in the first year, the returns from year two to year five will compensate for the lack of returns in year one. This is a very big investing wisdom which you actually learn only over time that this is a concept called time arbitrage. So basically just by spending your time horizon, you're able to enter into a very high quality long term compounding machine at what in hindsight will seem like a reasonable price. Like what you said, right? Because we need time for the company to perform to run and let the winners continue to run. So just now you did mention that at a period of time, you will maximum keep one company to 15%. So that means in a way, you have to trim a little bit of the winners if it runs too much. So what's your take on that? Trimming is slightly fine, but given that you're having 25 positions in your fund, so if you're initiating a new position at 5%, so for a stock to become 15% of the aggregate fund by value, because new inflows keep coming in every month and weights of other stocks will also keep rising over time because of appreciation. So for a stock to reach 15% weight over time means that it has to become a 10-bagger or more. Think through it. It is not as simple as 5% becoming 15% is a 3-bagger. No, in a fund structure, because new money is coming in every month and other stocks are also going up at the same time. For a stock to actually go up to 15% by itself in the fund, at the fund level, means that it will have to become a big 10-bagger or a big multi-bagger. So that's a very good problem. I hope your words come true. I would love to have this problem one day. That would be nice. So now my next question is, I can see that you really study so deeply into all those great businesses and that's why your fund is performing so well. As an investor, what is your daily habit that makes you to become good at what you are doing? I think it's keeping away from the noise as much as possible. It's one of the best habits I've adopted. So in the Indian markets, open at late night, my local time, and I am based in Eastern times though in Atlanta, Georgia. So it's New York time. And the Indian markets open at 11.45 PM every night. So my job is very simple. Just put in the limit order. They'll put in the limit buy and sell orders to my broker. Then I can go to sleep while the Indian market is open. And because I'm asleep, while the Indian markets are open, it helps me avoid all that daily chatter and daily news flow and daily noise which takes place while the markets are open. Because all these market commentators and social media handles are just screaming from the rooftops about this thing. This has happened today. This has happened today. But businesses do not get built in a single day. Businesses are built over generations, over decades. The bulk of the intrinsic value of any company lies, five, 10 years out, way out into the future. So the daily news flow doesn't really make a big difference to the long term intrinsic value of a company. So it's this habit of staying away from the noise as much as possible as it greatly helped me become a more rational investor if I can call it that. Is that like a decision by choice that you purposely choose to move off India so that you can stay away from the noises and live in the States? No, I had moved from India to US in 2015. That time I was in search of a good stock market job because in India I was not getting a good stock market job. But the decision to move to the US was not based because even when I started my job as a portfolio manager at Summit Global where I worked for four and a half years, even during that time I never thought that one day I'll actually quit my job and venture out on my own and become my own boss and run my own business. But like Steve Jobs has said, like you cannot connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect the dots looking backwards. In the end, everything came together to result in a very fulfilling and happy life because I know for a fact that when passion meets profession, well-being success follows. It's bound to happen. You just have to have faith that the dots will eventually connect. And the universe works in such a way to help you achieve your goals when you are a nice and helpful person. Yesterday I tweeted on Twitter also that being a nice and helpful person is a superpower. Just being able to notice your post on LinkedIn also, I think today or yesterday, that you talked about Vitaly's talk on benevolence and being a kind person. I think just being a helpful person, being helpful and genuine with people, that itself will get you so far ahead in life. Thanks for also reading my post and sharing it because I'm learning so much from you, from all those great investors. And I think as I pan down my thoughts, it helps to crystallize my own thinking as well. Is that why writing to you is so important that it helps you to pan down your thoughts and crystallize your thoughts? I write every single day slow and it's just not on investing. Like you saw in the making of a value investor, apart from investment journal, I write on many other things as well. So there's a five part section in my journal, a separate journal which I also maintain. So the first part one is titled I'm Grateful For and then there are three parts within that. Second heading is what would make today great. There are three more points within that. Third part number three is daily affirmation. So there's something called positive affirmations. If you affirm or promise something to your celebration, if you say something to yourself that I'm going to do this, I'm going to achieve this. I'm like this kind of a person. I'm good at this. If you keep doing this self affirmations, it has a very powerful impact on your mindset. So that's where that section of compounding positive thoughts and jobs that compounding comes from. So that was part three. Then part four is highlights of the day. There are three points within that. And then finally, I end with what did I learn today? There are three more points within that. So five parts in addition to my daily investment journal which I maintain, there's a separate journal and it means there are these five parts which I also maintain every day. And trust me, when you do this every single day for many, many years, over thousands of days, you can actually reflect, go back to these writings and then you realize just how far you have come along in your life. Wow, what a beautiful insight. And do you do that at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day? Part one to three at the beginning of the day, after breakfast and the last parts, four and five are done just before sleeping. Beautiful because the one, two, three is to set the intention and set the direction for the day. And then at the end, it's what you learned and the reflections of what happened today. Wow, that's beautiful. I could totally start doing that. Thank you so much. My next question is has to do with other investment vehicle. Because we know that resilience is super powerful. But at the same time, there are also other investment vehicle that went up so quickly. For example, Bitcoin and all this. In your book, you wrote that I would rather buy on some development and materialization than do hope-based investing. So in your opinion, do you think crypto is hope-based investing? You have some of the world's smartest minds backing up particular technology. It's not a wise decision to go against it. Personally, I do not invest in any cryptos or Bitcoin or Ethereum, but I think for traders with a very good risk management discipline, it's a great place because it's a very volatile asset class and that is where good traders can make a lot of money. And also, you have to understand that ultimately, liquidity drives prices. So recently, Bitcoin ETFs were launched in the US and that has driven large amount of inflows into Bitcoin ETFs after which you have seen a sharp surge in Bitcoin prices. Similar thing happened many years ago when gold ETFs were launched for the first time and then gold appreciated significantly. I think in terms of price appreciation, there's a good potential, but I personally do not understand it because it does not generate cash flow and I cannot value it. So that's why I do not invest in it. I have 100% of my personal liquidity allocation only within my India fund. So I'll give you a quick snapshot here of just how greatly I've simplified my life flow. I have one single investment inside my India fund. I have one single house in the US and I have one single checking account. So one bank account, one investment, one house, that's it. My entire network is right there. So the more you simplify your life, the more happier you will be. Trust me on this. That's true because simplicity also will give you that peace of mind, that you don't need to spend so much energy thinking about so many different things every single day because it's just there. Then you just focus on making it even better. Is that correct? Right. So basically for me, no precious metals, no commodities, no real estate, no investment, no Bitcoin, no alternative investments. It's just kept library simple because in your first half of your life, you're basically adding stuff all the time. And in the second half of your life, once you've become wise and gain wisdom and experience, you're busy subtracting things from your life. That's basically how most people behave. And that's what Mongo say as well. Wow. And in your opinion, right, then what is the quickest way to compound our wealth, especially for new beginner investors? What's your advice for them? By investing in yourself. That's the fastest and most effective way to compound your wealth. The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself. The more you learn, the more you earn. So you have to be a learning machine. So that is what is essential to becoming successful in this field and avoid get rich quick schemes because they eventually lead to the drug, eventually lead to ruin in the doghouse. So avoid, you know, if anyone is providing you a guaranteed high return in the stock market or any other market, just run for the hills. You know, just stay away from such schemes because ultimately they turn out to be either fraudulent or some kind of Ponzi scheme. Yeah, because nowadays I just see more and more scammers popping up and more and more people are falling for scams and because they all want to get rich quick. However, if we go back to the true principle of investing, it's never about getting quick rich. It's about really building that resilience and building that capability to grow our wealth over a long period of time. I'm just going to wrap up this interview very soon. I just, the last question I'll have for you is if people want to go and find more about your work, about your funds, where can they get more information and learn from you? RADIS can purchase a copy of the jobs of compounding and the making of a value investor on Amazon and for U.S. citizens and U.S. green card holders who are interested to invest in the Stellavilt Partners India fund, they can visit StellaviltIndia.com. So what if for people who are not U.S. citizens, like they have no way to invest in your fund at all for now? For NRIs, that is non-resident Indians and domestic Indian citizens, we have also launched a portfolio management scheme, PMS in India, in collaboration with Complete Circle Wealth Solutions to cater to the Indians living outside India as well as the citizens living inside India. So that's a separate investment vehicle and that the fund manager is different but the philosophy is exactly the same which I follow at Stellavilt Partners India fund. Would you be going to Berkshire this year? Yes, I will be going to Berkshire in May. Oh wow, there I will get to see you. I hope to see you in person and I would love you to sign a copy of the book over here. That would be great. Thank you so much, Gautam and so nice to have you here. Thanks once again for all your insights. I learned a lot from you and I will continue to learn more, keep reading your book. In fact, I'm halfway through the making of Value Investor and I thought it was a good way that every day I just read a few dates because you actually put it out in different dates and kind of feel like, oh, okay, today I should read a few dates just to make myself more grounded as an investor. And for those who are wondering the making of Value Investor, even though Gautam writes a lot based on the India stocks, but the principles actually apply to everywhere. As I was reading, I just felt like, oh wow, it kind of took me back to just two to three years ago when the market goes through the boom and bust and a lot of things made me reflect on my own portfolio as well, even though it's US based. So thank you once again for all your wisdom and can't wait to see you in person when we meet in Berkshire AGM. End with a small message here, Claude. Sure, sure. Investing is a field of competitive learning. So it's all about competitive learning and in order to out from the rest, you have to out learn the rest. So it's all about having this high level of intellectual curiosity and this passion for reading and learning. And if you don't want to read books, it's okay. Just open an educational YouTube video or open a good podcast interview. Just out of sheer curiosity, there is a podcast channel called Millenium Investing in the US. I was going through many of their past podcasts over the last one week and just yesterday I came across one podcast which was simply exceptional and I just posted it on LinkedIn and Twitter. So the idea is to just whatever you come across some great content which you really like, just share it with your friends and people in your network. I think because the more you share about what you're really enjoying, it will help you attract like-minded people into your circle. That's I think that's the biggest benefit of social media that you can cultivate your circle and then like-minded people come into your fold and I think that leads to a very fulfilling life because at the end of the day, most of us value investors, we are very different from the rest of the world. As you must acknowledge that we are very different in terms of our lifestyle, our thinking, our approach, our value systems are very different, our habits are very different. So it's a very niche small community but if you want to attract like-minded people into your life, it'll really lead to a lot of happiness. And I absolutely agree. Like I really realize the power of social media because of that I managed to connect with you. And because of that, I managed to connect with William Green and all these great authors and investors I've never thought about, wow, I'm able to ever have the kind of intersection in my life. So just like what Gautam said, like just there's so many resources available. If you don't enjoy reading for now, well, which in the past, I also didn't believe that I enjoy reading but I think over time, I've developed this habit and grow to see myself as a reader. So just start with something that you are most comfortable with, watch a YouTube video, listen to podcasts and keep on going in this journey and over time, you will continue to become better and better. Thank you so much Gautam for your wonderful advice and thank you everybody for being here as well. And we can't wait to see you guys in the next sharing. Thank you so much for inspiring us. Thank you, have a good day. Thank you. Thank you all of you. Thank you so much.