Cameron and Tony kick off episode 24 of QAV America by discussing the U.S. government shutdown drama and comparing it to Australia’s last major political standoff under Whitlam in 1975. The conversation then turns to portfolio performance: while the Australian portfolios continue to outperform dramatically, the U.S. one has cooled a little since the Trump administration’s return. They dig into long-term value investing principles and how cycles of underperformance are normal. Cameron presents this week’s Pulled Pork on American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings (AXL) — a classic, boring-but-profitable value stock that makes axles and driveline components for giants like GM, Stellantis, and Ford. They explore its fundamentals, merger news with Dowlais Group, and why its low valuation may make it attractive. The show wraps up with their trademark “after hours” chat: Tony’s social adventures, new music finds (Red Continent, Lyle Lovett, Sparks), Cameron’s film pick (Stalker by Tarkovsky), and their reflections on Asimov’s I, Robot, fascism, capitalism, and the short-termism of modern democracy.

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⏱️ Timestamps & Topics

00:00 — U.S. government shutdowns vs. Whitlam’s dismissal in Australia.
03:00 — Portfolio performance: U.S. QAV fund up 62% since inception vs. S&P 500 up 51%.
06:00 — Revisiting QAV philosophy: buying quality companies at a discount.
07:00 — Historical perspective: patience through short-term underperformance.
08:00 — Review of recent Pulled Porks
10:00 — Portfolio holdings update
11:00 — This week’s Pulled Pork: American Axle & Manufacturing (AXL) deep dive.
30:00 — After Hours

[00:00:00 ]

Cameron: Welcome back to QAV, the American Edition. Tony. I think this is episode 24. How are you doing?

Tony Kynaston: I’m very well. Thank you. Nice and

Cameron: I know that ’cause we, we just did our Australian edition. Yes. Very hot. Where I am. Very cool where you are. That’s Australia right now, depending on which part of the coast you’re in. Well, Tony, uh, talking about American news. Got a, they’ve got a, a shutdown. They’re funny. They have these shutdowns. We don’t really understand shutdowns.

Last time we had a shutdown kind of thing in Australia. It was during the Whitlam government, wasn’t it?

Tony Kynaston: November, 1975. Yep.

Cameron: Yeah, it is. 50 years ago. The last time we had a government down, and it’s still talked about in Angry Voices to this very day.

Tony Kynaston: We’ve had a couple of other examples, like a, ’cause they call it block supply here. So a government has to [00:01:00 ] be able to guarantee convince the Governor General, they can guarantee supply, which means that their budget will pass. So there’s been other cases where there’s been minority governments that can become topsy tur.

Like the most recent case was in Tasmania when, uh. The minority government there had a vote of no confidence and the blocking of supply, and then they had to go to an election and they got reelected. Same problem. Yeah. Different time.

Cameron: Well, the market, uh, you know, did stumble a little bit when they couldn’t, uh, prevent it, but yeah, thinner. Well, I don’t know. I mean, I have seen these sorts of things before. Not exactly with this level of urgency and animosity, I think,

Tony Kynaston: always is that level of urgency and animosities happened what 11 times since Clinton or something’s been a lot it, [00:02:00 ] and it’s always brinkmanship.

Cameron: yeah.

Tony Kynaston: for the government workers who don’t get paid and they may not get paid under this current In the past they generally

Cameron: Yeah,

Tony Kynaston: they’ll get back pay.

But that’s, there’s threats to withhold that. So we’ll see what happens.

Cameron: I like other things that happen in the news, in the economy. We tend to ignore it and just stick to our knitting. Um, I do wanna. Talk about our portfolio performance, though our US portfolio, which for new listeners, we’ve been running well for new listeners. Uh, we’ve been doing a value investing podcast for six years in Australia.

Tony’s been a value investor for 30 odd years. Oh, gangbusters. Absolutely. Our por, our Australian portfolios are all doing gangbusters, double market or better. Um, our US portfolio is doing okay. Not as well. It was, it was like three times market before the Trump administration came in. [00:03:00 ] It’s come back a little bit this year, but it’s only two years old and, you know, we work on five to 10 year timeframes for cycles to, uh, come and go.

Um, I’ll start with the all time performance. So we started the US portfolio back. A little over two years ago, 19th of September, 2023. Since then, our portfolio is up 62% versus the s and p 500, up 51%. So we’re doing better than the s and p 500 over the long haul, but we’ve come back a long way. Um, a year ago we were up a hundred percent versus the s and p up 34%.

So, uh, after the Trump administration came in, things started to go south for some of our stocks, but it’s not that bad. I mean, Willis Lease Finance Company, WLFC, which is our best performing stock, at one point it was up 300%. It’s [00:04:00 ] now up 189%. So it’s come back nearly half then, but still up 189% since we added it.

I don’t know when, uh, let me see.

Tony Kynaston: blame the Trump government on some of those. I mean, they wouldn’t have an impact on Willis Lee’s finance. It’s probably got more to do with interest rates than anything else. I would’ve thought,

Cameron: I am not blaming them. I’m just saying it’s a fact. Since the Trump administration came into power went backwards,

Tony Kynaston: well, it’s, but

Cameron: we’ve.

Tony Kynaston: is it just coincidence?

Cameron: Who knows. That’s beyond my pay raise. My pay grade, Tony. Um, we bought Willis Lease Finance Company in November, 2023. It’s up 180% since then. So I’m not complaining it’s at all. But year to date, our US portfolio, uh, is down 13.44%. By the way, year to date, I’m talking. Um.

Tony Kynaston: Calendar.

Cameron: Uh, [00:05:00 ] calendar year. Yeah. So January 25, it’s down 13% this calendar year versus the s and p 500, up 14%.

In the last month. Our portfolio is down 6% versus the s and p up 4%. So it’s not a good part of the cycle for us, but as we were just talking about in the Australian show, some of our Australian portfolios were underwater. Six months ago, now they’re doing double market ’cause they’ve exploded in the last few months.

So it comes and goes. At the end of the day, the QAV philosophy is to buy. Shares and companies that seem to be generating a lot of cash when we can buy them at a discount to their intrinsic valuation for whatever reason, hold them as long as we possibly can. We have a couple of sell triggers that we will obey, but other than that, we hold them as long as we can wait for their share price to regress to the mean wait for the market to [00:06:00 ] pick up in one way or another.

This is actually a healthy little business and. Six times outta 10. We hope that we buy the right ones and, uh, we outperform The market that seems to have worked for you over 30 years seems to have worked for other value investors over many, many decades, and in the years we’ve been doing the show, it seems to work well for us as well.

Tony Kynaston: And we saw the same sort of thing happen with the Australian portfolio when we first set it up. And the first couple of years it, remember it in the first year, I think it outperformed about four times compared to the index. And then it went backwards and there were periods of underperformance.

That’s, it does take a little while for a portfolio to beat itself down, usually. Um. it stutters and you have to sell things quicker than you’d like, and then start again. So, yeah, it’s, it’s the old, I mean, you talk to anybody about, um, investing and they say don’t base your decision on the one year return. at a longer term. So we have [00:07:00 ] a two year track record now. It’s still outperforming the market. But yeah, give it, it three to five before you sort of can see the real proof in the pudding. I think.

Cameron: And since we started doing this show regularly in March of 2025, I’ve been doing a deep dive or a pulled pork, as we call it, on a stock every week. And most of those have been doing gangbusters since we talked about them. Uh, the one I always start with, Zep, which we did in July Z Double P, Zep Health Corporation, is now up