Steven Kiel - Arquitos Capital

Can a military background arm you for better investing? When analyzing stocks you have to plan for a range of potential outcomes, manage risk and understand that things don’t always work out as planned. Almost like planning for battle.

Steven Kiel is the president and chief investment officer for Arquitos Capital Management, a firm he founded in 2009. Steven is also the chairman of Enterprise Diversified, Inc., a publicly traded alternative asset manager. He served as a judge advocate in the Army Reserves and is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, retiring in 2021 with the rank of Major. Prior to launching Arquitos Capital Management, Steven was an attorney in private practice.

“Steven Kiel is attracted to companies with little debt and conservative balance sheets. We only accept investors who share our long-term time horizon and who understand that volatility is an opportunity for the portfolio, not a risk. And we understand that successful investing and risk management is overwhelmingly a psychological exercise where self-awareness, intellectual honesty, and an understanding of and interest in avoiding biases is required.”

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Phil Muscatello (0s):

Hi, and welcome back to Stocks for Beginners. I'm Phil Muscatello. Today, I'm pleased to welcome someone who believes that successful investing and risk management is overwhelmingly a psychological exercise where self-awareness intellectual honesty and an understanding of, and interest in avoiding biases is required. That's a mouthful Steve. Steven Kiel runs Arquitos a hedge fund that invests in a small number of unique companies with little debt and conservative balance sheets. 

Steven Kiel (29s):

Hello, Steve, Hi Phil, it's great to be here with you. Thank you for having me. Thanks 

Phil Muscatello (33s):

For coming on. So tell us about your background. You were in the military and about the transition to now running a hedge fund. 

Steven Kiel (41s):

Yeah, so I have a little bit of a unique background. I think I was in the military just retired earlier this year, actually almost 21 years. I was in the army reserves and had a number of active duty years as well, including a deployment back about 15 years ago. And, you know, I will say you would not think right off the bat that military experience has a direct correlation to kind of stock picking and research, but, you know, it turns out I actually kind of, kind of does, especially on the risk management side, because as you're looking at different companies and you're analyzing them both qualitatively and quantitatively, you know, it helps to kind of have a whole range of potential outcomes and understand that things don't always work out as planned. 

Steven Kiel (1m 25s):

And so that experience has helped to prevent a few situations that, you know, made it might have otherwise not been able to avoid it, help to avoid some pitfalls, so to speak. And in some of those companies, they have a few other industries or that I worked in as well before launching the fund. I was a lawyer also, and also worked in public policy for about seven years in Washington DC. So, you know, I think each of those jobs brought a nice perspective to, you know, kind of the analysis side. 

Phil Muscatello (1m 56s):

Yeah. And I guess it's also, I've had a couple of fund managers as guests and they've spoken about Sun Tzu's art of war and the game planning that's involved in that is very useful in terms of thinking about planning for approaching the stock, man. Okay. 

Steven Kiel (2m 11s):

Yeah, absolutely. I'd agree with that because there's a lot of game theory involved there too, because ultimately you're arbitraging perception from reality and the perception is the stock price. And the reality is your view of, you know, what a company might be worth. So it's an interesting exercise there. I think that's a good analogy. 

Phil Muscatello (2m 30s):

So what you're trying to do is to find out, I guess, the stories that make sense. I was speaking with a friend recently and they were talking about looking at the story and then going and having looked at the numbers as well. Is that sort of what you're doing or how do you approach looking at a company? 

Steven Kiel (2m 45s):

Yeah, I think you have to give a lot of credit to the qualitative side, the numbers. Look, you have to understand how to read the financial statements and you have to have a view on that, but ultimately you're looking for companies that have, you know, I degree of alignment with you as the outside passive shareholder. And so that requires an analysis of the management, their view, their incentives, their goals, what they've accomplished previously and how strong the industry is, not just the company itself, but certain industries can support a number of competitors there with high margins. So the qualitative approach, I think is key. 

Steven Kiel (3m 25s):

And, you know, whether you start with that or the numbers, depending on whatever your process might be, I skew extremely heavily on the qualitative analysis when, when determining whether to buy and own a stock and what amount to allocate it, 

Phil Muscatello (3m 39s):

That's an interesting piece of jargon. And I always like explaining the jargon. Qualitative means you're looking at the story I'm assuming. And the quantitative is looking at the numbers. Is that a fair assessment of what you're saying? 

Steven Kiel (3m 50s):

So when I talk about quantitative, I think about the financial statements. So you're kind of doing an analysis of where they're at currently, where they might be in the future. You're making some maybe realistic projections and ranges from that, given their past experience. But then again, the qualitative side, when you're analyzing the actual operations of the business, the things beyond the numbers that helps to inform both whether the numbers are predictable or not, what the variables are and how much confidence you can have, you know, owning the company over the longterm, 

Phil Muscatello (4m 24s):

You focus mainly on companies at the smaller end of the market. What's your definition of a smaller company? 

Steven Kiel (4m 31s):

Well, that's a good question. And you know, and the, the size small has gotten much bigger over time. The S&P500 keeps growing Yeah keeps growing, 

Phil Muscatello (4m 40s):

Sorry, we're not even talking about the 500 we're talking about way out the other end aren't we 

Steven Kiel (4m 43s):

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the definition of small cap now is 2 billion market cap. And below something along those lines, you know, there's a big sweet spot though, around the $500 million range. And you can go a little bit smaller too, if you can really understand the business, but when the companies are getting smaller than that, then it really depends on the leadership itself. And sometimes it really depends on one or two key members there. So there's less infrastructure, so to speak at those companies. And so, you know, to de-risk yourself, sometimes you want to go a little bit bigger there where, you know, companies are, you know, whether the $500 million market cap range, that's the things that I like to look at. 

Steven Kiel (5m 23s):

I mean, I'll go anywhere. I do own some larger companies I do on some much smaller companies as well. And I own a number of different instruments such as warrants and options and things like that. But if you can find a company that's growing very fast, that has a lot of predictability, not a lot of variables high in increasing margins, great balance sheet. You know, if you're in the $500 million range, you've got a long runway ahead of you. 

Phil Muscatello (5m 47s):

I also, I guess that you're not competing against other analysts who I may be concentrating at the larger end of the market. 

Steven Kiel (5m 54s):

Yeah. Great point. You know, where can you find a competitive advantage right. Relative to other investors? And if you are an individual investor or you're a smaller fund, and, you know, you're sophisticated enough to understand these companies and analyze them. Well, you're just not going to have those large number of analysts looking at companies of that size. And that gives you an advantage because there tends to be more of a disconnect between, you know, the stock price and the underlying value of the company at that size. 

Phil Muscatello (6m 24s):

I've heard you mentioned in another podcast that you're looking for companies in a special situation. Can you give us an example to illustrate that process? 

Steven Kiel (6m 32s):

Yeah. Specialist situation is really something specific to the company itself. So there's a great book. Joel Greenblatt road called You Can be a Stock Market Genius, and that's kind of the Bible of special situation investing. And he gives a number of different examples and walks through how to look for these different types of companies and different types of situations. An example might be an activist being involved. It might be a divestiture, a spinoff, you know, it might be a big tender offer, might be a rights offering a number of different things that are specific to the company. They generally have a catalyst or a specific time period in mind. You know, so something like that for me, is interesting to look at and I might decide to own the company after that event happens, depending on the circumstances. 

Steven Kiel (7m 20s):

But sometimes, you know, you need to find the times when this happens, there is a mispricing, or there can be a mispricing there during that special situation or that event, and there's fertile hunting ground there. 

Phil Muscatello (7m 32s):

So if you've got a specific example of a stock that you've been through with this process, 

Steven Kiel (7m 36s):

Yeah, there was a recent one, a company called Nam Tai properties. It was a Chinese, property developer domiciled in the British Virgin islands. There was an activist involved from the U S named his own capital. And there was a private placement done, a big stock issuance to a controlling shareholder that helped prevent a special meeting from being called the activist investors sued the company, a one and the private placement that share issuance was reversed. You know, a special meeting was called a and now currently, no, that was on appeal. And any day now, I think you're going to get the result, but a number of different factors there, which was interesting. 

Steven Kiel (8m 19s):

Right. So you had that activist. Yeah. You had the private placement, the share issuance. You had some litigation and you have this kind of special meeting coming up. So there's a number of different areas there where there might be a misunderstanding, 

Phil Muscatello (8m 30s):

Is it an uncertain situation? 

Steven Kiel (8m 32s):

Yeah, and if you're able to have a view on that, you might have an advantage 

Phil Muscatello (8m 37s):

And an activist investor is someone who actually goes in and uses the weight of their numbers in terms of voting intentions, is that what's happening to be able to affect the management of the company. 

Steven Kiel (8m 48s):

Exactly. So in this case, the activist had asked for a special meeting in order to add a slate of directors elected. And so they had a number of directors that they wanted to run at that special meeting, and they probably would have won. And if they took over the board of the company, then that helps them choose the management and potentially direct the direction of the company. 

Phil Muscatello (9m 10s):

So tell us about the bankrupt ice company that you invested in. That's really looking around for a special situation. I'm sure 

Steven Kiel (9m 16s):

That's a special situation for sure. That was an interesting one a number of years ago, but a year or so after I started the fund in 2012, the ice company was in 2013. There's kind of an interesting situation where in north America, there were two primary ice companies, Arctic glacier, and Reddy ice. These two companies tried to merge in 2007 time period, and the merger was rejected by the FTC. So what happened then, unfortunately, you know, the crisis happened and Arctic glacier ended up going into bankruptcy. And in the bankruptcy you could follow along. This was an advantage for kind of the smaller investors who could put things on in size. 

Steven Kiel (9m 57s):

You can go through all the documents, you could see what the potential value of the assets were. And it turns out that the value of the assets were very highly likely to be more than the debt, because there were several bidders for those assets and one bidder that one, it was a private equity company. At some point in time, you could look in the documents and you knew who won and you knew what they bid. So there was value in the stock price and the equity above and beyond after paying the debt holders. So you could ballpark what that value was. And it was all out there. And it was basically a three or four bagger, and it was a four bagger if I remember correctly. And there was about a one or two week time period where he had plenty of time to buy up as much of the stock as you wanted to and get that four bagger, 

Phil Muscatello (10m 43s):

Stock was still trading while it was in a bankrupt situation 

Steven Kiel (10m 46s):

That was trading very long. Yeah. It got up to its true value within a couple months or so. So you had a three, four bagger in a couple of months and you know, all the information is right there. It's just a matter of digging through it and knowing what 

Phil Muscatello (10m 58s):

You're looking at, what's usually known as net asset value. 

Steven Kiel (11m 2s):

Yeah. In that case, there was actually a bid. The assets were put out to bid and a number of different bidders, including several private equity firms made offers. And you knew what those offers were. So, you know, the net asset value itself is a little bit on the edge of that. It would be a situation where, you know, if you were to liquidate the company, for example, that might be one way to look at it. That would be the actual value after the liquidation nav and a couple of other contexts too. You could see it in closed in fund or something like that where it's kind of the current value of the 

Phil Muscatello (11m 37s):

Yep. So I've got a quote here. I think I might've got it from your website, but did the research a couple of weeks ago is a significant volatility in a concentrated portfolio. Can you unpack that phrase and explain it for a stock market beginner? 

Steven Kiel (11m 51s):

Yeah. So when you take a small number of positions, you know, concentrated positions, you're willing to own a relative to whatever your investible income is. And for a fund, you know, it's, whatever the fund value is, what percentage of that are you willing to put into one company? And so that's how concentrated it might be. When I buy into a stock, I like to do enough research to know it very, very well where I'd like to buy at least 10% of an allocation. So at least 10% of the fund would be in one stock as I buy into it. And sometimes I'll go even higher. But with that, with that, you'll get some volatility, which means the stock price could go up and down. As we know, it's not always connected to the value of the underlying business itself. 

Steven Kiel (12m 32s):

And so if you have a small number of companies in your portfolio, and there's a disconnect between the stock price and the underlying value, you could get some sharp changes there. And so for me, from my fund, I've been in existence since 2012. I've had a number of very high years. I had a number of a couple of down years, one down 30% year, but I had some up, you know, 80% years and things like that. So you get a real, real drastic changes and it's not for everyone, you know, and as an individual investor to, you have to be able to withstand those ups and downs, not get overly excited, not get overly pessimistic if it's down. And it's just kind of the nature of it. And if you have a small number of positions, you're going to have that volatility like that, you're going to have those ups and downs and you have to keep that into context. 

Phil Muscatello (13m 17s):

So is this how we refer to investing, being a psychological exercise is holding your nerve part of that? 

Steven Kiel (13m 23s):

Yeah, exactly. And you know, not just with concentrated portfolios, but across the board, you really have to have more of a stable outlook. You know, it's nice when you're making money, but if you get too excited about it and if you treat it kind of, as something a little bit more emotional, you're going to start to make bad decisions. And so ultimately, you know, it's a bit of a math problem. It's a bit of a story, you know, and you're kind of learning, there's some pattern recognition and things like that. And as part of your analysis, and you don't want to kind of treat it as money itself because you know, you're going to start to have a disconnect there between, you know, the stock price itself and the value of the company. 

Steven Kiel (14m 4s):

And if you have a company that you think is worth, say $10, stock price trades at five, and then you have a lot of confidence in that. You're going to make that a decent size position. If nothing changes in the operations and the stock price goes down to two 50, who cares, right? You want to buy more if you can. And if you can't, you ride it out, right? Double-check your analysis, but write it out. And if you get too emotional about it, then you might say, well, I have a 50% drop. Oh no, you know, I'm going to have to sell out or I'm afraid in some way. Or if it starts to affect you psychologically there, then maybe investing is not for you. You know? I mean, you want to, you want to be able to have those downs and the ups too, and, you know, really tie it to your analysis of the value of the company itself and not kind of the stock price itself. 

Steven Kiel (14m 51s):

That's not the driver. It's your analysis that should be the driver. 

Phil Muscatello (14m 54s):

Interesting that you say that, not to think of it as money. That seems like a really key point to make about it. 

Steven Kiel (14m 60s):

People are emotional with money. Everyone is, you know, even portfolio managers are professionals are because you think to yourself, okay, what's my performance fee going to be, how much should I make less or something like that. And you don't want to think about it like that. You want to think about it, you know, as a, okay, the stock is worth this, it trades at this. So this is when I think the time period might happen, you know, and you ballpark it, whatever the case may be, or you own a company and you think, I don't know what the price is or the target price is, but I know it's growing. It's doing well, great management, increasing margin. I think it has a long runway. And you know, that's the way you really want to look at it. If you start looking at it like, oh, Hey, I made this much money on this trade or I made this much money last month. 

Steven Kiel (15m 40s):

I'm great. I'm a good doing really well. Yeah. It's gonna, it's going to screw you up. You're going to start making bad decisions if you view it like that. 

Phil Muscatello (15m 47s):

So how concentrated is your portfolio? 

Steven Kiel (15m 50s):

The top five companies make up about 75% of the portfolio. You'll generally own about 10, 12, 15 companies. But I really do like those top five to be a big, big chunk of the portfolio. 

Phil Muscatello (16m 1s):

Yeah. So these companies have really made it clear to you that you can have a belief in them, in their management as well. Are you talking to managers and managers of the companies all the time? 

Steven Kiel (16m 12s):

Yeah. Generally for that type of thing, not in every case, you know, sometimes it's a decision not to, but generally, especially the smaller companies, you want to make sure you get an understanding of their decision-making. You want to look at documents that are out there through some of the filings there's employment agreements. There's kind of things like the proxy statements you want to look at those, not just the financials, not that's just the 10K and the 10Q. And you might find some nuggets in there that are helpful, but yeah, when you're, when you have a concentrated portfolio like that, you really have to know the company is very, very well to have the confidence, not just to have the understanding of what the value might be, but also have the confidence to, to own it. 

Phil Muscatello (16m 50s):

So what's an sec filing. And how can it help you find companies to invest in? 

Steven Kiel (16m 54s):

Yeah, so, you know, in the United States, the regulatory filings are required for all the publicly traded companies that are required to sec filing companies are called and you'll have the 10K or the annual report. You'll have the 10Q the quarterly report. 8Ks, we'll throw out any kind of special one-time news or other disclosures that are required. But then there are a whole host of other things, you know, the proxy statements, which is the kind of annual meeting notice, which sometimes will have some interesting information in there. Again, you might have some employment agreements, you might have something called an S1 or an S3. If there's a, some special situation thing going on, if they might be issuing shares or registering shares or some case like that, there's a TO, which is a tender offer there, you know, so there's a whole bunch of them on there. 

Steven Kiel (17m 39s):

And it's a good way to really learn about discover new companies and follow along and your current companies. And so I've various alerts set up, you know, from these SEC filings and in order to see what might catch my eye for a different idea, generation. 

Phil Muscatello (17m 57s):

So part of your qualitative analysis is Twitter. Tell us how you use Twitter for finding stock opportunities. 

Steven Kiel (18m 4s):

Yeah, It's funny, you know, there's a lot of opportunity. There's a lot of smart people in Twitter and people share their ideas very freely, but, you know, get what you pay for. But, you know, you can curate your feed with a lot of smart people and people are able to have conversations, ask for feedback. You know, it's good for idea generation. It's good for kind of sometimes there's news flow and you can look up a particular company just by putting in the ticker symbol. You put a dollar sign in front of it and then put the ticker symbol and you'll see what everybody's saying about it. So it's a nice way to interact with other shareholders or people who are analyzing or looking at a company. 

Steven Kiel (18m 44s):

It's a nice way to ask for feedback if you're looking at something and it's a nice way to follow the news as well. 

Phil Muscatello (18m 50s):

I've got to say, people always look at Twitter as being an incredibly toxic place, but the financial side of Twitter or FinTwit. It is incredibly funny. Good natured, helpful. I mean, that's the impression I get. I'm like you I've curated my feed to have a lot of financial people talking. Is that the way you're finding it? 

Steven Kiel (19m 8s):

Yeah. I agree with you. And again, you get what you put into it or you get what you, who you decide to follow. And yeah, it can be toxic at times if you follow people who are toxic you know it's just like in real line, you surround yourself with people who are constantly getting into fights and picking fights and things like that. And, you know, do you want that in your life? But yeah, I generally find the finance community on Twitter to be productive. Like you said, humorous, engaging, helpful kind. So, you know, you're always going to have a bad apple here or there, but you know, if that bad apple has a, it's a good stock idea, it would be worth it though. So anything to find a good idea 

Phil Muscatello (19m 48s):

If you've got any ideas that you've picked up from Twitter that you can share with us, 

Steven Kiel (19m 51s):

Yeah, you know, the name Ty properties, one was one on Twitter. There's a Gattaca Warrants right now. GOED a. They have some warrants and then the stock itself, that's been floating around a lot of conversations on Twitter there as well. And you know, what I do actually is my current holdings and my watch list. I'll just have a list of those tickers and kind of check them once a day or so you can put them in there. I have a saved list and see what kind of news pops up there. So I would do that for your current portfolio, any stocks you're looking at and who knows, sometimes you, you find some interesting conversations there in places you wouldn't otherwise think to look. 

Phil Muscatello (20m 28s):

Yeah, but it's always good to have your ideas, tested as well by other people with a great deal of expertise. 

Steven Kiel (20m 34s):

Yeah. And some of those who'd have no expertise. Also, you know, that's the thing with Twitter, but if you follow some smart people who have interesting backgrounds and who are kind of engaged, if they happen to be interested in the company you're interested in as well. So definitely some good conversations can be had. 

Phil Muscatello (20m 52s):

You've mentioned warrants a couple of times. I didn't think warrants were that well known in the U S I thought it was more of a European thing. 

Steven Kiel (20m 57s):

Yeah. I think there's a lot right now because of these backs, you know, the special purpose acquisition vehicles, where the warrants are attached to them. I was just reading a newsletter a couple of days ago, and it linked to a website website lists all the publicly traded warrants in the U S I think there were 107 of them. And most of them 90 plus were SPAC warrants. But it's interesting to look through those, you know, because most of these warrants are timed and priced five years out. And so they don't get picked up by kind of traditional options pricing. So sometimes there's some mispricing opportunities there, if you really can do the work. 

Phil Muscatello (21m 33s):

Yeah. Well, this is maybe above the heads of some new investors, but they're kind of in the option space, aren't they, warrants are a little bit like options. If people want to find out more about warrants who issues them in the U S 

Steven Kiel (21m 45s):

So the company itself will issue them. And, you know, just to kind of give one example, this Gattaca company that I referenced GOED just recently issued these or listed the warrants. And the reason they did that was because they did a capital raise. They raised money in order to make an acquisition. And they did that at a particular price. I think it was somewhere on $2 and 25 cents, but then everyone who got shares who bought shares at $2, 25 cents also received a warrant and the warrants were freely tradable. So the stock trades and then the warrants started trading as well. And the warrants have a strike price of $2 and 25 cents. So as the stock price has gone up, the warrant price has also gone up, and those are now freely tradable. 

Steven Kiel (22m 33s):

You know, there's a lot of them out there trades just like a stock, but instead of the stock itself and the stock price itself, it gives you this instrument that, you know, has a strike price of $2 and 25 cents. So, you know, if it's going five years out and you have a view on the company itself, let's say it's growing, say it might be worth $10. You know, in the next five years, stock might be at $4 warrant might be at $2. 

Phil Muscatello (22m 57s):

Yeah. A warrant allows you to buy full ownership of the stock, but not at the full price. So it's a form of leverage. It's a debt as well. 

Steven Kiel (23m 4s):

Yeah at a particular price. So in this case, it's $2 and 25 cents. So, you know, if you think the stock price is worth 10 and it currently trades at 4 great, you've got a great return from four to 10, but you could buy the warrants. Right. And the warrants might trade it too. And you're going to make five times your money on that instead of a one and a half times, you know, but there's more risk too. 

Phil Muscatello (23m 22s):

We should warn listeners that there's a great deal, more risk with this. 

Steven Kiel (23m 26s):

And, you know, because the stock price might go down, right. If the stock price goes down to two, the warrants are worthless. So you definitely have to have a view on the company itself, but you have a lot of time to make that view because in this case, the warrants are priced five years out. And so, you know, there's going to be some volatility along the way. There might be some kind of arbitrage opportunities and things like that. Just a lot of ways to take advantage of mispricings during that time period and the warrants and the stock. 

Phil Muscatello (23m 51s):

Yeah. Do you believe that investors need to match their investing style to their personality? 

Steven Kiel (23m 58s):

Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. And you know, for me, that's why I do a concentrated portfolio because I like to dig deep into certain companies and I get a little bit obsessive, maybe about a company or two, and I'll get into that. And not everyone's like that. You know, some people can own maybe 1%, they might own a hundred companies or 50 companies, and it might be more quantitative or whatever the case may be. You know, that's how Ben Graham used to do it. And Walter Schloss and people like that. And then on the other end of the spectrum, Warren buffet, when he ran his hedge fund was very, very concentrated. And so it was Charlie Munger. And so it's whatever works for you and whatever makes you comfortable and to sleep at night essentially. So that's one thing of the personality fits into those allocations and that allocation size percentages that you own. 

Steven Kiel (24m 39s):

And the other part about it is now, what industries are you interested in? What companies are you interested in? Peter Lynch used to invest in companies he knew this was, you know, very famous mutual fund manager in 1980s and had a great track record for a long, long time. And, you know, he would invest in companies that he knew and he liked, and that's worked for a lot of people. You know, it's worked for people who like Tesla, for example, who, people who like apple, it depends on what you're interested in, what your personality is like. And, you know, some people, if you're a more agreeable person, for example, probably going to be hard to buy deep value stocks, you know, because you're going against the grain, you're really a contrarian to buy really out of the favor stocks. 

Steven Kiel (25m 22s):

And, you know, that takes a certain bit of a personality that might make getting along in day-to-day life, a little tougher, but it might be profitable for you. 

Phil Muscatello (25m 32s):

Okay, Stephen. So tell us about Akitas capital. And if listeners are interested in getting in touch, how they can find you and your Twitter handle, obviously 

Steven Kiel (25m 39s):

The Twitter handle. Yeah. So my Twitter handle is my name. It's a Steven with a V a underscore Kiel, K I E L. And the fund is Arquitos Capital. I launched it in 2012. Again, we take concentrated positions and a kind of unique companies, and we have a number of kind of unique things to it Arquitos Capital controls, a small public company called Enterprise Diversified and Enterprise Diversified has an asset manager associated with it too. That is kind of a platform for emerging managers that provides operational services to emerging managers. That's ticker S yte, you know, so we'll, we'll take some concentrated positions in companies like that, but yeah, we've been around nine years or so, you know, done very well, compounded my own money and some friends and family and other investors along the way, and really enjoy doing it and look forward to, you know, kind of having a a another 30 years ahead of us. 

Steven Kiel (26m 29s):

Or so this is something got to do for a lifetime and, you know, for so many individual investors out there, if you're talented and you have a kind of built up a track record and you're obsessed with it, so to speak, that's kind of what I was was. And I spun off from being a lawyer and launched the fund, you know, with my own money, with a small amount of a friends and family money as well. So it's definitely doable. 

Phil Muscatello (26m 51s):

Steven Keel. Thanks very much for joining me today. It was my pleasure, Phil. Thanks. 

Stocks for Beginners is for information and educational purposes only. It isn’t financial advice, and you shouldn’t buy or sell any investments based on what you’ve heard here. Any opinion or commentary is the view of the speaker only not Stocks for Beginners. This podcast doesn’t replace professional advice regarding your personal financial needs, circumstances or current situation.