Mr. Goodbar, Josh Brown, and What I Didn’t Know

Earlier this past January, I got a LinkedIn connection request from Josh Brown. I assumed it was someone on his team expanding his network and didn’t think much of it. Later that day, our director of research Joe Mareci flagged something: on The Compound and Friends — hosted by Josh Brown and Michael Batnick — they had mentioned The Forgotten Forty — specifically our Uber thesis, which Barron’s had written about. Josh is an Uber bull himself so it caught his attention. Suddenly the LinkedIn request made a lot more sense.

I knew Josh from CNBC and respected him, but I had no idea how he and the team helped build Ritholtz Wealth Management into one of the fastest growing financial advisory firms in the country, or that The Compound and Friends had become one of the biggest finance podcasts out there.

What I did know was that someone I respected had said something nice about our work. So I reached out, thanked him, and offered to send over the full Forgotten Forty report. One thing led to another, and we eventually met at their office — which coincidentally is a block away from mine.

The three of us had a great conversation. Friendly banter, easy back and forth — we talked stocks for a while. Cooper Companies, UniFirst, MSGS. Josh and Michael were kind enough to invite me to be a guest on the show. I said of course.

Then I started doing my homework.

I went back through their recent episodes and realized what an extraordinary franchise the two of them have built together with The Compound. Their conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin, the Tom Lee episode — genuinely great stuff. The more I listened the more I understood why this show has the audience it does.

And somewhere in there I went from “sure, why not” to actually a little nervous.

Which is odd. I’ve been on CNBC. I’ve been on Fox Business. I’ve spoken at investment conferences in front of large audiences. Public speaking doesn’t rattle me.

But this felt different. Maybe because it was going to be a real conversation rather than a performance. No graphics, no countdown clock, no anchor moving to the next segment after ninety seconds. Just smart people talking about stocks for an hour with nowhere to hide.

When I came off the elevator into their office — cool loft space, not what you’d picture — Michael immediately saw me and came out to greet me, offered pizza. I went with a Mr. Goodbar. Josh stopped by before we started and we spent ten minutes talking about our kids and the complete insanity of the college admissions process and AAU basketball. As a podcast host myself I was immediately jealous of the whole operation.

By the time we sat down to record it did not feel like an interview — it felt like talking stocks with two friends who genuinely love this stuff. Not a show that gets 50,000+ listeners an episode. An hour and fifteen minutes literally flew by. I had no idea where the time went. The conversation was fun but the questions were real.

Early in the conversation Josh pushed back on something most value investors get asked eventually:

“Why do value investors buy stocks as they’re falling instead of waiting for sellers to back off?”

My answer was simpler than most people assume. It’s not because we’re contrarians. It’s not because we think we can call the bottom. It’s because we buy slowly — start with a small position, let the thesis develop, and size up as the evidence builds.

The counterintuitive part: the hardest thing in this business isn’t buying a stock that’s falling. It’s buying more of one that’s already started to work. We’re all wired to do the opposite.

We also got into Uber’s autonomous vehicle positioning and why I think the Waymo fear is the wrong framework entirely. We talked about the MSGS spinoff catalyst and why the Dolan Discount is finally closing. Michael, who is a big Knicks fan, seemed excited he will have the opportunity to buy a piece of the Knicks. And we debated whether the Mag 7 selloff looks anything like the Nifty Fifty.

Full episode here:

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Jonathan Boyar

P.S. I’m hosting an online presentation this Tuesday March 31st at 12:00 PM EST going deeper on several of the ideas from the show — including MSGS & Uber. Click here to register.