What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompano. Most of you know me as pomp. You're listening to the pump podcast. Simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. This is a special episode of the pomp podcast where we record with 12 year old Zach Cox for those that don't have the background the other night a friend of mine. Jim O'Shaughnessy sent me a link to this 12 year old kid in the UK who is posting YouTube videos about investing in public companies the contents
Be good and it's very clear how intelligent he is. So I tweeted out saying everyone should go follow him so that when he woke up, he would have a lot more followers. Well now he's got almost 20,000 followers and he's planning to just keep cranking out content. I wanted to get him on the podcast quickly so that people could hear his perspective. We also talked with his mother and made sure that she consented to this conversation. I hope you guys enjoy this one Anthony pomp. Logano is a partner at Morgan Creek digital all paintings.
Pressed by pomp or his guests on this podcast or solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy. But only as an expression of his opinion this podcast is for informational purposes only.
All right guys bang bang. I've got a special treat for you today. I have a twelve-year-old on the podcast which is not probably what anyone is expecting but I've got a Zach here with me. Thanks for doing this man.
No, thank you for getting be like for a favor. So I
guess so let's start with this you live in the UK, right? Yeah. All right, and what do you do all day because
You've got these YouTube videos that you upload all about investing in companies. Where does that interest come from or when did you start looking at things in finance and business?
It's just like, you know, I you know, when you're on YouTube and stuff you always get laid of adverts and like might like remembering correctly Moon running a massive advertising campaign one time as everywhere. I just thought I put forth like what you put into it. Just how see how it went. Originally. I just started doing like the UK stock market stuff.
That didn't go too. Well as the UK some work. It's not like it's not as good as us. It's not as its takes a long. It's been taking a long time to recover from the coronavirus. It hasn't like bounce back like the US Stock Market. So I started doing u.s. Shares. I just started building up from there. And I mean, I've seen it all I waited at my Peak. I do not like 70% or my portfolio. Literally it was like it went all the way down to like one percent loss. It's going to go way back up to 65% You know, it's like I just
I've seen it all now.
So okay. So you've got a portfolio that you're looking after right and what are your friends doing? So at 12 years old I was not talking about business. I was not talking about investing. I basically was trying as hard as I could to not have my mom find out all the dumb things I was doing where does your interest in kind of business and investing come
from?
They're like, well, I got my friends into investing you only invest a little bit and he he he's he's a kind of input if he think he thinks it's quite well. I think he just wants to get his money for his new PS4 at the moment. So I don't think people have a glider. Yeah. It's like like with my friends already stopped by that, but he just like messed around stuff.
Absolutely and to talk about these videos even putting on YouTube, right? So a friend of mine Jim O'Shaughnessy sent me a link
He said hey, look at this guy. And basically you've got videos where you sit in front of the camera and you talk about various investment opportunities or companies. How do you film the videos? Do your parents help you? Do you do it all yourself? How does that work
now? I just feel my little by little crummy little tablet because what mobile my old tablet had it for like seven years it right now and I decided I didn't want to buy the new Apple ones. I was like, I better put in stocks instead me.
Get the Apple wants and made some money in stocks and I'm going to you just like ah, this is what you get for by 60 pound tablet with the camera footage. But yeah, so you don't just use my dad's but yeah, it's been pretty
good. Okay, and so when you're doing this, how do you research for the videos or where does the information come from? Do you spend all day reading? Like you're pretty informed? It's not like, you know, you're just saying random things. So how do you look at acquiring the information or
learning?
Yes, I like when I sent a lot of my videos. It's very sucks already own. I just talked about those kind of stocks. And I mean me a lot of these videos. These are just ink on his I mean just reading about watching interviews about, you know, watching clips from you know, reading investor presentations like three weeks before that and I just think I'll just upload upload it onto my YouTube channel like my latest from IPO be which is on a traumatic swans merging both and II research that for about a week before that. Whoops and
He's on CNBC. And yeah, that's done. I just thought I might as well make a video about
so literally for the IPO be video that you made you research for almost a week and basically just consumed as much content as you possibly could and then you create the video saying, you know, here's what's going on and here are my thoughts.
Yeah, basically,
yeah, that's awesome. So, alright, let's talk about what happened the other night. So you basically it looks like you had been using Twitter to try to distribute the videos and
Also reach out to people and say, you know, hey trough or others. Will you allow me to interview you or when you check out my videos, right? Yeah.
All right, and so
tomato responded to you maybe he didn't know what was going on at first and that eventually said, you know, if your parents basically sign off on doing something like I'll help you out on your YouTube channel,
right? Yeah. It is quite interesting that he said that but he didn't leave an email for us in evo2 who does little oh getting out of those.
Well, I like giraffe is good.
I'll give you as email and and then that's part of the challenge I think is that you gotta go find the email to see how resourceful you are.
Yeah scrolling for a list of different
ones. Okay, and so that happens and so Jim and a couple of other people basically said, hey this kids pretty smart. Like we should see if we could help him out a little bit. And so when Jim sent me the link to your Twitter and to your
Tube I said you know what? Like, let me just fire off a tweet Jim eternity tweeted it and I actually didn't know how many people would go follow you but I said, let's see what happens and I figured you were sleeping when all this was going on, right? Okay. And so I told pulling on my wife I said, you know, I'm going to Tweet it and maybe he wakes up to some more followers, but like let's see and within a couple of minutes of tweeting it I was like, oh he's gonna wake up to a lot more followers. What was your reaction when you woke up?
That's good. Isn't it called latest little follows now initially. I thought somebody just initially thought someone you should try my just brought some pots and stuff
where you thought what happened?
Well, they had brought some thoughts, you know, you could have my fate for all of us and stuff is lots of just brought me a little fake followers.
Okay. So when you woke up you went to sleep you had like 18 or 20 followers and you woke up to what
10,000? Okay. It's like eight seven.
And I wake up there's like every half an hour's gave me another hundred followers pretty crazy. I mean, I turned my phone on in the morning. It's just like a constant stream of our lights coming from had to silence everything.
That's awesome. And we're how many followers are you up to
now?
Is it going to study doubt now as my its kind study around 90 thousand five hundred?
Okay. So if we get you to 20,000 then that'll be a big win from from 18 to 20,000 18 followers to 20,000 followers. We pretty big jump for you, right?
Yeah. It's like when you when you compare it's like how many people are are, you know, just pay for my school. It's worth a thousand people in my stomach is like 18 times as many as that follow me on first. It's bit crazy when you think
about for sure and what did your parents say?
When when you told them that you had 20,000 followers on Twitter do they do they understand what that
means? Yeah. Yeah, my heart's like hurry up today, LOL. That's pretty good. How did that happen?
I love it. And so what's the plan now? Are you going to keep creating videos and you'll tweet them out or what? Are you kind of planning to do?
Yes, I know but it's just about you know, making videos and then you know, when I do, I when I'm in the middle of research, I kind of just tweet that on glitter.
Got it. So you're 12. What else? Do you spend your time doing? Right? I'd your mom was here earlier. So everyone who's listening? I made sure that his mom was fine with us talking and stuff. But what do you spend your time doing outside of investing? Do you go and play at the playground with your friends? Do you go to school? Do you read like what else are you doing?
Yeah, so I go to school. Yeah, that's good. You gotta yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it was my friends, you know.
We left around, you know, have fun go to the parks and funds around their house. So yeah, I did I did outside them. You know when I get home, I don't know. I'm not like I'm not one of those people who immediately when I go home. It's like well, it's like well, it's just I gotta say School get it's like see all the stocks are doing there. What kind of my mate then get over and then and then just, you know, just do normal stuff, I guess like
so when school ends the first thing
You do is you check your stocks.
Yeah, first thing
I love it. What are your favorite stocks right now just in terms of the ones that you've covered and created videos on other ones that specifically you're paying attention to
yeah. So like my biggest position at the moment to stop called are kimoto. It's quite easy used to be a penny stock. It went up to 68 percent of one day. I've been about one hundred sixty-eight percent of it. So yes, I sold half my position, you know and whatever what
That's all the profits of to work. So I want to take some risk off the table. But what is that that company do so they produce Free Will Evie vehicles and you and you know, I like the CEO, you know, the Visions pretty good, you know, it's back by Sunday Monroe. He's going to help them scale up like 50,000 Vehicles a year company at the time. I invested it was off a hundred fifty million that was going to fight something like 700 million in Revenue in four years. So just feel all this companies.
Might I might as well take a bit of this is what say it's like. I'm my address is $5.99 that 16 now. So yeah, I mean, but that's the in assets part to be just run up in EV sector in general. I mean after your lecture, he seemed quite nice that's back in the really the whole stock market
awesome. And so when you think of your portfolio, is it a hundred percent stocks. Do you have other things other than just kind of public equities? How do you think about
investing? Yes, so
When you when you live in the UK, it's like different. So at the moment is all stocks. I've got some spare cash offer sold out and the name position, you know half the so I say I probably look like I'm at that. It is like 5% into Bitcoin is like the crypto thing and then just put the rest back into maybe IPA be or something which I have a lesson position and
got it. So you're a believer in
Bitcoin.
Yeah, I think it's like well, I was like to be in the sun. It's like there's 21 million Bitcoins in the world. I've got loads of them are lost and they need and then you look at obviously just surprised it was over 18,000 now, let's go out there. But when you look at it, like a decentralized currency, you know, it's not controlled by the government. It's not controlled by anyone. That's really since I did governments are like it but you know people like if it's not it's not controlled by anyone. It's really in the hands of the people.
Got it. And when you think about your portfolio, are you mentioned earlier your rebalancing your kind of treating this just like any other kind of hedge fund manager or professional investor would do
right? Yeah, I guess
it and where did you learn how to do
that?
You know, it's like yeah, I just really like taught myself, you know, watch some YouTube videos now at the start. I initially I would send you nothing about it. That's the other start. You know, my parents are Traders or anything. Nobody in my family was and so I did I originally I just thought when you kind of get an idea of who like everyone the famous is so I just threw out some money into some of the favorites companies and just learned from there. I mean, I think one of the other the first Holdings of
It was Berkshire Hathaway is like within one week. I realize that all horned puffins Esther's food companies and Aaron's it's selling out so I sold that puts it into some you case. The Hawks told that and finally found us stocks. And that was my sight making a returns from there.
Got it. And when did you start doing this was this something where like when the virus came around and the pandemic it that's when you started or were you doing this before the
pandemic I say when the pandemic care
what troubles and I didn't start when it was middle of the stock market crash. I would have made a whole lot of money. Then I started around like four or five months ago. I'd say
got it and what platform do you use to trade on? Do you use one of the like new technology platforms? Are you use like a traditional brokerage account?
Yeah. So in the UK, Robin Hood was going to be heavily decided not to launch. So I use basically the UK version of Robin Hood at the moment trading to unseat. I like zero conditional that guy was
The one problem is just like Financial Exchange impact so you might be like once it on stop with your down limit because of the currency difference. But then at the same time, I'm not going to pay like 10 percent of all my life into stopped want to trade and a traditional brokerage account. So it works out pretty well
Zach you realize how ridiculous it feels for me to be talking to somebody who's 12 years old and understands the foreign currency risk and the exchange risk that you're taking right? Yeah.
All right. So you're it looks like you're in your bedroom. Is that the headquarters of the Zach Cox trading business?
Yeah, I did more or less everything in here. You know, it's all on the Fly. It's all on the phone, which I'm using now all the trace up a little bit.
Okay, you do everything on your
phone. Yeah, although my photo
what a legend and is it just you or do you have anybody else who's helping you? Are you gonna plan to get more of your friends?
Then what's kind of the plan for the future?
Yeah. Well like I don't really have anyone who's helping. I actually got my dad into it recently. I showed him. I was running it was making years all I can do this and what someone's doing it. But yeah, so I got in heaven to it. But yeah, I think like in the future is not really like necessarily persuading people there. I might put my link on my Twitter page and try and get some free pre shares. They got a Snapchat free share in the hold it and let it run a hundred percent. So
soda of those are some company which I made lost like one pound on I think it is like Snapchat show than they double worthy of it. And that was a pretty good preacher, but obviously I might put that on my channel so you get some free chairs. That's always good.
Gotcha. I love it. All right. So you're 12 years old now. I want to document this because you're obviously incredibly intelligent and ambitious. What do you want to do with your life? Right if we come back and we watch this video 30 years from now. What are you hoping?
Being to have accomplished by
then.
And like us and like that. Yes II maybe be a fund manager. That's like the hope maybe one of the smaller for managers manage like five million dollars or something, you know, that'd be pretty good, you know, being a fund manager getting locating the nicest a package which comes with it.
So I did you just say that maybe be a small fund manager with like five billion
dollars and not inside of but yeah, that was pretty cool five billion dollars. Okay five billion.
I love it. All right, any last words for everyone? We're going to send it. We're going to link to your YouTube in the description. So everyone that's listening to this or watching it on YouTube. Go check out Zach's YouTube page. He's literally smarter than 90% of the idiots on Twitter. So he's doing a pretty good job. But anything you want to say to
everyone. Yeah, just like if he says if you subscribe to my YouTube channel, I like greatly appreciate it and keep on investing. All right, so we're
going to send people to your YouTube we're going
send people to Twitter and if they have questions if they tweet at you, you're pretty active on Twitter now, right so you'll try to your best to answer everybody.
Yeah,
awesome. And all right. Listen. Thank you so much for doing this. You are you're a legend in the making my friend. So this is going to be fun.
Yeah. Hopefully I'm sure it will be.
