Reckoning looms for unlisted assets

In the latest episode of Stocks Neat, Co-Portfolio Manager Gareth Brown joins me to shed light on the commercial property industry and the broader issue of unlisted assets, particularly focusing on Australia’s super funds and their refusal to recognise the real value of some of their unlisted assets.

The second topic we explore is the current bull market, dubbing it the “bull market that nobody believes in,” highlighting the lack of enthusiasm despite statistical evidence of its existence, especially in the larger tech companies in the US. The conversation touches on the remarkable rise of artificial intelligence and its current bubble-type behaviour, using NASDAQ: NVDA as an example to explore the implications of high valuations relative to earnings.

Gareth and I also touch on inflation and its impact on the economy, mentioning positive developments out of the US, with Australia likely six months behind, given the persisting labour pressures.

Tune in and join us as we try a locally made American Pale Ale by Batch Brewing in Marrickville, Sydney.

“We’ve shaken our heads at some articles, starting 12 or 18 months ago, this ability to stick your head in the sand. Their argument here is that these are unlisted assets, and they’re less risky because they’re less volatile. It’s literally because they’re sticking their fingers in their ears when they’re seeing what’s happening on the listed markets. These are the same assets. They’re like-for-like assets. They’re like-for-like risky other than your definition of risk itself is off.“

Show Notes:

• Joel Greenblatt podcast (mentioned by Gareth) – IC Interviews: Joel Greenblatt
• The Economist article on San Francisco – Downtown San Francisco is at a tipping-point

Explore previous episodes here. We’d love your feedback. If you like what you’re hearing (and what we’re drinking), be sure to follow and subscribe – we’re doing this every month.

Drink of choice:

• American Pale Ale – Batch Brewing Company (Australia)

You can listen on:

• Spotify
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• Buzzsprout
• YouTube

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Transcript

[00:00:39] SJ: Hi and welcome to Stocks Neat, a Forager Funds Management podcast, where we talk about the world of stock markets and whiskey. I’m joined again today by Gareth Brown, portfolio manager here on our International Shares Fund.

Hey, Gareth. Thanks for joining us.

[00:00:55] GB: Hi, Steve. Hello, everyone.

[00:00:57] SJ: We’ve actually taken a diversion away from the whiskey today. What have you brought along with you?

[00:01:01] GB: Well, we decided that it was time for some beer. I don’t think either of us were looking to add to our whiskey collection at the moment, so –

[00:01:07] SJ: I don’t know how we both had that same idea on the same day. Maybe it’s the beautiful winter sunshine outside at the moment.

[00:01:13] GB: Maybe. Given the topic, we are actually going to talk a little bit about America. I was going looking for an American or a Californian, particularly a beer. But our local bottle shop here is not so well-stocked. I’ve settled for an American pale ale from Batch Brewing in Marrickville. I’m not sure how widely available this is outside of Sydney. I presume it’s pretty much a Sydney story. Batch is one of the original craft breweries in Marrickville, one of the inner city suburbs. I think it opened early in the 2010s.

If any of you from outside of Sydney are in the area at some point, it is a really cool area to do some like a craft brew crawl where you start off in Sydenham or Marrickville and work your way towards Newtown. There’s a bunch of good breweries there; Willie the Boatman, Batch, Philter, Sauce, Grifter. That’s probably enough for one day, but there’s plenty more there.

[00:02:02] SJ: And just quite nice venues as well, big sheds. It’s an old industrial area really in Sydney that they’ve turned into quite a fun area to go out. A bit of live music in the area and things as well. For the Melbournites, it’s quite a similar feel, I think, to Collingwood down there where there are lots of craft breweries as well. Don’t ever forget the Melbournite’s Gareth. I don’t want you talking about Sydney too much on this podcast, or we’ll have the complaints flooding in.

When I was in my early 20s, we grew up in this little place called Wellington out in New South Wales. A bunch of school friends and I went on a university. I was at university, and it was university holidays over Christmas. We went down to the Falls Festival in Lorne in Victoria and did that trip along the coast which was a lot of fun. But we learnt very, very quickly, especially when talking to the Victorian females down there, to not mention that you were from Sydney. If people asked us where we were from, we very quickly started saying Wellington. If they thought that was Wellington, New Zealand, then good.

Look, today we are going to talk about commercial property specifically and also the wider issue of unlisted assets. It’s been a topic of mine for the past 18 months or so. Australia’s super funds refusing to recognize the value or the real value of some of their unlisted assets. So we’ll talk about that, a bit of commercial property.

But just before we kick off, Gareth, what do you make of this bull market that we are in now? I’m calling it the bull market that nobody believes in. There’s not a lot of enthusiasm about it. But particularly in the US and particularly amongst the larger tech companies in the US, we are back in bull market territory, statistically at least.

[00:03:33] GB: Yes. No grand thoughts other than to say that bull markets climb that wall of worry. It’s a saying for a reason. They tend to start happening without anyone believing in them or with very few people believing in them, and then build their own head of steam from there. So whether this is the beginning of something or a false rally, I don’t really have any grand insights. Our job is to make that portfolio as robust as we can to whatever comes next. We will push towards where we see the value on offer and try to make it as robust as possible in the process.

[00:04:06] SJ: Yes. It’s a really strange environment. There are these pockets of bubble-type behavior, right? There’s stuff that’s going on in artificial intelligence. Yes. NVIDIA, it is a fantastic business. There’s no doubt about that. This company makes the chips that most of this generative AI technology is using. They also make the software that people use to write programs, and you can’t use the software without using their chips. So it’s a nice little ecosystem they’ve got going.

That company hit a one trillion-dollar market cap this week, though. The result that got everyone excited was a quarterly revenue number of about seven billion and two billion of profit. So if you annualize that, you’re thinking eight billion dollars of profit for the year for a one-trillion market cap. It’s something like 120 times earnings, and this is a business that’s already profitable, right? It’s not like the margins are going to inflect like crazy from here. Sure, it can be a very bright future ahead of it. But now, every single results call, every single company, no matter how far removed from technology, is talking about AI.

[00:05:06] GB: I don’t want to hijack the podcast and go in a different direction here but just a few interesting things that I’ve read over the week that sort of relate. At the same time that we have this heat or focus in certain pockets of the market, there are other parts that are unloved, and that’s very good for us. It gives us things to do.

GMO, Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo, so Jeremy Grantham’s organization released a paper. I think it was Ben Inker that released it, rather than Jeremy Grantham. But by their calculations, deep value, so that what they view as the deepest, the cheapest 20% of the cheap stocks, I think, is cheaper than – I think it was 95% of the time, going on their back catalog. I listened to a podcast during the week. Do we have show notes, so I can put this in?

[00:05:49] SJ: Yes, sure.

[00:05:49] GB: I don’t need to dig it up. But with Joel Greenblatt, who’s a famous value investor, and he said something similar. I can’t remember the exact specific. But when he’s looking for those, I guess, sort of magic formula-type stocks or the things that are in his zone, there is plenty to be doing now versus what they – most of history. So at the same time, you have markets ripping on one side. You’ve got some pockets of the market that are still pretty cheap historically. To me, that feels a lot more like the year 2000 than the year 2007.

[00:06:20] SJ: Yes. If you think about his formula, and you look at our portfolio, there’s quite a bit of that in it with these – I would call them structural growers, businesses that have got long-term growth prospects. His formula looks for those businesses trading at low multiples of earnings. There are quite a lot of those out there at the moment because everyone thinks that earnings are going to fall and are looking to the business. It’s actually trading on a higher multiple of what people think are sustainable earnings.

But there is a bit of encouraging news, particularly out of the US, on the inflation front. It was a low number reported this week and some encouraging signs on the core side of that as well and a couple of home builders coming out saying most recent months have actually been a tick up from the bottom in terms of orders. So that US economy looks like it’s holding up surprisingly well, and some of the inflationary pressures are still coming out of it. More encouraging signs, I think, about the next 12 months as rent and used car prices come down as well.

Hopefully, here in Australia, I think there’s a few more worrying signs on labor availability, on wage increases here in Australia. But it’s a decent probability, I think, that we’re just six months behind them and that the same thing is playing out here in six months’ time. So I do think there’s still enormous opportunities in a lot of those better quality industrial businesses. A lot of that deep-value stuff is commoditie,s stocks trading at very low multiples of earnings as well. It’s been a very strange rally so far, very, very narrow. But I think in terms of value available out there, it’s still a pretty interesting world.

Now, talking of assets that have not been performing well, commercial property is one of those. I noticed an article I came across on News Wires was, bizarrely, Unibail-Rodamco that owns the Westfield shopping centers hasn’t actually released anything about this themselves. But they’re handing the keys back to their flagship San Francisco shopping center to the lenders. So literally, here you go. It’s yours. We don’t want anything to do with it, which I found very, very interesting, maybe insightful into the wider commercial property market over there in the US. Did you read that article as well?

[00:08:28] GB: Yes, I did. It’s quite astounding. I’ve visited that center. Admittedly, it was quite a while ago, maybe 2006. It was a Marquis Center just off Union Square there, right in the bluest chip area of San Francisco at the time. It was something that the Westfield team had been very proud of, what they’d done over there. The idea that the new owner is walking away from this asset is really surprising.

At first, I thought, okay, this is all to do with financing, right? There’s been some clip in the valuation of the asset here. They’ve got too much non-recourse debt on the asset itself. So it’s just logical to walk away, and that’s part of it. But I think the article highlighted the occupancy there is down to nearly 50%. That just blows my mind. This is a very, very different world to what I saw sort of 15, 17 years ago.

[00:09:17] SJ: Yes. The more I looked into it, the more I realized there are widespread issues in the US with regards to commercial and shopping center property and the financing of that. This particular asset has its own unique problems. Gaston Amoros, who’s an analyst on our Australian Shares Fund, he actually emailed IR and said, “Look, this is a pretty important asset for you guys. Why haven’t you released anything to the stock exchange?” They just didn’t explain why they haven’t released it to the stock exchange but sent him back an email saying the trends at San Francisco Center counter to positive increase in sales, occupancy, and footfall across the rest of our portfolio and then some really interesting stats.

We’ve seen a significant decrease in total sales at San Francisco Center from 455 million in 2019 to 298 million in December of ’22. So that’s down a third. Meanwhile, Westfield Valley Fair in neighboring San Jose experienced a 66% increase in sales over the same period. Footfall has decreased to 5.6 million visits from 9.7 million, so almost half. There was an article in The Economist in the past couple of weeks as well, just talking about how derelict that downtown San Francisco area has become. Whole Foods shut down. Nordstrom shut down, a whole heap of businesses.

It mentioned,it was on a podcast related to that article in The Economist that the staff at Whole Foods had been calling paramedics on average six times a day because someone had overdosed or passed out in the shop. That whole part of town has just basically become a no-go area.

[00:10:43] GB: It’s amazing, isn’t it?

[00:10:44] SJ: For half the population.

[00:10:46] GB: Sorry to interrupt. It’s very much a downtown, maybe Oakland story as well, rather than a wider Bay Area. But this is sort of what you’ve seen in America in the past in other cities but always up in the Rust Belt, right? Like Saint Louis and, I don’t know, Dayton, Ohio and those kinds of places where people leave the center. But San Francisco’s always been liberal and always had homelessness and always been a weird mix. But it’s always been attractive to people with money as well, and it’s historically geographically a beautiful city. It’s just quite astounding to see this happen.

[00:11:19] SJ: Yes, it is. I do think the US is particularly unique like that. I learned this lesson the hard way. But we used to own a property trust that was listed here on the ASX and owned a bunch of US office property. It was called RNY. They owned this office property in New Jersey, Long Island. You could see. We went and visited all this stuff, and you could literally see Manhattan from the forecourt of a lot of these office buildings.

As an Australian, you sit there, and you think, well, the CBD is expensive. Then every kilometer you go out from it, it’s a fairly linear progression. These places were – they got down to 60, 50 percent occupancy. They literally could not lease the office space to someone at any price.

[00:11:59] GB: That was pre-COVID too.

[00:12:00] SJ: They just got stranded because that type of office and that particular location just went out of fashion and out of favor. It’s a much more, I think, mobile dynamic market like that in the US where stuff just goes from being popular to unpopular in a very short period of time, and you’re left with these stranded assets in places that you would look at geographically and say it surely is –

[00:12:22] GB: I mean, it’s –

[00:12:23] SJ: Worth something there, right?

[00:12:24] GB: And that New York story is probably even different from what you’re seeing in the Rust Belt ones, places like Saint Louis. The downtown population, that area is down, I think it was something like 60% over the last 60 years. Detroit similar story and then you’ve got big crime problems and no money issues and where the downtown bit is the bit that’s getting completely derelict, just an interesting story.

It sort of links through to something I’ve thought for a long time is that when Americans do have a liquidation of these sort of assets, they really do have them where, we saw that in the early nineties in America where commercial property that was – like I’m talking 20-story towers, big stuff. It would often go for like 80, 90 percent discounts from what the valuation of being a year or two early. Well, I mean, we’ve never seen anything like that in Australia.

[00:13:11] SJ: Yes. I mean, it causes short-term a lot of financial pain, and there’s a whole infrastructure set up over there for working out deadlines in places like that. But it also generally translates to much quicker repurposing, restructuring, redeveloping, whatever needs to happen to make them productive again, whereas here it’s very much hit in the sand. We’ve seen the same, and I’ve talked a bit about this on the podcast. But we’ve seen the same in the home building sectors in the two countries, where you’ve now got Lennar coming out, which is one of the biggest home builders in the US coming out this week, and saying, “We had an uptick in orders recently. We’ve seen the bottom, and now we expect it to grow from here.” They’re still building houses and selling houses, and that is at prices that are lower than they were 12, 18 months ago.

Finance rates are up. But basically, everyone has gone, “Okay, this is the new world we’re in, and we’re going to get on with it. And if this asset’s not worth what we thought it was worth a year ago, then so be it. We move on.” Here where we need that housing stock to be built, there’s a lot of lack of willingness, I think, to recognize that it needs to be built at a lower cost for people to be able to afford it. We need to do something about all these builders that committed to building things two, three years ago. They can’t do it profitably and they’re going bust. It needs to happen faster than it’s happening here.

[00:14:30] GB: Yes, agree.

[00:14:31] SJ: All right, should we try the beer before we move on to that particular issue here in Australia when it comes to some property prices?

[00:14:38] GB: Sure, sounds good. I don’t know if I’ve had this one before. I think I might have had it at the brewery itself, rather than via a can.

[00:14:44] SJ: I think you were trying to find it. There’s a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. It comes in a green can or bottle as well. Some of our pale ales don’t have that really deep hoppy taste like a Coopers or something like that. This is a much –

[00:14:56] GB: Closer to an IPA.

[00:14:57] SJ: Exactly, right. Yes. That darker color I would imagine that we can’t see that out of a can.

[00:15:02] GB: That’s very nice. I’m not the guy that can – I might drink two craft beers, and I’m sort of done. But I really like that one. It’s good.

[00:15:09] SJ: I’m very much a pale ale sort of beer person. I struggle to stomach some of the more traditional Australian beers these days. But that’s a really nice one, very good. What is it, 5.2%?

[00:15:20] GB: Yes.

[00:15:20] SJ: It’s quite punchy. Punchy, yes. You get lots of really – I like that. You get good beers at 4.2, 4.3 percent these days that you can have a couple of beers and not make too much of a difference.

[00:16:15] SJ: The second topic I wanted to talk about today was, well, commercial property here in Australia first, where we’ve had very significant hit-in-the-sand behavior, I think, for the past 12 months, where interest rates have been marching up month after month. We’ve had two reporting seasons now, June 2022 and then December 2022 as well, where all of these listed property funds in Australia came out and said, “Yes, our cap rate,” which is the discount rate that they use to value their assets. In June last year, not only did they not say it’s gone up with interest rates, but they said it’s gone down in a world where both short and long-term interest rates are going up. Then in December didn’t put them up again saying there’s no transactional evidence for higher cap rates down there.

[00:17:01] GB: Transactional evidence.

[00:17:02] SJ: The reason was there were no transactions. We have finally started to see some transactions take place. You are seeing exactly what I would have expected to see, that those valuations are 15 to 20 percent lower than they’ve been carried on the books of some of these companies.

[00:17:18] GB: We have – just to clarify here that some of these assets we’re talking about CBD commercial offices. We have, as well as the impact of higher interest rates, the impact of work from home and some of the changes in space that kept corporates needing less and less space because more of their workers are working at home part of the week or whatever it is. So they’ve got sort of – they’re getting attacked both on their revenue stream and on the capitalization rate for the whole thing.

[00:17:44] SJ: Yes. Interestingly, in the US, vacancy rates are very high. That has already happened. Here, we’re not yet seeing that dynamic play out in actual occupancy or vacancy, right? So Centuria, a listed property trust, out this week saying their occupancies, and they’ve been leasing space recently. Their occupancy is still 97%.

[00:18:04] GB: I guess my point there is you look at the banks and that workers will work from home half the time. You look at the smaller corporates. You’re seeing a lot of that. You’ve got very quiet Mondays, very quiet Fridays in the CBD, at least until we get into the evening hours. So it still feels like there could be some adjustment there in terms of space needed.

[00:18:23] SJ: What’s interesting is that everyone’s coming in on the same three days of the week, though. So Tuesday through Thursday is really busy. If you’re a corporate, you need a desk for all of those people on those three days a week. It’s almost –

[00:18:32] GB: We need a bus. It’s painful.

[00:18:35] SJ: It’s almost –

[00:18:36] GB: I’m working Monday and Friday in the office fairly religiously. When I take my day at home, which I like to do when I’m doing a specific piece of analysis, I’m typically taking it Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday when the buses are jammed.

[00:18:48] SJ: Yes. It’s been interesting. I think if we go into a recession and a lot of these companies are trying to look for ways to save money, I think they’re going to have to try and flatten that attendance out so that they can have one desk between two people if they’re not using it for two days a week.

The other interesting thing that I’m noticing is the retail and particularly the food. If you’re running a shop in the food court in the CBD, and you’re absolutely flat out Tuesday through Thursday, but nobody’s turning up Monday and Friday, but you’re paying rent for the whole week, that whole model, I think, needs to be rethought as well and particularly –

[00:19:22] GB: At least prices, right? Like rental prices need to adjust. It’s going to flow through to someone.

[00:19:27] SJ: We’re seeing, I think, really good evening visitation into the city. I think they’ve done a lot of work in Sydney in particular to try and make it more of a destination outside business hours. Also thinking about how you use that space at those times of day, rather than just being a lunchtime venue. But I would say so far, it’s largely a valuation, the discount rate input that’s driving the valuations down. There’s fear. I think the fear of –

[00:19:53] GB: It could be worse.

[00:19:53] SJ: Higher occupancies is driving people to say, “Well, if I’m going to buy this asset, I need a higher rate of return.” Therefore, that cap rate is higher. But for the past 20 years, those cap rates have been marching down lockstep with interest rates. Then they start going back up, and everyone’s arguing that it’s not real.

If you look at the ASX at the moment, across the board, you’ve got them all trading at 25 to 35 percent discounts to their NTA. The stock market is saying these assets are not worth what you’re carrying them at, and we’ve finally started to see a few transactions over the past month or so that reflect much closer to what the stock market’s valuing these things at than what they’re carrying them on the books at.

[00:20:35] GB: It’s really crazy, isn’t it? We’ve shaken our heads at some articles sort of 12 months, starting 12 or 18 months ago, this ability to stick your head in the sand. Their argument here is that these are unlisted assets, and they’re less risky because they’re less volatile. It’s literally because they’re sticking their fingers in their ears and saying la, la, la, la when they’re seeing what’s happening and what’s happening on the listed markets, right? These are the same assets. They’re like-for-like assets. They’re like-for-like risky other than your definition of risk itself is off. It’s not right versus reality.

First, you have the listed REITs sell-off versus their NTAs, and the unlisted owners say, “It’s nothing to do with us. We’re fine here. I can’t see it in the valuations of the actual transactions.” But that’s because you have a transaction drought because no one wants to – none of the bidders want to pay full price or they all want a discount. So now, you’re starting to see those transactions filter through. That’s when you’re starting to see the problems in the unlisted world because they’re going to have to recognize this now in a way that they didn’t.

It’s just all so damn predictable. Not only is it predictable without even thinking. It’s all happened in the past in other guises and other asset classes. This idea that you’re less risky because you’re not having to look at a daily price movement is just strange.

[00:21:51] SJ: This is a really widespread issue in the super sector, and it’s a larger issue than it’s ever been because of exactly the reasons that you’re saying. They’ve formed the incorrect conclusion that because the prices of these assets are not moving around as much as listed assets, they are, therefore, safer. So they’ve powered more and more of their members’ assets into them to the extent – I’ve just got the Australian super funds here and across the board. But their balance fund is the most common one that is the default, basically. If you just go there and you don’t change anything, that fund has got unlisted infrastructure, 15% private equity, 5%. That’s 20%, unlisted property nother 5%, so you’ve got 25% of that investment option now in unlisted assets. They’re basically refusing to recognize that the value of these assets has fallen as interest rates have gone up.

My wife actually got her statement 30 June last year from the super fund. The stock market was down 15 or 20 percent across the year, both domestic and global. Her super fund statement turned up and said, “Your fund is down one percent for the financial year.” I said, “Well, just shift it, right?”

[00:23:00] GB: Move it to market. Right, yes.

[00:23:02] SJ: You can get on there and say, “Well, I’m going to shift my whole allocation here from balance to listed equities.” She did that, and those listed equities have recovered somewhat. But also, now, you’re going to start to see that unlisted stuff get marked down.

[00:23:14] GB: And to the extent that they’ve got a point here. If there’s any reality behind their argument, you do with your whole group what your wife just did. You go and sell assets. If you think the fair value is X, go and sell them at X. Sell them at 5% discount to X or 10% percent. I don’t care. Then you go and buy the listed REIT at 30%, and you buy as much as it as you need to control it. Like why isn’t that happening? Well, the answer is their to incentivized, to keep their head stuck in the sand for now.

[00:23:41] SJ: I mean, the whole concept I think – and this happens a lot in finance. But people confuse something that’s meant to be a measure of something for the actual thing itself. So here in finance, people get taught that volatility is a measure of risk and the reason is that it measures how much the price of an asset moves around. It’s not a crazy idea that you’ve got cash in the bank. It’s not going to change in value a lot. Therefore, it is less risky than if you need to access your share portfolio in the next 12 months. It could be down 10%. It could be up 10%. That is a riskier asset.

So this measure of volatility came to be the measure of risk but the concept that we’ve got two exact same assets. You own half of the property that we’re in. I own the other half. Your half is unlisted. My half starts as unlisted. Then someone comes to me and says, “Steve, what I’m going to do is every day I’m going to come and quote you a price on that half of the property that you’ve got, and you’ve got an option to sell it or not sell it. You do whatever you want.”

All of a sudden, because someone external to me is doing that, I turn around and say, “Well, actually, this asset is more risky now because it’s more volatile.” The fact that you’re not getting a quote on your half of the property doesn’t change the fact that the value of it can move around.

[00:24:52] GB: It’s the old problem you see everywhere that people are confusing correlation and causation and volatility. In my opinion, there is an output of risk, right? It’s not the input to risk. So shutting off the volatility by keeping it unlisted doesn’t really change your picture. I mean, maybe it reduces some of your optionality around what goes on crazy in listed world. But it’s sort of putting the cart before the horse.

[00:25:17] SJ: Yes. I think to that point, long-term investors in the share market could actually take a bit of a leaf out of this book. The super fund administrators sit there and say, “Well, we’re going to hold this asset for 20, 30 years.” So the fact that the listed price is bouncing around weekly doesn’t actually change my valuation of the asset or the risk that’s attached to it. Equity investors could take a bit of the same philosophy, right? Just because the price is moving doesn’t mean that it’s impaired, that it’s worth less, or that –

[00:25:44] GB: Back to your point, this is a tidal wave of higher interest rates that’s causing the valuation issue in the first place. So by all means, maybe holding it is the right move. I’m not questioning that at all, but like reflecting that in your valuation. It needs to happen. They were quite happy to just cut and cut and cut the cap rates as interest rates are going down. Now, all of a sudden, there’s this inertia that I don’t want to reflect higher rates in my valuation.

[00:26:08] SJ: There are important consequences of them not doing that. Number one, there’s probably not that many of them, but more sophisticated people like my wife can arbitrage it and can increase their returns at the expense of other people that are invested in the fund. Then the other problem is that new people that are putting money into the fund, because interest rates are higher, your prospective returns today should be higher. You should be earning more from these assets because the required rate of return is higher. They are putting money in at prices that are not the right price for today.

So favorite topic of yours, but the older boomers are winning out at the expense of young people that are contributing to the fund at today’s prices. It’s actually really important that they get that right. I think they’re the two immediate and obvious consequences. Then it’s a small probability, but it’s not out of the question that this actually causes some big liquidity event at some point in time.

[00:27:03] GB: Yes. Everyone has to recognize all at once stuff happens, right?

[00:27:07] SJ: Article ends up in the paper saying you should be shifting your Australian Super fund assets out of balanced and into equities because they’re overstating the value of their assets. Australian Super denies it, you get a bit of a run on the bank or run on the super fund, and all of a sudden they have to sell these assets, and they’re selling them at prices that are potentially distressed in an environment like that.

They talk about how long-term their money is. But the way that system is structured is they are actually giving people daily liquidity. You can log on to your Australian super fund account and say –

[00:27:38] GB: I don’t want to own these anymore. I want to own stocks. It’s sort of Minsky would predict volatility to come here, right? You’ve suppressed volatility for one period. It’s going to pop up down the track.

[00:27:48] SJ: Yes. Again, I think it’s actually not a high probability, and most people just put their money into super fund, and actually getting them to even think about the fees that they’re paying or putting in a low-cost option is hard enough, let alone thinking about where it’s invested and how it’s invested and what some of the risks to that might be. So I think it’s unlikely this actually causes a big issue. But it’s not out of the question that at some point, there’s a blow-up here somewhere in the system of a fund that is either suffering withdrawals or suffering large-scale switches in asset classes where it needs to do something about the underlying assets.

On that pleasant note, Gareth, we will wrap things up. Been a very enjoyable winter beer episode of Stocks Neat. Please get in touch. If there’s anything you’d like us to discuss in the future, share it. If you’re liking the podcast, we do want to grow our listenership over time. A lot of time and effort goes into it. So please help us out if you can. We’ll be out on our roadshow in July, another version of the podcast coming up. Please get online and register for our roadshow as well if you’d like to see us in person and ask some questions live. Thanks a lot.