Tom Dyson – Wisdom Learned Off the Beaten Path

– His trading ideas sometimes seem a little bit wild but he’ll have absolute conviction and for the most part they’ve always turned out really well. He’s one of the best writers that I know. And I want to welcome him to the show. Mr. Tom Dyson thank you so much for co-hosting the show with me today.

– It’s my pleasure Aaron. It’s great to see you. Thanks for having me.

– Sure, of course. So, Tom, I want to get into a little bit of the chaos of the world. So you live in London and you travel the world. You’ve actually been traveling with your kids for years. Now when did you start traveling with your kids and how many countries have you guys visited?

– We started traveling in 2018, so it’s been six. We’re in our seventh year now. We’ve been to, I’m going to guess, 35 or 40 countries.

And when you say countries, these are not mainstream countries. Some of them–

you went to Africa. You’ve been to places where you wouldn’t think that you would actually bring kids there.

– Family destinations… like the Congo.

– Like the Congo.

– And Rwanda. And we never tried to rack up large numbers of countries. We’d rather go to a place and stay there for a longer time. We just spent three months in Argentina. We did four months in India, we did two months in Rwanda, we did a month in Japan. So we prefer that idea of slow travel.

– And let me ask you this, this is not really an investing thing. This is a more worldly living thing and getting a perspective. What would you say are the biggest things that your kids have learned by experiencing cultures? And I mean you’re experiencing deep cultures, you’re not going to Paris and hanging out in tourist areas. What are the things that they’ve really learned that you think are the most valuable from a parent to see?

– Well, I think one thing that’s important is that we’re super lucky. I think on a relative basis looking at the whole world, we live in high luxury, and we’re very wealthy. And so we didn’t want our children to assume that’s the way everyone lived. And so we saw how people live very differently to us back in London, or in Florida, or in the U.S. And things aren’t as clean and manicured, and the cars aren’t as new. And the roads aren’t as safe and you see people who just very generally have far less than we do.

– And so we wanted the kids to appreciate that just to see. I think that’s a big thing. And then to meet people from all over the world to see the different cultures and the different attitudes and the different ways of dressing and the different ways of moving around. And I think that’s all important.

The different foods–

the foods I really–

I don’t know if I don’t have a scientific background for this.

– But we wanted the kids to eat from all the different continents so they would get the strong stomachs to have for immune-system purposes. That kind of thing.

And above all we just had a great time. We have a great time as a family exploring. And I think that’s probably the most important thing is just the memories, the pictures.

– And you guys are very disciplined as well. I know that when it comes to homeschooling on the road, you guys are pretty strict in making sure that have your kids with their hours and meeting all of the criteria that they need.

– There’s no criteria except for what we say.

– Well, that’s what I’m–

but your criteria that you’re setting up it’s not like you’re going to places and they just go play with other kids all day. They’re still learning.

– Well, they sit on their screens and watch the phones. We do let them have screen time and Netflix and things. But also we make them write, and journal, and draw, and talk to people, and we have discussions. I would say my wife particularly is quite strict in making sure that they have well-rounded personalities and characters.

– And it’s great. What I love about this idea Tom is you’re doing the exact opposite of what our politicians worldwide want.

These days they’re the ultimate nanny state, they want to control everything. Everything is fear.

During COVID, you were traveling at the time, I believe. I know you did have to go back to London for your mom, I believe. But for the most part, that was the most fearful time in modern-day history for everybody. And by the way it turns out that it was the flu, even the CDC admitted it recently.

– They literally said, we are going to treat COVID now as if it is the flu. And isn’t it amazing how during those two years the flu literally disappeared. Normally there’s 20 to 30 million deaths annually from it and it literally went to zero. And now we’re back to 20 or 30 million deaths from the flu. And from that travel perspective, where were you at the time and were you technically locked down — or how did you navigate that?

– We were on our way to Argentina. And we were in Nicaragua at Rancho Santa Ana when the news came through that the airlines were going to stop flying. And we just thought we were just going to visit Kate’s parents in Florida for five days and then we’re going to go to Buenos Aires. Well, during those five days, that’s when everything just got locked down and we actually ended up never leaving the U.S. And I’m actually glad about that because the U.S. was a good place to be during the pandemic.

– Florida was a really good place actually.

– Yeah. We bought a camper, we bought a tent that we towed behind our car. And we just took off for six months and stayed away from the big cities. And we barely noticed there was a pandemic. It didn’t affect us at all. We just drove around and camped in campsites and stayed out in the country. And we had a great time.

– Now, that’s great. That’s fantastic. So you just got back from Argentina and obviously they have Milei, and Milei is doing the great libertarian experiment. And this is something that we’ve all dreamed of as libertarians. We’ve always dreamed of having somebody come in and try it. He was able to have the first surplus in 12 years for Argentina, which seemed impossible.

– Took him like a month.

– It took him a month.

“Afuera,” “afuera.” He’s literally getting rid of many departments. Now, what is being that Argentina, and I visited Buenos Aires, I’ve visited Bariloche, and always love visiting. But I’ve always found that the people of Argentina aren’t the happiest because socialism steals your savings.

So if you’re constantly a slave to the state and your currency doesn’t mean anything, work becomes monotonous, and it’s not fun. What would you say is the general consciousness of Argentinians now with Milei?

– I’m sure you have a big portion that hates him because they relied on the government. But there’s also a huge portion that wanted to see this happen. What’s your feeling on that?

– I should qualify my answer with the fact that we didn’t travel all over Argentina. We went to one spot, which basically was the furthest point in Argentina from the capital city. So that might skew my observations a little bit. But I found a lot of people voted for Milei out there. And I think the further you get away from Buenos Aires, the less people rely on the government. So then the more likely you’d find support for someone like Milei because they’re not going to have their subsidies taken away maybe quite so much, or their jobs.

– And a lot of people were really hopeful.

I generally asked everyone I met if they voted for Milei and most people said they did. We did see a couple of protests of people protesting against Milei. And my impression was they all they always looked like hipsters, which I don’t know why that would be. We’d look outside our window and I’d say to my kids, Look, there, see a bunch of socialists walking both, check them out. But anyway, people seemed happy.

– The thing that worries me is that in order to get rid of socialism, you have to have a level of education.

If you don’t study or understand economics at all, you’re probably going to vote for socialism because it makes sense on a very superficial level. Hey, let’s take the rich people’s money and get the government to give it to us.

On a very superficial level, that could make sense to someone. You could see that.

– And it’s not until there’s a level of understanding and education that you see how damaging that will be long term. So just really hope that Milei can get his message out to explain why he’s doing what he’s doing. And so that people will give–

will have the patience to stand behind him even during some tough times and some turbulent moments at the beginning.

– I think that’s a very good point that you bring up. And as you know, the education system created by the elites and the people in control don’t want you to understand economics. They don’t want you to understand finances. They want you to be dependent on the state.

They want the state to tell you what’s good for you. And we see this more and more today than ever. I know in London I’ve been watching London closely and Europe closely. I’ve a political science degree.

– I honestly thought it would be worthless. But looking back on it, it was actually a great education because I never realized how much politics would drive finance.

And now more than ever, and policy, and climate change and all this other garbage that they do. They’re always talking their book, why people don’t invest with RIAs anymore, because they’re just talking their book.

– Same thing is, if you have $10 million at Goldman Sachs and they start recommending things, you become the bag holder. It’s why this newsletter industry exists so that we can have alternate voices. And let’s talk a little bit about London and what your concerns are of what’s happening over there.

– That’s tough. London is progressive. They have the different bathrooms for all the different genders. And they have–

very climate aware.

Everything’s promoting greenness and all this stuff.

But I don’t know, I really don’t get out that much. I’m not going around everywhere looking at everything. I’m more focused inwardly on my work and on my family and on our little bubble. But things don’t–

haven’t changed that much.

– Where we live and around us, people’s values are the same. And I really wouldn’t say things have changed that much.

They’ve put in a bunch of cycle lanes which drive everyone nuts. And they’ve made our neighborhood so that it’s like they’re waging a war on drivers, on motorists. They’ve closed off — our neighborhood has all these roads that come into it, they’ve shut them off and put these cameras up.

– The ULEZ cameras.

– It’s not just the ULEZ, it’s called LTN. What does that stand for? I can’t remember what that acronym stands for, but it’s basically pedestrian friendly towns.

– They’re trying to make it 15-minute cities everywhere. They want to ban cars. That’s what they want to do.

– They want to ban cars. And they put this–

they spent millions on this cycle lane along our main high street and cramped up all the room for the cars. And now there’s just traffic all the time. And the cars just sit there and the bicycle lanes are empty. And I shouldn’t criticize it because we don’t have a car and we bicycle a lot so it actually works for us.

And I like that my neighborhood doesn’t have crazy traffic everywhere because my kids can walk around safely.

– And so it does work for us, but I do see everyone else complains big time about it.

We’re definitely entering the strangest of times we’re entering. Orwellian ideas are becoming reality now. So let’s give the audience something useful. I love to banter with you. But let’s give them some something useful finance related.

I’d like to do a little bit of origin of stories of you. And what were you doing before you found a newsletter world? How did you find the newsletter world? And then we’ll get into some investment ideas.

– I was working in fixed income at Citigroup in the City of London. And I was commuting across the city wearing a suit and tie every day and working on taking an elevator up to the 40th floor or whatever.

And then secretly without my bosses knowing, I was devouring newsletter content. I was reading Bill Bonner’s Daily Reckoning, I was reading Richard Maybury’s Early Warning Report. I was on the subway, I had my Financial Times like this.

– But inside I had the Early Warning Report which was teaching me how to make sure my kids didn’t get drafted in the next nuclear war and all this stuff and the air of respectability. But really I was learning all this really great interesting stuff. So I loved newsletters. So I’ve always–

I’m a seeker of gambling edge. I always have wanted to make money from the markets. Call it a speculator a gambler a trader whatever, I’ve always–

since I was actually a kid when I first opened the back page of the Financial Times and saw all the stock prices there, I have just been totally hooked on how to make a big score.

– And so the newsletter world just suited me really well. I was learning about all these ideas that they never talk about in the mainstream. And the Financial Times never gives you an idea of how to make a big score in the markets. It tells you news stories about–

and once it’s in the paper, well then it’s useless anyway.

So I wrote to Bill and I said I will work for free.

I just want to I just want to work with you guys. I love what you’re doing, and I don’t even need to be paid. So how can we make that happen?

– And it didn’t happen right away but about nine months later, I got a job working on the Daily Reckoning in Baltimore.

– And that’s amazing because Bill Bonner obviously is the OG of OGs when it comes to the newsletter world. And he’s the world’s greatest daily writer for sure.

– He’s brilliant. He’s my favorite writer. I just can’t–

I never lose my admiration and wonder for how he is able to put out such high-quality work every single day. And then run a giant company and travel and do it. Like it makes me feel like I’m really not equipped.

– Well, It is amazing and by the way bonnerprivateresearch.com, anyone can go and add their emails to the daily readers and get Bill’s work. I read Bill’s every day, his newsletter is amazing. I completely agree with you. It’s amazing. He’ll be in Ireland, he’ll be in Argentina, he’ll be in France at one of the Chateaus. He never ever misses a day to have deep research and tying in the current stories, the current financial trends. Even getting into the WEF, the Klaus Schwabs, the conspiracy stuff.

– And it’s really amazing. What I find the most fascinating about Bill Bonner is, he’s never recommended a stock in his life. He’s never recommended an investment ever. He just loves to talk about the macro picture. However he surrounds himself, and his business obviously is recommending investment ideas.

– I’m still working with Bill. I’m the investment director behind the paywall of Bonner Private Research. So all these years later we’re still working together.

– And it’s amazing, and I can’t think of a better mentor. And I’ve met Bill several times. He is like the godfather to me and he’s got so much wisdom. And he doesn’t talk much, but when he speaks, it’s always something very insightful. And he’s got a fantastic laugh. And he is the most libertarian person I’ve ever met by far. He runs his company as with the idea of… he hires someone, and they come in and say, well, what do I do? And he says, well I’m sure glad. I hired you to figure that out.

– And that’s truly how Bill operates, which is truly amazing to me.

His family is amazing, I’ve met a lot of the kids.

That libertarian approach really does work in a lot of ways. It’s just it seems so difficult to detach the ego and allow things to unfold as they should.

It may be naturally in the universe, but I think I’ve learned a lot from him watching him. So let’s get into some of my investment ideas.

– Tom, what’s your worst investment idea you ever had that you were just dead set that this was going to be the thing that was going to give that gambling edge as you said to your subscribers?

– I’ve bustered myself a couple of times. I lost all my savings betting on sports one time. I was way younger, and luckily I didn’t have a lot of savings then, but that hurt.

– But a good lesson by the way. That’s truly something you cannot control at all. That is not even–

we don’t recommend any of that, that’s pure gambling. Was it on soccer or what was it?

– It was cricket.

– Cricket, even better.

– But I’ve bet on all sports.

American football is my favorite probably. Cricket is really fun too because they have very large numbers involved. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched cricket, but you can get scores of 400, 500. And you can also get scores of 100. So because of that big variance, you get some wild swings in the bets.

I’ve played a lot of poker too and I’ve busted out on some poker as well. But I feel like I’ve done well.

– When you say you can’t control it, you can’t control the outcome.

But you can control what swings you take.

I love betting on golf too, tennis. I’ve even bet on basketball.

– So your track record was decent, and you still like to, you still like betting?

– Yeah.

– I’ve done OK. But only using small… I think if you start putting big money there, my edge would go. And I’ve done very well at poker too. I’m a good poker player.

And then investing, I’ve made all the mistakes. I’ve doubled down on a company that–

on a tech stock in ’99. And just the price kept going lower and I kept buying more and doubling down and then the thing went bankrupt, so I lost a bunch there.

– I always like to get the lessons. Would you say that was a convicted emotional doubling down that you had to be right or were you finding–

did you have some bias that you didn’t have–

that you couldn’t see at the time where you wanted to believe that this was going to work so you kept feeding that bias. What was the lesson, you learned from that?

– I thought that if I liked it at 10 and then it went to seven then I must like it even more.

And this is when I was in my early 20s. What I didn’t realize was that it’s easy to be wrong.

And you have to check the ego and cover. And now I always cut my losses and I let my profits run, and it sounds so easy. It’s difficult, but I will never average down anymore. I’m such an aggressive loss cutter now.

– Let’s get into that a little bit because I think our subscribers do struggle with that. We always recommend actually at Porter & Co., we have a 1-5 risk scale for each of our recommendations.

But it’s always the stories that people fall in love with. And usually it’s the most risky things. And even though we’ll say you should never put more than say 1% or 2% of your total investment portfolio into something, inevitably you’ll have somebody put 10, 15 20%, and they’ll cherry pick.

– So we say, buy all of them because not all of them are going to work out. Have a trailing stop, those are good ideas. But most people do fail at that. What is your personal investing advice for your subscribers? Do you recommend any type of percentage into each position with a trailing stop. What’s your advice there? We do all that stuff.

No surprise because I’ve honed my investment style working with Steve Sjuggerud and working with Porter. So I use trailing-stop losses, I use a basket approach where you keep 3% maximum into each idea.

– Or if something’s a little more risky, you have a little smaller percentage. Or if it’s less risky then you can have a slightly bigger position. But you always want to make so your maximum potential loss is a certain amount. You just don’t want to be losing 1% or 2% or 3% of your portfolio in an idea. Because you will make mistakes. There’s a lot of randomness involved.

It’s funny, I’m very conservative. But at the same time I’m also extremely aggressive too when I get an idea.

– And there’s been a few times when I have just put my entire savings into one idea.

– I know you have done that. So give an example of when you’ve done that in the past. Because I think once again I say that you’re one of the most convicted people that I know that when you get an idea that you really believe, you go for it.

– I’ve done it twice with gold. And most recently in 2018, right before we went traveling I liquidated every single thing we had and bought gold with it.

– So what was the price roughly with gold? Obviously, you’ve done well. I’m trying to think in 2018.

– 1,200.

– Amazing. That was an amazing trade.

We’re hitting all-time highs right now. And obviously this couldn’t be a better gold environment for the story of inflation, of wars, of chaos, et cetera. And it looks like gold is finally going to have its time.

I think the big trade obviously would be a silver moon shot, the gold to silver ratio is so ridiculously out of whack. I actually have a lot of silver myself.

– I do too.

– Also and I like physical silver as well for, just in case of the shift and living in Medellin, Colombia, as you know.

I’ve got a lot of junk silver as well. So in case I need to trade with it, it’s a great resource, a great asset to have. And I think that silver has a great opportunity. So that’s been a big one. I do know that you do like equities as well.

But are you focused on more commodity-related equities and also capital efficient equities? What are your favorite right now commodities?

– My current position is extreme defensiveness. I just think we’re in a–

I guess you could call me a doomer.

I am like a–

I feel like we’re at the crest of a gigantic credit bubble and there has to be a deflation. Or maybe let’s–

Bill calls it elegantly The Big Loss. I think there’s a big loss coming and I’m not sure if it’s going to be because the price of everything falls or because they let the dollar go and inflate everything, nominally, and not really.

– So I am like, I’m a turtle with my head under my shell, a bunch of cash and a bunch of precious metals. And then the equities are oil tankers and tankers in general. Because tankers I just see as another form of gold. They’re just a bunch of–

they’re just steel that floats.

That you can’t make more of them easily without burning a lot of energy and transporting a lot of iron ore to China and Japan. And they don’t want to make oil tankers because the environmental regulations.

– It’s to me, and then they produce great dividends. So it’s almost like gold that works for you.

And so basically it’s just another form of being very defensive owning shipping and then oil too and energy in general, uranium and oil. I just feel like–

so I’m hedged again lot of cash and then a lot of real assets. And I don’t like holding cash and every morning I wake up thinking, man, I don’t own enough gold, I don’t own enough silver, I don’t own enough ships.

– But then I think to myself: It never happens like you think. And right now, you’ve got inflation is still much higher than what the Fed wanted. And I thought the Fed would be a little tougher. I really did believe that they were serious about fighting inflation. But then you see everything’s popping and inflation isn’t coming down. And then the Fed says we’re cutting rates three times this year. You just think, man, those guys are spineless.

– Or actually what you realize is, their secret agenda is really to support the government’s ability to keep borrowing tons of money and keep interest rates low. So it really looks like they’re letting go and the obvious trade is to buy gold and silver and oil and commodities. But I’m–

always got that little voice in the back of my head saying, Danger, danger. It’s never what you expect, it’s going to be the opposite.

– So I just make sure I have both. I got a bunch of cash and a bunch of real assets, and that way I feel like I’m covered either way. I’m like a poker player who’s just chilling.

I’m not trying to go all in, haven’t got good cards right now. But I’m trying to win a couple pots here and there. And mostly nursing my stack ready to go all in when I see a really good opportunity. But right now I don’t see that.

– And Porter has always had this belief that it’s always going to be hyperinflation, that there’s no choice because as you know central banks more than anything hate deflation. Deflation is their enemy. That’s the one thing that–

I think it’s ridiculous.

– Deflation implies a chaotic collapse of the entire financial system.

And obviously no one wants that, you can’t have that. That means millions of unemployed, millions of busted banks, millions of busted businesses. It would be a nightmare scenario. But that’s what–

and of course they will do anything. Whatever it takes, that’s the word, that’s the phrase. They will do anything to avoid that. My fear is that the more they do whatever it takes, it’ll cause a revolt in the bond market to the point that the pain gets so bad.

– They will actually have to choose to actually be responsible and cause that collapse. So that’s what tempers my–

otherwise you just go all in with gold and energy and done. But there’s a part of me that really worries that they will be prevented from whatever it takes.

– My ultimate end goal for them, I believe that this time actually is different. And what I mean by different is allowing the entire system to collapse when they have the CBDCs ready to roll out.

I think their ultimate goal is to adopt the China model and to get people on a social credit score system and tie their money to it. And then they can do the carbon tax, and then they can see what you spend.

– And then if you have any… obviously if you have… if you’re anti the government on your social media, that creates this social credit score and they can turn it off and turn it on. They’ve been talking about UBIs for a long time, AI wiping out the majority of jobs. I think these things are a little further away than their dreams and hopes are of absolute enslavement of humanity, thank goodness.

– So I think that does create problems for them. And the biggest problem, Tom, and you see it, it’s the great awakening, they want this great reset. The great reset is the 15-minute cities and ultimate control. Well, in the United States you have carmakers now completely abandoning the idea of EV cars because they’re not being adopted at all. You’ve got people adopting hybrid cars but people want the combustible engine.

– Other than the Tesla, people don’t want EVS in the United States. That’s going to blow up in their face. Plus they never talk about the consequences of actually mining all of these rare Earth elements and how bad that is for the environment. And then how are you going to actually recycle or get rid of these lithium batteries and all that? Wou can’t. Just the same way you can’t with solar panels, the same way they can’t dispose of wind you know wind farms.

– Everything that they do is inversion. And they’re just a bunch of sociopath, psychopath liars in my opinion.

– Talking about those windmills, I hate those windmills.

– Hate them.

– We were in Spain, and the Spain has been a big builder of–

we saw the windmills everywhere. And it was a windy day, a really stiff breeze. And there was windmills all around us. And only 25% of them were spinning and the other 75% were still.

And I was like, what is up with this and I asked a local guy who was a mayor of his little village. And he said, it’s very simple those windmills that are running are already providing enough electricity.

– They don’t want to provide more electricity because then they can’t charge high prices for it.

– It’s a grift.

– So they press the button to turn off a bunch of the windmills on windy days. It’s a total grift, yeah. So I hate those windmills.

– Totally, and by the way you can’t even argue for climate anything because it kills more birds, and exotic birds, and birds that are going extinct. But of course they never talk about that stuff. And there’s so much copper required for these windmills.

– And plastic and oil.

– They’re dumb.

– But again, this is the ultimate grift. So Tom, I know that you’ve got to catch your flight and I don’t want to hold you too long.

I really do look forward… I’ve got my 50th birthday coming up in June. And myself, you, Jamison, and Porter, we’re going to go to North, Ireland. And it’s my first trip to Ireland to play golf over there. And I can’t wait to get after it with you.

– Me too, I can’t wait to. You’re going to love it. For golf nuts, it’s the best.

– I just need to start practicing in some windy and cold and rainy area, because those are things that in the United States we’re actually not used to. But I’m going to have to learn really quickly how to hit the ball low and hit the bump and run. And you’ll have an advantage on me, buddy, I think you’ll have an advantage for maybe one or two days. But I’ll do my best to make up for it.

– You’re a much better golfer than I am. I can’t compete unless you give me a few strokes.

– Well, we’ll figure it all out there. I’m sure we’ll have some friendly wagers. And again to read Tom’s research, go to bonnerprivateresearch.com. Tom, it’s so great to see you, my friend. And we look forward to having you on in the future when Porter is back. I know that he’s a big fan of you and all of your writings and your investment ideas.

– Thanks, Aaron. It’s great to see you, great to be here.

Your podcast is excellent. I love podcasts, I listen to a lot of podcasts a lot.

And the Black Label Podcast, I’m a big fan, I listen to it as soon as I see it pop up on my app. And you guys are doing a great job.

– Awesome, Tom. Thank you so much. We really appreciate the kind words, and we’ll see you later.

– All right.

– All right. Well, thank you guys for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much to Tom Dyson for filling in.

I find Tom fascinating. Tom is one of the greatest human beings that I know as well. And I know you’ll enjoy reading his research. We always love feedback of course, and we read it all. We don’t always get back to everybody. But you can send it to [email protected].

That’s [email protected].

And next time, we’ll have Porter back. We’ve got a great guest. And as always, we appreciate all of our subscribers and all of our listeners. And we’ll see you guys soon.

– Thank you for listening to the Porter & Co. Black Label Podcast with your hosts Porter Stansberry and Aaron Brabham. We’ll see you soon.

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