Episode #373: Tim Maloney, Roundhill Investments, “We Hit The Right Theme At The Right Time”

Episode #373: Tim Maloney, Roundhill Investments, “We Hit The Right Theme At The Right Time”

 

Guest: Tim Maloney is the co-founder and Chief Investment Officer for Roundhill Investments, a registered investment adviser and ETF sponsor focused on thematic and sector-specific investing.

Date Recorded: 11/10/2021     |     Run-Time: 56:39

Summary: In today’s episode, we’re getting meta! Tim begins with an overview of Roundhill and the firms’ unique strategy around distribution. Then we dive into some of their funds, most notably the fund focused on the metaverse with a ticker I bet Mr. Zuckerberg wish he had. We touch on funds that are focused on e-sports, sports betting and streaming, and even a couple of funds that were launched as a partnership with former podcast guests Tobias Carlisle and Chas Cocke.

Sponsor: The Idea Farm gives you access to over $100,000 worth of investing research, the kind usually read by only the world’s largest institutions, funds, and money managers. Join today and get access to quarterly CAPE ratios, an excel quant backtester and the entire research library. And best of all, there’s a 30-day free trial period.

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Interested in sponsoring an episode? Email Justin at jb@cambriainvestments.com

Links from the Episode:

  • 0:40 – Sponsor: The Idea Farm
  • 1:08 – Intro
  • 1:48 – Welcome to our guest, Tim Maloney
  • 4:13 – The origin story of Roundhill Investments
  • 7:22 – Launching NERD in 2019
  • 13:43 – The first tailwind Roundhill caught that helped them scale
  • 17:13 – Stepping into the market with a metaverse ETF
  • 19:45 – Owning the META ticker before Facebook changed their name
  • 23:43 – Shaan Puri’s tweetstorm on the metaverse
  • 23:52 – Overview of META
  • 25:35 – Tim’s interest in DeFi
  • 28:00 – Episode #158: Tobias Carlisle, Acquirers Funds
  • 28:45 – How Tim and Chas Cocke connected to launch BYTE
  • 34:41 – Overview of Roundhill’s Streaming and Pro Sports ETFs
  • 44:27 – Plans for the future and themes on his radar
  • 49:43 – What was Tim’s most memorable investment?
  • 52:00 – Learn more about Tim; Twitter @roundhill @maloneysandwich ; roundhillinvestments.com

 

Transcript of Episode 373:

Welcome Message: Welcome to the ‘Meb Faber Show’, where the focus is on helping you grow and preserve your wealth. Join us as we discuss the craft of investing, and uncover new and profitable ideas, all to help you grow wealthier and wiser. Better investing starts here.

Disclaimer: Meb Faber is the co-founder and chief investment officer at Cambria Investment Management. Due to industry regulations, he will not discuss any of Cambria’s funds on this podcast. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinions, and do not reflect the opinion of Cambria Investment Management or its affiliates. For more information, visit cambriainvestments.com.

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Meb: Welcome, welcome friends. We have a fun episode today. Our guest is a co-founder and Chief Investing Officer for Roundhill Investments an ETF sponsor focused on thematic and sector-specific investing. On today’s show, we’re getting meta. Our guest begins with an overview of Roundhill and the firm’s unique strategy around distribution. We dive into some of their funds, most notably the fund focused on the metaverse, with a ticker I bet Mr. Zuckerberg wish he had. We touch on funds that are focused on eSports, sports betting, streaming, and even a couple funds that were launched as a partnership with former podcast guests Toby Carlisle and Chas Cocke. Please enjoy this episode with Roundhill Investments’ Tim Maloney. Tim, welcome to the show.

Tim: Thank you. Thank you. Happy to be here.

Meb: You got your hat on. The last time I saw you in the real world, I mean, where were we? Arizona?

Tim: We were in Arizona. Yeah, Wealth/Stack, what was that, ’19? Pre-everything that’s happened in the last year and a half?

Meb: Pre-everything. I told you then, but you guys were just, like, a baby organization then, just kind of getting your feet under you. You had this hat, and I was like, ‘Dude, I love the ticker hat’. I went the ticker sunglasses route. So, you can’t see it, listeners, but you had one of the best hat marketing games. You got to send me one. That’s part of coming on the podcast. You got to mail one.

Tim: Absolutely. I’m surprised I didn’t give you one at the conference. I must have been out, because that’s a bad form by me.

Meb: Where do we find you today?

Tim: I’m in Northern California here, just north of San Francisco, in my kind of home office here. I’m the only of the Roundhill team that’s on the West Coast, so the rest of them keep Eastern hours and I struggle to stay kept up.

Meb: Aren’t you a New Yorker by trade, or do I have that wrong, by origin?

Tim: No, you’re right. Born and raised in New York. I actually grew up with my co-founder, Will, which I’m sure we’ll get into, in Manhattan, and moved out here, 2016, for a job at the time and then have since, obviously, left that job and started Roundhill, but decided to plant down some roots here.

Meb: Yeah. What’s the name of the steps, that hike near you guys, that’s great? Stinson Steps or something?

Tim: The Dipsea Steps.

Meb: Dipsea. Dipsea Steps.

Tim: Which are about three houses down from where I live. There’s a race every year that was this past Sunday, and I raced it for the first time. So…

Meb: Cool.

Tim: Not usually into that type of stuff, but I figured it’s three houses down, kind of got to participate.

Meb: Yeah, well, I should have knocked on your door. I did it last time I was there. But more importantly, if you’ve never been to Mill Valley, listeners, there’s also a German beer hall in the middle of the woods. It’s called, like, the Tourist Club or something. So, that’s more my style. It’s hike to a beer hall. That’ll give you the reward on the end. So, listeners, next time I’m up there, we’ll do a Tim Roundhill/Cambria meet up and go hiking in the woods.

Tim: We should. I’ve only been once. I haven’t joined yet. I plan to, but I was on a hike with some friends about three years ago, planned a long hike, and basically bumped into this place on a day they were open to the public. They’re not always open to the public. So we kind of cut our hike off at, like, a mile and had some beers. And it’s a real nice setup there.

Meb: Yeah. Well, look, let’s talk about what the hell you guys are up to. It’s been a lot going on for you guys. My goodness, quite a year, quite a couple years. You said your origin story starts in, like, kindergarten or something, which I’ve never heard before, I think, with founders. So, give us the quick genesis, and then we’ll start talking about all things NERD, BETZ, META, and everything else.

Tim: Yeah, definitely. So, as you said, our origin story really goes back to kindergarten. My co-founder, Will, and I started in school together in kindergarten. We actually went to the same school from kindergarten through college graduation, so three different schools, but all together, which is honestly kind of crazy. We remained close the whole time, kind of went our separate ways professionally after school. So, I went and kind of did the larger institutional route within finance. I was currency sales at Morgan Stanley, then I traded investment-grade bonds at Wells Capital, and ultimately kind of left in 2018 to start Roundhill.

Will actually got into the ETF business right out of the gate. He was involved with some of the first couple MLP ETFs, and really kind of saw that part of the industry starting in 2011, 2012. So, got some really interesting experience then. And we kind of met back in the middle, in 2018, and, at this point, I think we can tell the full friends and family story, which we used to keep to ourselves, but really, a lot of the origins for Roundhill came from cryptocurrencies, not that we invest in cryptocurrencies here at Roundhill. But what we saw was, around that time, there was a really active community on social media, Twitter in particular, but other channels, talking about the investment landscape for crypto. And they were really engaged. It wasn’t a conversation that was being driven by, like, the banks, or any of these established names. It was a lot of anonymous people out there doing, like, really interesting due diligence on these opportunities.

And we said, ‘Well, I think there’s room for this audience to do similar due diligence on kind of the ETF product’. It’s a great wrapper. It’s available broadly to the public, and I think what we need to do is if we create products that make sense to this kind of same demographic, and there’s a Venn diagram, and we’re kind of starting in the middle and helping the circles grow, but if we can reach those people with interesting products that tackle themes that are relevant to them, and adjacent in some ways … crypto, and kind of hit them with a strategy from a content and marketing point of view that reaches them, there’s something to be done there. And ultimately, we kind of took that initial thesis, and we’ve started with NERD, which we launched in 2019, and kind of built it out from there. I think we’ll probably get into it, but it has implications for kind of how we sell funds. So, we don’t have a distribution team. We may in the future, transparently, but for right now, we’re really kind of focused on these one-to-many channels, and finding a way to create almost viral ETFs. I think that concept is relatively new, but something we’re trying to lean into and kind of continue building from.

Meb: So, I’m sure a lot of people are interested in this topic, because we get daily, certainly weekly, but often daily inquiries about ETFs. And the good news now, we’ve done a few prep shows. We’re like, ‘This is how you launch an ETF’. We wrote an article about it, then we did a few podcasts, most of them with Wes Gray, about the topic. So, listeners, if you’re interested, ping Wes, not me. It’s a modern take. Like you mentioned, I mean, historically, asset management companies, if you talk to every CEO, I can’t tell you how many times I would talk to people and they would say, ‘It’s all about distribution. It’s all about distribution. It’s all about sales. It’s all about sales’. And I said, ‘Well, huh. That’s kind of funny. Like, doesn’t have anything to do with, like, how good the product is, or whether it’s a good fit, it’s just that you sold it to someone and they bought it, or the various infinite levels of conflicts of interest that are embedded’?

So, tell us how you guys built this, how you thought about it. And part of this, to be honest, listeners, because we’ve done something similar, is a little bit out of necessity. You know, if you’re bootstrapping and don’t have any money, you don’t have a lot of choices to build out a giant sales force, but tell us about how you guys thought about it, and what was the approach? And what year did NERD launch? You said 2019?

Tim: Yeah, so we launched NERD in 2019. We then followed it with BETZ in 2020. And transparently, and I think this is sometimes helpful for other folks who are maybe starting businesses or thinking about starting businesses, we tried a lot of stuff that just didn’t work. We tried to have maybe the resident salesperson and kind of picking up the phone. And I think, to your point, like, as a newer entrant to the space, you’ve been doing this longer than we have, but as a newer entrant, it’s really hard to get a sales conversation going, for kind of two reasons. One is it’s hard to build that sales process and have the resources and all of that. But the second is a lot of the larger platforms, they don’t really want to talk to you until you have a couple hundred million in a fund, or a longer track record, or firm-level assets of a certain point. So you kind of end up with this chicken and the egg problem.

So, whether it was lucky that we stumbled into it, or hindsight being 20/20 it was a good idea, but having this more one-to-many distribution channel helps solve that problem. Because the day you list an ETF, it’s available on the brokerages, available to the retail, and to, like, the smaller independent RIAs. And really, that’s been our bread and butter, is reaching them. As to the how, I mean, I hate to say it because it seems kind of silly, but Twitter’s probably our most powerful channel, by an order of magnitude. We have an email newsletter that we’re very active on. But really, our goal is we have these themes. We want to create interesting content about the themes, and get it in front of as many people as possible. And really, there are two impacts from that. First is it can directly drive people to our content, and then they buy the fund and that’s great, but the second, and I think almost more important at this point, is it helps us earn media and earn coverage from other individuals, whether that’s traditional media or just people with large follower accounts on social media.

And when they start talking about our funds, that has this kind of second-order effect that starts to snowball. One example when we launched our sports betting fund, I’m not on TikTok, but people were sharing me TikToks of people talking about BETZ, the new ETF launch from Roundhill. And we didn’t know these people. They found us and they decided to talk about it. And really, we’re trying to find ways to just build that kind of buzz in the community. And in a way, we provide our content for free. And it is free. We don’t, we have no, like, paid research channels or anything like that. And if people like what they see, we hope they buy the funds because the funds fit their investment thesis, and that’s really the goal here. So I think that’s kind of how I think about it.

Meb: It’s a modern interpretation, and we’ve kind of talked a lot about this, where you have so many of these legacy companies that want to do sort of modern, social, and so many of them are just so bad at it. And I don’t profess to be amazing at it, but I’m just saying you see others and it’s just cringe. But content has always been the driver. We talk about maybe it’s Fisher, with direct mail and marketing, or Edelman with radio, or, I don’t know who’s the best example of TV ads or content is, but just kind of on and on. I mean, Cramer, obviously with The Street, but the Twitter, the Tok, etc. It’s fascinating that that’s been kind of the entry for you guys, where people see it and then just has its viral loops around. Walk us through the early days, because starting up a ETF company is no joke. Many fail. The average fund, I think it’s over half close over any decade. And you guys are a rare success story. Was it always obvious when you guys put the first one out, or was it sort of a grind for the first year or so?

Tim: So, first and foremost, thank you for the kind words. Transparently, once again, and maybe this is helpful to other entrepreneurs out there, the first year, I mean, we launched NERD, and I think the peak assets were about $17 million, which, you know the ETF business economics, but for those who don’t, that’s not making money. You’re losing money. Now, we have been in a fortunate position. We had raised some outside funding, so we were able to lose money for a little.

Meb: What did you guys do? Do you do friend and family? Do VC?

Tim: So, it was a mix. We did some friend and family, but ultimately closed a VC round, which is I think very… It’s a very non-traditional type of investment for the VC world. We kind of went a different approach, and our first fund was NERD, which is focused on eSports. We went to a eSports-focused VC. And ultimately, they said, ‘We get this. We also get eSports, and I think a lot of other people out there do, and will want to invest. So, it’s not our core competency, investing financial services firms, but like what you’re doing here’. We also did a co-brand. The name of the fund is the Roundhill BITKRAFT eSports & Digital Entertainment ETF. They kind of saw similar vision to what we saw, so they invested. But it is definitely, if you’re out there trying to raise money for an ETF business, it might be a little easier now, since I think the space is a little bit more… The opportunities are more visible. It’s a tough sell for the traditional VC crowd, if I’m honest.

Meb: Can you disclose who the VC was? Is that public?

Tim: Yeah. So their name is BITKRAFT eSports Ventures.

Meb: Oh, it is BITKRAFT. Okay. Yeah.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah. So they’re the ones. And as an eSports-focused firm, they were very excited as well, about the co-branding opportunity.

Meb: That’s fascinating, some of the partnerships you see going on. I mean, I’ve talked about this for a long time on the show, where I say, you know, there’s not a whole lot of ways to invest in the actual ETF industry. There’s one publicly-traded company, WisdomTree, but they’re on the large side, I think $50-plus billion. And then, we used to, for a long time, talk about, and I probably talked to you about this, because I would love to get on your cap table, but I got to be very careful, because it’s…of all the conflicts. But I said I would love to do a private equity, I guess it’d be VC-ish, fund that would invest in the 10 companies we know intimately that are going to be a good chance of being some big winners. I think it’s a great idea. Listeners, if you want to seed it, hit me up, and maybe we can talk about it.

But anyway. Okay, so, you had the comfort level of the runway, slow growth, like you mentioned, sub $20 million is sort of a sleepless nights area. It doesn’t feel like you’re… I mean, you’re no longer writing huge checks, but it’s not the rocket ship sort of into orbit yet. You’re not out of gravitational orbit. What was the first, like, tailwind you guys got, where things started to really start to raise and help on the AUM side?

Tim: Yeah. So, it’s interesting because the catalyst was actually just the second ETF, which I think we potentially learned something from and we potentially thought we learned something that maybe isn’t true, which I can kind of get to. But on the one-year anniversary of NERD, we still believed in the core thesis of creating these viral ETFs. We were kind of looking back a little bit. It was, call it April of 2020. We were just starting lockdowns and sports were off. And we basically said, ‘What’s a play that we think is interesting, in general, but that could be really interesting timing-wise’? Sports betting essentially rose to the top. So, we had been working on a fund there, and we ended up launching that on the one-year anniversary of NERD. And I think to replicate the first couple days of that fund is going to be really hard because it was a very specific market environment. People were stuck at home. A lot more people were coming into trading markets. Sports betting was getting legalized across the states, and there was a lot of momentum to that fund. That fund launched and took in, I think north of $75 million in the first couple days.

Meb: Where was that coming from? Did you guys do, like, a huge PR push? Was it just one giant hedge fund in the Isle of Man? Was it, what? Were you dancing on the Tok? Where’d all that come from?

Tim: Yeah. So, I mean, with the caveat that you never really know in ETFs, as you know, it was retail. We hit the right theme at the right time. And to Will’s credit, he was the one who said, ‘Let’s do this’. I was like, ‘Sports are not on. How can we launch a sports betting fund’? So he was right, so big ups to him if he’s listening. We put it out there. And like I said, we saw TikToks a day or two later about the fund. It got a ton of coverage. It really just kind of went viral, like we thought it could. If you’d told us the day before we were going to see $75 million inflows in three days, I would have said you’re crazy. Like, take a seat. That’s not how this works.

But we did. And I think that, first of all, validated our thesis a little bit. So, those sleepless nights about ‘does this work’? I think we started to believe that it could be done. But the way we got here was, what was the catalyst for NERD? That was the catalyst for NERD. So, I think over the next several months, NERD went from $13 million, $14 million at the time to, at one point, over $100 million. It’s a little below there now. But that really was the catalyst. And I think we drew the conclusion that one plus one can equal more like three. Now, we can talk about where we are today, because it might be more like two and a half, or kind of depends on the story. But that was kind of the initial catalyst where NERD started taking off, BETZ took off, in terms of asset gathering, and we said there’s something here.

Meb: That’s great. And now, you guys are closing in on a billion. Congratulations. Hopefully, it happens before the end of the year. You got one, two three, four, what, six? Seven funds?

Tim: Yep. So, we got six that we are the advisor to. We have a seventh where we work with Toby Carlisle, who I know you know well, on as well we’re technically the advisors, a third party, but I do … funds under our umbrella.

Meb: Toby many time a podcast alumni, that’s deep, having a monster year, up 40%. All right, so, let’s talk about, and I’ll give you the baton. What funds’ strategies would you like to kind of dig into? If we’ve covered BETZ or NERD enough, I’m happy to move on and pick a couple of topics. But have we exhausted the topic on BETZ and NERD and move on, or there’s some more discussion on those that you think is important?

Tim: I think we may end up coming back to them, but I think what’s probably most topical now, and if we didn’t get to it would be kind of a shame, would be our Metaverse ETF. So, as listeners will know, or may know, there’s been a lot of press about the Metaverse of late. I think a key catalyst there was actually Facebook’s rebrand, where now they are kind of Meta Platforms Inc. And I think this is the second example of an ETF sort of going viral. And then we’ve seen it in the last couple weeks, and it’s frankly still happening. So, knock on wood, that continues. And I think a few interesting things to mention on this product, from my perspective. The first is the index for this fund is actually a third party. So, it’s a group of experts on the Metaverse led by Matthew Ball, who many of you have probably come across over the years. He’s kind of like, I don’t know if he’d like me calling him the Godfather of the Metaverse, but he’s definitely got the largest body of work writing about it.

Meb: Yeah. He’s a great writer. Fun to read. What’s his actual role? Is he operation or VC in the company?

Tim: He’s done a little bit of everything. He was at Amazon for several years. He does do some private investing. The reason we ultimately connected was more his content, if anything. If you want to learn about the Metaverse, set aside some time on a weekend and read his body of work. It’s really incredible. And that was kind of… There’s this idea of almost partnered funds that we had been doing a little bit. We have the fund with Toby. And that’s, in my opinion, has been a success story so far. But I think there’s value, too, in our business, with our model. It’s about getting eyeballs to the fund and then people make their own decision, versus us kind of selling it. There’s real value to working with people who have thought leadership in a space, and have a following for that thought leadership. It lowers the bar for us to getting the word out there, and that’s really how our business works.

So, I think with that fund, setting aside that we happened to catch a viral moment about the Metaverse, I think we’ve positioned ourselves for success by finding that, and saying let’s do this, and he’s got this awesome council that helps make the decisions. And I think there’s really something interesting there that we’re hoping to expand to, and we’ve launched a fund recently focused on digital infrastructure that’s in a very similar model, that we can talk a little bit about, too.

Meb: Let’s dive into Metaverse while we’re here. When did this fund launch, ballpark?

Tim: End of Q2. I think it was, like, June 28, 29th.

Meb: So, you guys, there’s always an element of serendipity and luck when it comes to everything we do?

Tim: Hundred percent.

Meb: Or you guys just preordained this, which makes you just the grandmasters of the ticker game? But before we dive deep into actually what the fund does, there’s the hilarious moment where one of the largest companies on the planet just up and decided to change their name to Metaverse, which is Facebook. And the most obvious ticker for Metaverse would be your ticker, which is META. And you guys have a great ticker game. I think it’s underappreciated, despite how much people talk about it, the ticker, I think, is important, especially with thematics.

Tim: And I know you know that as well.

Meb: Yeah. So, what is the Facebook? It’s like MRVS, MVRS or something?

Tim: Yep. So their plan is to trade under MVRS, starting on I think December 1st, was what the press release said. And, look, their announcement generally was great for the Metaverse. I mean, it came part and parcel with, three days earlier, they said they were going to start spending $10 plus billion a year, that’s going to increase, in building the Metaverse. So, it’s hard to really say what impact comes from the fact that one of the largest companies in the world has made this a stated objective that they’re going to stick to, and how much of it is the shelf space that we essentially get from having this fund. So, if anyone goes in and searches META and their brokerage app right now, you’re going to get probably two results at the top, and that’s valuable.

Meb: So there’s an obvious question. If I was in y’all’s chair, and you can comment on this or not, to the extent that this has already been discussed. And Mark rings me up, or reaches out on some weird Facebook DM, and says, ‘Yo. You guys clearly have the better ticker for our company than this garbage ticker we have. How do we make this happen’? It seems like you either say, ‘Facebook, you put’, I don’t know, ‘$50 million into our company’. I’m trying to think of, like, the game theory of what the right ask would be. Say, ‘Why don’t you just become an angel investor in our company? Fifty million sounds about right. Or, we figure out some way to work together’. Is that ever going to be in the cards? Are you guys chatting with the Death Star over there, or are you just going to sit fat and happy on the ticker and watch it ride?

Tim: Trying to think the best way for me to answer this question in a very measured way. I think any observer would agree that for a company whose name is the word ‘Meta’, the ticker META would be a superior ticker. And I think I kind of just want to leave it there.

Meb: Sure. Well, I’m giving you my… That’s my over-under. I think $50 million, Mark, is a… Say Mark listens to this show. That’s a safe number, Cheryl. Fifty million sounds about right to me. You could do it either two ways. You could do it where you just invest in Roundhill, or something similar. All right, well, we’ll pass it along.

Tim: Well, I think taking a step back just generally, though, like, the reality is, the Metaverse, it’s a complicated thing to build, and it’s going to require resources from large companies to do so. There is a big decentralized effort in the crypto community, and I personally, it’s not really a business interest at this point, but I follow that very closely, and it’s amazing what’s happening in the crypto world. And maybe we get to that later, maybe we don’t. But the reality is that having a firm like Meta Platforms, Inc. and some of these other big names that are really stating an intention to enable the Metaverse, like, that, to me, is the most important takeaway here, right? Like, you don’t necessarily with a fanatic product get that too terribly often. And I think, to your point, we’re a little lucky with the timing. That goes without saying. That, to me, is the biggest takeaway is this is on the minds of some of the most powerful people in the world. And to the extent that resources are directed in this direction, like, it’s going to lead to an outcome that they’re rooting for. I can’t make any promise or any statements about the Metaverse, but, like, it’s not not bullish for the space.

Meb: There was a good thread…we’ll have this in the show note links…Shaan Puri, from ‘My First Million’ podcast, which is a fun one. It had a good thread on Metaverse, we’ll add in. That’s an awesome development. It’s exciting for you guys. It looks like it’s now in the top two jostling for size on AUM. What’s the actual, like, composition? Is this, Ball rings you guys up once a year, and is like, ‘Here’s what I think the index should be’? Is it, like, 10 stocks, 100 stocks? Is it long/short? Is it global? What’s the actual fund look like when you buy the ETF, as opposed to the company formerly known as Facebook?

Tim: For sure. So, it is global in name. And at the end of the day, Matt and his team provide the index, and there’s meant to be, for regulatory purposes, a little bit of kind of a firewall. So, we’re not influencing his decision-making on that, and the teams, but it’s a quarterly rebalance. The number of names is not set in stone. It could be anywhere from a minimum of 30 to, I think they could go up to 75, 100, and it would still be kind of reasonable and achieving its goal. Right now, it’s I think 40 or 41. I will say one thing that’s interesting compared to the rest of our funds, it has a higher median market cap than any of our others. It’s about $70 billion median market cap. And to me, I think that kind of comes back to what I was just talking about, which is if you’re going to build the Metaverse, you’re going to need some of these larger players to really commit to it. And as a result, these larger players that have maybe some of the elements that will make up the Metaverse already in action, they’re going to be the ones that are maybe most exposed, if that makes sense. But yeah, so at the end of the day, Matt and his team maintain the index and the universe. They’ve kind of split the world up into seven categories that they believe will enable the Metaverse. And really, I think we’re very excited about this partnership and about this fund, and about this space, and frankly, having such a knowledgeable team on it as a partner.

Meb: I mean, it’s funny, too, and this is obvious, of course, but that the Metaverse ETF holds Meta, or the company formerly known as Facebook, which of course is meta in and of itself. Da-ding, ching. I’m looking through decks. You guys do a great job on the decks. I was picking through it, which is fun, just to see all the ticker names, the weights, what’s going on. Are we missing anything on the META discussion before we saunter on to something else?

Tim: If you want to learn about the Metaverse, Matt Ball and his team are your best resource there. So, rather than boring everyone with my thoughts on it, I do think it is worth looking into the decentralized finance part of the world if you’re interested in the Metaverse. The reality is I think you need to be able to look at both, and mostly for regulatory reasons, META itself has no cryptocurrency direct exposure. That’s a whole other rabbit hole that I’m sure you’ve gone down, just, how the SEC views cryptocurrencies and ETFs and all that, and probably not a direction we want to go.

Meb: I wrote back in 2013, I have a funny tweet that’s like, ‘There’s no way a crypto ETF gets to market by year end’. Because people were talking about back then as if it was going to come out in 2013. So, like, I’m willing to make a bet with anyone, a dinner bet. Mainly, I just wanted to go to dinner and hang out with people. I said I prefer sushi. And I would just retweet it every year, because I was like there’s no way this is coming to market anytime soon. And now you have futures everywhere else in the world, and then the future ones in the U.S., I’m pessimistic that one happens this year. But when it happens, hopefully next year, whenever, we’ll have a big sushi party somewhere here. Anyone in Manhattan Beach, hit me up, we’ll go. We’ve been pleasant sideline supporters, and like you guys, we’re open about it, but I’d love to get a fund out. I’d love to get a really low-cost sort of indexed fund out, but I also don’t want to spend $10 million in legal fees, which many of our friends have just, flushing those down the toilet, but HODL is here waiting, where I’m ready to go, when the SEC is ready to do it. So we’ll see.

Tim: I love it. Speaking of strong tickers.

Meb: Yeah. Well, that was a good one, and I was laughing the other day because there were some inverse ones coming out, and I said, well, people were, like, debating what’s the best ticker for the inverse Bitcoin ETF, and there was, like, three or four contenders, and I was like, ‘How is it not FODL’? Hold and fold. So, FODL, F-O-D-L. So we now that FODL.

Tim: I like that.

Meb: But that inverse Bitcoin seems a little too volatile for my britches. All right, you know what’s fun, so, we’ve covered probably DEEP in some other podcasts with Toby, listeners, we’ll have that in the show note links if you want to go deep into the DEEP ETF, which is small-cap deep value? Is that right? Or is, it’s not micro-cap? Small-cap?

Tim: Yeah. Small and micro, 100 names, equally weighted at rebalance. Toby is very knowledgeable in the space, and he’s created this nice kind of rules-based system for screening the companies. So…

Meb: Yeah. I’ve been talking about this. So I’m already blue in the face and probably turned purple at some point, but the opportunity set of the big large-cap, market cap-weighted passive, versus some of the, like, the micro-cap values, I mean, again, go to Toby’s episode. We don’t need to talk about it here. But it’s worth a deep dive. You know what? You probably don’t know this. You may know this. I did a podcast this week with another Roundhill-adjacent partner of LB Partners, Mr. Chas Cocke. And I was like, ‘You know who I’m talking to this week’? And so, we didn’t…I talked to him for, like, two hours yesterday.

So that podcast will have already hit by the time this one comes out, I’m sure. Give us the backstory. Now, you’re not allowed to dox him, because he also has an anonymous Internet Twitter account. So, we’ll delete it if you accidentally… He’s not, like, super strict … but I don’t want to be the one to reveal it, because it’s a popular one. But, Chas, you probably know this, but, was a college dorm mate of mine. So we don’t go back to kindergarten, but we go back to college. So, give us the backstory on how a hedge fund manager, former fund-of-fund endowment guy, fundamental stock picker, got involved in you guys and ETFs.

Tim: So, I will not dox. I have a strict no doxxing policy that I think we have to keep, especially with the way we’re building our brand here. But yeah, so, we ended up connecting with Chas…actually, Will connected with him at their Twitter spaces that they were both on. And I think what started maybe as a little bit of a joke, ‘Hey, let’s do an ETF together’, kind of quickly spiraled into ‘Yeah, this is a great idea, and let’s for sure do it’. So, we did launch an ETF recently, and similar partnership to the one we have with Matt, where Chas and his team maintain an index, and we license the index for the purpose of an ETF. And it’s focused on digital infrastructure. Trades under the ticker BYTE, B-Y-T-E. And I think at the end of the day, like, our business is around creating buzz for an ETF, and right now, like, the Metaverse is just creating its own buzz.

When I look at what we’re working on with Chas, to me, it’s, really, if you look across our themes, they have this kind of tech-ish tilt to that Metaverse. You’ve got sports betting, which is very much going technology. You’ve got eSports, streaming. And the reality is, when you look at the kind of scaffolding beneath these industries, it’s really what ends up in BYTE. It’s the infrastructure that allows for the rest of this stuff to be even possible. And to me, just as an investor, you look at that and you say, ‘Well, if we’re giving people the ability to bet on all these other themes that they’re interested in, that maybe are a little bit more front and center in the kind of B2C space, then the names that make up a digital infrastructure ETF are, I mean, I can’t make any promises performance but, like, they should do well if everything else does well’. So, it’s a little bit of almost a meta play, to kind of beat that fund to death, on the rest of what we’re doing, which is the companies in this product are really the ones that they have to be there, and they have to be kind of well-oiled machines for the rest of these opportunities to really even exist and grow, in a way.

So, personally, I’m really excited about this fund, because it may not have the same kind of shelf space in people’s minds. It doesn’t live rent-free, like the Metaverse does right now. But, like, it has to keep growing for the rest of it to grow. So, I’m really excited about this fund. But yeah, it started off with Twitter spaces, and we like to stay entrepreneurial. So when the idea came up, we were like, ‘You know what? Actually, let’s do this. This is awesome’.

Meb: So, for the listeners’ knowledge, let’s say that there’s somebody listening, billion-dollar money manager, $10 billion fund of funds, or a family office, and they say, ‘You know what? I have an idea for a fund’. Can you tell me briefly, like, few-minute, we’ll just walk through, how does the sub-advisory indexing work? Is it like, hey, look, here’s my perspectives. Here’s broadly the latitude I have with coming up with an index. So, is it, let’s just say, you find a sub-advisor out there who’s interested in something and they want to design it, like, what can they do? Meaning, like, hey, I wanted a portfolio of stocks, update it once a quarter, can they just pick all the stuff? Like, just help us out a little bit.

Tim: Yeah, so, you end up in a lot of grey areas with a lot of this stuff. I think the cleanest way to do it is how we’ve set it up, where it’s a third party who maintains the index. That index needs to be rules-based. And rules-based is… It can be a little bit of a nuanced explanation, because there’s some things that you can classify into a rule, but the rule itself has a little bit of necessary human discretion built in. And hopefully, this isn’t being listened to by one of our SEC examiners at any point. But I think the grey area is not that grey anymore. I think people understand that this is kind of how it works. Like, the indexes are no longer just top 500 companies in the U.S. by market cap. Like, we’ve evolved. So, if you’re looking to do something like that, you do have to make it, if you want to be an index provider, somewhat rules-based, somewhat of a cadence to rebalance, whether it’s quarterly, semi-annually, annually. And for us to think it’s interesting, you need to kind of pick a theme that we can tell a story around.

So, digital infrastructure, there’s a story. Deep value, small and micro-cap deep value, like, there’s a story there. Metaverse, there’s a story. It can’t just be your kind of top 25 picks that I like for X, Y, Z reason, or at least it’s much harder to sell. But I will say one thing, which is you can’t be that ‘active’ in managing it, because if you want to be maybe a sub-advisor, my understanding is that you essentially need to be a registered investment advisor to do that role. And if you want to have an active fund where you’re making decisions on kind of a daily basis, more like a Cathie Wood, you need to be in that role. You can’t really do it in the index setup. So, if you’re creating an ETF strategy via an index that’s meant to be somewhat similar to your broader investment strategy, that is a trade-off that you have to make. You won’t be able to say, ‘Earnings are great. It’s up 15% over the last three days and that’s a nice outperformance. Let’s trim that and buy this’. That option’s kind of not available to you the way we do it. So I think that answered the question, but happy to expand on any which part?

Meb: Yeah, I mean, look, listeners, again, email Tim and Wes and crew, not me, but there’s a lot of ways to do it. There are a lot of different structures that probably end up working. And I think it’s always, of course, evolving, but it’s a lot of fun and there’s a lot of cool ways to go about it. I mean, you guys have been one of the most sort of open, as far as this concept of partnering. I mean, my gosh, you just found someone off Twitter spaces and other places, so good on you guys. Let’s round out the line-up while we’re still talking about the funds. I mean, you got one more you want to pick out? What have we not talked about? MVP, that’s a fun one.

Tim: Yeah, so the two we haven’t really talked about are interestingly both active in name. Now, we manage them very similarly to an index product, quarterly rebalance, somewhat goals-based. And those are, we have a streaming ETF under the ticker SUBZ, and a pro sports ETF under the ticker MVP. And really, they’re active for similar but different reasons. If you’re going to own your own index for a fund, it needs to be more rules-based than if you’re a third party. They just look a lot closer. For both the opportunity around streaming and the opportunity around pro sports, it just made less sense to try and make it super rules-based, where, I think what the SEC wants to see is if you handed this to a third party and told them to run a rebalance, would it look the same as yours? I could say with pretty high confidence for NERD and for BETZ, that’s the case, yes. For SUBZ and MVP, it would have been tough. So, those are active in name. They’re both tackling what we think are really interesting themes. Streaming, I think we’ve been talking about cutting the cord for some time now. And I think that’s an opportunity that will continue. There’s been some challenges in the space.

Meb: What are you using? Have you cut the cord yet? I got, sat down the other night, we had, and Internet service was out. So I was just playing around on DirectTV. And a third of the channels were, like, QVC or something, like, an infomercial, which is astonishing, like, how you pay but can’t really opt out of that. A third were, like, pay per view, or some sort of, like, subscription that you had to upsell. It’s like the worst experience. What are you doing? You got any advice for me? I know a lot of people are trying to do YouTube TV.

Tim: I don’t know if I have advice. I personally get a little frustrated too. I think we’ve maybe almost come too far in the cut the cord model, because now there’s, like, 100 different ways you can go, and you’re missing one channel in one place and not in the other. We did cut the cord. It took us a while. Part of the way they get you is if you want good Wi-Fi, they say, ‘For 10 extra bucks or 20 extra bucks, you can have the TV, too’. And that’s kind of a hard thing to move away from, especially if you’re in… When we were in San Francisco, we only had one choice for internet service providers. And I think if you want to talk about BYTE and some of the kind of opportunities there, like, a lot of the companies in there do have this well-positioned relationship with consumers, where you do need their service. If you want to watch TV, you need Wi-Fi. If you want Wi-Fi, your options are relatively limited. So, personally, we’ve cut the cord. I use Fubo for, like, TV. I’m a big New York Rangers fan though, and I have had several stressful evenings so far this year, where I realized I had channel A, channel B, and channel C, but it’s on channel D tonight, and I can’t watch it. And personally, I think if we could just unbundle everything and I could just buy, like, 30 channels, I would love that trade. If someone out there is trying to figure that out, help me out. I don’t need 90% of this stuff. I really don’t want it. And I would pay a bit of a premium to just pick my channel suite and move on.

Meb: Yeah. Same. I mean, sports is the big one for me. So, kind of is hardest to replicate. MVP is funny because, like, that’s a cool strategy. It’s one of y’all’s smaller funds. Every time I hear MVP, it reminds me of… It’s funny, like, there’s been a moment for the past… I don’t know when the inflection point was. Maybe 20 years ago or post-financial crisis, but for the better part of history, I feel like most athletes and celebrities, when they got involved investing, it was almost, like, a contrary signal. When you heard about someone, like, back in the day doing something, you’re like, ‘Oh, God. Run away. Like, what a terrible idea’. This reminds me of during the Internet bubble, MVP was a company started by, I think it was Jordan, Gretzky, and Elway. And it went flaming to zero. But it was kind of like if you just put three big names and slapped the word ‘crypto’ on it today. But at some point, that signal flipped from run away to run towards. And now, in the past, I don’t know, certainly in the last 10 years, you have almost every time I see an interesting start-up on the cap tables, like Kevin Durant, Nas, on and on and on, Ashton Kutcher was probably one of the most famous early on the celebrity side, I think it’s great. But, just, MVP reminds me of that. And you know where I’m going with that. It was a fun trend. You’ve seen this sort of inclusive capitalism, and people understanding the concept of being an owner.

Tim: I agree. I think, looking back as to when it was an anti-signal, like, I wasn’t really so much actively investing then. But it makes sense to me that it’s starting to work. And the reason is, nowadays you can leverage influence a lot more easily than you used to be able to. So, if you’re looking at a top athlete who’s in their prime, who’s on the major channels for whatever sport they’re playing every night, and they invest in an energy drink company, they’re going to be able to give so much visibility across their channels to that company that it can actually be a catalyst for success in a way that I don’t think it was as true 20 years ago. You didn’t have social media, you didn’t have these kind of ways of reaching mass audiences. And to me, I think that’s maybe the biggest piece of why that shift has happened.

And as a result, it’s become desirable if you’re starting a company that has a B2C element, why not go after those big names and get them on the cap table, because they buy you so many eyeballs that you can’t really buy any other way, or not efficiently? I think we’re seeing it a lot in crypto. Tom Brady’s a big FTX guy now and he had a commercial… I think they had one during the Super Bowl, where he’s on the phone with his mom and it’s like, ‘No, use that other one’, or whatever. But anyway, the point is, like, I’m sure that drives signups to something like FTX, or at least visibility. So they now have this more powerful tool. These people have a lot of influence. And one way for them to wield it is to invest and then add value, simply by having the association with their brand. So, it is something I follow. I think it’s really interesting. It does tie a little bit to what we do. Like, if we work with a partner and they have a following for discussing the topic we’re partnering on, that’s going to help us get in front of the right people. It’s an audience that wants to learn more about the Metaverse, or digital infrastructure, or what have you.

Meb: You said you’re a big Rangers fan. Is Dolan still the owner there? I mean, isn’t he, like, one of the most hated owners in sports?

Tim: Yeah. We used to joke that the Rangers were able to do well because Dolan didn’t really care about them. He only cared about the Knicks. And a few years back he started caring about the Rangers, and that was a problem. He’s still there.

Meb: Well, you see the angle I’m getting at here. You ready? MVP gets to be a giant fund. You have Madison Square Garden as one of, like, the top holdings. I think it’s number two, 6% holding. You end up going activist on the Dolans. I think there’s an angle there, listeners. You start marketing the fund as, hey, we’re going to take Dolan out when this gets to $50 billion. So…

Tim: I love that idea. If any kind of affluent Rangers and Knicks fans are listening and you want to get involved, I’m not saying it, but give me a call.

Meb: It wasn’t you guys? Was it? Who was Portnoy getting involved with on the ETF side? That wasn’t you guys, was it?

Tim: Not us. That was BUZZ, B-U-Z-Z, which is a VanEck fund.

Meb: Ahh, it was VanEck?

Tim: Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s a VanEck fund.

Meb: Which is funny, because VanEck is… I feel VanEck. I mean, Jan and that crew, it feels like…I mean, they come from such a traditional, like, bonds, and sort of straight-and-narrow world. He seemed to have gotten quiet on that fund. I don’t know if the SEC was like, ‘Yo, you gotta stop’, or what, but…

Tim: I’m not sure. I will say that VanEck, I mean, look, I try to always either not speak or speak nicely about people in our industry. I actually think VanEck, of all the kind of larger players, they do a really good job of trying to tap into these, like, evolving trends. I think, frankly, when we look at some of the firms that we are maybe aspiring to be, like, VanEck, I think has done a really nice job of evolving over the years. I think Global X is another one. So, I do think… Was I a little surprised to see Portnoy with his press conference, where he had a robot say the word ‘ETF’ every time, so that he technically wasn’t talking about the ETF? Like, that was ridiculous. But, at the same time, I was like, ‘well played’. Like, that’s a nice asset-gathering technique.

Meb: There are a lot of parts of the world where you can take a lot of liberty in marketing advertising. In our world, like, I put Elon Musk and things he says in that category. But in the world of professional asset management, I feel like a lot of people take the Icarus route. And it’s just like, makes my palms sweat watching some of the latitude people will take with some of the rules. So, we try to err on the side of not getting in the crosshairs, but who knows? Anyway, we own a lot of VanEck funds. So, full disclosure there.

Tim: Yeah. And full disclosure as well, we’re working on an index that I think tries to tap into something similar. And I can’t necessarily confirm or deny if there’ll be an ETF to follow, but if you want to do a little digging, I’m sure you’ll find it. That’ll be exciting. It’s something we’re hoping that have updates on into year end here. We’ll be similar in some ways to BUZZ, and very different in others.

Meb: So, as you guys kind of look to the future, I mean, it’s been a banner year, but let’s project out. I mean, what’s on your brain? I’m going to ask two questions. One, what are you guys thinking about? What are the main initiatives? Is it just start cranking out more funds? Is it some strategies and ideas and themes you guys are looking at, particularly excited about?

Tim: So, I think on that, I mean, there’s kind of, I would say three things for our core business. One is more funds here in the U.S. And I think some of those will be Roundhill only. Some will be partnered funds. Some will be a little bit different than thematic. Like I mentioned, we’re working on one that’s kind of a sentiment one. So, more funds in the U.S., and potentially growing the team to more formally start selling at some point, something that, transparently, we are thinking about. Haven’t done it yet. So that’s one. Two is we are working on bringing funds to Europe in a UCITS wrapper. That’s a whole different regime, and we’re learning a lot along the way.

Meb: You guys partnering with somebody? You doing it on your own?

Tim: We have partners in the process. We’re not going the white-label route. We’re going to kind of build it ourselves, where it’s not one-to-one, but essentially the ‘trust equivalent’ over there would be, like, around … vehicle. So it’s been a learning experience, but we do want to get kind of a more global reach, and we think there’s potentially interest for our themes. And then the last thing is kind of tied to that a little bit. But I think that a lot of folks in the traditional asset management space are looking at cryptocurrency, and they’re trying to find a way in. And I think the way in that most people are looking at is having a Bitcoin ETF or something like that, or maybe, like, top 10 by market cap crypto.

I think there’s going to be opportunities to innovate using, kind of, the blockchain technology. I think they might look a little bit, kind of, let’s just say we’re trying to zig when others zag. I think that there are opportunities. We haven’t really honed in on one yet, but finding a way to tap into the excitement in crypto and in the blockchain space, while leaning into what we do here with the ETFs, and with building kind of a community and a brand, kind of one to many. There’s something to do there. We just don’t know yet, and 2022, big goal for me is to figure that out. Those are some objectives.

Meb: I was going to say, that’s pleasantly vague. You ever get nervous? You’re mostly long only, mostly equities. Is the volatility of the markets cause you concern ever? Are you ever thinking on other asset classes outside of the equity space, or anything that is beyond the shores of stocks? Stonks, as you’d call them in 2021?

Tim: We’ve done a few things that are a little bit removed, but the reality is everything we’ve done, and frankly, everything I envision us doing, is going to have some kind of leverage to public equity markets, at least for now. Or, I should say public markets. If we do something in the crypto space, then it’s a different set of markets. But I think for myself, it’s just been a matter of… My Roundhill ownership is probably the majority of my net worth, and it is levered to the markets. So if the markets go down 30%, our ETFs will probably go down 40%. Maybe. Like, who knows. And then we’ll also see outflows, which is no fun. And I think I’ve just, it’s been a exercise in personal growth, just becoming comfortable with that, because I don’t have a good way to hedge it, other than buying SPY puts, and that’s not really my game either. So…

Meb: Simple answer is just don’t look. The private equity model. My favorite is, like, the, talking about sketchy advertising, is, like, the interval funds that claim, like, a 4% volatility because they only value the securities, like, once a year, or whatever it is. I’m just like, that’s… I’m like, how you can say this with a straight face? Whatever.

Tim: Straight face, or with regulatory buy-in. Like, I can’t even respond to tweets mentioning my ticker, and you’re allowed to say you got 4% volatility because you pick a price once a year?

Meb: Yeah, that’s funny. Anything we didn’t cover? We did a lot. We kind of bounced all over the place. Anything else on your brain that’s got you excited, worried, concerned, confused? That’s where I spend most of my time these days, is confused.

Tim: Confused. I spent a good amount of time confused, too. No, I think, look, I think at the end of the day, kind of comes back to your last question. We view what we’re building as sort of a platform for investing that’s going to stick around because of who we engage. The average web traffic for us, I think we have something like 65% is between 18 and 34. I got to imagine that skews pretty low compared to the rest of the ETF industry. So, I think we can handle a downturn in stocks by virtue of the fact that going against that is this growing access, and entering markets at a younger age, which I think is very healthy. A lot of people say, like, you should just kind of put your money with an advisor and not worry about it. I kind of think that, at the end of the day, it’s good for people to start investing. Hopefully, they start with less risky behaviors, or they learn away from those risky behaviors more quickly.

But the reality is, it’s kind of good to know how the sausage is made. And I think there’s a real shift that’s happening, where people are interested, they’re learning. Hopefully, they’re making their mistakes when they have less on the table. If you want to start trading options and you’re 18 years old, and you put 100 bucks in and lose it, that’s a lot better than starting when you’re 35 and you put $15 grand in and lose it. So, there’s no perfect answer to it. But that, to me, is a trend that’s going to be our friend, hopefully, regardless of what the markets decide to do.

Meb: I agree with everything you said. Although they’re mostly want to see how the veggie sausage gets made. That’s the transition now. I just had the Impossible Burger veggie chicken nuggets, listeners. I’m a shareholder, so I’m always promoting Impossible Burger.

Tim: Got it.

Meb: I’m on record. I think it’s a $50 billion company eventually. But the nuggets, my family taste test gave it two thumbs up. I thought they were fine, good, but I’m not a huge chicken nugget person anyway. What’s been your most memorable investment over the years, as you look back, trading forex, and bonds, and now ETFs, and stocks? What comes to mind for you?

Tim: That’s a good question. Most memorable investment. Wow. I mean, I started when I was 16. I think first stock I bought was 3M. And I think it might have been because it was a number starting the name of the company, so it was higher on the list. No, I think, look, the way I think about investing for my personal side, at this point, is I’m not trading it terribly actively. I have some longer-term names that I like. I buy a lot of my own ETFs and other ETFs, because I think that’s a good strategy for me. I think, honestly, if we want to go most memorable investments, it’s probably within the crypto space, and it’s not so much just for the returns, which can be eye-popping if you get the right thing at the right time, but it’s more because by investing in crypto, you kind of get to learn about a new technology. And to me, that’s been really cool. So I think it’s probably, generally speaking, my deep dive into the crypto ecosystem and trying different things within DeFi, and figuring out the difference between the different layer one protocols, and which ones work better and which ones are expensive. And I think that, to me, has probably been, it’s been more recent, but has been a really rewarding activity, and I can’t say everyone should try getting into crypto, but it’s an interesting technology.

Meb: You just outed yourself as the Shiba whale.

Tim: I’ve never bought a dog meme coin. And that has been a horrible trading strategy for me.

Meb: Yeah, like, that should be the only rule, to learn anything, it’s just to buy dog-theme coins, and put them away forever until you have $5 billion. That’s the way it works.

Tim: Yeah. I missed that trade. I think it’s really easy to be skeptical about new stuff. And I think if you’re going to be too skeptical, you’re more likely to miss opportunities than not. So…

Meb: Well, my man, it’s been a blast. Enjoyed seeing y’all’s success. Looking forward to my hat in the mail. Where do people find more info? They want to track what you guys are doing, buy some funds, listen to your prognostications on what’s going on in the world? Where do they go?

Tim: Yeah, sure. No, thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure catching up. I think most everything you’ll want to find is, if you’re on Twitter, we’re @Roundhill. I’m also on there. I’m probably a less interesting follow than the company count, but I’m @MaloneySandwich. And then, look, we’re a pretty publicly out there brand. So most of what you want to find, you find if you start at that Twitter page, roundhillinvestments.com. And we’re a pretty open book. Shoot me a DM if you have questions. Happy to chat.

Meb: And what is the Maloney Sandwich? Is there an actual sandwich, or is that just a nickname, or what?

Tim: No, it’s kind of just, like, something I’ve been using for a while. I don’t even really eat sandwiches much anymore, but it is a goal for me to have a sandwich named after myself.

Meb: What would it be? What’s your go-to? Like, what’s your dream sandwich?

Tim: So, it’s going to be something along the lines of chicken cutlet, bacon, probably some mozzarella cheese, hot sauce, maybe a little bit of mayo, maybe some shredded lettuce.

Meb: If ever there’s been a Northeast sandwich, that’s it. If you tried to order that in Los Angeles, people would just be like, ‘What is this person talking about’?

Tim: Yeah, especially when I say ‘on a hero’.

Meb: Yeah. I was tweeting this morning. I said, ‘What’s your favorite example of inflation, followers, because mine is I had a $18 turkey sandwich last week’. Now, to be fair, the turkey sandwich was delicious, but it was still $18. But again, I live in LA. We’re in the land of $5 gas. All right, well, we’re just veering off into no man’s land now. Tim, thanks so much for joining us today.

Tim: No, I appreciate it. It’s good to be on, and I look forward to hearing the Chas podcast. Hopefully, he had similarly complimentary things to say about us.

Meb: Awesome. Podcast listeners, we’ll post show notes to today’s conversation at mebfaber.com/podcast. If you love the show, if you hate it, shoot us feedback at feedback@themebfabershow.com. We love to read the reviews. Please review us on iTunes and subscribe to the show anywhere good podcasts are found. Thanks for listening, friends, and good investing.

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