Why Bubble Talk is Totally Wrong with Ankur Crawford

**Josh Brown** (0:00)
So, remind me again, how did you first meet Adam? You guys worked together?

**Ankur Crawford** (0:05)
Oh my god, Adam, when I came to Alger, I had just finished my PhD, new diddly shit about anything.

**Josh Brown** (0:13)
Okay.

**Ankur Crawford** (0:14)
And my very first-

**Josh Brown** (0:15)
How old were you?

**Ankur Crawford** (0:16)
I was 28

**Josh Brown** (0:16)
Okay.

**Michael Batnick** (0:17)
Where did you do your PhD?

**Ankur Crawford** (0:18)
Stanford.

**Michael Batnick** (0:19)
NASA community.

**Ankur Crawford** (0:20)
In material science and engineering. So, like, it was like... And I sat down. My very first celicide meeting was with Adam.

**Josh Brown** (0:29)
Okay.

**Ankur Crawford** (0:30)
And he was a semiconductor analyst at Bernstein.

**Josh Brown** (0:32)
Okay. And he probably talked most of the time.

**Ankur Crawford** (0:34)
So he did talk most of the time, but I was like, wow, what a cool, like, smart guy. Yeah. And we just stayed in touch after that.

**Josh Brown** (0:40)
Okay. So we're going to get into how you came to Wall Street, and we'll do all that stuff.

**Ankur Crawford** (0:46)
Oh, okay.

**Josh Brown** (0:47)
All right.

**Michael Batnick** (0:48)
I listened to my first Taiwan semi, Ernie's Call Today.

**Ankur Crawford** (0:50)
Oh, you did?

**Michael Batnick** (0:51)
It was very strange, I thought. I'm sure you listened to a million of them, that the analyst asked questions, and then the CFO repeats the question that has been asked for every single question. It's bizarre.

**Ankur Crawford** (1:05)
I think...

**Michael Batnick** (1:06)
I don't know what's happened there, because he literally is like, all right, so the question was, I'm like, huh, that's weird, and then he just did it the entire call.

**Ankur Crawford** (1:11)
So it used to be that there was actually an audience, and so people would ask in the audience, and they were on stage.

**Michael Batnick** (1:17)
Oh, that makes sense.

**Ankur Crawford** (1:19)
That was how it used to be, and...

**Michael Batnick** (1:22)
But you heard the call. Like, I heard the question. I don't know, but that's a possible explanation.

**Ankur Crawford** (1:26)
Maybe it's a cultural thing.

**Michael Batnick** (1:28)
I thought it was odd that their deck looks like it was made in the 90s, like their investment deck. What is that? I don't know.

**Josh Brown** (1:34)
Well, I mean, it's only like a trillion dollar company, so you gotta give them some time.

**Michael Batnick** (1:39)
But it looks like it was made on MS-DOS, like honestly. Like, I pulled one chart, but it just looks like it hasn't been updated since 1984

**Josh Brown** (1:45)
How do you listen to conference calls? Do you dial in or have you discovered quarter yet?

**Ankur Crawford** (1:51)
Yeah, I have quarter, but we use something called era.

**Josh Brown** (1:54)
Ah, okay.

**Ankur Crawford** (1:55)
And so it's similar to quarter. You basically go through and you just click through into a call. Makes it really easy.

**Josh Brown** (2:02)
So we're investors in quarter, but also like power users. I'm obsessed with it.
I don't know how I ever used it because I like seeing the words get illuminated as they're being spoken. So you're reading it and hearing it at the same time, and I feel like it sinks in better.

**Ankur Crawford** (2:16)
So it's interesting. I talked to one of your sales guys from quarter and told him that I think I forget exactly what the pricing was, but Era was giving us better pricing.

**Josh Brown** (2:26)
Okay. I know some people there.

**Ankur Crawford** (2:28)
I think they actually use quarter on the back end.

**Josh Brown** (2:30)
Oh really? White labeling it. Okay. All right.
How many calls are you listening to each quarter? Do you have people listening for you on some or do you get to everything yourself?

**Ankur Crawford** (2:50)
No, we have a team. And so we have a team that listens to everything and then selectively I'll go through and listen to certain calls.

**Josh Brown** (3:04)
Okay. What are the ones that you personally won't miss?

**Ankur Crawford** (3:08)
Oh, I mean, definitively the hyperscalers. I did miss TSM today because I had a personal appointment.

**Michael Batnick** (3:18)
Don't worry, the iStory is intact. That's what they said.

**Ankur Crawford** (3:21)
Great. I read your notes.
Yeah, so I don't know. It depends on which quarter it is. I'll try to listen to like Walmart or Costco to understand what's happening on that side of the consumer. I mean, it's not just about an industrial company or a health care company. So just a smattering because there's no way that as a portfolio manager, we're going to be able to get through the entire portfolio.