The Grant Williams Podcast Ep. 133 - Ian Cassel

Ian Cassel, founder of MicroCapClub and author of Stock Picker, joins me for a fascinating conversation about investing, conviction and the advantages that can still exist for individuals willing to venture into the neglected corners of public markets. Ian’s journey began with a $20,000 family gift that he turned into $120,000 during the dot-com bubble before promptly losing 90% of it when the bubble burst—an experience which, rather than driving him away from markets, made him determined to understand what he’d got wrong. We talk about the chance investment in XM Satellite Radio that introduced him to the power of meeting management teams face-to-face, why micro-caps offer individual investors opportunities that simply aren’t available to large institutions, and the crucial difference between believing in an investment and developing genuine conviction through doing more work than everybody else. Ian also talks candidly about the things that have “chased” him throughout his life—from proving doubters wrong when he was younger to family, legacy and the growing awareness of the scarcity of time—and the lessons his mentor Skip taught him about concentration, communication and earning the attention of people from whom you want to learn. Along the way, we discuss Monster Beverage, XPEL, insider selling and some decidedly unconventional due diligence, as Ian explains why the greatest investment opportunities often look anything but obvious at the beginning—and why the beautiful long-term charts we admire afterwards conceal just how difficult those companies were to own while the story was actually unfolding.   Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, Kaos Theory, Shifts Happen and The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper and Silver Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com.  Copper Tier subscribers get access to all podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm… 

On this episode of The End Game, Bill Fleckenstein and I welcome Mike Green for a fascinating conversation about a force that has quietly become one of the most important drivers of modern financial markets: passive investing. Mike argues that ETFs, mutual funds, target-date funds and systematic strategies increasingly function as liquidity-concentration mechanisms, mechanically directing capital into securities with little regard for price, valuation or fundamentals—and, in doing so, changing the behaviour of the markets themselves. We discuss the work behind his new firm, Tier1 Alpha Asset Management, which attempts to identify the distinctive “signature” left by these flows and use that information to construct portfolios capable of responding more intelligently to incoming liquidity. Mike walks us through some extraordinary examples of the distortions this process can create, including the role leveraged semiconductor ETFs such as SOXL have played in individual stocks and even the composition of the S&P 500, before turning to the bond market, where he believes passive investing is creating similarly important—and potentially exploitable—anomalies. The crucial question is where all this ultimately leads. Mike believes passive’s share is still growing and that we may be only a year or two away from a considerably more unstable phase, making it increasingly important to understand not what investors think should happen, but who is actually buying, why they are buying and what those mechanical flows are doing to prices.   Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, Kaos Theory, Shifts Happen and The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper and Silver Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com.  Copper Tier subscribers get access to all podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm… 

In this episode of The Grant Williams Podcast, I welcome back Jared Dillian for a fascinating conversation about his terrific new book, The Awesome Portfolio, and a deceptively simple question: what should an investment portfolio actually be designed to achieve? Jared argues that too many investors optimise for maximum returns while paying insufficient attention to volatility, drawdowns and, crucially, their own ability to withstand losses when markets turn against them. His alternative is strikingly straightforward—a 20/20/20/20/20 allocation across stocks, bonds, gold, cash and real estate, designed to capture much of the long-term return available from equities while producing a considerably smoother journey. From there, we explore FOMO, concentration, the reluctance to take profits, the importance of creating a “life hedge” between your investments and your source of income, and why the best portfolio may ultimately be the one that allows you to spend the least amount of time worrying about it.   Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, Kaos Theory, Shifts Happen and The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper and Silver Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com.  Copper Tier subscribers get access to all podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm… 

In this episode of The Grant Williams Podcast, I welcome back Andrew McDermott of Mission Value Partners for a fascinating reassessment of one of the world’s most misunderstood economies. While many investors remain focused on Japan’s currency, bond market, and decades of sluggish growth, Andrew argues that these headline narratives obscure a far more important story: Japan remains one of the world’s indispensable industrial powers. Together, we explore how Japanese companies quietly embedded themselves deep within global supply chains after the trade tensions of the 1980s and 1990s, becoming world leaders in advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, robotics, defence systems, machine tools, and precision engineering. The discussion also examines the strategic consequences of a weaker yen, Japan’s evolving relationship with the United States, and why the country’s greatest investment opportunities may lie not in broad market indices but in the globally competitive industrial businesses that continue to underpin much of the modern economy.   Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, Kaos Theory, Shifts Happen and The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper and Silver Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com.  Copper Tier subscribers get access to all podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm… 

In this episode of The Grant Williams Podcast, I welcome back Gerard Minack back for a fascinating discussion about one of the most consequential questions facing investors today: whether AI represents a durable investment opportunity or an extraordinary technology surrounded by an increasingly fragile earnings boom. Gerard makes an important distinction between an earnings bubble and a valuation bubble, arguing that the extraordinary profits currently being generated by the companies supplying the AI buildout are real, but may prove far less sustainable than markets expect as Chinese competition intensifies, customers become increasingly price-sensitive, and margins inevitably come under pressure. From there, our conversation broadens into what happens if the AI trade cracks, why that needn’t necessarily produce a US recession, and where capital might flow next. Gerard’s answer leads to a compelling discussion of Japan, where improving corporate behaviour, a cheap currency, strengthening domestic fundamentals and the potential for enormous repatriation flows offer an intriguing alternative to both an expensive US market and a Chinese economy still struggling with the consequences of chronic overinvestment.   Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, Kaos Theory, Shifts Happen and The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper and Silver Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com.  Copper Tier subscribers get access to all podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm… 

In this episode of The Grant Williams Podcast, I welcome Marvin Barth of Thematic Markets back for a characteristically wide-ranging conversation about central banking, fiscal sustainability, and the intellectual frameworks underpinning modern monetary policy. Beginning with our shared admiration for the work of our mutual friend Dave Dredge at Convex Strategies, we examine the dangers of a policymaking establishment built around models that consistently underestimate fat tails, volatility clustering, and the messy realities of financial markets. That leads naturally to newly appointed Fed chair Kevin Warsh and the fascinating question of whether his emphasis on epistemic humility, accountability, and framework-based policymaking represents a genuine assault on decades of central-bank orthodoxy. From Warsh’s task forces and the conspicuous absence of mainstream Neo-Keynesian economists to America’s deteriorating fiscal position, term premia, Japan’s changing monetary regime, and the possibility that the next sovereign crisis begins outside the United States, this is a thoughtful exploration of whether the world’s most important central bank may finally be preparing to rethink the way it thinks.   Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, Kaos Theory, Shifts Happen and The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper and Silver Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com.  Copper Tier subscribers get access to all podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm… 

In this episode of The Grant Williams Podcast, I welcome back Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital for a thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion built around Brent’s latest piece, The Band, and the evolution of his long-standing dollar thesis. What begins as an exploration of a simple framework for understanding the limits of dollar strength and weakness quickly expands into a deeper examination of the global monetary system and the unique role the dollar continues to play within it. Brent explains why dollar credit remains the lifeblood of global finance, how excessive moves in either direction create stress throughout the system, and why understanding those dynamics is essential for interpreting everything from emerging-market crises to sovereign debt, capital flows, and geopolitics. Along the way, we also explore how recent geopolitical events have altered global incentives, the growing tension between economic efficiency and national security, and what the next chapter of the international monetary order might look like. Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, Kaos Theory, Shifts Happen and The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper, Silver and Gold Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com.  Copper Tier subscribers get access to all podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm… Gold Tier subscribers have access to my new series of in-depth video conversations, About Time. Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, Kaos Theory, Shifts Happen and The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper and Silver Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com.  Copper Tier subscribers get access to all podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm… 

In this episode of The Grant Williams Podcast, I welcome my dear friend Rick Rule into the studio for a wide-ranging discussion about commodities, capital allocation, and the kind of opportunities that emerge when patience meets deep industry knowledge. Drawing on decades of experience in the resource sector, Rick explains why he believes the fundamental case for commodities remains compelling despite years of investor neglect. From copper and oil to inflation, monetary instability, and the lessons of previous commodity cycles, our conversation explores the forces driving supply shortages and why many investors continue to underestimate how difficult and time-consuming it is to bring new production online. Along the way, Rick also shares his thoughts on speculation, risk management, and the importance of understanding not just what you own, but why you own it. Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, Kaos Theory, Shifts Happen and The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper and Silver Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com. Copper Tier subscribers get access to all podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm…

In this episode of The Grant Williams Podcast, I’m joined by author Dominic Frisby for a conversation that is equal parts monetary history, philosophy, and comedy. Best known to many as a comedian, writer, and commentator, Dominic brings a rare ability to explain complex financial ideas with clarity, humour, and perspective. The discussion traces his journey from trying to finance a West End musical to becoming one of the most recognisable voices in the world of gold and sound money. Along the way, we explore why gold continues to exert such a powerful hold over the human imagination, what its enduring appeal reveals about the nature of money itself, and why the debate over gold remains as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago. Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, Kaos Theory, Shifts Happen and The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper and Silver Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com. Copper Tier subscribers get access to all podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm…

In this episode of The Grant Williams Podcast, Brendan Ballou returns for a fascinating and deeply important conversation about the rise of forced arbitration and the quiet transformation of the American legal system. Brendan explains how what began as a narrow mechanism for resolving commercial disputes has evolved into a vast private justice system that increasingly shields corporations from public accountability. Through examples ranging from hidden cellphone fees to wrongful-death cases, the discussion explores how decades of court decisions have steadily weakened consumers’ and workers’ ability to challenge powerful institutions—particularly when harms are individually small but collectively enormous. Along the way, he lays out why this matters far beyond the courtroom, touching on incentives, transparency, corporate power, and the broader erosion of trust in public institutions. Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, Kaos Theory, Shifts Happen and The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper and Silver Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com. Copper Tier subscribers get access to all podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm…