Talking Billions with Bogumil Baranowski

My guest today is Jared Dillian—former Lehman Brothers index-arbitrage and ETF trader, founder of the 18-year-old professional market letter The Daily Dirtnap, registered CTA, author of seven books, and an unusually multidimensional market thinker whose work joins macro trading, practical personal finance, risk control, writing, mental health, and electronic music.
Today, are we talking about his new book The Awesome Portfolio, a simple, stress-free approach to investing.
Episode Sponsor: Fiscal AI is a modern data terminal that gives investors instant access to twenty years of financials, earnings transcripts, and extensive segment and KPI data—use my link for a two-week free trial plus 15% off: https://fiscal.ai/talkingbillions/Jared unpacks the origin of The Awesome Portfolio — born from testing model portfolios with a subscriber-turned-advisor, later validated by Nick Maggiulli's own optimization research.
Core thesis: "to make people make stupid decisions" is, in Jared's telling, the whole purpose of volatility — Vanguard's own data shows investors rarely capture the returns their funds actually post.
Vanguard's "advisor alpha": simply having someone stop you from trading boosts returns by 3%. But Jared argues even a good advisor can't erase the stress of a 50% drawdown.
The Awesome Portfolio's worst-ever year: down 12%, versus an 89% max drawdown for the S&P since 1929. "Drawdowns affect psychology."
The "life hedge": your job and the market tend to move together, amplifying your life's volatility. The ideal hedge would move opposite — nothing fully does.
Risk of ruin, via a $300M Powerball thought experiment: "wealthy people think about the risk of ruin and middle-class people don't."
Reflexivity: the top 7 stocks make up 35% of the index, so buying the index means buying concentration.
The five 20% slices — stocks, bonds, gold, cash, real estate — rebalanced once a year, deliberately simple.
Why crypto got cut: even a small Bitcoin allocation would dominate investor attention and undercut the whole stress-free premise.
Stress-tested against a literal nuclear war, Jared still can't find a scenario where all five assets fail together.
Closing candor: "Books succeed when they tell people things they already believe" — which is why he expects pushback, not a bestseller.
Podcast Program – Disclosure Statement
Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm’s employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.

My guest today is Professor Paul Johnson, a veteran value investor, long-time Columbia and Fordham professor, and co-author of The Enduring Value of Roger Murray, Pitch the Perfect Investment, and The Gorilla Game. He's taught in the same value investing tradition that runs from Benjamin Graham through Roger Murray, and he brings both a practitioner's and a historian's eye to our conversation today.
02:10 – Origin story: a teenage bet on a gold penny stock turned $250 into $2,500 and hooked Paul on markets with "no physical labor."
08:46 – Debut theory: the '73–'74 crash plus the rise of relative performance permanently reshaped investing after Graham.
10:54 – Buffett's 1991 letter: value and growth investing are "basically the same thing" — the label "value investing" is redundant.
24:54 – Correction for the record: David Dodd, not Murray, taught Security Analysis until 1961.
27:04 – Murray's core contribution: rigor and discipline — illustrated by the Leon Cooperman "400-number table" story.
33:26 – The magnet metaphor: intrinsic value pulls price toward it over time, though price can overshoot or undershoot.
42:28 – Paul pushes back on his own construct: ignoring the future still means betting value stays stable.
47:39 – Bruce Greenwald's addition: sustainable competitive advantage, and the 1997 "Competitive Advantage Period" paper with Mauboussin.
51:53 – Why growth concentrates in mega-caps: scale, internet infrastructure, and the "optionality" to acquire threats early.
58:45 – Framing device: "What if AI is just a normal disruptive technology?" — like electricity or the internal combustion engine.
01:16:14 – "I say the key to investment" — a superior value estimate plus the ability to hold through volatility.
01:17:33 – A Buffett-adjacent friend rode $10K to $1B because he "didn't want to disappoint Warren."

Podcast Program – Disclosure Statement
Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm’s employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.

Bob Robotti, founder and CIO of Robotti & Company, joins Matt Zeigler and Bogumil Baranowski to explain why bottom-up value investing may be entering one of its best opportunity sets in decades. They discuss AI and reindustrialization, inflation and interest rates, passive investing, capital cycles, private equity, long-term ownership, and why today’s neglected industrial businesses may offer opportunities that the market is missing.
I join Matt Zeigler for one more special episode of Excess Returns. I’m excited to share this episode with you—it’s reposted here with permission and blessing from both Matt and Jack. Don’t miss it! And follow their work; links below.
Bob Robotti on X
https://x.com/BobRobotti
Robotti & Company
https://www.robotti.com
Topics covered
How Bob finds misunderstood businesses with latent earnings power

Why his “grassroots macro” process starts with company-level supply and demand

How AI spending is increasing demand for energy, copper, aluminum, cement and other physical assets

Why North America’s natural gas advantage could support a long-term reindustrialization cycle

Why persistent inflation could force higher interest rates and lower valuation multiples

Why no competitive moat is permanent, even for today’s dominant technology companies

How passive investing and shorter time horizons can create opportunities for fundamental stock pickers

Why prolonged downturns can improve industry economics through consolidation and reduced capacity

Why Bob views himself as an active owner rather than an activist investor

Why he is skeptical of today’s private equity model and its expansion into retirement portfolios

The NewMarket investment that taught him the cost of selling a great business too early

Why he thinks individual company research can outperform indexing over the next decade

Learn more about the Excess Returns podcast network:
https://excessreturns.co
No information discussed in this podcast should be construed as investment advice. Securities discussed may be held by the hosts and guests, their firms or their clients.
Podcast Program – Disclosure StatementBlue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm’s employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.
Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives, and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

My guest today is Jan Petke, a dynastic architect and strategic consigliere to sovereign and leading global entrepreneur families, who designs continuity architectures so that power, capital, and culture compound across generations — not just portfolios.
3:00 — Jan traces his path from a McKinsey-spinoff consultancy through private equity (Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s First State Investments) to advising “centi-millionaires” — first-gen tech entrepreneurs with liquidity events over €100 million.
5:25 — Jan rejects “advisor” and “wealth manager” as labels: “wealth has nothing to do with money” (6:14).
7:35 — The shift from “next generation” to “rising generation,” and from financial capital to human and intellectual capital.
11:04 — The “meteor” metaphor: inherited wealth arrives with a weight of responsibility most heirs are unprepared for (12:55).
20:43 — On the shirtsleeves proverb: “This proverb is real and serious, because that is physics” — though every family has “free will” over whether it repeats (21:45).
25:04 — Jan’s own 100 Year Family Project, built with his four children: “my mantra is I eat my own cooking.”
32:25 — Declining birth rates and families transforming into institutions.
38:53 — New “tribal” dynasties forming around purpose, not bloodline. 2,000–5,000 new dynasties expected within a decade — 40% female-led (41:19).
43:51 — Women as an “underestimated” force in the wealth transfer.
50:43 — Bringing elders into governance through an “elder council”: “you can’t Google wisdom” (54:12).
54:51 — The 1,000-year vision — inspired by Hong Kong’s Lee Kum Kee family and echoed across scripture.
58:42 — Why Jan avoids “legacy” in favor of “lineage impact.”
1:03:20 — On success: “if I can inspire someone to do better.”

Podcast Program – Disclosure Statement
Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm’s employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.

Thomas Chua is a friend, an investor, an investing educator, and the founder of Steady Compounding, where he shares lessons from great businesses and great investors with a global audience. He’s also the author of a brand-new book, The Lunch Break Investor, about how busy people can build wealth thoughtfully in roughly an hour a day.
(03:00) Title story: his father pawned his mother’s wedding jewelry; Thomas vows “the lights will never go off again.”
(06:00) Library autobiographies over role models; “failure in itself is nothing to be embarrassed about.”
(08:00) Singapore’s 4-year bond funded university — career freedom traded for $30K to compound.
(11:00) Trader-to-owner shift: prices checked every 15 min, until Buffett’s line on tickers landed.
(15:00) “Forgotten money”: Guy Spier’s dislike of trading; Adam Mead forgetting his own login.
(17:00) Core thesis: “invest to live and not the other way around” — one hour a day.
(20:00) Lynch’s line: “nobody ever wished on their deathbed that they wish they spent more time in the office.”
(24:00) Ronald Reid (janitor, $8M) and Anne Scheiber (IRS auditor, left $22M).
(28:00) A moat as treasure inside a castle worth defending.
(31:00) ROIC and Munger’s “gravity” — a moat’s trajectory beats its size.
(33:00) AI capex wave: Meta’s ad growth vs. debt-heavy new cloud entrants.
(38:00) Red flag: Peloton’s CFO denied a capital raise days before doing one.
(41:00) The “wallet test” for management; Bezos’s “Ouch” letter.
(43:00) Buying in three tranches, letting the business prove itself.
(44:00) Selling as “an admission that I was wrong” — the Lululemon case.
(48:00) One-hour checklist: “why does this business deserve to be bigger five years from now,” plus scanning your card statement for moat clues.
(50:00) Writing Steady Compounding publicly sharpened his thinking, built his audience.
(53:00) The Malacca trip with his grandmother that never happened; Munger’s tuna regret.
(56:00) After 200+ episodes: permission to take the walk, take the trip — you’re safe now.

Podcast Program – Disclosure Statement
Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm’s employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.