**Episode Overview**
In this episode of *QAV America* (Ep. 25), Cameron and Tony unpack a wild few weeks in the U.S. markets following Donald Trump’s latest tariff threats on China and the subsequent “birthday crash.” They discuss Australia’s surprising role in rare earths, portfolio moves including DAC and GTN, and new additions VSAT and RNR. The main feature is a deep dive into Cal-Maine Foods (ticker: CALM), America’s largest egg producer, exploring its scandal-ridden history, DOJ investigations, and surprising fundamentals. From “egg cartels” to F-scores, the duo balance analysis and absurdity, topping it off with film talk (Scorsese, Lynch) and kung fu bruises.

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### ⏱️ **Timestamps**

**00:00 ** – Market chaos, Trump’s tariff tantrum, and rare earths politics
**06:30 ** – Australia’s rare earth advantage and Gina Rinehart’s role
**10:00 ** – Portfolio moves: selling DAC and GTN, buying VSAT and RNR
**18:00 ** – Portfolio performance update and lessons from volatility
**22:30 ** – *Pulled Pork:* Cal-Maine Foods (CALM) deep dive 
**52:00 ** – After Hours: Scorsese, *Taxi Driver*, Lynch’s *Elephant Man*, and kung fu chaos

Cameron: [00:00:00 ] to QAV America, Tony, episode 25. We’re recording this on the 21st of October, 2025. Well been a big couple of weeks in the US market. Tony, uh, Donald Trump. Crash the market again on my birthday, October 10th. It was his, uh, birthday present to me, which I appreciate.

I’m wearing your birthday present to me. My fight club t-shirt, um, was good ’cause I had a broken nose and black eyes when you sent it to me. That was fun. Uh, but Donald Trump threatened massive increases in US tariffs on Chinese imports, following China’s announcement of stricter export controls on rare earth elements.

And the market predictably crashed and then he said, uh, 10 days later, yesterday, today when meeting with our prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, our KAKA [00:01:00 ] Albo. For the Americans. That’s what we call our prime minister here. That’s the amount of deference you get as a Prime Minister in Australia. We call you Albo.

He had a fantastic deal he’s gonna put together with China after a fantastic deal with Australia. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know about you, but I think Albo was very happy. About the, uh, announcement of the rare earths deal from China, because it gave him a really good chance to have a really great meeting with President Trump.

They had something that they both wanted to talk about, gave Trump a good positive news release. Our former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who’s the current, uh, ambassador, didn’t have as good a time with President Trump. He said, I don’t even know who you are and I don’t like you, but it’s all forgiven. He said, immediately afterwards.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, um, it’s hard not to like someone you don’t know, but I, I take. I

take

Cameron: I dunno.

I, I, I saw, I, I had a look [00:02:00 ] at Kevin Rudd’s face and decided I didn’t look at him too.

Tony Kynaston: he is. He’s Trump’s not alone is he.

Cameron: No,

no, no.

Tony Kynaston: gotta say Australia saves the day again. we elbow’s ridden into the US with a mineral, a rare minerals agreement. You know, hold my beer. I got this. We got you want rare minerals. Let’s

do a

Cameron: yeah,

Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: yeah.

Cameron: yeah. G Gina Reinhardt to the rescue. ’cause she controls a lot of what we have apparently. Uh, but just to put it in perspective. Australia is the fourth largest producer of rare earth minerals in the world at present on track to be number two, I believe. But China controls 70% of the global market

and even an A larger share, 85 to 90% of the refining and processing capability globally.

Tony Kynaston: which is important.

Cameron: if we can dig it out the ground. We need to send it to China to get [00:03:00 ] processed probably. So

you know they,

Tony Kynaston: called Linus, which has got a plant to process rare earths minerals in, say the Philippines. I think somewhere in Southeast Asia.

Cameron: Hmm,

Tony Kynaston: easy. There’s been a few with the local government over it, but um, yeah, there is a fallback.

Cameron: right. But anyway, the market recovered. Uh, it tar and, uh, everything’s back kind of to where it was pre the announcement. So the frothy market is back, and I did have to sell a couple of things though in that period, uh, out of our US portfolio, which is rare. So I had to sell DAC Dan aos, a Greek shipping company that I had owned.

For quite a while and got to sell it at a profit too, but it broke our three point trend line sell trigger for new listeners. Uh, we try and hold [00:04:00 ] for as long as possible when we buy a company, but we do have a couple of sell triggers. One of them is a three point trend line sell. We’ll track it on a five year, month end.

Graph and if it breaks through that support line, we’ll sell it. And this did, but I still managed to sell it at a 5% profit. Plus there were dividends over that period as well, which don’t get factored into stock edia. But, uh, neither does the s and p five hundreds dividends, so it all tracks. Okay. So we sold it at a 5% profit.

I also had to sell GTN the TV guys.

Tony Kynaston: really?

Cameron: came back quite a bit and also became a three point trend line sell neutral result for us. Plus, there were dividends factored into that one as well. And I added two new companies to the portfolio, VSAT via sat, a global tech, a global communications company, has defense and advanced technologies.

It’s up [00:05:00 ] 7% since I bought it. Which is pretty good. And Renaissance Air Holdings, RNRV, SATs on the Nasdaq, RNR is on nzi. Um, it’s a global provider of reinsurance and insurance companies. It’s down 5% since I bought it, so they kind of six seven is the kids say you don’t have kids, so you probably don’t know that, but six seven.

Six seven. Yeah. God. Thank think yourself. Lucky you don’t have a 11-year-old boy right now ’cause that’s all you hear all day, every day. 6, 7, 6, 7.

Tony Kynaston: okay?

Cameron: and I probably should have done a pulled pork on one of those today, but I’m not. Because I wanna talk about eggs. But before we do that, um, I’m also gonna talk about our US portfolio, which is not having a good time.

Quite honestly. It for the Cal, for the 12 month period, it is down. 17% versus the s and p [00:06:00 ] 500, which is up nearly 15% year to date. It’s down. Well, about the same actually. So it’s all started. It started when Trump took office. Whether or not that is coincidental, I don’t know, but uh, for the. All time since inception, which is September 20, 23, little over two years, our portfolio is up 56% versus the s and p up 51.5%.

So we’ve. We were doing triple the SMP going back to late last year and now we’ve come back to even Stevens. So has not been a great year for our portfolio, but it’s still doing okay. Like all in all, all told we’re beating the index so over two years, which is fine, up up nearly 60% in two years. Like no rational investors gonna [00:07:00 ] complain about that, but I.

It has not been a good year for our US portfolio. Not that anything is done particularly badly. I mean, I’ve had to sell a couple of things. Everything’s doing okay. It’s just come back from insanely good highs, as I say, every week, but I’ll say it again. Willis Lease Finance Group, which is our best performer, was up like 300% late last year.

Now it’s only up 174%, so it’s lost a lot of gains, but still it’s up. 174%, uh, since I bought it in November, 2023. So two years up, 174%. I’m not complaining. It’s doing okay. But the company I’m gonna do a Paul pork on today, Tony is Palm, CALM. Keep calm and keep trading trade on.

Tony Kynaston: what we need When the [00:08:00 ] portfolio comes back to the index isn’t it

Cameron: keep

calm. Keep calm. Great Ticker. I had to do it. I saw that I had to do it. The company is actually called Cal Maine, and they are the largest egg business in the us. The largest producer and distributor of fresh cell eggs in the United States. Guess you could say they’re an excellent company, Tony, an excellent stock.

But I’m not sure if I’m gonna call this episode number one in the pecking order or the Bad Egg. ’cause they’ve had quite a few scandals.

Tony Kynast