GDP weak… but also too hot? September 4, 2026

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
A LISTNER production.

**Scott Phillips** (0:04)
Chairs, the S&P, the ISX, stocks.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:07)
This is Motley Fool Money.

**Scott Phillips** (0:10)
Welcome to Motley Fool Money, the podcast that is 0.4% bigger than it was this time last year. I'm Scott Phillips from the Motley Fool. He is Andrew Page. The man for whose 0.4% is just what happens when he wakes up in the morning. Such is the compound growth of Australia's premier online investment club, strawman.com. That by the time we finish talking, it may well be larger than the entire GDP of planet Earth. Mr. Page, how are you?

**Andrew Page** (0:34)
I'm very good. Thank you.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:36)
It's on your gender, isn't it?

**Andrew Page** (0:37)
Well, I wasn't fast enough on the calculator, but I was thinking 0.4% every day. I'm pretty sure that compounds out to something insane on an annual basis. I'll take that. I'll take that for sure.

**Scott Phillips** (0:49)
It's the grain of rice chessboard story, which I can't do well. Such a good one. The compounding is just such a fascinating and incredible. Can I do it? Can I give it a go?
I love it.

**Andrew Page** (0:58)
I'm going to butcher it too, but let's do it anyway. It's a apocryphal kind of sort of story about supposedly in ancient times, there was an emperor who was so pleased with the inventor of the game of chess. He invited them to the court and sort of said, you have anything in my kingdom is yours for this gift that you have bestowed upon the world. I said, great. I'll take all I want you to do is take a grain of rice or wheat.
Depending on what region of the world you happen to be in, wherever this story is placed. I want you to double that grain for every square of the chessboard. So 64 chairs, we start with one, you go to two, you go to four, eight, so on and so forth. The king's like, are you sure? That doesn't seem like very much. Anyway, long story short, it's more wheat slash rice that is not only in existence today, but that has ever been produced and probably will take another 10,000 years to produce. The formula from memory is something like two to the 63 minus one or something like it.

**Scott Phillips** (2:02)
64 minus one, well done.

**Andrew Page** (2:04)
Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So it's sort of more atoms than exist inside the solar system. It's like, actually probably even more than that. Like it's a ridiculously large number. And it's just that idea of just like doubling times are really important. And you get to very, very, very silly numbers very, very quickly. And of course, if you think about it, like on the 63rd square, you've got half as much as you do on the last one.
It's sort of, you know, and I have found that, well, I was going to say, I mean, obviously, I would love to say that I have experienced a doubling every year on my portfolio. It hasn't been, but I do. I have been doing it for a long time. And you know it academically, you know it intellectually. But just experiencing that, not that the percentage gain increase has occurred, but on a capital basis, it just, what used to be your entire portfolio will now fluctuate in a day or two. And that sounds, it sounds like a flex. I don't mean it that way. Partly it's because the very first investment was so tiny.
But also my point being is that you let compounding run for long enough. The other, sorry mate, the other great stat here, you'll probably be able to flesh this one out for me, is that 98% of Warren Buffett's wealth was made after he was 55 or something like that, which gives me hope, just quietly.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:27)
I'm thinking of that similar vintage.

**Scott Phillips** (3:30)
I thought you had more at 55 than what you're gonna have at 55 That's the other problem.

**Andrew Page** (3:33)
I mean, he was a very wealthy man at that age. But when I say wealthy, I would say in today's dollars, 30, 40 million, obviously very large sums of money, but not, no one would have ever heard his name. You know, he would be some obscure multimillionaire from Omaha, Nebraska.
But because he just continued, and because he started so early, like anyway, it's just, everyone knows the idea, but it's sort of like, you've just gotta keep hitting it, because it is, even once you do grok it, it is still surprising, at least to me.

**Scott Phillips** (4:08)