Today I have the pleasure to sit down with Stuart Pritchard, Founder and CEO of the UK firm Blockman Capital. We will be discussing business resilience, entrepreneurship in these crazy times as well as his extremely expert opinion on both the traditional and cryptocurrency markets. This is one conversation you must not miss!
https://youtu.be/12Nzoimde84
Dennis Lewis 0:01 Hey, hello everybody, welcome Happy Friday to you we’ve made it through yet another week of these strange and crazy times. And like every Friday we get a we’re going to have an amazing guest. Today, we are going to be talking about not just you know about business and coming out of this crazy times on top, but we’re going to have a trader on a an authentic expert on what the hell is going on in the markets. If these are if the times are crazy, in my humble opinion. And you guys know by now I am not a trader by any stretch of the imagination. These times are even more crazy. So it’s a real pleasure to have Stuart Pritchard. He is the founder and CEO of Blackmon capital. He’s so UK based company. We’ll talk also with him about what their company offers as well on today’s live stream but Yeah, I’m going to take off the fancy intro slide there and bring on Stuart. And let’s just have a conversation. Hey, you’re
Stuart Pritchard 1:11 welcome. Welcome.
Dennis Lewis 1:13 Thanks for being on. And how are things going for you there in southern England?
Stuart Pritchard 1:19 Yes, pretty good. Actually, obviously everybody is suffering from the same thing the the lockdown. Hence the reason why we’re sort of live in my in my kitchen at the moment as we’re talking, which isn’t the usual way to conduct business, but it seems to have been the way of the last six weeks. From all reports. It doesn’t look as though it’s going to end in a hurry either over here, I know. You guys are relaxing down a little bit in Spain, but the talk here is for another sort of two or three weeks. So interesting.
Dennis Lewis 1:55 funny things this this whole experience is we’ve had some we’ve been Looking into people’s kitchens and their and their that Yeah, I don’t know, maybe not their bathrooms but you know, all sorts of weird places and, and sometimes just the backgrounds are interesting, right? They
Stuart Pritchard 2:15 They certainly can be I mean, I’ve been I’ve conducted a number of zoom calls with clients and with with guys that work for us over the past four or five weeks and as you say, there’s been some interesting backgrounds from time to time. I think my favorite is when the children sort of bounce into the room or something unexpectedly. That’s always amusing, but But yeah, I firmly might put my two daughters like the older 17 and 20 they are here with us. But yeah, just ask them to remain vacant for the next 45 minutes while we have a conversation.
Dennis Lewis 2:53 Okay, cool. So So let’s start off by just talking about what it what’s your experience been like? You know, running your business in these weird times? How do you, you know, when you talk to other entrepreneurs, what what do you tell them? You know what, what’s your take on how to keep your business safe and healthy and go in with all of this kind of apocalyptic feeling?
Stuart Pritchard 3:19 Yeah, I think it’s, it’s obviously everything is about enthusiasts. And it’s about positivity, you know, that that that’s ultimately the two buzzwords or catch words that we will be using. But I think also It all depends on on what particular sphere, your businesses in, you know, my, my wife owns a hair salon, for example, that’s been closed now for the past sort of four to five weeks and I know a number of people in the hospitality trade, who you know that that’s a slightly different picture for them because trying to keep them positive and motivated when they have zero revenue. In front of them, and potentially zero revenue for some time to come. It is challenging. You know, it’s hard work for people from our side from an investment perspective, and certainly trading the markets perspective. Okay, so the markets have been incredibly volatile recently. But you need prices to move in order to make money. And the key to it is not to get caught out the wrong side of a trade. But yeah, it’s just it’s keeping positive from our side. It’s weird because a lot of people now sat at home private investors, if you like retail supply answers there so far in the UK, and they actually want to try and do something for themselves that actually makes things a little bit positive. They don’t really want to just be sat at home, licking their wounds and watching their equity portfolio, so disappearing down the drain a little bit. They want to get a bit more active about it. So that’s been good for us. But I’m also very conscious, just with my wife for example, I’m very conscious that we’re in a slightly we’re in the slight better end of having to deal with this those poor people, but they’re at the other end. I you know, I sympathize completely with them It must be really difficult.
Dennis Lewis 5:19 Yeah, it is. And you know, a lot of it is, like you say there is a lot of it, that is his mentality, but there is a lot of it. There’s this there’s a lot of businesses suffering right now, there’s not, you know, I say there’s not there’s not really anybody who’s probably saying, Hey, this is great unless you make masks or, you know, something like that. But, you know, that’s it’s funny because, you know, what you said about the markets. It’s true, you know, from from your point of view, movement is, you know, the probably the worst thing possible is a stagnant kind of market that doesn’t do anything because if it’s moving, then it’s, you know, there’s energy in the market and if you’re, I guess if you’re really smart, and you know, how to handle it, then that plays to your advantage. I guess it also plays to disadvantage to a lot of people that aren’t as clever.
Stuart Pritchard 6:10 Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, a sideways moving market is is don’t, there is nothing you could do. The the other side of that, though, is there’s very little risk on the table when the markets moving sideways. However, when the market starts getting lively, up or down, there are opportunities there. And it depends, again, on your trading stance. You know, there’s the ability to short the market to take a profit from the downside, notoriously a lot more difficult to do than trading the upside that you have to have a certain mental predisposition to short the market. It’s a bit of a tough ask. However, yeah, moving markets right now. certainly been good to us. And obviously, you know, with the caveat that Whatever you trade there’s risk whenever you place a trade, it can go the opposite way.
Dennis Lewis 7:09 Hmm.
Stuart Pritchard 7:10 But But yeah, overall a bit more interesting right now.
Dennis Lewis 7:15 Yeah, well, I mean, I always remember the the Warren Buffett quote you know that when people are greedy I get scared and when people are scared I get greedy right. Now if you’re, if you could hear me there
Stuart Pritchard 7:30 Yeah, absolutely. It’s a Yeah, great. keeps breaking up a little bit to be fair, but be I can I can still hear you. But yeah, it’s, it’s exactly as Warren Buffett said, quite often, it’s good to be contrary to the underlying feeling in the market. If people are scared, that tends to be the time that you should be getting involved. And certainly we’ve found that over the past six weeks, the market has been very good to us because The fear is there. So people have sold out and it gives you the opportunity to buy in.
Dennis Lewis 8:05 So so here’s just just from a general market kind of equity market sort of question for you that I mean, it. Everybody understood that when all this happened, the market crashed, that that I think even silly people like me can understand. But give me a reason why it’s come back because the world isn’t in a better place. Yes, you know, there is we haven’t solved any problem. So why is it coming back? It doesn’t make sense to normal people like me.
Stuart Pritchard 8:38 Yeah, sure. So so the the reason very, very clearly is governmental intervention. You have for example, in Italy, one of the worst places hit by this. They’ve already thrown 750 billion euros into their system. In the UK, we’ve already put aside 350 billion dollars The US literally just last week signed a false bill that now brings their stimulus up to $3 trillion. as amazing as a new billion,
Dennis Lewis 9:14 where the hell are they get? I mean, they’re just printing just like they’re just pulling it out there, right?
Stuart Pritchard 9:19 Absolutely, absolutely the same as the credit crunch the credit crisis back in 2008 2009. But the interesting part is if we just look at the footsie 100, which is the one that obviously I concentrate on being based in the UK, recovered back up to sort of 6000 level from a 5000 level, so significant drop to the downside and recover back up, but again, money coming in from from the government. But as you quite rightly said, we haven’t actually solved the problem here. And we haven’t faced the fact that we’ve switched the economy off for a sustainable period of time, not just the UK economy, you know, the global economy has been switched off for the last six weeks that has to play out. You know, we’re now getting into companies releasing their first quarter earnings reports. British Airways, Boeing, etc. EasyJet, Ryanair, any travel company. And you know, we saw Lloyds Bank, for example, post a 95% drop in revenue in the first quarter 95% drop in revenue. That’s not the second quarter This is up to the end of March. April, May and June are going to be a lot more frightening again, and I think I I’m curious to see whether this recovery is a dead cat bounce as in, is the market going to roll over again now, as companies start reporting the hard facts about how hard they’ve been it’s and I do Worry, what other leavers do the government’s have now they’ve slashed interest rates to basically zero. They’ve pumped billions if not trillions of pounds and dollars into the market. What what happens from here, you know, what other leaders have they got to pull to try and get things going again, they’ve kind of already pulled all the leaders at their disposal. It’s, it’s going to be an unusual time over the next three or four months, in my opinion, in equity markets.
Dennis Lewis 11:26 Yeah, because I mean, I think we’re going to inevitably, they’re going to be companies that aren’t going to make it and probably companies with big names, you know, in the travel industry and hotel industry, it’s just stands to reason there’s no revenue, the you know, they’re still paying mortgages on their properties. They’re still you know, they’re still expenses and there’s no money coming in. I don’t know how many people are going to be able to survive that and I think we fading out on me there, Stuart. Are you still there? Hello. Alright, hold on. Yeah, you have somebody didn’t like what you had to say there. You’re fuzzing out on me. I’m going to see here I’m going to remove you just a second. You can guys can look at me here for a minute and then I’m going to add him back in. Maybe that will help. Ah
Stuart Pritchard 12:21 dingy. I’ve lost you there.
Dennis Lewis 12:24 Yeah, I think you’re you’re you’re you’re fading out maybe would be a good deal to refresh your browser or something there, Stuart. There we go. Okay, so while we’re waiting for Stuart to come back on and, you know, talk about we’re going to talk about we’re going to continue to talk a little bit about the equities market and then we are going to talk about specifically the cryptocurrency market is as you know, that is something that I am I’m very interested in Hey, your backstory.
Stuart Pritchard 13:02 Welcome. Apologies just dropped out there. So, apologies.
Dennis Lewis 13:07 So my question before we move on to crypto markets and whatnot is, um, you know, inevitably there’s there’s big companies that with big names big brands that that are that are just hemorrhaging big right now they’re the costs aren’t going away. I mean, if you have no hotel, you’re paying the mortgage, regardless of whether you have anybody staying in a hotel and revenues like you said, I mean, you know, Lloyds Bank 95% drop in revenue, you know, and we haven’t got q2. Do you think we’re gonna see some big name companies just not make
Stuart Pritchard 13:41 it? Absolutely. I can’t see how that can’t be the situation. I think it’s going to start in the SME that the small to medium sized enterprise level, but I think some big names gonna fail. The likes of Boeing, the likes of British Airways or AIG. That, you know, mainland Spanish now but but but these companies are really going to struggle unless again, they have a bailout from the from the governments involved. But I think you know, what stays you go get to with that, you know, the banks were one thing where we have to have a banking system allowing companies like airlines to fail. sounds absolutely awful and terrible for the people that work there. But from a governmental viewpoint, somebody else will step in and pick those pieces up. So it’s not like the banking system where everything’s reliant on it. I just think there are going to be some big things that come crashing down here, unfortunately, which is, which is just awful for you know, although those poor people that are employed by it and the services that they provide to other people, and then the knock on effect, you know, the domino effect of if you look at airline companies, you know, they have catering companies that are tend to be independent that provide the food for the flights. Just a whole list of things in the domino chain that are going to get affected by this. So, yeah, it’s going to be very far reaching. And as you quite rightly said, we’re really not at the end of this, you know, we don’t know if there’s a second wave coming. We don’t know if there’s going to be a second lockdown in other places. Everybody’s kind of approaching it slightly differently. The UK has one stance, Germany has another Sweden has yet another Spain has yet another. So whilst everybody is desperately trying to sort this out, who knows which way works? You know, is it Sweden where you do nothing? You don’t lock down in at all? Or is it Spain where it’s a really severe lockdown? I think any time we’ll play that out, you know, we’ll see where we are.
Dennis Lewis 15:42 Yeah, I think it really is. It’s the uncertainty is what’s really the I think that that really worries me. You know, it makes everything hard because you really don’t know. I mean, you know, we can all look and see that there are leaders that have done better jobs than others. That we kind of all know, but uh, but answers nobody really knows it’s all you know, it’s it’s
Stuart Pritchard 16:08 who would who would want to be a prime minister or you know right now or president right now you know what a poison Chalice studies to pick up and you know I think every government is having a go you know that one thing that certainly comes across from just conversations with people in different countries it’s not like anybody’s kind of just ignoring this, you know to use choose a bit of a term the throwing the kitchen sink at this you know, imagine being the Prime Minister that says we’re going to switch the economy off for six weeks at least maybe 12 weeks that that takes that takes one hell of a decision to make that you know that that’s an incredible decision to make. And what what’s actually been really quite heartening here in the UK and I don’t know how it’s been so much in Spain Andrews My brother is As he lives in Spain, as explained a few bits, but over here, it’s kind of the government said, Look, we’re shutting the economy off. And we all went. Yeah, fair enough. That’s exactly what we need to do to try and get on top of this thing. Yes, no fighting back, there’s no resisting, there was no up in arms. There was no, everybody’s kind of gone. Yeah, that’s, that’s fair enough. You know, people are dying from this, that that’s a perfectly reasonable stance to take, that we all locked down, we stay at home and we have a go at saving lives, you know, and just and I that’s really heartening, the way the sort of community spirit has gone up, even where I live my neighbors, you know, we’re taking a lot more time now to speak to each other and ask how we’re all doing and making sure that everybody’s got what they need, etc. It’s, yeah, there’s a lot of positives here. I mean, obviously, it’s tragic, what’s happening within the virus outbreak itself, but the heartening stories about the community and the positive outlook that’s coming about from it. Yeah, it’s really that’s pretty cool.
Dennis Lewis 18:04 Yeah, I’ve said the same on here on on quite a few of these live streams that here in Spain, people have, you know, they’ve taken it in stride and you know, they’re, they’re, they’re following the rules, they’re, you know, there’s not a whole lot of, you know, when we look out the window, you know, I, I can take the dogs out every you know, when they need to go and but there’s nobody out there, you know, other than the other people taking the dogs out. I mean, it’s, yeah, they’re, they’re doing a good job. I mean, you know, whether or not it’s, you know, how many lives is it saved? We don’t really know. But I mean, we sure as heck know the number that we’ve lost and it’s scary. So I think that’s kind of what what, what’s keeping you know, keeping that community spirit going is that you know, I mean, this we’re all you know, you don’t really have a choice, you either do it right or you or you know that the consequences are are kind of you know, unimaginable.
Stuart Pritchard 19:03 Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And I think everybody is abiding by it and everybody is aware, you know, certainly over here, the amount of coverage that’s given to this whole situation. It’s literally constant 27. We have five terrestrial channels that we follow in at any given time or one of those terrestrial channels. There will be an hour long talk about Coronavirus, you know, what’s going on how it’s affecting people, etc. So, everybody is is ultra aware of how important this is. And as you say, who knows how many would say that but you very correct in saying, you know, we know very, very clearly how many people are are suffering from this. So, yeah, it’s one of those things. I think everybody has just gone yet. This is fine. We’ll deal with this. We’ll come out the far side whether the V shape recovery Going back to a little bit about sort of economic side of things. There is a lot of talk here about a V shaped recovery, when we switch the economy back on. Again, I just don’t quite see that I think people in i think i think their habits have changed. You know, I’m certainly go to restaurants go into bars go into cafes, I just think that there’s not going to be the reshaped recovery that Bruce hoping for, I think people will be a lot more concerned and perhaps making sure that they’ve got a bit of rainy day money in their pocket, rather than going out and spending it pretty much straightaway. So we’ll see. We’ll see. I might be wrong, but it feels like I tend
Dennis Lewis 20:41 to agree. I don’t I don’t think you know that this is going to be Yeah, snap your fingers. And we’re going to go back. I mean, I’ve been saying this all along here. From an entrepreneurial point of view, you know, business owners have to be thinking about there’s we’re not going back to two months ago. It’s not going to happen. So you have to start you know, reap reframing your position your what your messaging your, your marketing, everything that you do in your business, you really have to think it over again and say, okay, you know, where, you kno