October 2026 Random Ramblings

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Andrew Walker (0:28)

You're about to listen to the Yet Another Value Podcast podcast show Yet Another Value Podcast.

I'm Andrew Walker, and I'm your host, and today is my monthly Random Ramblings for October. Before we get into that, a disclaimer to remind you that nothing on this podcast is investing advice. That's true for every podcast, particularly true for today, because it's just me, random guy alone in a very small office, just rambling to you about things. And I can't tell you, I just start talking to the mic. And maybe it's just because I like the sound of my own voice, but I just start talking and go. Today we're going to talk about, I think hopefully it's a really interesting one, just some things on my mind. So the first is M&A. And if somebody is thinking about a bad M&A deal or announces a bad M&A deal, does it and then pulls back? How do you think about that? Do you give the company credit for pulling back from a bad idea? Or do you ding them because, hey, they had a bad idea and they almost executed on it, and they were forced not to? So that's the first thing we're going to talk about. And we'll talk to that through the light of SOLS, SOLS, and the Starbucks Chipotle rumors. Then I'm going to go and talk a little bit about the indices. You know, I just kind of a state of the markets thing. Indices are broadly double digits, you know, domestic indices, double digits here today. But that's not how I feel when I talk to a lot of my friends. You know, a lot of them are just like despondent. Maybe that's because there's been a big pullback. Maybe it's because there's a lot of churn, a lot of blood underneath those high level. But I'll talk about that a little bit. Then we're going to go to talk about unexpected competition. And I'm going to view that through the lens of IMAX, through the lens of FICO, and through the lens of Netflix. There's this really interesting piece on microdramas, which are becoming really popular in the US. I think they're quite popular in a lot of overseas foreign markets as well. Becoming very popular. And if I said, hey, somebody's going to film 20 90 second clips that are going to be very formulaic, very quick, very twisty, say, okay, that sounds pretty cool. But I don't think that's going to be a big business. A, it is a big business. And B, I think it's going to start cutting into legacy media. And in particular, Netflix, I think it's a really interesting one to think about. So we're going to go there. And then we're going to talk about I ran a high rocks. I'm a WOOP member. Here's my little WOOP on my wrist for those you watching. Aura pulled its IPO. I want to talk a little bit about that IPO. And in particular, you know, the Aura business, I think if you had thought about Aura and it's like four years ago, you wouldn't have been thinking about this huge AI data play. Maybe. I don't know. I'm not an investor. Maybe they were. But that's that really became a thing as they were approaching a 15 billion dollars, which just seems insane to me.

And thinking about other businesses that could have that type of value, that type of, hey, we were one thing, but now we have this big AI tailwind that's increasing our value.

And the one I think about there just in terms of it wouldn't be a continuous tailwind, but it would boost their current asset value as homebuilders. And you know what? While I'm rambling, the one thing I didn't talk about with Aura, the other interesting thing with Aura and Whoop is their IPOing.

I've got my Whoop on one hand, there's an Apple Watch here and you think about, hey, the dedicated fitness trackers have this one overwhelming risk, which is Apple makes the watch, Google's got the Fitbit, they've got these big tech companies that they're competing with. You've got a specialized thing doing one thing versus this big thing that Apple Watch is always getting better at health. How do you compete with that? That's interesting. You might say, hey, specialization wins out. There are some cases where that has worked, but how do you think Kodak feels about their specialized camera makers when the iPhone comes around and Kodak, I mean, I think they might still be in business, but they're not the Kodak of the 80s anymore. Right. So does the specialization win or does the general use cheaper? All that one. Another interesting thing about which I didn't even think about while I was rambling. I just rambled. But so we're going to get to the ramblings in one second. But first word from our sponsor and our sponsor is Trata, trata.com. If you've been listening to this podcast for the past year, 18 months, you know that Trata has been a great sponsor and it's a product that I love, I use frequently. Trata is two by setters who hop on to an anonymized call and they talk about stocks that they're long. They talk about the writ or long thinking about getting long, short, whatever it is. They talk about it and they talk about why, right? They talk about, hey, here's the opportunity I see. Here's the risk. Here's what I worry about. Here's what keeps me up at night. Here's where I think the street is right. Here's where I think the street is wrong. They talk about all that and then Trata takes the transcript of it, anonymizes it and lets you read it. And you know, I'll give you a little bit. Whenever I'm looking at a company, I have my little Claude agent. I say, hey Claude, today I'm looking at this company. First thing it does, go to Trata, pull up any transcripts that mention it and tell me what people are saying about the stock. So I think it's just an awesome product. It's really unique. I think if you like this podcast, you're going to like Trata too. So go to trata.com to check them out.