No one likes to wait, especially when you live in a fast-paced world. But there’s a man in the UK, Freddie Beckitt, who has aced the art of waiting and turned it into a full-time profession. Popularly known as ‘professional queuer’, Beckitt has been pocketing as much as Rs 16,000 a day, waiting in queue for people in exchange for money. Yes, you heard it right. In a recent conversation with The Sun, Beckitt, who is a historical fiction writer, revealed that he has been working part-time as a professional queuer for the last three years.
Standing and waiting in the lines comes naturally to him, quipped Beckitt, a resident of Fulham, London. Talking about his clients, he revealed that they vary from young busy people to old pensioners. While it’s tough to wait during the winters, in the freezing cold, summers have proven to be quite beneficial for Beckitt.
“I also do seasonal and Christmas shopping queuing, but big events that people know about in advance, is normally when people think to book me in to save them time,” Beckitt said. Talking about a recent job, he said, “I worked eight hours for a job queuing for the V&A’s Christian Dior exhibition for some very well-to-do people around their mid-sixties.” While his clients vary from families to young ones, who don’t like to stand and wait in lines, Beckitt continues to make some additional earnings by waiting in queue for them.
During the conversation, he also revealed that he even advertises his skills on platforms like TaskRabbit. Talking about turning into a professional queuer, he shared, “Unfortunately, I don’t think I can charge any more than £20 an hour and it doesn’t require any skill or even hard work! But it gives me lots of flexibility to earn and fit it about my writing schedule. My friends and family find it very amusing but definitely weren’t surprised.”
The one play that perfectly crystallizes the 1990s Knicks isn’t the famous dunk by John Starks. It’s not the miraculous four-point play by Larry Johnson in 1999. It’s not the picture-perfect baseline jumper from Patrick Ewing, which was responsible for more points than any other shot in those years. As you might guess, offense has nothing to do with it.
The sequence that best sums up those Knicks took place the night of December 30, 1992, in Indianapolis. Pacers center Rik Smits had the ball at the top of the key and passed to a cutting Reggie Miller, who was sprinting into the paint to make the catch. But before Miller could get there, Charles Oakley — who might as well have been made out of tungsten — had planted his feet and lowered a left shoulder that sent the beanpole of a guard flying.
The hit was so jarring that it stunned the officials, who were apparently too dumbfounded to call the obvious foul. They also gave the ball back to the Pacers somehow, despite it clearly ricocheting off Miller’s hands before going out of bounds.
“That play was so physical, the refs had no idea what to do,” Pacers general manager Donnie Walsh says. “Right then, I told myself, ‘This summer, I’m getting two guys just like [Oakley].’ Because players like that would immediately change the makeup of our team.”
Despite referees not whistling the play, league officials called foul the following day, issuing Oakley a $10,000 fine for leveling Miller. “Oakley [stepped] in the way and popped him the way a defensive back pops a receiver after the ball’s already passed,” league disciplinarian Rod Thorn said.
The Knicks were incensed, so much so that team president Dave Checketts reached out to NBA commissioner David Stern directly and threatened to bar Thorn from the Garden after his ruling, saying the league had shown a pattern of bias against New York.
The threat led to a meeting in early January between the Knicks and top league executives to hash things out. Stern and a handful of high-ranking NBA officials lined one side of a conference table at the league’s headquarters, while Checketts, general manager Ernie Grunfeld and Ken Munoz, the team’s general counsel, sat on the other.
Munoz felt uneasy joining them for the session when Grunfeld explained why his presence was needed: The Knicks were going to construct a Hail Mary argument in which they expressed legal concerns with the league’s integrity.
“I said, ‘Look guys: we can’t push this,’” Munoz recalls. “But Ernie wanted to push it. He said we had to get this message across.”
The sitdown went nowhere fast. Almost immediately, the Knicks raised the issue of integrity, which sent expletives flying — first from Stern, then from the Knicks’ side of the table.
“This meeting is over!” Stern, a lawyer by trade, yelled minutes later.
The approach was an abrasive way to try to deal with the league. But on some level, abrasive was all the Knicks knew.
*****
The Knicks were a bit rough around the edges, to put it mildly.
Oakley, a player whose high school coach demanded he play football to develop more physicality on the court, was perhaps the NBA’s roughest player in one of its roughest eras. During that 1992-93 season, he finished with an NBA-high nine flagrant fouls — more than twice as many as the next-closest player, and more than fifteen teams finished with that year.
New York, owners of the NBA’s highest technical-foul total that season with 97, also finished with the most flagrants that year.
To be sure, Pat Riley specifically coached them to have that physical edge. He was someone who had his players watch videos of car crashes and Bighorn sheep violently headbutt each other as a way to motivate them before taking the floor. Just one season earlier, he’d instructed his players to knock Michael Jordan to the floor during a playoff series before ever allowing him an open lane to the basket. And multiple players said Riley threatened to fine any Knick who offered to help up a fallen opponent.
Yet even if New York stepped all the way over the line at times, the Knicks felt the NBA — whose headquarters sat mere blocks from the Garden — scrutinized them more than any other club. They got the impression that everything they did was under a microscope. “The NBA was our biggest season-ticket holder, by far,” Checketts says. “They were in the stands for our games every night, but you knew that wasn’t true for anyone else.”
New York had grown fed up with having its wrist slapped over trivial things, like the league warning the club for starting-lineup introductions running long by 15 to 20 seconds. NBA officials also made a point to chide the Knicks behind the scenes — and threaten fines — for repeatedly showing certain instant-replay sequences on the Jumbotron.
Seeking to spare its officials unnecessary ridicule, the league had limitations on how many times clubs were allowed to loop foul-call sequences on the big screens. But because the Knicks were already annoyed by what they saw as nightly overpolicing, they ignored the rule altogether when they felt an egregious call had taken place.
“There was this red phone we kept courtside in case Ernie or Dave needed to reach the game-ops folks,” says Bobby Goldwater, an executive who oversaw events held at the Garden for almost 25 years. “And if the red phone rang after a controversial call, you knew it was gonna be Ernie saying, ‘Show [the play] again!’ You’d tell him we were gonna get fined, or get in trouble. He didn’t care.”
On the surface, it sounds outlandish to suggest that the NBA would be out to get its biggest market. Yet Checketts felt the league — which came under scrutiny after the controversial 1985 draft lottery allowed New York to land Ewing — often bent over backward to illustrate it wasn’t showing favoritism toward the Knicks.
Regardless of how Stern saw New York, referees certainly had established thoughts about the club, which constantly kept officials on edge due to their physicality.
“Anytime you had the Knicks on your schedule, you’d huddle with your crewmates and say, ‘Oh boy; we’re gonna have to watch this matchup between these two guys to make sure nothing flares up. Oh, and this matchup. And this one, too,’” recalls former official Steve Javie. “Before you know it, there’s a number of guys you have to worry about keeping an eye on.”
But what happens when a ref is so sidetracked that he loses sight of a ticking time bomb?
*****
The basketball alone should have been enough of a storyline on March 23, 1993.
That day, the Knicks, who owned the East’s best record, were visiting the Phoenix Suns, the only NBA club that owned a better mark. But just in case the game itself wasn’t juicy enough, the Phoenix media contingent, doing its best impression of the New York tabloids, added an extra layer.
The Suns had gone 0-4 combined against the Knicks, Bulls and Cavaliers, the teams with the best records in the East. Based on that, a question had emerged: Sure, the club owned the best mark in basketball. But were the high-scoring Suns — led by Charles Barkley, Kevin Johnson and Dan Majerle — tough enough to beat tough clubs?
“Teams hear about how we’re gonna come in and beat [them] up, and then that puts them in a spot where they feel like they have to match that toughness and physicality, and that they have to strike back at us,” Knicks guard Doc Rivers said.
On the last play of the first half, Johnson inexplicably leveled Rivers on the wing, jolting through his upper body and knocking the New York point guard to the ground as the buzzer sounded.
“If I’d seen that — with Johnson initiating the whole thing — the whole thing probably never happens,” says official Ed T. Rush, who was working that game and was widely considered one of the best refs from that era. “That’s what I said to the league office, too, on my game report, which took me seven hours to finish: that this thing was probably my fault.”
After the dirty hit, which went uncalled, Johnson took off for the locker room, as if nothing happened. Rivers popped to his feet and went after Johnson, looking for immediate payback.
Benches cleared, with no fewer than 20 bodies entering the fray. Yet for as ugly as things had gotten, and how much the fans at America West Arena were loving the spectacle, the incident simmered down after about 25 seconds, when Riley began escorting Rivers to the visiting locker room.
But then, Knicks guard Greg Anthony — in street clothes due to a bum ankle — decided it wasn’t over. Walking up from behind Johnson, the lefty uncorked a sucker punch, igniting the biggest fight the NBA had seen in years just moments after the flame had almost been extinguished.
Having seen the punch, Riley raced in, desperately trying to pull his player away from the scene. But before he could, a slew of Suns players joined the melee from behind, colliding into Riley’s back and inadvertently ripping his Armani pants from the right pocket down to his knee.
Anthony, meanwhile, had on a bizarre pajama-pattern button-down shirt that raised the same question that could be applied to this whole matter: What the hell was he thinking?
The ordeal — with one ugly shirt, two separate fights, and no fewer than fifty people involved as both instigators and peacemakers — played out over a 90-second span. When it was all said and done, officials had ejected six players and handed out 12 technicals. The league fined 21 players and docked them almost $300,000 collectively — unprecedented totals. Anthony got a five-game suspension for his actions.
Far more important, the fight embarrassed NBA officials, who moved to strengthen rules regarding future fights.
As that took place, the Knicks became even more feared, both on the court — they finished with 60 wins that year — and as the NBA’s biggest bully. “We’d say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna win something tonight. We’re either gonna win the game, or win the fight,’” Anthony said.
But that fighter’s mentality might have ultimately caused the Knicks to lose the war.
*****
Fast forward to 1997, and plenty had shifted.
The Knicks had suffered heartbreak by this point, losing the Charles Smith Game in 1993 and a haunting Game 7 in the 1994 Finals to the Rockets, in which John Starks shot 2-for-18. Riley had exited stage left — and resigned by sending the Knicks a letter via fax machine — to join the Miami Heat. And New York, now coached by Jeff Van Gundy, had seen a slight roster overhaul, with Larry Johnson and Allan Houston on the club.
The league’s rules had shifted to allow far less contact. Hand-checking, once a Derek Harper specialty, wasn’t legal anymore. Too many flagrant fouls would lead to suspensions, ridding Oakley of his most impressive superpower.
“They were anti-Knick rules,” Rivers says. “It was obviously aimed at us, because we did those things so much more and so much harder than everybody else.” (Russ Granik, then the NBA deputy commissioner, said: “The changes certainly weren’t directed at them. But I wouldn’t dismiss the idea that the rules changes impacted the Knicks more.”)
By 1997, the Knicks had a better mix of offense and defense. They’d won 57 games and split their four contests with Jordan and the Bulls. “We were really peaking at the right time,” Grunfeld said. “Everything leading up to that point, it just really felt like that year was going to be our best shot to win.”
Then things turned upside down, literally and figuratively. With two minutes left in Game 5, and New York leading Riley’s Heat club three games to one in the Eastern Conference semifinals, Miami big man P.J. Brown flipped over much smaller Knicks guard Charlie Ward, who’d clashed into him while aggressively boxing out on a free throw.
With the incident happening on New York’s side of the floor, Knicks players — including Starks, Houston and Johnson — came pouring off the bench to stifle the altercation and have Ward’s back, while Miami’s remained in place. The ordeal lasted all of 35 seconds in a blowout Heat victory, and no punches were thrown by anyone. But there would be enormous ramifications.
When the dust settled, the league would announce six suspensions, with five of them being doled out to New York’s side. Ward, Starks, Johnson and Houston would all be forced to sit, but it was the fifth player — Ewing — whose punishment left the club in shock. The franchise player had barely left the bench compared to his teammates who’d broken things up.
“In Patrick’s case, he almost meandered onto the court, just to see what was going on,” New York Postcolumnist George Willis recalls. “He clearly had no intention of instigating anything, or even to pull anyone apart. He just kind of wandered.”
New York’s punishments, the most severe penalty handed down in postseason history at the time, were so drastic that the suspensions would need to be split alphabetically — with three being served in Game 6, and two in Game 7 — just so New York would have enough available players.
The Knicks had their attorneys collaborate with lawyers from the National Basketball Players Association in hopes of getting the suspensions delayed the following morning. The lawyer who argued on the Knicks’ behalf, union chief attorney Jeffrey Kessler, was a Knicks fan. The man overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, was also a Knicks fan.
But in the end, Ewing and the Knicks had clearly left the bench — something the union itself acknowledged — and the NBA’s rulebook on that issue was clear. “It wasn’t the ruling I wanted to make, but it was also pretty clear,” said Rakoff, whose Knicks-supporting family was angry with him about the decision.
Badly undermanned, New York dropped both Game 6 and Game 7, watching perhaps their last decent opportunity for a title in that era slip away in the process.
“The commissioner took away a golden opportunity from me and my teammates,” a dejected Ewing said after scoring 37 and grabbing 17 rebounds in the Game 7 loss.
Chicago, Indiana and Miami were among the Knicks’ chief rivals during those years. But the team’s feuds with the league in the 1990s bubbled over just as much, if not more.
UK’s PRF Composite Materials has named Dave Ellson as managing director from January 2022. PRF has expanded enormously over the last few years, and has invested considerable funds into this expansion and paving the way for future growth. PRF Composite Materials is a manufacturer of high-performance materials for the advanced composites industry.
The expansion has prompted an increase in management structure and expansion of the sales team, and the company has made a number of appointments to support this growth, maintaining the focus on the continuing development of innovative, high quality advanced materials and providing exceptional service to customers, the company said in a press release.
With over 30 years in the advanced materials industry, Ellson has extensive experience in quality assurance, purchasing and sales. After completing over a year as PRF’s head of operations, Ellson has shown leadership and passion for the things that PRF has always stood for: innovation, quality and customer service.
UK’s PRF Composite Materials has named Dave Ellson as managing director from January 2022. PRF has expanded enormously over the last few years, and has invested considerable funds into this expansion and paving the way for future growth. PRF Composite Materials is a manufacturer of high-performance materials for the advanced composites industry.
Robert Burnell will remain at PRF as CEO and COB, moving into a development role where he will be leading R&D, product development and innovation, and will also be developing the future growth of the business in terms of infrastructure, investment and finance and working with the senior officers of the company to strengthen the organisation.
“Having known Ellson for over 30 years, I have always had great respect for his knowledge, success and reputation in the industry, working in the leading composites companies. I was extremely pleased with the opportunity for him to join the team in 2020 and he has proven himself to be a great asset to the company. I am confident in his ability to take the reins in this new chapter for PRF,” Burnell said.
“PRF is a family business and I want to build on its solid foundations to grow a company where our people flourish, where focus is on our customers, and health and safety is paramount. I want to create a place of mutual benefit: PRF leading innovation and developing cutting-edge products that help our customers to succeed and for PRF to grow with their success – working in partnership together,” Ellson said.
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) president Faruque Hassan recently said his country and South Korea have great potential for bilateral trade collaboration, especially in the apparel and textile sector. He said this while meeting ambassador of South Korea to Bangladesh Lee Jang-keun recently at the BGMEA office in Dhaka.
Both discussed possible areas of expanding trade and how both countries can collaborate in a meaningful way to boost trade, according to Bangla media reports.
Hassan requested the envoy to encourage Korean businessmen to invest in the backward linkage industry of Bangladesh, especially the non-cotton textile sector.
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) president Faruque Hassan recently said his country and South Korea have great potential for bilateral trade collaboration, especially in the apparel and textile sector. He said this while meeting ambassador of South Korea to Bangladesh Lee Jang-keun recently at the BGMEA office in Dhaka.
The envoy pointed to extending incentive facility to garment factories inside the export processing zone (EPZ) against their exports to new markets.
Democrats are pushing forward because, in the words of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine “We all have to be recorded at this moment in time about where are we in protecting the right to vote.”
In comments at a National Action Network event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Schumer reiterated that, calling out Manchin and Sinema. He said he would do “everything in [his] power to advance legislation that would strengthen our democracy” despite the “two Democrats who don’t want to make that happen,” adding that the “fight is not over.”
“Far from it,” Schumer said. “I’m going down to Washington, and we are going to debate voting rights. We are going to debate it, and, in the Senate, you know we need 60 votes to break a Republican filibuster … but since we only have 50 Democrats in our razor-thin majority, the only path forward on this important issue is to change the rules to bypass the filibuster.”
“We must never give up,” Schumer said Monday. “We are going to continue till we get full voting rights for all Americans. We will never give up until we stop these horrible, horrible laws from passing until we expand the right to vote, not contract it.”
How that’s going to happen, or when exactly, is not clear. As of Tuesday morning, the health status of all Democrats wasn’t apparent—Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii had tested positive for COVID last week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California was absent for an undisclosed reason. It’s possible there won’t be 50 Democrats available right now to move forward.
That could argue for that other procedural trick at Schumer’s disposal—it would buy time. That’s to use yet another Senate rule to force Republicans to hold the floor with speeches and procedural motions and tire either them or the two traitor Democrats out enough to just break the filibuster.
This is something Democrats are looking at. “There are a couple of paths here. Do we go down the path and do a long debate until it’s done and then have a simple debate?” Kaine said last week. “We wouldn’t need a rules change to pass the bill by simple majority if the debate is over. Theoretically, you do not need a rules change to pass a bill that’s on the floor, you just have to allow debate to occur,” he added.
James Wallner, a former Senate Republican aide and expert on Senate procedure, explained how it would work. “The easiest way to get to final passage on this bill is to put it on the floor and have Vice President Kamala Harris or Majority Leader Schumer or any other senator start to make points of order against any senator who tries to speak more than twice.” That’s Senate Rule XIX, which says a senator can’t speak more than twice on the same question on a legislative day. That would mean Schumer would have to keep the Senate in session indefinitely—staying on the same legislative day for days, possibly weeks. That means simply recessing at night instead of adjourning. That would force Republicans to debate until all 50 of them had spoken twice.
That would put some pressure on the 16 sitting Republicans, including McConnell, who are on the record in support of the federal government protecting voting rights. Those sixteen have all voted to reauthorize the federal Voting Rights Act.
But it would also require a much more coordinated Democratic caucus than we’re used to seeing, and a presiding officer who was rock solid on the rules. “This requires a more aggressive presiding officer,” a senior aide to Senate Democrats told The Hill. “The parliamentarian is not going to advise the presiding officer, ‘Nobody seems to be seeking debate so bring the question.’ It will have to be affirmatively sought by the presiding officer.” The aide added: “The two-speech rule is hard to make work because you can always offer another amendment or bring up a new debate proposition and then get two more speeches out of that. And once again, the parliamentarian doesn’t look to enforce it again, so it would have to be presiding officer causing the parliamentarian to do something they don’t traditionally do.”
It would also mean that all 50 Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris would have to be available all the time to squash Republican procedural motions. It requires both energy and discipline. If Schumer could muster that among his conference for a week, maybe two, it actually might wear Sinema and Manchin down to the point where they would give in on a filibuster carve-out for voting rights. Or not. The tactic would also force Manchin to either stand by his claims that he thinks the talking filibuster should be restored. Because this would be essentially that, a talking filibuster.
There’s really nothing else pending in the immediate term to keep Democrats from trying this, though we’re just one month away from the next must-pass government funding bill. The continuing resolution that government is currently operating on runs out on Feb. 18. A potential government shutdown could serve as an additional pressure point on Manchin and Sinema, who were more than happy to support a filibuster carve out in a similar situation last month, with the debt ceiling.
“They can table at any point anything before the Senate, so the Democrats are literally in simple-majority territory right now,” Wallner told The Hill. They’ve got the majority, even though in a 50-50 Senate that’s kind of a technicality. They have it and they need to use it.
Ian Cassel is the founder of the MicroCapClub and Cofounder of Intelligent Fanatics. He is also the chief investment officer at Intelligent Fanatics Capital Management. Ian started investing when he was seventeen with the money in his college fund. He phased his way through different sectors such as mining and life sciences until he became a professional investor focusing on the fundamentals of businesses, not the sector. Ian specializes in microcap investing; he defines microcap as “companies with a market capitalization under $300 million,” meaning they are all very small businesses. All of his investing portfolio is in microcap companies.
One of the most important points Ian made in the following interview is that, as a beginner investor, you shouldn’t worry about finding the perfect or best stock as much as trying out ideas and strategies and learning from both your successes and failures.
Soren Peterson: How did you get started in investing?
Ian Cassel: “I started investing when I was a junior in high school. My parents sat me down and told me they had saved approximately $20,000 for my education, and they just wanted to let me know because that’s all I was going to get, and then I could apply where I wanted to apply. That was 1997. This was right in the heart of the dot com bubble and greed was rampant. When I got in control of that $20,000, I opened up a brokerage account with their financial advisor and bought three small cap technology names and rode that wave. During the dot com bubble it was easy. You could have have bought any technology company and had a multibagger a year or even less, and that is what happened to me. So I turned that $20,000 into $120,000 by the time I graduated—and that was 100% luck and 0% skill—and then rode that wave the whole way back down and turned that $120,000 into $8,000. The small cap tech names I owned went down and became microcaps, so that is where I got introduced to microcaps investing.”
So were you shocked about how that kind of got your start into microcaps? How has your investing style changed since?
“My investing style has evolved quite a bit over the last 20 years. I am now forty. The first microcap company I spent time researching was a company called XM Satellite Radio, which was a company that then merged with Sirius XM radio and is in every car today, but back then it was just an idea, a story stock. They had two billion in debt, very little in revenues. They didn’t really have any OEM agreements with any of the car manufacturers. I fell in love with the story: the idea of having 100 crystal-clear radio stations as you are driving. You are probably too young to remember, but with normal radio, you would drive twenty miles out of your radius and lose connection, and you would have to find a new radio station. Just the thought of 100 crystal-clear radio channels nationwide with no commercials, was a great story.
“When I was a sophomore in college, I saw that the CEO of XM Satellite Radio was presenting in a conference in New York City. So, I called the conference organizer and lied and said that I was Ian Cassel of Cassel Capital. They thought I was a fund manager, not a college student. They let me come.
“So, I took the bus from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to New York City. I put on the same suit from senior year that I wore for my senior photos and it still fit, thank goodness. Had some fake business cards made and made my way up there. Long story short, I was able to have a sit down conversation with the CEO, and from that point on, I took that $8,000 I had left from the dot com crash and bought XM Radio at $1.78 per share when I left that meeting.
“I got lucky again. Almost immediately the company started signing deals., The stock went from $1.78 up to $34 in fourteen months. So, I made back a lot of the money that I had lost in the dot com crash.
“I like to tell this story because it is what started my love affair with small stocks, with microcaps. The allure was that even a small time investor like me at the time had the ability to sit down with a microcap management team face-to-face. And yes, I may have used some coercive measures to do that. But it was really that ability to sit down with management that attracted me to that small-stock arena. I felt that gave me an edge.
“From that point forward, I focused on microcaps and to figure out how make a living from doing it. The first five years were really focused on story stock companies. I wasn’t focused on business fundamentals; I was focused on finding great stories. Bac then much of the activity and discussion on microcap companies was on public message boards. I gravitated to those boards, and I built a reputation on those boards as someone who was able to pick winning stocks. I found a few mentors on those boards as well. These mentors helped guide me and show me the good and the bad, and what to look for.
“I started out investing in story stocks, and then moved to precious metals and junior exploration companies for a few years, and then life science companies. I became a full time private investor in 2009 and this is when I started focusing on business fundamentals. I layered on what I would call a GARP style [growth at a reasonable price] or a Peter Lynch approach. My portfolio today is 100% small equities, microcaps. Today my style is a mix of my past experiences. I like to find great stories with a great business. But I still have a mining company. I still have a couple story stocks—God forbid!—. So my strategy is like my own painting. It is unique to me and I’m not done painting. I will probably be investing a little differently in 5 years. If you aren’t evolving, you aren’t growing.
I believe those who call themselves investors have lost money in investments at some point. What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned from losing money in an investment? And what were your initial reactions or emotions during that experience?
“I am an active investor, which really means I am a stock picker. I’m never going to be right all the time. This isn’t a game of perfection. When I lose money it is because I didn’t do my research or control my emotions or a combination of both of those things. If you are a microcap investor, it is important to know what you own because the businesses are small. They are impressionable. And so their situations are evolving all the time. You can’t just buy and forget them. You have to buy and verify your thesis to make sure it hasn’t changed in a bad way. So, a lot of my mistakes have been when I have taken my eye off the ball. Quite honestly even most of the winners I’ve had eventually couldn’t sustain their growth. So you have to have your pulse on the business. The other mistakes can be more emotional.
“The emotional side of investing is something you can’t really learn in a book or a classroom. There are lessons that have to be experienced. It’s kind of a test of how you can sit quietly while your emotions are screaming at you to do the wrong thing. Active investing is like navigating a ship across the ocean and the crew are sort of the company management team. The currents and the storms and the wind are the emotional component of that. Pick the right boat and the right crew and navigate the emotional side.”
What keeps you going? The potential returns?
“I just love the game. I just love investing in small equities. The key is acknowledging that you will always make mistakes. ‘I am a stock picker. I know I am only going to be right 60% of the time’ is what Peter Lynch said, which means being wrong 40% of the time.
“Successful stock picking isn’t just about picking winners but also means picking out the losers in your portfolio. I am constantly trying to identify the losers in my portfolio so I can get rid of them. Outside of that, successful investing is more about holding your winners as long as they execute.
“One winner can make up for ten or fifteen losers. So, investing in especially small stocks is a game of slugging percentage, to use a baseball term, not necessarily batting average. So, I know I am not going to be wrong all of the time, and I am really trying to hold my winners as long as possible and cut my losers as quickly as possible.
“A combination of both understanding that the power laws that you see in venture capital and what I mean by that is if a venture capital investor makes twenty investments, they know that two out of those twenty investments are going to drive the overall performance. They know they will have some that go to zero and some that go down. Those power laws are prevalent in small stocks and microcaps as well. For me I’m trying to find companies that have a lot of upside but also don’t have a lot of downside. In my early years I focused too much on, ‘Where can I make 500% in six months?’ Incidentally this is where you are going to lose money. Ironically most multi-baggers are found where you feel you aren’t going to lose over the next six months, not necessarily where you think you are going to make 500% over the next six months.
“There are 10,000 microcaps in North America. I have four main hurdles or filters for microcap companies.
Is this a business that can grow through a recession? That is a very tough hurdle. Only 5% or 10% of stocks that can get through that filter.
Does this business have a balance sheet that can weather a storm, that can allow that operator to act with occasional boldness to hopefully even acquire a competitor that is weak, maybe in the bad times.
A third hurdle is a leader that is showing signs of intelligent fanaticism. I coauthored two books on the topic of intelligent fanatics. This is a term Charlie Munger uses in his speeches. Really trying to find those great leaders—that is a big part of what I do. If you want to find great companies early, you need to find great leaders early.
Last but not least is a valuation hurdle. I am looking for an investment that I can double my money in three years based on fundamental drivers. That is a 25% compound annual growth rate over the long term. That is a benchmark that I make for myself.”
People assume that microcap investing is riskier because you’re dealing with newer, smaller businesses. Do you think this is true and what do you think about this risk? What advice would you give to a beginner investor interested in microcaps?
“I think in general there is always risk in doing something new where you don’t have experience. If you don’t have experience investing—what I usually tell new investors to microcaps is that most of the risk comes from story stocks. So if you focus on profitable businesses that are microcaps, that alleviates a lot of the pain that you could have in the future.
“Of the 10,000 microcaps in North America, around 15% of them are profitable. So I would just say to focus on the real businesses. Focus on the profitable ones. “
“In general, I feel that all great companies started as small companies. I want to make big returns. I want to find the ones that go up 5x, 10x, or 100x. I haven’t had a 100x yet. It makes sense if you want to find a 100x return you have to start with a smaller business because they have more room to go up. But there is also lot of risk there. If you are looking at North America—there are about 20,000 public companies in North America. About half of these companies are small microcap companies that most people have never heard of. Unfortunately the financial mainstream media loves to broad-brush the microcap arena or the penny stock arena as this uninvestable wasteland of insignificant small companies that don’t deserve to be public in the first place. I disagree with that, which is one of the reasons why I am on social media and Twitter: to be a shining light for this space. They don’t realize Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, and Joel Greenblatt, started as microcap investors. Companies like Walmart, Amgen, Intuitive Surgical, Netflix, Monster Energy, Berkshire Hathaway—some of the best performing stocks of all time—started as microcap companies.
“And even beyond investing looking at the overall economy – Microcap companies as a whole employ more workers than Walmart. So this is an important piece of the economy. I think it is an area of investing that should be taken seriously. It is a validated investment class.
“Microcap investing is a place where the smaller retail investor has an edge over the institutional investors because most of these companies are so small and so illiquid that institutions aren’t able to buy them because of the illiquidity. Institutions can only buy them after they’ve executed, and their stocks go up. When their liquidity stocks go up, it allows them to deploy that capital. Institutions can only buy after these companies have gone up. Microcap is one of the few areas where the retail investor has the edge. And that is what continues to attract me to do it, and it is an incredible area for people that are willing to put forth the work to understand and invest in this area.”
What has been the biggest lesson you have learned from microcap investing?
“The biggest lesson is that it is hard. Finding great companies early is hard. I started a website called microcapclub.com back in 2011, and it is a private forum where some of the best microcap investors in the world share ideas and exchange ideas. Basically, if a member investor likes a stock, they write up a two- to three-page thesis on that stock so it kind of gets the conversation going. So, if you ever see the internals of MicroCapClub, it is basically a stock message board and each thread is a company. Some companies have a couple comments on them, and some have a thousand comments on them. One of the interesting things we do is we track the performance of every single company that has ever been profiled by our members, and we track the stock price and where it closed at the end of every month. So, we have some of the best microcap investors in the world on this site, which have profiled over 800 microcap companies since 2011. If you actually look at 800 in a performance analysis, out of the 800, roughly half are up and half are down, which doesn’t sound that impressive. But remember, this isn’t a game of batting average; it is a game of slugging percentage or power laws. Of the 400 that are up, actually 250 of those 400 that are up have doubled or more. 100 out of the 400 are up 300% or more, and 50 are up 500% or more, and we have now had 25 ten- baggers. Not an impressive batting average, but it is a really good slugging percentage.
“The biggest lesson I have learned is that you need to study those winners. Study their businesses, their leaders, and put in the reps, studying them, not just the twenty-five out of 800 that were ten-baggers, but go out there and study all winners.
“A good friend of mine, Connor Haley, did a case study in mid-2020 called the Makings of a Multibagger, where he studied the best-performing stocks over the last five years. You can search YouTube and find the interview I did with him. What you will find when you study winners is that there are two main drivers of big winning stocks (the ones that go up and stay up):
Earnings growth. You want to find businesses that can grow earnings over the long term.
Multiple expansion. As a company grows and gets discovered, and investors like the long-term prospects more, the multiple expands. If a company doubles its earnings over three years from ten million to twenty million, and the multiple stays the same and you made a 100% profit in three years, and that is not bad. But if the multiple the investors are willing to pay for the company also doubles, then you made 300% over those three years. So the key here is earnings growth and multiple expansion. So, how do you find growth companies before the multiple expands? You have to find them early when they are undiscovered by others. That is another reason why I like microcaps.”
What fundamentals are similar between microcap investing and large-cap investing?
“Fundamentally if you focus on profitable companies, they obviously are similar to large cap. They have revenue, they have earnings, they have cash flow, assets and liabilities, just like large caps. Microcaps are just smaller businesses. In many ways microcaps are a lot simpler to evaluate. I remember GE had something like 109 subsidiaries. Just think, as an investor, how confusing that is to evaluate a company like that. Microcaps are normally one business with a couple products. They are much easier to understand. You also have microcaps that pay dividends. Not too many, but they exist. You can find microcaps in every industry. Well, maybe not as many utilities. Most other industries are represented in microcaps as well.”
How do you think about dividends in microcaps as opposed to dividends in large-cap investing?
“That depends on the type of microcap investor you are. I am more of a growth-oriented microcap investor. I don’t have any that are paying a dividend. It would almost be a red flag if they did because it would mean they aren’t finding enough growth avenues to deploy that capital internally. But you certainly can find dividend-paying microcaps. There are a bunch of them on MicroCapClub that are really good businesses that pay 3%–5% dividend yields. It is just that I don’t focus on that particularly.”
How do you find microcap companies to research when there might be little information on them?
“I developed a simple but thorough research process I call the FAIR research process: find, analyze, interact, and research
“I could talk this entire time on just this. I will take you through this. I will go through each one.
“Find. Where do you start? It can be overwhelming. There are 20,000 public companies in North America. A half are microcaps. I think there are 70,000 companies worldwide. A half are microcaps.
“What do I do? Where do I start? Microcaps are small companies. They don’t have analysts’ coverage on most of them. They aren’t being spoon-fed to you by Wall Street, which means that you have to go out and do the work by yourself.
“The best way is just by brute force looking. That way, you aren’t missing something. Look at everything—I think Warren Buffet said that—and literally go A to Z, literally turn over all the rocks. I recently did this in Australia, with my analyst. We went A to Z in all of the microcaps in Australia. It takes a lot of work, but honestly oftentimes your edge is to look through a mountain of uninvestable ideas to find the great ones. I believe in brute force. Then there is networking. Microcap investors—at least the good ones—are independent thinkers because they have to be because they are doing this work themselves. It can be lonely. A lot of times you think you are looking at a stock, or these types of company, alone, but in reality, there are tons of microcap investors out there. There are a few physical or virtual places to connect with other microcap investors. Obviously one of these areas is microcapclub.com.
“Build relationships with a close group of investors that you exchange ideas with. I enjoy having a mix of people in my inner circle that invest differently than me. It is always interesting to me when I meet someone that invests the complete opposite of me but is successful. A lot of times, just inverting yourself, you can find out different areas that you can improve upon with your own processes. Last one for finding: screening. Screen for fundamentals that you find attractive, market cap, or whatever you want. And I find screening can be a trade-off between being very specific and comprehensive. I like being more comprehensive, and screening out less, when I am doing a screen. I like doing screens for everything under a certain market cap rather than screening for a list of specific fundamentals because a lot of times what you are left with is what everybody else is looking at. So, I I like to cast a wider net when I screen for opportunities.
Analyze. How do you analyze microcaps? First, watch out for red flags. There is fraud. Next, analyze the industry, the business, the financials, the products, the management, etc. Most US listed companies file with the SEC (SEC.gov), and you can pull up their financials. You can look at their 10Ks and 10Qs. Oftentimes they list their competitors and industry drivers, which you can research deeper.
Interact. This is what attracted me to microcap over twenty years ago: the ability to actually talk to the CEO. You can’t really do that with midcaps. I spend a lot of time interacting with the management teams. I usually fly out—pre-COVID—to meet with them, meet with the board, that type of thing. Oftentimes 90% of due diligence is analyzing customers and the employees and seeing if they are happy and why. Oftentimes your edge is that 90% of investors are not willing to do that kind of work. So that is the type of work that I am trying to do. Interacting can add a lot of value to investing. A lot of investors will say that it adds no value. But oftentimes that is just an excuse, because they aren’t willing to do the work.
Re-search. Stands for maintenance due diligence. We don’t buy and forget; we buy and verify. And the smaller the company, the more often you need to verify because their businesses are evolving and changing. It might be that initial research that gets you invested, but it is the ongoing research that keeps you invested. This research will be your pulse on the company and alert you to when the company is changing for the better or worse, and you can hold on or sell them before others sell. This maintenance due diligence or ongoing research is really, really important.”
That is a great framework. I learned a lot from that. Charlie Munger is a north star for many of us in the investing world and many of us use his quotes and advice to guide us in investing. What quote or advice would you personally like to be remembered for?
“I would like to be remembered for fighting to keep the microcap light lit. This place was left for dead ten years due to regulations and the rise of venture capital and private equity. I feel microcap is in a much better place now. I just want to leave microcap in a better place than when I entered it.”
For Ian, investing is a continual learning process. In order to learn more, it can be helpful to continue to research stocks even after you have bought them to make sure you still want to invest in them and that you understand the new developments and ventures of those businesses.
One way to research is to reach out to board members or the management of a business and ask them questions to better understand the company. This strategy is also mentioned by Emily McCormick for understanding banks, but it can apply to microcaps in general. This opportunity is one of Ian’s favorite things about investing in microcaps: because the companies are small and often serve local customers, you stand a higher chance that they will engage with you, as an individual investor, than you would with the CEO of Apple.
However, if you can’t meet with someone from a business, you can also learn a lot by reading the annual report, which is usually accessible on Google. In his FAIR researching framework, Ian mentioned the importance of closely studying financials.
Going back to the idea of investing in fundamentals and not necessarily by sector, Ian likes to only invest in microcaps that have strong fundamentals or will have strong fundamentals. This may seem obvious, but many investors overlook this aspect of a business.
Another reason Ian likes microcaps so much is because everyday investors can have an advantage over the professional investors on Wall Street because they can learn about a microcap company in its early stages. This may not seem all that important, but if you can understand why a company works (or doesn’t) and how it works, you can use that to inform your choice of whether or not to invest. This is especially true if the company is located geographically near you or you have talked to the management so you have a chance to understand the company well. This is a resource many investors may not have, or 95% of investors won’t try to get. When you think about it that way, it is a major advantage and one that you can use.
Priyanka Chopra often makes headlines for her successful career in Bollywood and Hollywood and her envious personal life. Priyanka and Nick Jonas’ highly publicised wedding followed many Indian traditions which they have kept up years after they tied the knot. And now, the actress who was recently in the news for dropping “Jonas” from her Instagram handle, has opened up about her thoughts on another piece of Indian culture – wearing a mangalsutra. For the uninitiated, a mangalsutra is a necklace worn as a symbol or marital status. PeeCee has been seen wearing one every now and then.
In a recent brand endorsement, Priyanka Chopra looked back on wearing her mangalsutra for the first time and wondered if wearing one is “too patriarchal?”. Revealing that she understands the “repercussions” of it, the actress shared a post captioned – “I remember when I wore mine for the first time… because we have grown with the idea of what it means. It was just a very special moment for me. At the same time, as a modern woman, I also understand the repercussions of what it means. Do I like the idea of wearing mangalsutra or is it too patriarchal? But at the same time, I am that generation that’s sort of in the middle. Maintain tradition but know who you are and what you stand for. And we’ll see the next generation of girls might do differently.”
“The black is basically to ward off evil, to protect you,” she added.
While the conversation revolves around promotional content, the question is worth exploring. Several critics maintain that mangalsutra, sindoor and similar customs are social constructs that are inherently patriarchal as they emphasise a woman’s position in society, one linked to her male spouse. Furthermore, these symbols are glorified in films and TV shows as proof of success or virtue. It’s difficult to ignore these connotations attached to a mangalsutra (even designer pieces). That being said, it’s a personal choice for many modern women.
The Indian sports fraternity on Wednesday was witness to unprecedented scenes as some of the country’s top wrestlers including Vinesh Phogat, Bajrang Punia, Sakshi Malik sat at a protest at the Jantar Mantar and levelled allegations of sexual harassment against Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) coaches and the federation’s president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh. Vinesh Phogat, the first Indian woman wrestler to win gold in both the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games, said that “national coaches molested female wrestlers over the years and were given death threats by WFI officials.” She along with other top Indian wrestlers sat a massive protest at the Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Wednesday. The wrestlers have called for the removal of the WFI president from the post.
Later, Bajrang Punia made an emotional appeal to the wrestling community. “My request to all of you who are associated with wrestling – coaches, fellow wrestlers, and others, this is a fight to protect our game. So, kindly stand with us. Our president (Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh) is saying that only three per cent of the wrestling are raising allegations while the rest are with him. So, we have to stand united to protect our game. We have to stand together and stay united. It is very important to save wrestling because it has given us everything. You are associated with wrestling, so do support us,” Bajrang Punia said in an Instagram post.
Vinesh, Bajrang’s allegations
Rio Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik, world championship medallist Sarita Mor, Sangeeta Phogat, Anshu Malik, Sonam Malik, Satyawart Malik, Jitender Kinha, Amit Dhankar and CWG medallist Sumit Malik were among 30 wrestlers who assembled at the famous protest site.
Vinesh, a world championship medallist and Olympian, also claimed that several coaches at a national camp in Lucknow have exploited women wrestlers, adding that there are a few women at the camp who approach wrestlers at the behest of the WFI President.
“Some coaches are close to the national federations. Those coaches have exploited young girls. Don’t know how many young girls have suffered due to them,” Vinesh stated.
The 28-year-old though clarified that she herself has not faced such exploitation but claimed that she had received death threats at the behest of WFI president from officials close to him because she dared to draw Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attention to several issues plaguing Indian wrestling when she met him after the Tokyo Games.
“I know at least 10-20 women wrestlers who have told me about the sexual exploitation they faced at the hands of (the) WFI President. They told me their stories. I can’t take their names now but I can definitely reveal the names if we get to meet the Prime Minister and the Home Minister of the country,” Vinesh said addressing the media after staging a four-hour ‘dharna’ at Jantar Mantar.
“I have received death threats from people who are close to the WFI President. If anything happens to any of us sitting here, only the WFI President will be responsible.”
Centre’s response
The sports ministry has sought a response from the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) “within the next 72 hours” after the allegations were made. The centre, in a statement, has made it clear that if the WFI does not respond in the next three days, the sports ministry “will proceed to initiate action against the federation in terms of the provisions of the National Sports Development Code, 2011.”
“Taking cognizance of the protest staged by wrestlers, including Olympic and CWG medalists, in Delhi today and a press conference in which wrestlers have levelled serious charges of sexual harassment of women wrestlers by the President and coaches of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) and of mismanagement in the functioning of the federation, the Sports Ministry has sought an explanation from WFI and directed it to furnish a reply within the next 72 hours on the allegations made. In its communication to WFI, the Ministry has stated that “since the matter pertains to the well being of athletes, the Ministry has taken a very serious view of the matter.” the sports ministry said in the statement.
“The Ministry has further stated that if WFI fails to furnish the reply within the next 72 hours, the Ministry will proceed to initiate action against the federation in terms of the provisions of the National Sports Development Code, 2011.”
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MCLEAN, VA. (PRWEB) JANUARY 13, 2022 — Kajeet®, a leading provider of IoT connectivity, software and hardware solutions that deliver safe, reliable and controlled internet connectivity to nearly 3,000 customers, today announced the launch of its 2022 Homework Gap Grant Program. This funding opportunity will allow K-12 schools and districts, colleges and universities, and public libraries to connect students to safe, reliable internet outside of the classroom.
“At Kajeet, we believe internet access is a basic human right and are fully committed to efforts aimed at closing the digital divide,” said Daniel J. W. Neal, chairman, CEO and founder of Kajeet. “Providing a more equitable future for students everywhere is a top priority at Kajeet and we are thrilled to once again offer a grant opportunity that will help schools and libraries provide critical resources.”
An estimated 12 million students in the U.S. and Canada lack home broadband access, putting a staggering number of school-aged children at a serious learning disadvantage. The 2022 Homework Gap Grant Program is part of Kajeet’s mission to provide students opportunities to access online educational resources anytime, anywhere.
For a decade, Kajeet has been working with education and community leaders to close the digital divide for students, known as the “Homework Gap.” Each grant recipient will receive up to $25,000 worth of Kajeet Education Broadband Solutions, including unlimited student data plans, access to Kajeet Sentinel® platform and devices like, WiFi hotspots, school bus WiFi, routers and LTE-embedded Chromebooks, laptops, and tablets.
The call for entries for Kajeet’s 2022 Homework Gap Grant Program is now open! Qualifying organizations have until March 11, 2022, to apply. Winners will be announced in May. Eligible applicants include all K-12 school districts (public, private, charter, and tribal), colleges and universities, and public libraries in the U.S. and Canada.
About Kajeet Kajeet provides optimized IoT connectivity, software and hardware solutions that deliver safe, reliable, and controlled internet connectivity to nearly 3,000 businesses, schools and districts, state and local governments, and IoT solution providers. Kajeet is the only managed IoT connectivity services provider in the industry to offer a scalable IoT management platform, Sentinel®, that includes complete visibility into real-time data usage, policy control management, custom content filters for added security and multi-network flexibility. Whether to enable digital access that ensures student success, empower companies to connect and control devices in the field, or offer support and a platform to launch a complex mobile solution, Kajeet is trusted by many to make powerful and flexible wireless solutions easy. Kajeet is available for hybrid and multi-network access across all major North American wireless networks, globally in 173 other countries, and on multiple licensed and unlicensed networks. Kajeet holds 40 U.S. patents in mobile technologies. To learn more, visit kajeet.com and follow us on Twitter at @Kajeet.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
– Valuewalk
