Hello again, David and Salem here. Happy to be back on real vision to explore with my good friend Andrew McDermott, a question that I find endlessly interesting, given the freedom that Andrew isn't enjoyed since setting up his own money management firm 10 years ago.

Why has he kept his own capital and his clients invested more or less exclusively in Japanese stocks?

So without further ado, let's get right into it with Andrew.

Andrew, thank you very much for doing this.

Great to be here David and I'm excited to have this conversation again. We've been having it off and on for 10 years and never gets old.

Well, as I noted in my intro, since you left southeastern has set up your own shop a decade ago, you've kept your own capital and your clients invested more or less exclusively in hand.

And to call that a non consensus, a contrarian stance would be would be understatement to say the least. So here's the question I want to start with and you're considered opinion.

What do global investors as a group get most wrong about Japan?

I would say that as a group, they they focus more or perhaps too much on what Japan has done wrong and not enough on what Japan's done right.

And to to prevent extended model logging, I'll break that up into three little segments or doors and you can pick which one would go through, but but the first is is really my least favorite, but the one that everyone spends the most time on, which is the macro and I'll define that as politics and central bank and such.

So second, which is slightly more interesting, although I'm not a Japan file by any means, I've left Japan twice in frustration.

I've been as frustrated as anybody in some management meetings, but nevertheless, I think this, this, the social element of Japan to find us as kind of the habits that inform business practices.

I think that's another area where we focus too much or our industry focuses too much on the bad and not enough on the good. And then, and finally, the area we spend our most time.

The micro, the actual process of selecting Japanese securities relative to other Japanese securities and other options we have around the world. So I'll let you decide which way we're going to go.

I would say that our punchline is that Japan's not perfect, but it's it rewards security analysis at the individual level, primarily because so few people do it because they get distracted by the negatives on the other side.

Thank you.

It reminds me of the game show where they gave you three doors and you got to pick one to go.

Taking note of the fact that I know well from conversations with you that it's sort of least interest or frankly relevance to your portfolio construction to talk about macro.

I know with certainty that that's a really keen interest to the real vision audience.

It's important to in the longer term. So let's spend at least a few minutes up front going through that door and talking about the macro backdrop for investing in Japanese stocks.

And by that, I mean the past, the present and the future as you envision it. And, and you know, you can start wherever you want in the timeline.

I encourage you Andrew to focus since he's just left office and he was a pretty big elephant in the room for many years to talk about Abyssal and his legacy and how that relates to the big macro picture in Japan.

...