Latest / The Curve / TCW52: Everyone wants a piece of Stanley.

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TCW52: Everyone wants a piece of Stanley. · The Curve

• 0:00
  Hi and welcome to the Curve Weekly. The podcast that keeps you up to date with all the money,
• 0:06
  business and stock market tea. Everyone should experience for us at least once in their lives
• 0:10
  and Annie shouldn't miss out just because she can't afford it. Help me own pool.
• 0:14
  Okay, don't think you've ever looked hotter, honestly. Like I know, that's a bit weird,
• 0:20
  but your hair and your face. Hey, me, so I know she looks so pretty, doesn't she?
• 0:25
  Oh my god, we should hang out more often. Compliments like that?
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  I think we hang out way too much. I know, true.
• 0:32
  You look like you've had a blow wave. Did you use the new Dyson? Is that you?
• 0:35
  I do, but they present. Yes, no idea. I use the new Dyson ear wrap and oh my goodness,
• 0:42
  it's a game changer. So for anyone that missed this, I think this is like maybe the best
• 0:49
  friend material I've ever done, right? Like, yeah. Oh, hands down.
• 0:53
  Like banged on about getting an ear wrap for, honestly, ever. So basically for Vixpert,
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  that I emailed Dyson and I was like, hello. Just wondering, is there any chance that you would be
• 1:04
  interested in giving Victoria a birthday present that I can claim? I love it. Now like, yeah,
• 1:10
  sure. Anyway, so it's like, and I used it the other day, just like a little spruce up,
• 1:15
  where was I going? I don't know. I don't know. Oh, go ahead. I was sitting there.
• 1:19
  No, I was sitting there. I don't know. Honestly, and I was trying to have it like blow it out.
• 1:26
  I must say, I think you need to show me how to use it. I was like in a hurry and to know what
• 1:30
  I was up to. Yeah. No, it's so easy to use. It's honestly like he is styling for dummies.
• 1:36
  I don't know if that's what they want the tagline to be, but it's honestly, it sucks your hearing
• 1:41
  and kills it and makes it into a way. I'm just like, oh, where has this been on my life?
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  Anyway, enough about your hot hair. Okay. So stock market news. So we've got a bit of a divergence
• 1:54
  in the world at the moment in terms of what's happening in the stock market. So in the US,
• 1:59
  the US stock market is hitting at all time highs. So levels that's never ever been at before.
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  So if we go back to say December 21, that was the previous high that the S&P 500. So the top
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  500 companies in the US that index, that was the top point that it ever reached. Then it kind of
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  fell back down in 2022. And then last year, 2023, it's kind of roofed it back up again. And the
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  start of this year has continued. So we're reaching new highs, which is quite healthy and quite good
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  for a stock market. It's a good indication things are going well. But on the flip side, we've got
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  another large economy in the world that is reaching record lows. And it's quite interesting to
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  see such a divergence at the moment. So China, their index is hitting five year lows. So yeah,
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  levels that hasn't seen in the last five years. And the Hong Kong stock exchange is hitting
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  20 year lows, 20 year good lows. So you're kind of undoing all that growth. If you think about
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  all that growth in those companies share prices over the last 20 years has all been undone.
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  And we're kind of going back to levels we were at 20 years ago in Hong Kong, which is crazy.
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  I mean, there's been tons that's been going on in that 20 years in Hong Kong. But also Hong Kong
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  like is starting to be slowly taken over by China, right? Exactly. Yeah. And the thing with China
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  is, and we spoke about this last week was all around the fact that their population is shrinking.
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  And a lot of economic data coming out of China isn't as good as people first thought or getting
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  worse. But the government in China is now considering nearly a $300 billion package to
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  prop up the stock market. Because of a stock market isn't doing well in a country that can start
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  fueling people taking money out. Companies not wanting to list on their stock exchange.
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  And really just kind of a sense of doom and gloom in a country where the stock market isn't doing
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  too well. So the Chinese government has got a nearly a $300 billion package to prop up the economy.
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  So who's the money coming from? When you say package, is that from the government? Are they
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  coming from, yeah, from taxpayers? But that just means the government gets more debt. So if the
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  propping up doesn't work or the support doesn't work, how much longer or how much do they keep
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  going to prop up the stock market before they give up and they go, okay, you know what people
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  just aren't wanting to invest in China. So it is a dangerous game. And the whole point of a
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  stock market is that you've got investors trading with other investors, depending on supply and
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  demand. So as soon as you kind of artificially start interfering, that's what things can kind of
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  turn into disaster. So it's not a very good sign when the government steps in. And where's the
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  money going? So like where is, for example, if you're like, okay, they're putting this much money in,
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  is it the government deciding what shares they want to buy? Yes, that works. Yeah.
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  In previous times, the Chinese government has just closed the stock market on bad days. So when
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  the stock market starts falling, it just shuts it and goes, you know what? No one's buying or selling
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  anymore today. We're going to stop. Which again, it's really bad because it's like, oh gosh, I can't
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  get my money out or I can't buy stock. It also just creates so much uncertainty for people
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  doesn't it? Like totally is this feeling of like, oh god, are they just going to close the stock
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  market? I've got money in there and then people freak out and they pull their money. Yeah. And so
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  that's why you probably get a lot of investors are like, you know what? China's just a bit too hard
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  basket to invest in. I'm going to put my money into other, other indexes or other economies
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  like the US. And so that's why we've seen the US stock market reaching all time highs in China
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  and Hong Kong reaching new lows. But yeah, no, there is that whole big day energy of China versus
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  US at the moment. And so I think from an economic health perspective, US is definitely winning
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  right now. So the S&P 500, the interesting thing is that there is seven companies that make up
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  about 30% of the index. So remember, there's 500 companies in the S&P 500, the top 500 companies
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  in the US. But seven of those companies make up 30% of the index, which is huge. And we haven't
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  seen this for like decades. And they're called the magnificent seven. So it's Apple, Microsoft,
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  Alphabet, which is Google, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and Nvidia. Yeah. So these make up 30% of the
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  index. So when they move, the index moves. If you've got a big waiting in the index,
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  if you sneeze, everyone gets a cold kind of thing. So if you had invested $100 in the S&P 500,
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  $7 of that $100 would go straight into Apple stock. That's how much of that $100 you'd be owning
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  of Apple, even though you're investing in 500 different companies. And seven dollars would go
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  into Microsoft as well. So $14 would go into two companies. And the rest of your money,
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  the remaining $86 is split across $498 companies, which is quite wild just to see the weight
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  or the size of those two companies in particular, that they are of the S&P 500. So when Apple does
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  well, the S&P 500 does well, when Microsoft doesn't do well, S&P 500 doesn't do well, because they're
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  such a large portion of that. So you are diversified, but what those top seven companies do
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  does have quite a big impact on the movement of the index. It's super interesting. I think you'd
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  like this one. So I don't know if you've seen, but Stanley, the cut that, I know the ones you
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  mean, those massive cups that like you have a handle and a straw. They come in gray or green,
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  and I know the ones you mean. It's like the bigger, the better, you know, the bigger your Stanley
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  cup, the better. And it's gone viral on TikTok and it's become this hyped craze, particularly in
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  the US or in Gen Z millennials, people wanting to own these Stanley cups and they've bought out
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  limited edition ones and like all the stuff, there's like such a craze. People are camping outside
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  target for hours before the store opens to get these limited edition Stanley cups, which is
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  absolutely crazy. So there has been congratulations to them. That is
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  amazing brand. Like to have people queueing for a drink bottle of all things, like maybe an
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  iPhone, maybe tickets to see your favorite band, but a fucking drink bottle, like who has time to
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  share. It's such a good rebrand because they were historically, I guess, made thermoses and camping
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  equipment. I think of them as like a camping like yeah, we're on the rootburn track and I've got
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  my thermos out for a hot chocky, you know, like I definitely wouldn't have thought of them as
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  like a cool brand. No, yeah. And that's kind of why they've done such a good rebrand.
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  And it is quite interesting to see these companies that historically targeted one demographic,
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  like this would have been kind of blue collar workers, campers, that kind of thing. And now they're
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  targeting mainstream millennials, young girls, you know, just creating, creating a completely
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  different target market and targeting a different audience. And we've seen it with Birkenstocks,
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  I was about to say is it similar to Birkenstocks? Yeah, they've nailed it. They've nailed it. Yeah,
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  and so it's really interesting to see and I googled, I was reading articles about this and seeing
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  it all over social media and so I googled is Stanley a public company. And it is. It's cool,
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  Stanley, Black and Dica. So they merged the businesses in about 2010, I think it was, was
• 9:37
  Stanley company in Black and Dica and they merged and it's only a small part of the business.
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  So I think investing in a company where one tiny product out of the whole business is doing well,
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  probably not the best investment idea. But if you did start to see maybe a few other products and
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  you started seeing in their revenue that, okay, this is actually having an impact on their revenue
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  because people might be going in to buy these at and then they buy something else. Yeah,
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  they buy something else or something. Yes, yeah, it's probably like young girls dragging their
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  dads into to buy the Stanley car from the dad comes out with a few other bits of tenting,
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  a tenting equipment. Yeah, a bit of work. Oh my god, some carabinus.
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  Oh, some crampons. Gosh. So basically the thing is if you see Birkenstocks and they're selling,
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  you know, hot pink crocs with flames are absolutely going crazy. That doesn't mean that
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  holistically all of their products are doing well. All that the companies are good investment.
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  You just have to keep things in perspective. Yes, yeah, keep it in perspective. But it is a really
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  good lesson that look around, you know, if you are sitting on TikTok or you are sitting on
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  social media that there is a bit of a craze and people are starting to buy certain products or
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  certain brands that they weren't before. Maybe just have a little thing in your head that goes,
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  hang on a second. Maybe I want to see if I can invest in that. So it's just having that
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  investing mindset. I thought I was waiting for the investor mindset to be dropped.
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  Anyway, another trend that we are seeing on social media as well is and I am all for this. When
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  I saw this, I was like, Hallelujah, I've been waiting for this. So it is called loud budgeting.
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  And I don't know if people listening have bought into it or doing it, have seen it, but
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  it's a viral trend on TikTok that's all about personal finance. And it's the opposite of quiet
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  luxury. So what you're doing is you are effectively saying your budget out loud. So you're like,
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  look, you know what, in 2024, I'm going to cancel my gym membership because I don't use it.
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  And I'm going to save that money. And so you're almost holding yourself accountable because you're
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  outwardly saying what you're going to do in your budget in 2024. So it would be, as an example,
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  like, okay, I'm not going to spend any money going out for dinners in 2024. Yeah. And you say,
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  is it concepts that I say it and therefore my friends know publicly that if they see me out for dinner,
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  I'll be shamed. Totally. And you say it on social media. So if anyone sees so fast,
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  a dinner that would be like, excuse me. So it would be like take away a coffee cup or something
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  would be quite good. Yeah. Like I watched this one girl and she was like, this year in 2024,
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  I'm ghosting my friends. I'm saying no to plans so that I can save that money and grow my wealth.
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  And I was like, go you. I was like, probably a bit extreme to ghost all your friends, but
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  quite funny. But people are finding really innovative creative ways to allow budget.
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  Why don't we think of one? I think we should do one. Let's think about it and come back to the
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  next week. We can have our allowed budget and we can announce it. And if anyone sees us
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  breaking in it, we have to give ourselves some kind of life and hold each other accountable.
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  And so can the everyone in the curved community if they see us doing it.
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  Maybe we should do like a pleadging where it's like, I'm, you know, and we could share everyone's
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  and it'd be quite fun. It would be really fun. No, but I think this is really cool because a lot
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  of social media is all about keeping up with the Joneses, you know, making yourself look good
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  and trying to impress other people through materialistic things. And I just love how this is
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  completely flipped that on its head. And it's like, let's make being frugal cool. Let's make
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  saving money cool. And if anyone can jump on this bandwagon and, you know, who wasn't previously
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  budgeting or doing cost saving things, I think is like really, really cool. And we've got girl
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  math and all that shit that I hate. Like, this is just right up my alley in terms of, I'm like,
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  yeah, I love stuff like this. And I read this headline and I was like, oh, my goodness,
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  I was like, this is great because we've talked about how working from home flexible working
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  conditions have been pretty much a godsend to women. You know, we now can be much more active
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  participants in the workforce. The whole nine to five working week was set up for mainly men who
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  partners at home that could look after their family and children. And so, so if there's one thing
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  that COVID has done, which is positive, it's really shook, shook it up, shaken up, shook it up,
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  the workplace and the working arrangements. And so we're finally starting to see data now, which
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  is really, really cool. That mean they're actually working shorter hours on average than they did
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  25 years ago. And women are picking up the slack. So we, it's almost like COVID and this flexible
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  working room has allowed us to enter the workforce in a new way. Yeah. And it's really cool to see, you
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  know, those women that might have been working in a workplace where, okay, look, you have to come
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  to the office nine to five every day. And they're like, look, that's not going to work for me. And
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  they're like, okay, cool, we'll see you later. Can now actually be like, go cool, I can work two days
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  a week here and three days a week at home or I can work from maybe nine to one and then spend the
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  afternoon at home, looking after children. So just that flexibility has really meant that we can
• 15:01
  now lean in a lot more to work, which is awesome. It's crazy that you bring this up because yesterday
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  I was speaking to one of the founders Meila from Jobs for Mums. Have you heard of that? No.
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  So she was saying 80% of the gender gap, like the pay gap is due to the mum area of our lives where
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  we can't get a nine to five job. And we want something like, you know, a flexible three days a week
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  or a, you know, whatever, like a lot of it comes from that motherhood penalty. And she was just
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  basically saying, you know, if we can focus on helping mums get into the workforce into different,
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  you know, like higher paying roles because a lot of them are really qualified for it. But as soon as
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  they leave, it's really hard because unless they can fully commit to a full working week, they don't
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  get a look in and a job. So anyway, they've got this website. It's called Jobs for Mums for anyone
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  that's like interested, but they work with like all kinds of companies all over. It's just New Zealand
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  specific. So if say, for example, Fletcher building or like Spark, for example, if they were open to
• 16:03
  a mum applying for a job that was like essentially appropriate for flexible hours and paying love
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  of love, they market it on jobs films website. So you know automatically if you see a job on there
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  that it's appropriate for you and they're open to things being a bit more flexible. But it's just
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  like, it's such a scary thought. It puts me off wanting to have kids because I don't want to
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  have kids and then all of a sudden not be able to have the same earning capacity or or do things
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  that like challenge and excite me purely because the reserve for someone that can be in the office
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  from a 9 to 5 Monday to Friday, it's scary. I think it's just workplaces need to be, need to open
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  their eyes up to the fact that women in particular are the ones that stay home and look after
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  children and they've got a whole other job at home. So it's like be flexible in the fact that
• 16:52
  them coming to work and being paid is only a small portion or of the whole makeup of what they do.
• 16:58
  I don't know, I just feel like treat parents as parents not being versus woman if that makes
• 17:05
  just create an environment for a family to function in a current in current society whether it's
• 17:13
  the male or the female that goes into paid employment. It's such a hard though because if you're the
• 17:18
  well, if you're the employer, for example, for us, like it is really hard actually working with
• 17:24
  months who only have three hours a day to work. Like I do understand how impractical it can be
• 17:29
  for a company. Like I do understand it but I just don't know what the solution is because
• 17:34
  I mean we've experienced it with like amazing moms who have helped us with things like writing
• 17:38
  or social media or whatever but it is difficult when you can only access someone for a short
• 17:44
  period of a day because of course they've got to look after their kids for the rest of it.
• 17:47
  Like I don't know what the solution is but I think it's difficult for
• 17:51
  parents as well as employers and I don't know what they're like comfortable middle grounders.
• 17:56
  Yeah I don't know, it is a tricky one.
• 17:58
  God I feel like we're just we could honestly tell you how. I know I'm like oh God so this
• 18:05
  was positive news though so this was positive news. I've forgotten it. Yeah so that women are
• 18:11
  picking up the set. Me and our working shorter hours which is great which I hope means that there's
• 18:17
  been a more time looking after children and picking up the the jobs at home and then women are
• 18:23
  being much more active participants in the workforce so in paid employment so yeah it's really
• 18:29
  really good to see I mean there's still a huge discrepancy the average weekly hour worked by a male
• 18:34
  is 35 hours a week and a female is 28 hours a week so it's still quite a large gap.
• 18:42
  I think we need to say men and women because I'm pretty sure if we say female we're not
• 18:48
  compassing yeah in identifying folk so I think just and we don't need to cut the salads.
• 18:54
  It should be really good for people to listen I think but yeah I know what you're trying to say
• 18:58
  but I just want to yeah correct so and the biggest thing was after the pandemic so it is definitely
• 19:04
  a function of this increase increase in flexible working conditions this lead to this increase in
• 19:11
  women participating so we've seen a huge increase post pandemic of this closing of the gap
• 19:18
  in terms of hours worked per week so but there's still a little bit of a long way to go as
• 19:23
  there always is but also in terms of earnings so we're talking about hours worked in terms of
• 19:30
  earnings the gap is also narrowed particularly in the US so when we talk about gender pay gap it's
• 19:36
  about 9% in New Zealand it's about I think it's about 14% in Australia or that may have been
• 19:42
  updated but in the US it's actually 16% but it is closing so if we think about weekly earnings
• 19:50
  for a woman in the US it was a thousand dollars a week last year on average and but that's only
• 19:56
  about 84% of what men were paid so we're getting paid about 16 less in America in terms of women
• 20:06
  versus men unfortunately and what was that stat it's going to take over 200 years for the gender pay
• 20:13
  gap because we we spoke in it like a corporate event last week and it's so weird because as we
• 20:18
  were talking about it I noticed because there was obviously men in the room and I noticed
• 20:23
  this kind of like not because you don't want to be like it's your fault no yeah so it is really
• 20:28
  hard to talk about when men are around but it's so important that they're aware of the situation
• 20:33
  but I did find myself feeling a little bit awkward like let's just skip over this bit because you know
• 20:37
  yeah okay on to the next slide on to the next slide I know it's important yeah but it is true
• 20:44
  because it's they might have daughters and it's like hey you know what don't let your daughter be in
• 20:49
  this position when she retires or you know make her stand up for herself and ask for a pay rise
• 20:54
  or make sure she's getting paid the equal amount as everyone else in her job or your sisters or
• 21:00
  your wives you know they do they ask around by by woman I have a friend who actually
• 21:07
  her dad she was basically on purely commission for like a couple of years and was really struggling
• 21:13
  financially and she was meant to be going overseas and her dad September was just like you're not
• 21:18
  allowed to go even though she's like definitely old enough to do her own thing and make her an
• 21:22
  decision it was like unless you're on a salary you're not going so she was forced to have this
• 21:28
  uncomfortable conversation with her employer and be like hey I kind of need a base salary as well
• 21:32
  as commission you know and it's worked out really well and it's so much better for her now but
• 21:37
  it's just like I think you're right there is there is a part to play no matter where you sit in the
• 21:42
  story and the narrative you you can help encourage people to ask for what they deserve and not
• 21:47
  what your child or daughter or girlfriend should be how they could be approaching things differently
• 21:50
  and yeah so yeah but it's a forgotten to be all combos isn't it I really want to end on a
• 21:57
  high do you have any like fun jokes you could you know finish words or like is there really
• 22:02
  really put me on the spot so sorry why don't you tell everyone about your date stop it I knew
• 22:08
  that's exactly where you go like it's been literally twice two days I just need to give it a
• 22:13
  bit of breathing space yeah fair enough okay well if it continues and continues to be a good
• 22:19
  dating scenario we might hear more of this so cool person with no name yeah he loves trucks he
• 22:27
  likes it no no trucks they call diggers yeah he can be diggin man but yes okay have a great week
• 22:34
  no I didn't mean you I mean I was like it'll see you in an hour five seconds
• 22:40
  okay bye thank you so much for listening to the curve weekly make sure you hit the subscribe
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• 22:50
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• 23:05
  you next Monday bye bye see you next Tuesday wow see you next Tuesday I mean Monday