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A show that brings you the latest market updates and insights to help you make smart investment decisions.
Hello and welcome to the ASB Investment Podcast, the show that keeps you up to date on the markets and helps you make smart choices with your investments. These are entirely our own views and that of our guests. Guests. It's not investment advice, but we know plenty of experts at ASB that will be happy to chat if you need. Well, welcome along to another edition of the ASB Investment Podcast.
Nigel:Right now, money is front of mind for most New Zealanders, whether it's the cost of living, mortgage pressure, or what to do with your investments in these crazy times. But how much of what we or what we feel is driven by reality and how much is shaped by the stories we consume every day? Today, we're joined by someone who sits right at the intersection of media money and public sentiment. It's Stuff's Money Editor Damien Venuto. We'll unpack what's on the mind of Kiwis, how media narratives shape financial decisions, and what it all means for investors.
Nigel:Thank you, Damien, for joining us. Fantastic to have you here. Now before you I let you say a word at all or hi, we've known each other for about fifteen years, and you were not always the money editor at Stuff. Right?
Damien:Yeah. And Nigel, you are correct. I remember a very well dressed individual named Nigel Grant. I'm meeting him at an event when I was the a journalist at Marketing Magazine, a magazine that I would eventually go on to edit later in life.
Nigel:Yes.
Damien:And I was very impressed by what you were wearing.
Nigel:Oh, well, so I'm glad I'm glad that image has stuck with you because so for those who don't know, guess I worked at The Hero a long time ago, we've known each other and and passing through different roles and things. So you're I mean, you were at Marketing Meg all that time ago, and now you're the money editor. What's your what is that current role? What does it mean?
Damien:So as the money editor edit editor at Stuff, what I look at is how Kiwi's wealth is being affected in different ways. That might be what's happening in the markets. It might be what's happening to their property prices. It might be what's happening to technology and how technology is changing their relationship with money. Is it is it becoming easier to spend?
Damien:Is it becoming more difficult to spend? Are they more prone to scams right now? Are they subject to to other forces that could be affecting their relationship with money? So it could take on a few different hues, but what I what I fundamentally focus on is this idea of growing New Zealand's wealth bit by bit over the long run. It's not a short term game.
Damien:It's not a quick get get rich quick scheme. Yeah. You know this quite well, Nigel. I mean, I'm I'm speaking to the converter over here.
Nigel:And so I guess, you know, a lot of time on this podcast, we talk about investment portfolios, but that's not the whole thing because I'm I just you mentioned scams and kinda what's what's sort of the, I guess, the flavor going through things. It's broader than just what the market has done in any day. Right?
Damien:So there are two elements to it. Right? It's growing your wealth, which is that involves investments. It involves what you're doing with your with your property right now. The other aspect's protecting your wealth.
Damien:So what what you're doing in terms of insurance or how what scams should you be aware of Yeah. At any given moment. So it's the the the relationship between growth and protection because what good is it growing your wealth if it's vulnerable to natural disaster Yeah. Or if it's vulnerable to somebody sitting in a call center looking to to get as much as they can
Nigel:from you. I guess, know, that that call center somewhere or trying to get things or the insurance thing because I guess it's it no matter how your portfolio performs, it's not just the downside of what the market might do. It's it's those things. I guess if you were to sum up because I guess it can change on a dime, but what's the mood out there right now? Fragile.
Damien:It's I would absolutely say it's fragile. I feel people are concerned. They watch with a great sense of consternation what's unfolding in The US on a daily basis. The fact that we've seen a gain in the last twenty four hours, we've seen a resurgence of the violence in The Middle East. We know that that type of activity is gonna affect our fuel prices, it's gonna affect the market, it's gonna affect a whole lot of things that trickle down to New Zealand.
Damien:So we watch with great consternation consternation all the volatility that we're seeing unfolding around the world, and we worry how that's going to affect us. I think fragility is how we're feeling or that that sense of feeling quite fragile Yeah. Captures what New Zealanders are feeling right now because it feels like one thing after the other. Yeah. And resilience can only take you so far.
Nigel:Because we chatted to Kim Mundy, one of our economists, it was sort of like it felt like we the last or actually in our mood of the CFO report as well that we or the podcast we did with Lee from Hunter Camera, like, it's those two podcasts, the theme was kind of we feel like we're just about there. We've climbed out of the sand pit maybe and then we're falling back in. So I was gonna ask you what the the word was, but it's fragility as you've described. In in your time as Money Editor, has it have you do you think it's always been that word or or is that kinda has it been your time across the role or is it recent?
Damien:It's it's tricky to say because, obviously, I I was working in the corporate space before that and I saw that on that side. I mean the agency that I was working for was performing quite well. Yeah. But then as I moved into the media you start to hear the stories of other businesses, you start to hear the stories of other news media, you you start to see research from the social cohesion report that the Helen Clark Foundation recently put out showing that a third of Kiwis under the age of 30 are going without meals some of the time because they can't afford it. When you hear stories like that, you start to realize that that sense of fragility, it's far more prominent than what we realize on the surface sometimes.
Nigel:You know, we talk about fragility, but as a as a sort of a dominating theme at the moment, but I guess across and you've mentioned a few, but across money and, you know, economics, are there any headlines that dominate at the moment? And I don't wanna say getting the most clicks quite a bit, but more like that you find readers and watchers and listeners are asking you to cover more and more.
Damien:So there are a few I wouldn't say that there's a particular type of story because it depends on the mood of the day. It depends on what other stories are being put out there. So beyond the World Cup right now
Nigel:Yeah.
Damien:Themes that that that resonate with New Zealanders are those the technological shifts. So anything that focuses on how our relationship with money is gonna change. Some of the most popular stories that I've written recently include a piece on open banking. They include pieces on agentic AI and how that's gonna change our relationship with shopping in the future. Yeah.
Damien:On top of that, people are really looking for those bits and pieces of advice of what small changes can they make to make their wealth grow a little bit better over time. What those stories tend to do really well, and there are two people who read them, the people who absolutely hate them and then the people who feel like they're taking something from them. So every once in a while, we'll put out a story saying maybe your Timu and Sheen habit isn't helping you all that much when you consider the fact that New Zealanders are spending around $2,400 a year on clothing. And yet at the same time, we're seeing 50 tons of clothing end up in the landfill. So there are two interesting data points there.
Damien:You put those together and you have a story
Nigel:Yeah.
Damien:That's a bit confrontational Yeah. But also reveals a little area where you can make a small change Yeah. And that change could potentially
Nigel:And when you say to thousands of dollars. And when you say you've got people that love them or could benefit from the advice and maybe people that hate it, the the latter, is that people just because it's it's something that maybe has struck a nerve with them, or is it they're not you're not touching on the topics that they think you should be?
Damien:Look. There are a lot of people out there who think that they've got their finances down, and they don't feel like the information that we're providing is catered to people that have a really high financial literacy. And
Nigel:And so they tell you that?
Damien:Yeah. They'll they'll certainly they'll they'll send an email and express their views, and that's their right to do. I I'll never I'll never shun away from that, and I I tend to reply to to everyone who does email me even with the criticism because I'm it also does put a little a little bit of pressure on us because if you think about the quantity of information we have out there today, there's pressure on us to make sure we get things right. And p there's always somebody willing to let us know when we get things wrong. I value that exchange because it means that we can do things a little bit better, but it's also a sense of pressure because if we get things wrong, people will let us know.
Nigel:And I guess with that great power comes great responsibility thematic. You know, for staff or media in general, there is a great responsibility as you say, because what you write will, you know, I guess you see the numbers and you see how it can impact people. Do you think that, you know, you help shape what people are thinking about? Or are you merely, I guess, you know, responding back to what you think there already is on their mind?
Damien:Look, that it's always comes down to a bit of a chicken and the egg question there. Right? So there are a group of people who are incredibly financially literate in New Zealand, who are maybe acquiring information from independent sources, finding the right finding areas where the information that we might cover, they might have already experienced or experienced elsewhere. There is that group of people. Yeah.
Damien:But I also know that there's a massive group of people who do rely on mainstream media for their information, and this bears out in a lot of studies. So if you look at the top, let's say, 10 stocks that people invest in
Nigel:Yeah.
Damien:They're the companies that the media is most likely to write about. Correct. So if that that applies to both local stocks Yeah. And international stocks. Yeah.
Damien:Tells you that the relationship between the media, companies, and then where we invest, it's a lot closer than what what what we might think on from the outside. So if you if you look at companies like SpaceX, Tesla
Nigel:Yeah.
Damien:NVIDIA, these are companies that are in the media all the time, and it's no coincidence that these are also the companies that Kiwis are most likely to invest in.
Nigel:Yeah. But I but I because I like the chicken and the egg analogies, and I guess but there's those companies deserve probably writing about, so if you're not writing about them Yeah. You get asked to.
Damien:And also, again, I come back to that, like, we're talking to two different audiences. Right? They'll be the audience that's, like, way ahead of of anyone else. There's a small niche. Let's call them a finance bro audience who who who are really in the the Yeah.
Damien:In the nitty gritty of everything. But then there's a broader audience that is maybe a little bit more casual, maybe has a share z's account, maybe maybe does a little bit of investing through ASB too. Yeah. We're talking to both of those audiences, and we have to cater to both of those audiences at the same time.
Nigel:And with the great, you know, respond you know, whatever the analogy is. I've forgotten the Spider Man analogy now. Do you sometimes think that, you know, that if you weren't putting out articles on it on certain things that people then wouldn't do something off the back of it, like I. E. It's almost like we need to know what the latest thing is that's happening out there.
Nigel:But if we didn't talk about it, then people wouldn't make short term reactions. But conversely, if you weren't talking about it, you're not across everything. You know what I'm I guess it's, you know, do should the media react to things Yeah. And would that help us?
Damien:Fortunately, in my role as money editor, we've made a commitment to do things slightly differently. So there isn't the pressure on me to react to the news as it happens every single day. Yeah. I I've I've actually got a remit to be a little bit more cautious. Yeah.
Damien:To speak to more voices, to get a broader perspective of what's happening in the market Yeah. And then pull that into a longer piece. And that's why a lot of my articles, you'll see, they tend to be around thousand words long. I they're they're not your quick snappy 300 word Yeah. Out the door immediately, one voice expressing an opinion.
Damien:They're normally multiple voices in the pieces, and they're more analytical. So credit needs to go here to Keith Lynch, the editor in chief, and Ellen Reed, my direct boss, because both of them have been very specific and particular about what they want from the money editor. Yeah. And they've said that they want to help the understanding of New Zealanders. They don't wanna create more confusion.
Damien:And I think that that's a really good space for us to be operating in.
Nigel:And I to your point when you I guess when you started, a money editor is not the market's editor. Right? So I guess it's there's a maybe as a subtle but not subtle difference there. You know, I guess, how do you decide what what warrants, you know, Damien and his opinion and spending a thousand words on something versus you know, how do you wade through all that noise and focus on
Damien:the signal? That is tricky. I mean, that that's what editorial judgment is all about. Right? What you're talking about here is, like, what do I think New Zealand just care about at a specific moment?
Damien:Is there something happening in the world right now that makes the story relevant? Yeah. And then will it actually make a difference? Will it be read? Because if people don't read the articles, then there's absolutely no point.
Damien:It's the tree falling over in the forest that nobody hears. Right? Love that analogy. So we have to hit those three areas in order to to make a call Yeah. When it comes to what we report on.
Damien:And look, it's not it's not a perfect science. Maybe there'll be an AI bot that one day tells us what what to write. We aren't there yet. Not even close.
Nigel:But but, I mean, I didn't have a pre prepared question on that, but you've gone there. How do we because in this age of, I guess, there's a quote unquote, I've seen AI slop.
Damien:Oh, yeah.
Nigel:And there's a there's enough AI ability now to have played back to me what's happened in the market in a given day. But his opinion, like, Damien's opinion on things where, you know, what people will still gravitate well, I guess you think people will gravitate towards, they can get intelligence as commoditized somewhere else, but they wanna hear from you. Right?
Damien:Yeah. I I I think the the thing with journalism is that you're always clear. Like, when we're talking to experts, you know which experts we're talking to, so you can see that quite clearly. Yeah. With AI, it'll be scraping the Internet, pulling answers from pretty much anywhere, from Reddit quite often.
Damien:So you need to really do some additional research if you're gonna be relying on AI. And a third of us are now using AI to Yeah. To help with investing decisions, which depending on how you look at the world, it could be terrifying. If if they're just asking basic questions to under understand financial terms, I actually think that's Yeah. Quite but it is worrying.
Damien:If we if we do have a growing reliance on these these tools, we have to start questioning, which results are being championed by the AI. What what is it being programmed to prioritize? I think these are important questions that we need to ask because it's not always clear. Yeah. And we also need to remember that AI interfaces and the people who run AI AI interfaces aren't worried about your wallet.
Damien:They're worried about their own wallets, and they are burning through billions of dollars. And there will come a time where they have to make some decisions to commercially sustain the organizations that they are now running.
Nigel:Yeah. So don't potentially be too reliant on it. Yeah. Or that that that price might not always be so cheap.
Damien:No. No. No. No. Precisely.
Damien:I think it it will be it has to become more expensive because of the enormous cost to these organizations. Yeah.
Nigel:Now I know we're a big both of us, I've seen you on LinkedIn talk about myths and legends, and I I have been known to have a fondness for those things. In your time in the role and and you're thinking over even before that, what are some of the, I guess, biggest financial or investing myths or misconceptions that either you hold true to you or that you've seen come through from, you know, your your viewers and listeners?
Damien:Okay. So one thing that I think happens quite often is that people take long term thinking to apply to a single stock. So they'll hold a single stock for an extended period of time believing that you have to hold that stock in order for it to eventually grow into what you think it's going to be. I think every piece of research in this space shows that that strategy doesn't always pay off. So Henrik Bessenbinder, an academic that I interviewed out of The US, he studied, I think it was 64,000 global stocks over the course of a hundred years in terms of performance.
Damien:And he found that over those hundred years, only 46 stocks contributed to something like 50% of the wealth created over that hundred year period.
Nigel:Yeah.
Damien:So when people pick a stock and they hold it and hold it and hold it and hold it and hold it, think they presume that it's a fifty fifty call that it might go up and it might go down.
Nigel:Or if I hold it long enough. Yeah. Yeah.
Damien:That that percentage is actually it actually looks a lot more like 0.33%. And having a holding a whole series of individual stocks doesn't really improve your your odds that much when you're when you're comparing what the what the research shows. And so I think that people almost fall into this danger of holding something and not realizing that the value in that stock is only for it comes from how much you are able to sell it for.
Nigel:Yes.
Damien:And good companies disappear all the time. The top 10 largest companies in the world today do not look like what they looked like ten years ago. They do not look like what they looked like twenty years ago, and they certainly don't look like what they looked like a hundred years ago. If you're holding a dud stock and it's been a dud stock for the last decade, in ten years from now, it doesn't mean that that stock's gonna grow. I think that people confuse this idea of holding individual stocks with a diversified portfolio Yeah.
Damien:Which will allow your your your your assets to grow over time.
Nigel:I didn't expect this one. I expect I I love you went into the weeds on individual stocks, but I guess I was thinking, you know, buy and hold and, you know, see through the noise and stuff. But do you get many people you know, I guess, are you getting questions on specific stock, you know, strategies and things? Because that's a that's a very nuanced piece of research.
Damien:Yeah. I I I found the research interesting because I I I I watched what people were doing on Sharesies. So I get, like, a list of the the top 10 stocks that people are investing in. And what I noticed was that they were investing in stocks that were incredibly popular in New Zealand.
Nigel:So story driven types.
Damien:Story story driven stocks. And then I looked at the performance of those stocks over, let's say, the last ten years. I'm not gonna name the individual companies because there's no benefit in doing that.
Nigel:Of
Damien:course. But you I mean, we all know who the big popular companies are in New Zealand. If you looked at the performance of those companies over that period, it hadn't been good and there were no signs that it was going to get better. Yeah. So once I did that, I found an academic out of The US who I thought would have a very good nuanced view on this because it's what he spent his career studying.
Damien:And everything that he told me, it kinda blew my mind a little bit because there were misconceptions that I held. And I mean, I I can tell you a personal story here. I held Airbnb for five years, and I was like, it'll it'll go up. It'll go up. It'll go up.
Damien:It didn't go up. I eventually sold it. It was flat. It had flatlined over that five year period. It was a waste of time if I just put that money into, for instance, the S and P 500 or into a managed fund, it would have performed far better.
Nigel:Yeah. I guess people people assume that this individual holding will mean revert. Yes. Or, like, it will catch up, but I really like it's still an underlying company at its heart. Yeah.
Nigel:And And and that requires someone to buy pay more than you have paid for it.
Damien:Yeah. And and the bottom line too is that we have a really big version of this playing out right now in the shape of Bitcoin. We've seen the performance of Bitcoin completely flounder Yeah. Over the last year and a half, and a lot of people are holding in the belief that it will still grow, but that's a belief. Yeah.
Damien:And it's a story that you believe. It's necessarily how it's gonna pan out.
Nigel:Yeah. And, you know, I guess as a derivative, are there more is the is investing more hype driven than it's ever been?
Damien:Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. People absolutely. Maybe not I mean, we've had the the puppies in The Netherlands.
Damien:We've had Yes. The .com crash. The tulips. Yeah. Sorry.
Damien:The tulips. Yeah. Dammit. Yeah. The tulips.
Damien:Yeah. The tulips in The Netherlands. We've hadthe.com Yes. Saga. We've had I I mean, in New Zealand, we've had property.
Damien:Yes. That was driven on hype. Yeah. So hype has always been there. Yeah.
Damien:And we are creatures who love a crowd. And when a crowd's rushing to get their hands on something, we'll follow.
Nigel:We can't help us. It's like a
Damien:Boxing Day sale. Cannot help ourselves. And I mean, those are the fundamental biases that are programmed into our brains, and we can't escape them. You might think that you can, but you can't.
Nigel:Well, I've got a few I've got a few books on bubbles if you ever wanna read them. I've got in the in the Grant
Damien:pass them on.
Nigel:In the Grant State Library. With, I guess, you know, true to, I guess, your role, with so much content out there, how do people know who to what and who to trust?
Damien:I have an analogy that I because I thought about this question when I saw it on the list of questions that you'd sent me. I thought, how can I explain this in a way that's that that people will kind of understand where I'm coming from? I learned a new word recently, the words orthorexia. Have you ever encountered that, Nigel? Okay.
Nigel:No. But I want I want to know it so I can weave it into future ones.
Damien:Orthorexia is a condition where you become obsessed with a certain form of healthy eating, and that form of healthy eating eventually damages your health. So this could be somebody who sees something that tells them that they need to eat a lot of protein
Nigel:Yes.
Damien:And that becomes their thing. They just focus on eating protein Yeah. And then they do all sorts of damage to their arteries, to their heart, to to Yes. To to other things. You could also have somebody who's maybe drinking too many smoothies, and then that that Like that
Nigel:fruit diet.
Damien:Yeah. Yeah. That damages their organs eventually. Or you could have somebody who runs so much that they damage their knees. Right?
Damien:So orthorexia is a condition that's been around for a while, but in the age of the influencer, it's taken on a greater significance because there are so many young people now who suffer from orthorexia. Yeah. I sometimes feel like the financial diet or the financial media diet is similar, where we'll follow a certain influencer who has a certain view on the world Yeah. And then we don't look at anything else.
Nigel:Right.
Damien:And it if you stick to that one diet, what'll happen is that you'll damage yourself in ways that aren't patently clear at the outset.
Nigel:So then you'll be almost too far. How do I turn back?
Damien:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think that that's the danger that a lot of the influencers are they're they're existing and I mean, they're limited by their own thinking. Right?
Damien:Yeah. And there's a Swiss academic that I read a while back, Rolf DeBellie. He he said he explained that if you haven't thought about six counterarguments to the the to the view that you hold, then you're not driven by informed decision making. You're driven by ideology. And I I feel I feel that that's an important that's an important question we constantly have to be asking ourselves with the financial decisions we are making.
Damien:Are we being driven here by ideology or are we being driven here by an informed decision where we've considered all the counter arguments to what we're doing?
Nigel:Yeah. And so I that I felt like you got, like, really involved and passionate about that position. So as when I read Damien Venuto and anything from Stuff, I guess, you wanna I get the sense that in through that, you'll have the counterfactuals or through that
Damien:Yes.
Nigel:In an article. I otherwise, it's what's the point in reading you?
Damien:Yeah. Precisely. So and I I think that that's that's something I nobody nobody has me in their pocket. Nobody owns me. Yeah.
Damien:Yeah. It's independent. You can't say the same for foreign influencers sitting out there. You don't know who's funding that content. Yeah.
Damien:Quite often quite often, it's it's hidden beneath layers of Yeah. Yeah. Deceptiveness.
Nigel:Yeah. Or even if there's no, I guess, advertising or financial backing to that influencer, to your point, maybe they've followed their own path and now it's just stuck in a tunnel and can't turn around.
Damien:I'll give you an example. There was a fitness influencer that I watched recently Yeah. Where he was giving a tier listing for foods. Grapes got a d tier listing because they are too high in sugar apparently. And I thought to myself, grapes.
Nigel:Yeah.
Damien:Grapes. Grape grapes are now a
Nigel:Those terrible grapes.
Damien:And I was like, that's the quality of information that you're sometimes getting where Yeah. People are saying something with the utmost confidence Yes. And they're expressing this information to you in a way that makes you feel like you have to believe it, and that's incredibly dangerous. Because anyone who is that self assured, they they just haven't read enough.
Nigel:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess if I'm you wanna read grapes have this property, but this is really good for you, but watch out. This that's a sort of Yeah. Everything in moderation.
Damien:Right? Precisely. Precisely.
Nigel:So how do you think, you know, Kiwis can take advantage of, I guess, the rep yeah. Not the financial reporting, but I guess the reporting and investigative and inquiry sort of stuff that you do to educate themselves further?
Damien:I think what you can do is if there's a theme that's interesting that we've maybe picked up on, go and read more widely about it. There are so many great books on on these topics that you can go and pick up off the shelves of a library. We you might think our book is pretty old school or that it it's it's no longer relevant, but the more we think the world is changing, the more similar it actually stays. Every impulse that we have today, we've had for a hundred years. So there's so much we can learn from history.
Damien:And so much of the reporting that I do today is informed by what's happened historically. You can't you can't just look at the last ten years, for instance, the last twenty years, and think that you know everything because there's just so much that's happened Yes. From from the oil shock in the nineteen seventies to the crash in 1987 to all of those moments offer a learning opportunity. And I think if you pick those moments, find something that's interesting to read on those moments because the more you understand about those moments Yeah. The more you can work out where risk lies for you today and what you can do about that risk.
Nigel:And what and what you actually is worth worrying about versus just look through. If you were thinking of maybe a year in advance, is there a I guess, is there an article headline you want to be able to write?
Damien:I would love to write that total remuneration contracts have been removed. Removed. I would I would I think that that would be a positive step for New Zealand. Yeah. I think it would be a positive step for the the wealth of New Zealanders.
Damien:Yeah. And I I I think that these contracts, they were created to allow for negotiating. What we've seen in practice, every expert academic, the retirement commission, everyone that I've spoken to has told me the same thing. You don't have equal footing when it comes to negotiating with your employer if you're a younger staff member in particular. And I I feel like if there's one thing that could make a very big difference to the long term wealth of a lot of New Zealanders, particularly younger New Zealanders.
Damien:It's the removal of total remuneration contracts.
Nigel:And in true Stuff Money and ASB Investment Podcast style, what does total rem mean?
Damien:Okay. A total re remuneration contract, it essentially means that you're paying for your own KiwiSaver out of your pocket. So it's not on top of your salary. So generally, let's say your your employer contributes 4.5 or
Nigel:3.5.
Damien:3.5% to your Kiwi server. In a total REM contract, that actually comes out of your gross salary. So you're getting less money
Nigel:as Than maybe someone else down the road who's
Damien:not. Precisely. Right. So it it I always use the $100,000 salary example here. A $100,000 salary might look like a $100,000 on paper, but if you have somebody on a total REM contract versus a not a not, the person who's not on a total REM contract is actually earning a $103,103,000 dollars, which is a significant difference if you expound that or you you compound that over, let's say, a decade.
Nigel:Yeah. And I guess potentially someone who's on a total REM situation might also have a less favorable view then of KiwiSaver and its importance. Right?
Damien:It's a disincentive. It's a disincentive. And and it's an incentive for employers who maybe want to save when it comes to payroll. So it functions in both directions. And I guess final question before we
Nigel:get into recommendations, is there anything you think the people might be underestimating right now?
Damien:I think the one thing that gives me a sense of concern is that we've been fed this line that the market's always gonna bounce back and that those bounce backs happen quickly.
Nigel:And you mean any sort of market? Well, I I investments?
Damien:I think this is a theme that that keeps coming through.
Nigel:Yeah.
Damien:I I think that that's a dangerous assumption to make, specifically specifically because recent history doesn't does seem to suggest that those bounce backs happen incredibly quickly. So when Trump released his Liberation Day tariffs, the market took a hammering, but then it bounced back within it was a few months that it bounced back. If you look at the really big crashes that we've seen historically so, again, history is informative here. The .com crash, it took the S and P five hundred seven years to recover back to the point where it was before that crash. During the oil shock, we saw something similar.
Damien:The S and P 500 took years to recover. If you go back to the Great Depression, it was even even longer. So I think when you do consider your risk profile, don't make the mistake of assuming that things are gonna bounce back as quickly as what they have in recent history. Longer term history is I think it does Informative. It is definitely informative.
Nigel:Yeah. I guess it's, yeah, a lot of people might have grown up grown up sort of a short term with a v shaped recovery.
Damien:Right?
Nigel:Yes. So some sometimes history can be pretty informative in that. And so last question. I hope you've got a good one this. Is there anything you're reading, listening to, or watching that you could recommend?
Nigel:And you've already dropped like all these like, I talked to this researcher, this book here, so I know you should have a good answer.
Damien:Okay. So there are two I'm gonna give two two recommendations. One is for like more academic purposes and the other one's for pleasure purposes. The first one is I recently finished a book by it was written by Humberto Eco and Cardinal Martino. Cardinal?
Damien:Yes. So it's a series of essays between one of the top secular thinkers and one of the top theological thinkers in Italy at the time. And it was published in an Italian newspaper, And the reason I love it is because it's two people coming from completely different perspectives, but having this courteous conversation about big issues that range from the existence of God, to the role of women in the Catholic church, to whether abortion is morally right or wrong. And they're having this discussion coming from completely different perspectives, but they're doing it in this really courteous way and it kind of challenges all the preconceptions that you have. So it shows that a secular person can be deeply empathetic.
Damien:It shows that a person with a theological background can be deeply rational. Yeah. And it shows that these two people can exist in the same world, and they can have really good conversations.
Nigel:Yeah. Now now three things. Three things. You're extremely well read and learned. No.
Nigel:No. No. No. Recall Do also you speak multiple lang Yes.
Damien:I I I mean, I speak three languages to different degrees.
Nigel:So the derivative of that, is this only in Italian?
Damien:No. No. No. I I read it in English. So just gonna ask
Nigel:for it.
Damien:I'll I'll I'll see. Been translated.
Nigel:And I've forgotten what the third one was. So we'll just leave it there. But I I think my guess is you love this because it's a great example of how you can hold conflicting views Yes. And debate it in a pragmatic and respect the other person's
Damien:And what I loved about this exchange between these two human beings is that it happened in a mainstream newspaper, and it happened as a series of letters. Between these two men who were just giants of their perspective.
Nigel:Diametrically opposed.
Damien:Diametrically opposed, but they come together for this discussion, and it isn't it isn't that classic, like, I I know, on on YouTube, it's always like, this guy destroys that guy. There's nothing like that. It's courteous, it's polite, it's informed, and it's all the arguments are rational. Like, they they feel deeply rational. You can see something valuable in both perspectives.
Damien:And I I think it reading that gave me a sense of hopefulness that I hadn't had in a long time because I was like, it wasn't that long ago that things like that were happening.
Nigel:Yeah. Whereas now it's a case of your I'm right, and I ignore the wrong.
Damien:Yeah.
Nigel:And what was your for pleasure one?
Damien:My I'm currently reading one of the great vampire novels of our time, Let the Right One In, Scandinavian noir meets vampire fan fiction basically. It's it's pretty cool.
Nigel:Wow. I thought you were gonna say Twilight.
Damien:No. No. Not quite.
Nigel:Oh, wow. Well and just I guess, actually, one thing one question I wanted to ask, which is not one we normally ask other people. It's if people wanna follow you Mhmm. And the stuff money stuff, where would you point them to?
Damien:LinkedIn. I put a lot of stuff on LinkedIn. Yeah. The other thing is just visit the stuff site. I try to put up a few stories every week.
Damien:So all my content's available there. You can if you want to, you can look up my byline. Yep. But, yeah, just just have a look at stuff. Yeah.
Damien:And I try and try and consistently update Yeah. What I'm putting out.
Nigel:Yeah. Well, I guess it's it's probably an easy place to find. Just stuff.co.nzed. So thanks again, Damien. Hope you had a fun time.
Damien:I had a lovely time, Nigel. It's so good to hang out with you, man.
Nigel:Oh, so I could keep could have kept going for hours. So in the depths of early this morning, I was reading a piece from a blog that I follow, a weekly commentary on everything happened in the week that was in US markets. And this one always advocate or advocates for focusing on the things that don't change, those quintessential truths and long term drivers and ignoring the noise. But the question it poses in this week's edition, should you actually stick your head in the sand and ignore everything? The author themselves said despite what they preach, if anything, they're still unable to practice it.
Nigel:But because of that and a focus on trying to understand the crisis of the week, that's helped them build up the scar tissue and wisdom to make sense of everything going on, you know, help them acknowledge but not get influenced by what the latest events are that could make them do something not in your long or their long term interest. So I think the right path, if you're remotely interested in understanding the workings behind savings and investments, is to do a bit of both. So you learn what's going on, and that's from the likes of Damien and the work he's doing at Stuff to help improve New Zealanders understanding of all things financial. Yeah. So you can cope with the next thing that happens because it will.
Nigel:Also But don't forget to have a break sometimes. Check that vampire literature, that fan fiction, or put your head, you know, being putting your head in the sand sometimes offers a nice break too. So with that, happy investing, and bye for now. Thanks for listening to the ASB Investment Podcast. If you have any thoughts on this episode, or if there's anything you'd like us to discuss on a future show, get in touch with us at podcastasb dot co.
Nigel:Nz.