719-Why-I-Dont-Miss-Investing-in-the-Stock-Market-2826
00:00:00.000 | If you are looking for an exciting role in customer service, food service or retail,
00:00:05.320 | connect with a job at the airport.
00:00:07.520 | Get started in a role that offers competitive wages, consistent schedules and fast-tracked
00:00:12.560 | management while you work in a vibrant, exciting environment where security is a priority.
00:00:18.100 | The airport has it all.
00:00:19.820 | You can have it all too.
00:00:21.640 | Visit cmhserviceindustry.com to learn more.
00:00:24.680 | This is a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight and encouragement
00:00:31.760 | you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom
00:00:33.760 | in 10 years or less.
00:00:35.400 | My name is Joshua.
00:00:36.400 | I am your host and today we're going to talk about why I don't miss investing in the stock
00:00:43.160 | market.
00:00:44.160 | Now you should have a little bit of context though.
00:00:45.920 | The reason why I think this is interesting is that I have for almost all of my adult
00:00:51.320 | life been invested in the stock market.
00:00:53.840 | Not only that, I spent a significant amount of my career helping other people to invest
00:01:00.900 | in the stock market.
00:01:02.320 | I've been a licensed securities broker.
00:01:05.560 | I have managed money.
00:01:07.160 | I have billed fees and charged fees based upon managing people's money.
00:01:11.680 | And yet at the time of this recording of this show, I do not currently own any publicly
00:01:17.420 | traded mutual funds.
00:01:18.420 | I don't currently own any publicly traded securities.
00:01:20.520 | Although I'll expand and share with you a little bit of some additional texture behind
00:01:26.600 | that.
00:01:27.600 | But today I want to talk about what I don't miss about investing in the stock market.
00:01:32.160 | If we look back and we think about kind of where we are as a people, the stock market
00:01:38.280 | is a big, big part of our lives.
00:01:40.320 | You know, right now, stock market up, down, every single way.
00:01:43.560 | It just seems like no matter how you go through it, every single day, there's more headlines
00:01:48.320 | and the stock market is driving almost everything.
00:01:51.980 | And yet I become convinced the longer I've been a financial planner, that I become more
00:01:55.960 | and more convinced that the stock market is not for everyone.
00:01:59.200 | And so what I want to do in today's show is I want to share with you some details as to
00:02:03.820 | some of the ideas that I used to hold about in stock investing that I don't hold any longer,
00:02:09.880 | as well as share with you kind of where I'm at.
00:02:13.280 | And I need to just go ahead and give you the whole story from the beginning, which is fairly
00:02:17.320 | simple.
00:02:18.320 | Right now, as I record this right now, I'm not sure where I'll wind up being over the
00:02:24.160 | long term.
00:02:25.160 | I'm not sure whether I'll wind up going back into the stock market or staying out of the
00:02:30.960 | stock market.
00:02:31.960 | I've been wrestling with that for quite a while, trying to think about different solutions.
00:02:36.400 | What I have learned is this, and this is my basic thesis.
00:02:39.480 | The more time that I spend out of the stock market, the less I miss it.
00:02:44.740 | And the more excited I am about other opportunities.
00:02:48.020 | When I think about the other investment opportunities that I have and that you have, I become increasingly
00:02:55.760 | convinced that the stock market is really good at making investment advisors a lot of
00:03:00.860 | money, but it's not so good at making individual investors a lot of money.
00:03:07.220 | Now I'm not going to make an extreme case in this show.
00:03:10.420 | I'm not going to try to say, "Oh, you can't make any money in the stock market."
00:03:13.100 | Of course you can.
00:03:14.100 | I'm not going to say that nobody should invest in the stock market.
00:03:17.100 | You should sell it all and go buy timberland.
00:03:20.820 | What I'm going to try to do is lay out more of my view, which is kind of a nuanced view,
00:03:25.220 | which comes down to the fact that the reason why you associate investing primarily with
00:03:30.380 | the stock market has more to do with the easy marketability of stocks than it does with
00:03:36.660 | the inherent benefits for you as an individual investor.
00:03:40.220 | So here's what I've learned in my years of working as a financial advisor.
00:03:44.140 | I started in 2008, so 12 years now as a financial advisor in some form or another.
00:03:50.140 | I don't currently hold any investment advisory licenses.
00:03:52.820 | I don't hold any securities licenses anymore.
00:03:54.780 | I abandoned all those things.
00:03:56.700 | But I had all that stuff and I still consider myself a financial advisor, although I try
00:04:01.020 | to be a little bit thoughtful with how I use that term.
00:04:04.580 | Simply due to follow the regulations.
00:04:06.060 | I don't make suggestions to people to buy or sell securities.
00:04:09.380 | Here's what I've learned.
00:04:12.180 | Stocks are really easy to sell.
00:04:15.340 | And they're really easy for me to make a living selling.
00:04:19.020 | But when you actually pull back from that and you think about the whole broad scope
00:04:24.420 | of investment opportunities, you find that there are a lot more opportunities than most
00:04:32.280 | people come in.
00:04:33.280 | Usually over the years I've learned that I need to be very careful.
00:04:35.580 | When I ask people about their 401k and what investments they have, they automatically
00:04:40.260 | think stock market.
00:04:41.260 | They automatically think, and let me even be specific because there are stock markets
00:04:44.420 | all around the world.
00:04:45.420 | They automatically think US publicly traded securities, US stock market, the New York
00:04:50.060 | Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ Stock Exchange.
00:04:53.140 | They kind of automatically conflate this word investment to mean stock market.
00:04:57.780 | And I believe that that is more due to, again, the influence of those of us who have worked
00:05:04.820 | in the securities business than it is to how individuals should think about it.
00:05:11.820 | Sorry for all the disclaimers up front, but I do want to be cautious.
00:05:14.220 | I'm not mad at stockbrokers.
00:05:16.260 | I'm not here to do an expose on the industry.
00:05:19.380 | I have lots of friends who are stockbrokers.
00:05:21.380 | I could probably be a stockbroker again in the future at some point in time.
00:05:25.140 | I have some ways that I've thought about that I think I could do that.
00:05:28.380 | But what I want to do is just give you a little perspective on the subject.
00:05:31.360 | Because when I say the word investment, I don't believe you should just automatically
00:05:35.740 | conflate that word investment with buying stocks.
00:05:39.900 | I think those should be different things and you should consider them differently.
00:05:45.540 | Again, you can invest in almost anything.
00:05:48.380 | I'll give you an example.
00:05:49.780 | You can invest in an education.
00:05:54.120 | You can and should invest in an education.
00:05:56.020 | In fact, for most people, investing in your education is going to be the single best investment
00:06:01.380 | that you can make.
00:06:03.820 | But here's another trap.
00:06:05.220 | Notice that when I said invest in an education, you automatically thought invest in a college
00:06:10.900 | degree.
00:06:12.540 | Why did you think that?
00:06:13.700 | Well, you thought that because you've been effectively marketed to over the years by
00:06:18.060 | colleges, admissions advisors, your friends, your parents, advisors.
00:06:26.460 | You've been marketed to by financial planning magazines that have said if you want to invest
00:06:31.860 | in your child, you should buy a college fund for them and you should fund it with stocks.
00:06:36.300 | That's been marketed to you.
00:06:37.300 | But all I said was invest in education.
00:06:39.940 | You can invest in your education in many ways.
00:06:42.580 | For example, I invest in my education by reading books.
00:06:45.460 | I invest in my education by taking seminars.
00:06:47.940 | I invest in my education by hiring mentors and hiring coaches.
00:06:52.340 | You can invest in your education by starting businesses and getting yourself in a situation
00:06:57.140 | where you say, "You know what?
00:06:58.820 | Even if it costs me a bunch of money, I'm going to go ahead and focus on starting something
00:07:03.580 | and learning from the process."
00:07:05.020 | You can invest in a marketing degree by going to college or you can go and start a business
00:07:09.820 | and invest in your marketing education by learning how to market your business effectively.
00:07:14.260 | Both of those, in my opinion, are really quality investments that you should, can, and should
00:07:18.340 | consider doing.
00:07:19.340 | But when I say invest in your education, you think college.
00:07:22.860 | Same reason when I say invest money, you think stocks.
00:07:26.220 | Now what other ways could you invest though?
00:07:27.980 | The reason I started with invest in education is because most of the time, we would usually,
00:07:33.100 | for thinking clearly, we would recognize that it's more important for you to invest in your
00:07:37.660 | education and building your earning skills than it is for you to buy stocks.
00:07:42.500 | If I were presenting to you a 16-year-old who was making, I don't know, $8 an hour at
00:07:47.300 | some dead-end job, and they came to you and said, "I've saved $200.
00:07:52.300 | What should I invest in?"
00:07:53.780 | You would never tell that 18-year-old, whatever age I said, you would never tell that young
00:07:57.860 | person that the secret of what you should do with your $200 is to go and buy a stock.
00:08:05.820 | You would say, "You need to invest it into your earning ability.
00:08:09.260 | You need to invest it into yourself because that's a good investment."
00:08:12.660 | Now there could be other things that are worthy investments that give you financial returns
00:08:18.140 | but also give you lifestyle returns.
00:08:21.320 | For example, let's say somebody doesn't have a car.
00:08:23.180 | Well, they earn a little bit of money.
00:08:24.700 | They save a little bit of money.
00:08:26.240 | They should probably invest in a car or at the very least, probably invest in a bicycle
00:08:29.980 | because that vehicle might open up totally new earning possibilities to them.
00:08:34.940 | That vehicle might open up a totally better lifestyle for them.
00:08:39.780 | Now what else?
00:08:40.780 | We talk about investing in your home, and that's perfectly reasonable.
00:08:43.140 | That's perfectly adequate.
00:08:45.660 | But that's just scratching the tip of the investments that are available.
00:08:49.300 | So here's what came, what bothered me when I was a financial advisor.
00:08:53.220 | I started to discover that I didn't have a lot of success stories of my clients becoming
00:08:59.020 | wealthy because they invested in my stocks that I sold them.
00:09:06.100 | That bothered me.
00:09:07.420 | What I realized is I was good at helping clients who were already wealthy invest their portfolios
00:09:13.300 | effectively.
00:09:14.300 | We put together a portfolio of mutual funds and I would say, "Listen, you've got a million
00:09:18.460 | dollars or you've got three million dollars or whatever you've got.
00:09:21.500 | We'll help you invest that effectively."
00:09:24.020 | But I wasn't very good at helping them get rich.
00:09:28.700 | That process brought me to believe that financial advisors and the financial advice industry
00:09:37.300 | is better at helping people who are rich stay rich and get a little bit richer without having
00:09:44.260 | to work every day and also helping people who, well that's it.
00:09:52.460 | That's what they're better at.
00:09:53.460 | They're better at helping those people who are rich get a little richer and stay richer
00:09:57.060 | without having to work every day than they are at helping people who are not rich get
00:10:00.620 | rich.
00:10:01.620 | I came to realize that when I looked at it, the two things that always happened that helped
00:10:07.340 | my clients to actually become rich was number one, they had a high income job and/or number
00:10:14.620 | two, they had a successful business.
00:10:17.100 | Because if my clients could have a high income job, they could save money, put money in their
00:10:21.860 | 401K and over a course of decades become millionaires or if they had a highly profitable business,
00:10:27.020 | they could have enough money either through income or through eventually selling the business
00:10:31.020 | that they were rich.
00:10:32.580 | But without those two things, without a high paying job or without a good business, people
00:10:39.700 | didn't really wind up becoming all that rich at least not through stock investing.
00:10:45.020 | Now is that because it can't work, that it can't happen?
00:10:47.780 | Certainly not.
00:10:48.780 | It can work.
00:10:49.780 | You could have somebody, if you're a financial advisor, you could have a client that you
00:10:52.660 | start working with when the client is 22 years old, just came out of college, you open up
00:10:57.140 | a Roth IRA, they put a few thousand dollars in it and maybe if 40 years later you're still
00:11:01.020 | working with that client, they might have a million dollars, maybe.
00:11:05.520 | But the realistic answer is you're probably not going to be working with that client 40
00:11:09.220 | years later because as a financial advisor, you're always upgrading your clients, you're
00:11:12.820 | always changing out your client base and you're moving up to wealthier clients who give you
00:11:16.600 | more opportunities for your business as a financial advisor.
00:11:19.540 | So it's not that it can't work, it's just that it's not the most effective.
00:11:21.820 | What you need is a high paying job and/or you need a business.
00:11:26.780 | And that's why the number one prospecting pool for the vast majority of financial advisors,
00:11:30.980 | for most of us, is high income professionals and business owners because there's opportunity
00:11:37.940 | there.
00:11:38.940 | Well if that's the case, I think that we should spend a lot more time helping people to develop
00:11:42.580 | a high income and/or helping people to develop a profitable business than we do selling stocks.
00:11:49.380 | But unfortunately the whole business is built on selling stocks.
00:11:54.340 | So what's my personal experience with the stock market?
00:11:57.340 | Well the first thing is when I was 18 years old, I sat down on my 18th birthday and opened
00:12:01.340 | a Roth IRA and I bought a mutual fund.
00:12:03.060 | I don't even know what mutual fund it was, I just bought a mutual fund.
00:12:05.860 | And I was a nerd, I was really interested in financial advice, I was really interested
00:12:10.580 | in how I could become wealthy, I really wanted to become wealthy.
00:12:14.820 | And so I sat down at an early age and I started reading the books.
00:12:19.060 | I would read books on mutual fund investing and I started with the mainstream personal
00:12:22.660 | finance books.
00:12:23.780 | I read, what's the one, Automatic Millionaire, I would read the Automatic Millionaire by
00:12:31.820 | David Bach when I was in high school.
00:12:33.340 | Or I would read the Lazy Man's Guide to Investing, it's all about passive index fund investing.
00:12:40.060 | I would read Jack Bogle's books and what I could find.
00:12:43.660 | But mostly at the basic, what I call the personal finance, the consumer level of personal finance.
00:12:50.260 | And as a consumer I would put myself in a situation where I said, "Okay, the way I'm
00:12:53.460 | going to build wealth is I would buy mutual funds and I would put them in an IRA and I
00:12:57.660 | would make sure I fund that IRA."
00:13:00.060 | Well fast forward a number of years, in 2008 I started working as a financial advisor.
00:13:03.940 | I started with getting insurance licenses, became an insurance salesman, selling life
00:13:08.700 | insurance, disability income insurance, long term care insurance.
00:13:11.980 | Then I went ahead and got my securities licenses, a series six, and I forget all the numbers,
00:13:15.700 | 63, and then I later got a 65 and became a registered investment advisor representative
00:13:19.900 | or whatever it's called, it's a number of years ago.
00:13:22.020 | I wound up studying financial planning.
00:13:24.100 | I had a certified financial planning designation, a chartered financial consultant.
00:13:30.060 | I wound up getting a master's degree in financial planning.
00:13:32.420 | I never did investment focused specific specialties.
00:13:36.580 | I didn't become a chartered financial analyst.
00:13:39.100 | I didn't spend time to get any of the specific investment management designations.
00:13:44.260 | That was never my interest.
00:13:45.260 | I was always more interested in personal financial planning.
00:13:47.260 | But I passed the exams.
00:13:49.100 | And generally I should know what I'm talking about.
00:13:51.660 | I read a bunch of books on the subject.
00:13:53.700 | I should know what I'm talking about.
00:13:54.980 | Again, I used to manage portfolios.
00:13:57.100 | Although I wasn't choosing what stocks were in them, I was just serving as an interface
00:14:00.260 | between clients and kind of the back end investment advisors for our firm.
00:14:06.780 | Then I left the firm that I was with.
00:14:08.900 | I surrendered all my securities licenses so that I could do what I'm doing right now,
00:14:12.420 | which is be a member of the media.
00:14:14.060 | I became frustrated with trying to be locked behind a paywall where everything I had to
00:14:18.500 | say, sorry, a legal wall where everything I had to say had to go through a legal department.
00:14:22.860 | I had to be pre-approved.
00:14:24.300 | The way that it works, if a financial advisor is going to do what I'm doing right now, the
00:14:28.380 | financial advisor has to write a script of everything they're going to say.
00:14:31.020 | They send that script off to their legal department, get it approved by their legal department.
00:14:34.300 | The legal department says, "Okay, you can say this.
00:14:36.360 | You can't say this.
00:14:37.360 | You can adjust this."
00:14:38.540 | Then they go and they do the media appearance.
00:14:40.140 | They do the interview.
00:14:41.140 | They go on TV.
00:14:42.140 | They say what they're going to say.
00:14:43.140 | Then afterwards, they get a recording.
00:14:44.620 | Then that recording all goes onto the company servers and has to be saved forever.
00:14:47.700 | It's all kind of part of the deal because if you're going to be in the financial advice
00:14:50.500 | industry and you're going to get the licenses, that's the deal you sign up for.
00:14:55.500 | I didn't want that.
00:14:57.300 | I walked away from that business, got rid of all my licenses, surrendered everything.
00:15:01.820 | I no longer have any licenses and haven't had any since about 2014.
00:15:07.060 | Over the years, I've watched to see how I would change because even though I didn't
00:15:11.420 | have any licenses, I still had an intense degree of loyalty to the industry, to my comrades,
00:15:18.100 | to my friends who are advisors, to everything.
00:15:21.460 | Over the years, that loyalty has kind of changed a little bit.
00:15:25.420 | It's not that I don't have that sense of loyalty or that sense of affinity.
00:15:28.540 | It's just that that's kind of a past life.
00:15:30.500 | I haven't been involved in that in a very long time.
00:15:33.380 | Because it's a past life, then I don't think about it much.
00:15:36.940 | I don't worry about it much.
00:15:38.220 | It's not something that I pay much attention to.
00:15:43.500 | But in the present life, I have a little bit more perspective.
00:15:47.780 | Over the years, as I've thought about it, I grew more and more dissatisfied with stock
00:15:54.260 | investing.
00:15:55.260 | A number of years ago, around about, I would say, 2015 or '16, I was in a position where
00:16:01.300 | I looked around and I just thought, "I'm frustrated with stock investing."
00:16:06.140 | Number one is I was working on building a business.
00:16:09.100 | What I realized is that I had far more profit potential from building a new business, a
00:16:14.500 | business that was not connected to work for time, a business that had a global opportunity,
00:16:18.700 | the business that had a potential revenue potential of unspeakably large, extremely
00:16:23.620 | profitable.
00:16:24.620 | I realized the single best investment that I can make is to invest into my business,
00:16:28.620 | into radical personal finance.
00:16:30.020 | I said, "That business can be so much more profitable than anything else.
00:16:34.940 | I'm going to go all in on that.
00:16:36.300 | No matter what it takes, I'm going to go all in on that."
00:16:39.020 | I moved money to cash, partly for safety because I didn't want to have volatility.
00:16:42.940 | I figured if I spend every dollar in my savings on building this new business, and if the
00:16:47.360 | business succeeds, it would be worth it.
00:16:49.820 | If I keep all the money as emergency funds and savings, just in case I need it, and that
00:16:54.640 | allows me the safety to build a big business, it'll be worth it.
00:16:58.060 | That was what I did.
00:16:59.060 | But along the way, I'd become frustrated with some of the ethics of stock market investing.
00:17:04.340 | I wasn't focused on the specific volatility or scared about the market goes down or it's
00:17:09.340 | all lies and fake.
00:17:10.340 | I just was frustrated with the ethics of big companies.
00:17:13.860 | The number one thing that has really bothered me over the years is how modern capitalism
00:17:21.220 | has become crony capitalism.
00:17:23.500 | Just no question has become, in my opinion, unquestionably crony capitalism.
00:17:28.780 | I realized that the single most important job description for most companies is their
00:17:33.780 | corporate lobbyist.
00:17:35.580 | That bothers me.
00:17:36.580 | It still bothers me intensely.
00:17:38.620 | I find it utterly offensive that seemingly the single first thing that a company wants
00:17:46.720 | to do is get a lobbyist so they can go in and get the laws adjusted.
00:17:51.260 | There are two aspects to this that I find really offensive.
00:17:55.240 | Number one is that companies constantly lobby for rules that add more regulation to their
00:18:02.300 | industry.
00:18:03.980 | That seems counterintuitive.
00:18:05.060 | You think I said what I didn't mean to say, but I meant it.
00:18:08.060 | Companies lobby for more regulation for their industry so that they can keep their competitors
00:18:14.620 | out.
00:18:16.220 | That's what is, to me, so frustrating.
00:18:18.860 | Because as you look at the US economy, you look at a mature economy like the US American
00:18:23.460 | economy, and you look around and you consider what's actually there, it's very profitable
00:18:30.500 | for most large companies to not have small upstart competitors.
00:18:35.260 | This leads to a calcified, locked in, repressed almost economic system.
00:18:43.340 | It's what you see in the United States, where there's almost nowhere in the broader US economy
00:18:47.340 | that you look for and you find innovation, except usually in some area of internet work,
00:18:55.260 | a digital company of some kind, because there are just fewer regulations.
00:18:58.220 | But even there, you're starting to see it.
00:18:59.500 | You see Facebook last year when they're called before Congress saying, "Come out, regulate
00:19:04.020 | us."
00:19:05.020 | Zuckerberg is sitting there saying, "Regulate us, regulate us, pass laws."
00:19:07.620 | Why?
00:19:08.620 | Well, I don't want to be too ... I don't want to try to say what Zuckerberg thinks, but
00:19:13.100 | it wouldn't hurt Facebook to have some pretty intense regulation right now.
00:19:17.380 | Facebook could deal with any regulation because they're highly profitable.
00:19:20.660 | They can afford to pay all the people to dot everything out and take care of everything.
00:19:24.740 | It's Facebook's competitors who would be hurt by increased regulation.
00:19:27.780 | But you look at the US economy and you say, "There's almost no area of excitement."
00:19:31.900 | What are you actually excited about with the broader US economy?
00:19:35.140 | There's no area of growth, of adjustment.
00:19:38.880 | You have tiny areas.
00:19:40.340 | For example, I pay attention to the electric car marketplace, but it's so unfathomably,
00:19:45.100 | impossibly expensive for a new car company to come out that you have just a tiny number
00:19:50.440 | of success stories.
00:19:51.440 | You have Tesla, and then you have Rivian, who gets invested in it.
00:19:54.660 | Without this big, huge investment, they can't make it.
00:19:57.940 | Now, you go back and you compare that to the dynamism of a US economy of a century ago,
00:20:02.980 | where you had far less regulation.
00:20:05.180 | You had dynamic development in all areas of the economy.
00:20:09.020 | I'm convinced that there's nothing that's fundamentally changed about the potential.
00:20:15.500 | It's just simply that the regulatory environment is so intense that it leads to really very
00:20:20.380 | modest ability for companies to change, to adapt.
00:20:23.140 | Again, the place where you usually see it is in digital markets.
00:20:26.260 | That really bothers me because big companies, I'm personally convinced.
00:20:30.100 | I can't prove it, but I'm personally persuaded at the moment.
00:20:33.040 | Big companies use regulation as a tool to keep from being competed with by small upstart
00:20:38.500 | competitors.
00:20:39.500 | I find that really offensive.
00:20:41.020 | The other thing that's really offensive is that the companies just directly lobby for
00:20:46.260 | changes and changes in laws that are going to help them and help their own business models.
00:20:52.260 | Let me give you an example just from today's Wall Street Journal.
00:20:58.900 | You see right here, when you look at the Wall Street Journal and you think about what's
00:21:04.380 | actually happening right now.
00:21:05.780 | First, you had all these companies that put themselves in a situation where they were
00:21:11.540 | broke in no time at all, where they couldn't even handle three weeks of no business before
00:21:20.120 | all of a sudden they come crying for handouts.
00:21:23.020 | You have trillions of dollars being given to bail out giant Wall Street corporations.
00:21:29.980 | Thankfully, some of that money, some of the money is filtering down to smaller businesses
00:21:35.180 | as well who don't usually have the lobbying power that large corporations have, but trillions
00:21:39.740 | of dollars going to these companies.
00:21:42.020 | What's the first thing that you see now when you look constantly at the news?
00:21:45.940 | You see that number one, one of the basic focuses is that we want more.
00:21:50.940 | Wall Street Journal article headline, "Lobbyists Press Congress for Last Chance at Coronavirus
00:21:55.660 | Stimulus Funds."
00:21:56.660 | This is from May 3, 2020.
00:21:58.540 | "Democrats Want to Expand Stimulus Aid.
00:22:01.300 | Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Says New Help Should Be Tied to Liability
00:22:04.420 | Protections for Business."
00:22:05.580 | Lead, "Lobbyists for business groups, labor unions, and non-profit associations are shifting
00:22:10.700 | into high gear as Congress considers what could be a final round of aid to combat the
00:22:15.540 | economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic."
00:22:19.140 | So first it talks about, the article talks about non-profits, but then it says this,
00:22:22.460 | "Other organizations are seeking relief from measures that were aimed at preventing
00:22:26.260 | coronavirus aid to companies that have lots of debt.
00:22:29.060 | Saks Fifth Avenue thinks government rules that prohibit federal assistance to firms
00:22:32.800 | with too much debt don't take into account the vast real estate holdings and other collateral
00:22:37.420 | options of many department stores.
00:22:39.660 | Such a change could help Saks and others qualify for federal help.
00:22:43.780 | Saks has hired a former top Senate aide as a lobbyist and hopes to win the support of
00:22:51.460 | Mr. Schumer, a Democrat from New York.
00:22:54.260 | Saks Fifth Avenue's flagship department store is in Manhattan."
00:22:57.260 | So you see, Saks Fifth Avenue putting themselves in a situation where what they feel like they
00:23:01.920 | have to do to succeed in this time is to hire a lobbyist to change the laws so that they
00:23:05.820 | can get some government money, get some government bailout money.
00:23:09.260 | But it's not the only one.
00:23:10.940 | Men's grooming company Harry's Incorporated has hired a lobbyist close to President Trump
00:23:16.060 | to try to change another provision that makes it harder for startup companies to qualify
00:23:19.700 | for loans backed by the government.
00:23:21.860 | New companies can take years to be profitable, making them ineligible for government help
00:23:26.060 | due to a rule that prevents loans to failing businesses.
00:23:29.460 | Harry's doesn't qualify for federal assistance under that rule, even though its business
00:23:34.620 | appears to be thriving.
00:23:36.540 | Last year, a rival grooming company tried to buy it for $1.4 billion.
00:23:41.840 | On April 13, Harry's hired lobbyist Brian Ballard, a top fundraiser for Mr. Trump's
00:23:46.980 | presidential campaign.
00:23:48.460 | Joshua Kushner, the brother of Mr. Trump's son-in-law and advisor, is a Harry's director
00:23:54.140 | and investor.
00:23:57.860 | I do appreciate the Wall Street Journal making it obvious that this is a bipartisan issue,
00:24:01.620 | because it certainly is.
00:24:03.540 | You got Mr. Schumer, and you got Mr. Trump.
00:24:05.900 | Everybody's involved.
00:24:06.900 | And so you've got this constant revolving door where it goes from Wall Street to Pennsylvania
00:24:12.540 | Avenue, Wall Street to Congress, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
00:24:16.860 | And it's disgusting.
00:24:18.660 | It's utterly, ethically, morally disgusting.
00:24:22.380 | Continuing on, who else is going to get involved?
00:24:24.260 | More than 100 retailers, commercial real estate firms, and insurers want to create what they're
00:24:27.700 | calling America's Recovery Fund, which would build on the already historic economic rescue
00:24:33.060 | efforts.
00:24:34.060 | The coalition, which will formally launch on Monday, wants more federal support over
00:24:37.780 | a longer time to more companies, said Trevor Hanger, the group's research director.
00:24:42.060 | "Businesses across numerous sectors are not going to make it without additional support,"
00:24:45.900 | said Mr. Hanger, whose coalition includes blah, blah, blah.
00:24:48.860 | The existing PPP program is aimed at getting businesses to retain or rehire employees.
00:24:53.120 | The coalition contends the needs of consumer-facing businesses and their landlords are more complex
00:24:58.260 | and require grants that can be spent over a much longer period of time, with the flexibility
00:25:02.760 | to spend more on expenses like rent, utilities, taxes, and debt.
00:25:09.020 | So what do you see?
00:25:10.180 | You see that it seems like almost the first situation, first thing that the companies
00:25:14.140 | did in this most recent catastrophe was run crying to Congress and say, "We need money."
00:25:19.940 | Didn't even take a few weeks before everyone says, "We need money."
00:25:23.220 | Now, is there an ethical argument saying, "Well, the government shut us down and therefore
00:25:26.940 | we should get some government money"?
00:25:28.060 | I grant that there's an argument there.
00:25:29.780 | I don't buy it, but I grant that that's a legitimate argument.
00:25:33.580 | But what's amazing is that this is the first response, seemingly, of everybody.
00:25:37.260 | "I need some money."
00:25:38.260 | Now, you want to know why.
00:25:40.460 | One of the things that I do, most of what I have to say about the stock market is not
00:25:43.940 | from an investment perspective.
00:25:44.940 | It's not saying, "Well, in the long term, the investment perspective is going to be
00:25:49.500 | bad," although I'm going to make a little bit of that argument later.
00:25:53.980 | But this is one of the many reasons why the investment opportunities are so bad, because
00:25:58.980 | you have this calcified structure where you have these huge corporations that are so accustomed
00:26:05.780 | to and reliant on government money, and you never have a clearing of the decks.
00:26:10.500 | Back in 2008, what should have happened?
00:26:12.380 | All these companies should have gone bankrupt, and then newer competitors should have come
00:26:16.100 | in and bought out their assets, but they didn't do it.
00:26:18.900 | They didn't let them go bankrupt.
00:26:20.140 | They didn't let them fail.
00:26:22.200 | And so what do you see in 2020?
00:26:23.380 | You see the same thing happening.
00:26:24.700 | We're not going to let them go bankrupt.
00:26:25.700 | We're not going to let them fail.
00:26:27.060 | And what's needed is to clear the decks.
00:26:29.300 | What's needed is bankruptcy for all of these companies that can't make it.
00:26:32.940 | All of their assets will be sold off at auction to somebody else who will come in and start
00:26:36.620 | again, and that would be the thing that would actually lead to economic growth.
00:26:39.960 | But instead, we've got this calcified corporate crony, corrupt—I'm lacking more C words,
00:26:48.380 | but we've got this system that just leads to tremendous inefficiencies and is leading
00:26:54.780 | to a stale, stagnant economy, in my opinion.
00:27:00.260 | Time will tell whether that prediction turns out to be true or not.
00:27:05.740 | I don't like that business model.
00:27:07.240 | I don't like to be involved in it, and I find it really, really revolting.
00:27:13.060 | When you have a society that says, "We're going to steal money from citizens for taxes.
00:27:22.640 | Then we're going to use that tax money to put in place laws that are lobbied for."
00:27:27.940 | And the laws are in many cases written by large corporations who can hire successful
00:27:33.020 | lobbying firms to get their position through.
00:27:36.500 | We're going to reward this utter corruption of this back-and-forth flow of going to Congress
00:27:44.180 | and then going to Wall Street, going to Congress, going to Wall Street, back and forth and back
00:27:48.060 | and forth.
00:27:49.060 | And we're going to pay for access to the legislators.
00:27:51.780 | And then when things go bad, we're not even going to let anybody pay for the price of
00:27:57.580 | their actions.
00:27:58.580 | We're going to just step in and bail them out and print more money.
00:28:01.220 | It's absurd.
00:28:02.220 | Anyway, that for me has always been the biggest issue.
00:28:06.100 | I believe in the value of a free market system.
00:28:08.540 | I want to compete in an area of open competition.
00:28:12.780 | I've never asked for a bailout.
00:28:14.140 | I've never asked for something.
00:28:15.220 | I believe that there's something fundamentally valuable about an individual taking the risk.
00:28:19.740 | That's why I love the Internet, because I can speak on the power of my ideas.
00:28:23.700 | I can be in a situation where I'm not sitting here saying I'm going to coerce somebody to
00:28:27.500 | do it.
00:28:28.500 | I can just bring my ideas and I can compete.
00:28:30.580 | And there's a totally free market.
00:28:31.860 | I compete for your ears, for your eyeballs.
00:28:34.740 | I compete with everybody in the world.
00:28:37.100 | And you can say anything you want in the comments.
00:28:39.420 | You can share.
00:28:40.420 | You can not share.
00:28:41.420 | And I love that because it's almost the purest expression of competition where it's the value
00:28:44.640 | of my ideas and the value of my advice that has to stand on its own.
00:28:49.700 | How do I, who believes in those values, how do I then turn around and say, "We're going
00:28:54.140 | to reward this antiquated, calcified, corrupt system, and we're going to say that that's
00:28:58.700 | the best we can do from an investment perspective?"
00:29:01.180 | Especially when the investment returns stink and the volatility is off the charts and the
00:29:07.340 | regulation is unheard of.
00:29:10.860 | It's frustrating.
00:29:20.500 | Other issues that I have.
00:29:21.500 | When I look at the broader market, just the S&P 500, I personally, again, not going to
00:29:26.740 | try to tell you what to think, but I personally do not like a lot of the businesses that these
00:29:30.980 | companies are in.
00:29:32.260 | I find them really, really frustrating, the businesses that these companies are in.
00:29:40.660 | I don't like how many of these companies are involved in war.
00:29:45.140 | The United States government and the country of the United States of America has been at
00:29:47.980 | war for almost 95% of its history.
00:29:52.500 | You look at that and you say, "Why?
00:29:54.340 | Why on earth does this exist?
00:29:56.420 | How could it possibly be the case that you have a country that's at war for almost, for
00:30:01.820 | like 93 or 95% of its history?"
00:30:04.660 | There's been basically been about a dozen, 12 to 15 years in the history of the US government
00:30:09.140 | that they've not been at war.
00:30:11.940 | Now I'm not in Howard Zinn camp.
00:30:18.660 | I'm not going to accuse everything of craziness.
00:30:21.260 | I'm firmly in a Smedley Butler camp myself.
00:30:23.460 | If you're unfamiliar with him, Smedley Butler was the man who wrote most decorated general
00:30:30.500 | in history in the United States.
00:30:40.660 | He was a Marine Corps general and had two medals of honor.
00:30:41.660 | He wrote this incredible book years ago after World War II.
00:30:43.540 | He wrote this incredible book that was specifically called War is a Racket.
00:30:49.380 | In that book, he goes through and he shows in that book, specifically, he shows why war
00:30:59.500 | is a racket and why there's this horrifying commitment to war based upon the finances
00:31:14.500 | of it.
00:31:15.500 | He goes through in that book and he explains how it's all about money.
00:31:18.660 | He does such a great job with it.
00:31:19.900 | Him, again, most decorated, I think soldier, but certainly Marine in history.
00:31:25.580 | He goes through and he just shows how crazy the whole thing is.
00:31:29.060 | He shows how even the big wars that most people would agree, like these wars are morally valuable,
00:31:34.580 | wars like World War I, World War II.
00:31:37.500 | You would say these wars were necessary or they were valuable.
00:31:40.180 | Well, maybe they were, maybe they weren't.
00:31:42.820 | None of us were that.
00:31:43.820 | We don't get to choose and it really doesn't matter.
00:31:45.820 | We can look at them in history.
00:31:46.820 | What we can be sure of is that they were unquestionably profitable and that they made massive amounts
00:31:52.940 | of money for the inside people.
00:31:55.540 | You look forward and you say, "Why does the war continue?
00:31:58.460 | Why on earth does it continue?
00:32:00.260 | Just on and on and on.
00:32:01.740 | It never ends."
00:32:02.740 | Well, it never ends because it's highly profitable.
00:32:06.060 | You go through the large companies in the United States of America, you look at Northrop
00:32:09.340 | Grumman and Raytheon and Boeing and whatnot.
00:32:12.060 | You just realize how much of it is based upon war and this promulgation of constant and
00:32:18.300 | never ending war.
00:32:20.540 | It makes you sick to your stomach, especially when you realize who pays the price.
00:32:24.740 | Who pays the price is the people who get killed by it, the millions and millions and millions
00:32:30.220 | and millions of people who are killed by it.
00:32:32.180 | Yet here I am profiting as an investor from this.
00:32:37.020 | It just bothered me for years.
00:32:39.780 | That would be an example of the kinds of things that you can consider.
00:32:44.500 | You have to make your own decision.
00:32:45.500 | You have to think about it.
00:32:46.740 | I think that it's so hard because when you come to any of these issues, we all have family,
00:32:53.100 | we all have friends who are involved in these things, and it becomes personally troubling.
00:33:00.940 | For me, it's a big, big deal.
00:33:02.300 | I hate the violence.
00:33:03.300 | I hate the war.
00:33:05.980 | It really bothers me because how can I earn money on this system that promotes just extensive
00:33:12.140 | war?
00:33:13.140 | One of the big concerns I have right now is I feel like everything smells like and feels
00:33:17.180 | like we're headed for even more of it.
00:33:19.980 | What would everybody say?
00:33:20.980 | What would happen to the stock market if war took off?
00:33:23.220 | Well, there'd be some people who would say, "Well, the stock market is going to be bad,"
00:33:26.060 | but most people agree that war is good for an economy.
00:33:28.260 | It unites a nation and results in let's go and do it.
00:33:31.500 | There's only a tiny number of us who would buy the overall arguments that things are
00:33:35.980 | destructive, but what I will say is that although I think war is destructive to an economy,
00:33:40.100 | war is very profitable to stock investors.
00:33:43.620 | There you have that never-ending disconnect between the economy and the stock market.
00:33:48.580 | It also really bothers me just that the ongoing social activism of some of these huge companies
00:33:54.260 | because it seems like I'm always on the wrong side of the social activism.
00:33:57.860 | For example, I'm deeply offended by war for the reasons previously stated.
00:34:04.220 | I think it's really, really bad, but I believe that there's real value in individuals having
00:34:10.380 | firearms, for example.
00:34:13.060 | There's a massive difference between tools of war, tanks and battleships and F-22 fighter
00:34:18.500 | jets versus rifles, AR-15s or otherwise.
00:34:22.700 | The difference is the scale and who benefits from them.
00:34:26.420 | You have a system where the government will spend tens of millions of dollars on an F-22
00:34:30.260 | or on an aircraft carrier and yet wants to say simultaneously, "We're going to ban AR-15s."
00:34:36.220 | The Canadian government, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, "We're not going to have AR-15s in
00:34:40.100 | this country."
00:34:41.100 | Well, Justin Trudeau is still going to be protected by AR-15s or the Canadian equivalent,
00:34:44.980 | military equivalent, and his troops are still going to have it.
00:34:48.060 | It's just that individuals are not.
00:34:49.940 | You have companies ... It's frustrating.
00:34:51.820 | The banks, right?
00:34:52.820 | In 2018, Bank of America said, after the Parkland shooting, Bank of America says, "We're going
00:34:57.820 | to stop producing loans and financing loans for companies that are involved in firearms
00:35:03.420 | manufacturing."
00:35:04.420 | Well, on the one hand, I personally support their right of discrimination.
00:35:08.460 | I believe that you and I have an absolute unconditional right to run our businesses
00:35:12.680 | and our lives as we see fit when we're in a voluntary society.
00:35:17.100 | So I support their right to discriminate.
00:35:18.620 | It just feels like their right to discriminate is everywhere and nobody seems like will give
00:35:24.560 | much of ... It doesn't seem like they afford the same right to other people.
00:35:30.400 | What else?
00:35:31.400 | Again, back to the banks.
00:35:32.620 | Banks and payment providers are actively excluding people from commerce, people that I care about.
00:35:37.580 | Right now, there have been many Christian ministry organizations who have been canceled
00:35:42.060 | by PayPal, who have been canceled by Stripe, who have been canceled by their merchant providers
00:35:46.700 | because they get blacklisted by a social activism organization that disagrees with their position.
00:35:52.340 | Now, do I personally support the right of discrimination by PayPal and Stripe?
00:35:56.300 | Yes, I do.
00:35:57.340 | But it's frustrating to say that now my investments are going to be from these people who are
00:36:02.500 | discriminated against, people who believe things that I think are really important.
00:36:06.580 | Sometimes really, really difficult.
00:36:08.260 | Or what else?
00:36:09.260 | What about just the involvement of a lot of the organizations and invasions of people's
00:36:14.860 | privacy?
00:36:15.860 | Again, we're getting into pretty esoteric territory.
00:36:18.700 | I'm just giving you some things that are the kinds of things that bother me.
00:36:21.020 | I wouldn't just pull out of the stock market based on this.
00:36:23.260 | But you look at what the banks and the finance companies do in response to the Patriot Act
00:36:27.140 | laws and just the complete destruction of privacy.
00:36:29.780 | It's frustrating.
00:36:30.780 | Now, in the United States, is that life and death?
00:36:34.140 | No, it's not.
00:36:35.700 | But around the world, is it life and death?
00:36:37.460 | It absolutely is.
00:36:41.380 | I find it really frustrating when some of these big companies submit to human rights
00:36:46.700 | violators to make a quick buck.
00:36:48.980 | You look at a company like Google, right?
00:36:51.980 | In 2018, Google comes out and I think it was Project Dragonfly is revealed, where Google
00:36:59.500 | gone back and forth with the Chinese censors over the years about whether or not they were
00:37:05.700 | going to censor web search and censor different things.
00:37:09.820 | Google had generally taken a pretty strong anti-censorship track.
00:37:14.620 | They stood up for what Google professed to believe, right?
00:37:17.860 | Do no evil and organize and allow access to information.
00:37:22.060 | Well, in 2018, the information comes out about Project Dragonfly.
00:37:25.020 | Now, Google is going to facilitate and work with the Chinese government to put themselves
00:37:30.140 | in a situation where they're going to have a censored version of Google web results.
00:37:33.860 | Now, is that Google's right?
00:37:35.420 | Sure, it's Google's right.
00:37:37.220 | But the Chinese government is unspeakably evil.
00:37:40.500 | They are evil.
00:37:41.500 | They have murdered tens of millions of people and today, today are persecuting and executing
00:37:49.140 | and imprisoning millions of people in the most immoral and unjust fashion.
00:37:55.180 | People that I care about, right?
00:37:56.820 | Millions of Christians in China suffer because of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:38:00.100 | Right now, millions of Muslims, the Uyghur Muslims are being completely devastated, locked
00:38:05.260 | up, sent to re-education camps.
00:38:07.340 | The Chinese government, let alone even coming out with the coronavirus, COVID-19 and the
00:38:12.460 | insanity of that.
00:38:14.020 | You have one of these just incredibly evil governments and you have Google saying, "Oh,
00:38:20.020 | okay.
00:38:21.020 | Well, we'll talk a lot, but when it comes down to actually making a buck and us being
00:38:25.340 | excluded from the government, from a huge market, we're going to just roll over on that
00:38:31.140 | stuff."
00:38:32.140 | Fine.
00:38:33.140 | Right?
00:38:34.140 | Is that Google's right?
00:38:35.140 | It's certainly Google's right.
00:38:36.140 | My issue is why should I try to profit from that?
00:38:38.500 | How can I sleep at night when Google is sitting here saying, "We're going to submit to these
00:38:43.980 | evil men just so we can make some extra money."
00:38:47.780 | And I'm supposed to sleep well at night when my brothers and sisters, my Christian brothers
00:38:51.740 | and sisters are locked in prison right now, when they're being disappeared off the street
00:38:58.240 | right now, and now I'm going to go to bed at night and say, "Well, at least my 401k
00:39:02.860 | is up."
00:39:03.860 | Like that's unconscionable.
00:39:04.860 | It's unconscionable.
00:39:05.860 | And it just goes on and on and on.
00:39:09.020 | For me, now again, I know I'm unusually sensitive to these issues.
00:39:15.380 | I know most people, it doesn't seem to bother them, but it just goes on and on.
00:39:19.140 | It feels like increasingly, Joshua Sheets in 2020, it feels like almost every move that
00:39:25.260 | is popular on the broad level is something that's against something that I care about.
00:39:31.020 | I care deeply about children and the ability for children to grow and to not be, to have
00:39:41.300 | just the ability to grow and to succeed.
00:39:43.340 | And yet we live in a world where everything is about marketing to my children's eyeballs
00:39:47.180 | as early as possible.
00:39:48.940 | And I fight day and night to keep their eyeballs free of all that stuff.
00:39:53.860 | And yet now I'm supposed to say, "Well, I know that this is the fundamental operating
00:39:57.780 | philosophy of this company, and I'm working to keep my children insulated from the destruction
00:40:03.140 | of staring at this screen and being totally marketed to and bombarded left, right, and
00:40:08.820 | center.
00:40:09.820 | But now I'm going to profit from it for other people's children."
00:40:11.900 | How does that fulfill any kind of ethical standard of...
00:40:18.300 | It's just, it feels so dirty.
00:40:21.060 | And so that's a lot of things.
00:40:24.700 | It just seems like for me, with the moral positions that I hold and the ethical things
00:40:29.460 | that I think are pretty clear, whether I'm right or wrong, of course I believe I'm right,
00:40:34.180 | otherwise I wouldn't believe what I believe, but it seems like at every turn, the majority,
00:40:40.500 | I don't know if all, but the majority of large publicly traded corporations have official
00:40:45.840 | positions that are directly offensive to me.
00:40:51.020 | And yet I'm supposed to line up and say, "Here, here's the money."
00:40:53.540 | At the end of the day, I just came to a point, I thought, "How do I get to the end of my
00:41:02.180 | life and stand before the Lord and say, 'Here's my accounting of what I did with your money,
00:41:11.580 | God.
00:41:12.580 | Here's how I invested it.
00:41:14.260 | And here's all the money that I made on it.'"
00:41:16.660 | And God says, "Well, what return did you get?"
00:41:19.340 | You read the parable of the steward, right?
00:41:23.580 | The master goes away and Jesus tells the parable and he says, the master goes away on a long
00:41:30.780 | trip and he comes back and he gives one talent to, depending on which version we use, he
00:41:36.100 | gives a talent, gives a few talents, 10 talents, gives 20 talents, comes back from the trip
00:41:40.820 | and says, "Give me an accounting."
00:41:42.900 | And the master's expecting a return.
00:41:46.180 | And I see that parable that Jesus taught as directly applicable to my life.
00:41:51.180 | When God entrusts money to me and he says, "Here, here's money.
00:41:54.860 | You are the steward of this money."
00:41:55.980 | He expects a return.
00:41:57.640 | So I imagine myself standing before the master, right?
00:41:59.620 | The master comes back from a long trip and I'm standing there saying, "Well, what's the
00:42:02.420 | return?"
00:42:03.420 | "Well, God, I made 8.2%."
00:42:06.260 | Meanwhile, millions of people were murdered around the world, right?
00:42:10.940 | Other people were locked up.
00:42:12.380 | We destroyed society.
00:42:13.540 | We destroyed lives, right?
00:42:16.140 | Millions of teens committed suicide and yet we're going to stand by and profit from it.
00:42:23.100 | Over time, it just grew and grew and grew to the point where I'm like, "I can't do this."
00:42:29.100 | Now could I have ever come to that position as when I was a financial advisor?
00:42:32.660 | I don't know if I could have.
00:42:33.940 | I'd like to say I could have, but it would have just meant the complete destruction of
00:42:37.260 | my entire business, right?
00:42:38.700 | How do you operate in that environment?
00:42:41.780 | You can't.
00:42:42.780 | So it was almost like I needed a few years to detox from it.
00:42:45.780 | But over the years, for those reasons, I've had all of my investment accounts just sitting
00:42:48.940 | in cash.
00:42:49.940 | Now does that mean that I'm fundamentally opposed to investing in stocks?
00:42:53.300 | No.
00:42:54.300 | There's lots of ways I think to work through handling that.
00:42:56.020 | There's lots of companies that I admire.
00:42:57.780 | There's lots of companies that I'd be proud to own, publicly traded companies that I personally
00:43:01.020 | would be very proud to own.
00:43:04.120 | But what I came to, as I said, the mass market approach, just buying the mutual fund that
00:43:09.220 | includes everything, I didn't feel good about it.
00:43:12.060 | I acknowledge the efficiency of that kind of scenario, but I didn't feel good about
00:43:17.580 | it.
00:43:18.700 | I came to the realization that I was as blinded to investment opportunities as most of my
00:43:28.820 | clients because I was trained by this mainstream system that exclusively relied on financial
00:43:37.940 | advisors to market their products.
00:43:40.580 | What I started to realize over time is that there was a massive world of potential investments,
00:43:46.540 | a massive world of opportunity that I just wasn't tuned into.
00:43:51.100 | And so once I walked away from the stock market, I started to realize that there were many
00:43:56.900 | other areas of investing, many ways I could build huge wealth, invest very effectively,
00:44:04.100 | and not have some of the ethical concerns that didn't help me to sleep well at night.
00:44:09.900 | I'm also convinced that a lot of those things are far more profitable.
00:44:13.460 | Now I'm not at a position yet as a mature investor where I can confidently teach you
00:44:18.540 | what they are.
00:44:19.660 | I can teach you some of the academics of one area or another, but I'm not willing to
00:44:23.620 | say, "Look, here's my investment record," because I haven't done it for long enough.
00:44:27.260 | I don't have the results to speak for themselves, and I try to speak to things that I actually
00:44:30.380 | know about.
00:44:31.380 | So we can talk about it academically, but I can't say, "Look, you should invest like
00:44:34.860 | me."
00:44:35.860 | What I can say is that as I have dug in deeper and deeper, I've realized that there's this
00:44:40.620 | whole world of investment that I never before thought about because I was so focused on
00:44:48.180 | stocks, stocks, stocks, stocks.
00:44:49.980 | And when you start opening up your mind to those things, all of a sudden you now turn
00:44:53.100 | around and you look back at the stock market and you think, "This is crazy.
00:44:57.460 | You're trying to tell me that this is where I should invest my money?
00:45:00.940 | You're trying to say that this is the best thing that I can do with my money right now?"
00:45:09.740 | When you look at it and you think about—I'm sorry for the phone call.
00:45:14.060 | I'm still learning.
00:45:15.060 | I'm live streaming the recording of today's show, and usually nobody calls me, but unfortunately
00:45:19.980 | I can't.
00:45:20.980 | I'm using all my phones as cameras, and so I'm being interrupted by a phone call here.
00:45:28.640 | When you look at the stock market and you're open to other opportunities and other ideas,
00:45:33.940 | it's hard to make a really strong argument for the stock market with the exception of
00:45:38.540 | a few basic arguments.
00:45:40.100 | Let me make the positive thing about what the stock market, speaking generally, is really
00:45:44.340 | good at.
00:45:45.340 | As I see it, it's basically two things in the modern era.
00:45:49.060 | Number one, investing in the stock market makes investing really, really easy for people
00:45:56.740 | to do.
00:45:57.860 | It makes it really, really easy in the modern world for people to do.
00:46:01.700 | It's so easy for people to open an account.
00:46:04.900 | You can do it in an app on your phone.
00:46:06.380 | You can go to any one of these investment markets, and you can just open an account
00:46:11.700 | and boom, you can be invested in five minutes in some pretty good investments, speaking
00:46:17.260 | purely from a financial perspective, broadly diversified, low cost.
00:46:20.860 | It's pretty incredible.
00:46:22.260 | When you go into markets where that level of efficiency does not exist, and you go back
00:46:28.140 | to a place like the United States where you have that level of access to the market, it's
00:46:34.100 | sobering.
00:46:35.100 | It's really sobering because you realize what a stunning achievement it is in market efficiency
00:46:40.540 | and building out this powerful world of investments where any individual with a smartphone app
00:46:45.580 | can just open it up and boom, invest into it.
00:46:48.260 | In the stock market, because of that, it's very efficient.
00:46:54.260 | Costs are low.
00:46:55.260 | You look at the incredible revolution that's happened over the last couple of decades,
00:46:58.540 | even in just the decline of costs, the decline of costs of investing, the major impact of
00:47:05.780 | passive investing, of firms that have cut fees.
00:47:09.140 | There's almost no comparison.
00:47:11.020 | When you look at the market, you see how incredibly efficient it is with the tremendous focus,
00:47:16.540 | the tremendous constant and never-ending focus by the investment analysts.
00:47:22.620 | It's really incredible.
00:47:24.380 | The US stock market has succeeded in making investing easy.
00:47:29.020 | That I think is well worth acknowledging.
00:47:31.260 | It's worth and important to acknowledge that investing is easier in the United States than
00:47:38.740 | almost anywhere else in the world.
00:47:40.840 | The other thing that's worth acknowledging is that when you invest in the stock market
00:47:49.940 | and you invest in mass market mutual funds, you can make a little bit of return, a decent
00:47:55.140 | level of return, and you can do it with zero input.
00:48:02.220 | That's amazing.
00:48:03.320 | I don't know of any other investment that truly comes close to being passive.
00:48:07.320 | People talk about passive income.
00:48:08.620 | They talk about, "Well, I'm going to make passive income because I'm going to start
00:48:12.020 | a YouTube channel and get advertising revenue," or, "I'm going to make passive income because
00:48:16.460 | I'm going to buy rental houses," or, "I'm going to make passive income because I started
00:48:20.220 | a network marketing company and I received overrides on the purchases of my downline."
00:48:25.920 | None of those things are passive income.
00:48:29.380 | None of them are passive income.
00:48:32.000 | They're income that necessarily is not directly tied to the work of today, but none of them
00:48:42.820 | are actually passive income.
00:48:46.780 | The only thing that I think actually qualifies as passive income specifically is dividends,
00:48:54.420 | living on the dividends from publicly traded companies and/or living on the dividends and
00:49:00.260 | profits from a large mutual fund portfolio.
00:49:04.700 | Maybe you say, "I'm going to put all my money with American funds, and I'm going
00:49:07.780 | to spend my dividends from the American funds in mutual funds," or, "I'm going to put
00:49:12.020 | all my money with Vanguard.
00:49:13.020 | I'm going to buy the Vanguard total stock market index fund.
00:49:15.580 | I'm going to live on 3% of my portfolio."
00:49:18.980 | That's genuinely, truly passive, but almost nothing else is.
00:49:23.540 | You can get a little return from that, broadly speaking.
00:49:27.340 | You can get a little return for that, and you can do it totally passively.
00:49:32.540 | I think that there's also ways to do that, that you can generate those results and still
00:49:36.940 | satisfy maybe any ethical concerns you have.
00:49:40.580 | Maybe your concern is, "I don't want to fund the war," but you can put yourself in a situation
00:49:45.100 | where you say, "I may not want to fund the war, but I'm happy to spend Coca-Cola dividends.
00:49:50.900 | I'll spend my Coca-Cola dividends.
00:49:54.620 | They're not financing the war, but I've got dividends from all over the world."
00:49:57.900 | Totally passive, really, really powerful as a solution.
00:50:01.220 | But outside of those two things, stock market investing has a whole bunch of downsides.
00:50:06.700 | The first thing is, although the stock market is generally higher in terms of the overall
00:50:14.340 | return that you can get than something like putting money in a bank, which is its own
00:50:18.420 | ethical issue, right?
00:50:19.540 | The war on savers, which I'm convinced contributes over time to, is going to contribute to more
00:50:26.380 | and more of a destruction of our lives and our finances.
00:50:29.480 | When you have a society that penalizes savers through inflationary policies and yet doesn't
00:50:36.620 | open up and forces everyone into stocks, it just makes it really more difficult.
00:50:42.220 | I can't go down that tangent.
00:50:45.620 | But in the stock market, you can generate some returns, but you have no competitive
00:50:52.660 | advantage.
00:50:55.020 | Because the market is efficient, you pretty much know that, "Okay, the market's efficient,
00:50:58.740 | and you and I have no competitive advantage."
00:51:01.620 | There's nothing that you and I can do as individuals to go in and get involved in a particular
00:51:06.900 | market and really make it pay off.
00:51:09.420 | We're stuck in a scenario where we're little fish.
00:51:12.020 | Now, can you find some little trading opportunity?
00:51:14.740 | Maybe.
00:51:15.740 | Is there something that you can do where you say, "I've developed a scheme," or, "I've
00:51:18.300 | developed a philosophy," or, "I'm going to buy these companies," or maybe.
00:51:21.060 | At the end of the day, there's not really any competitive advantage that you and I have.
00:51:27.140 | Why should we invest in a market where we have no competitive advantage?
00:51:30.860 | You have a much bigger competitive advantage in a market that you know, in a market that
00:51:35.100 | you can be involved in.
00:51:36.580 | You have a much bigger competitive advantage working as a plumber and building a plumbing
00:51:40.460 | company because you can go out and say, "Here's what's going to make us really effective at
00:51:44.100 | plumbing and here's how we're going to compete with everyone," or, "Here's how we're going
00:51:47.180 | to take and build out a chain of automotive repair shops and make that really profitable."
00:51:51.460 | When it comes to the stock market, you have no competitive advantage.
00:51:56.540 | You're a small fish.
00:51:57.660 | I'm a small fish.
00:51:58.660 | Utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
00:52:01.420 | Why should we go and invest in these areas where we don't have a competitive advantage
00:52:05.300 | if that costs us investing in another place where you do?
00:52:09.620 | What I'm convinced, personally, is it costs many investors the willingness to go and invest
00:52:15.540 | in a market that they actually do know.
00:52:18.100 | Because they're so used to investing into their IRA or their Roth IRA, people often
00:52:22.940 | don't ever amass any meaningful wealth and thus they don't look at the world through
00:52:27.180 | the eyes of an entrepreneur and see the opportunities.
00:52:29.780 | They look at the world through the eyes of a broke salaryman who has a bunch of money
00:52:33.980 | and a 401(k) and they don't see how they could get involved in this other business opportunity
00:52:38.620 | over here because after all, my money is locked in the 401(k) and yeah, I know I could do
00:52:42.500 | a self-directed 401(k) but that's really hard and my company doesn't allow it.
00:52:46.380 | They go through life as basically a salaryman without ever applying that entrepreneurial
00:52:53.860 | mentality to the world and seeing the investment opportunities.
00:52:57.100 | They'll see a house.
00:52:58.100 | Somebody will see a house across the street for sale.
00:53:00.580 | Honestly, for many people, it never enters into their brain, never, that they should
00:53:05.060 | buy it.
00:53:06.060 | Never.
00:53:07.060 | They don't ever think of it because, "Oh, that's not an investment," or "I don't like
00:53:11.860 | real estate."
00:53:12.860 | They don't look to the guy next door to them that's a real estate investor himself and
00:53:16.680 | realize I could lend that guy money at 15%.
00:53:20.780 | I make a whole lot more with very modest risk versus the stock market and have it secured
00:53:27.300 | by real property instead of something made up.
00:53:32.500 | I have no inset edge in the stock market.
00:53:34.220 | I'm a small fish.
00:53:35.220 | I have no competitive advantage and I'm dealing with strangers whose character I cannot assess.
00:53:40.220 | That's the thing.
00:53:41.860 | When you see a company come out, when you see an Enron, the classic Enron and WorldCom,
00:53:48.020 | what keeps those things from being an everyday story?
00:53:51.060 | Part of it is due to the very efficient marketplace that people are involved in.
00:53:54.940 | Part of it is due to the constant scrutiny of the analysts and the news media chasing
00:54:04.060 | down hot stories.
00:54:05.060 | But at the end of the day, you still have no ability to know the people.
00:54:10.540 | Whereas if you invest closer to home, you can know the people and you can take a bet
00:54:14.060 | on a person because you know their character.
00:54:19.620 | The volatility in the stock market is crazy.
00:54:24.620 | It's crazy and it makes no sense to me.
00:54:29.740 | It makes sense to me that there is volatility, but the direction of it makes no sense to
00:54:33.940 | me.
00:54:36.780 | If there's anyone who should know what's going on with the stock market, it should
00:54:41.340 | be me.
00:54:42.340 | I'm not claiming to be the world's greatest analyst.
00:54:45.220 | I'm not.
00:54:46.220 | I'm not claiming to be a charter.
00:54:47.220 | I'm not a CFA.
00:54:48.220 | I've never been that interested in it.
00:54:49.900 | But you would think that somebody with a master's degree in financial planning, who was a certified
00:54:55.860 | financial planner, I'm in the process of reinstating, but it's not reinstated yet, so I can't say
00:54:59.660 | that I am.
00:55:01.740 | You would think that somebody like me should know what's going on in the stock market,
00:55:05.260 | considering I used to make my money telling people to invest in the stock market.
00:55:11.160 | I don't understand it.
00:55:12.460 | I genuinely do not.
00:55:14.420 | I do not understand it.
00:55:15.420 | Now, part of it is, okay, I get that the market, and I would teach.
00:55:18.580 | If you were calling my Q&A show and you were saying, "Josh, explain the market," I would
00:55:21.980 | say, "Well, the market doesn't really exist.
00:55:24.460 | The market is this word that we use to describe the individual decisions of millions and millions
00:55:29.540 | of people, millions and millions of businesses, funds, all of whom are buying and selling
00:55:34.020 | for their own individual reason.
00:55:35.300 | It could be somebody's buying or selling because they think the market's going to go down.
00:55:38.640 | Could be someone's buying and selling because they need money to pay for their kid's college
00:55:41.180 | tuition.
00:55:42.180 | Could be someone's buying and selling because their dad died, left them stocks, and now
00:55:45.380 | they're selling.
00:55:46.380 | We have no idea why, so we just talk about the market."
00:55:49.420 | But realistically, when you think about the overall themes, it's just hard for me to make
00:55:52.740 | sense of.
00:55:53.820 | It's really hard for me to make sense of.
00:55:56.460 | So we say this thing, "Don't invest in something that you don't understand."
00:56:02.820 | We say this little aphorism, "Don't invest in something you don't understand."
00:56:05.500 | We say aphorisms, and I like aphorisms.
00:56:07.180 | I'm the king of aphorisms.
00:56:09.020 | We say, "You shouldn't invest in something that you can't explain to your five-year-old."
00:56:13.500 | And yet when I honestly, genuinely come down to it, and I honestly, genuinely think, "Do
00:56:18.780 | I understand the stock market?"
00:56:22.500 | The answer is no.
00:56:25.220 | The answer is honestly, genuinely no.
00:56:28.060 | I don't understand it.
00:56:29.300 | I know something about it, but I don't understand it.
00:56:33.180 | And so why am I investing massive levels of money in something that I don't understand?
00:56:40.340 | Now I'm basically making some bets, right?
00:56:42.580 | I can make the arguments, and I'm not saying sell your stocks.
00:56:46.220 | I can make some of the arguments for the long term and say, "Here's where things can grow
00:56:52.220 | over time."
00:56:53.580 | I look and I see significant headwinds.
00:56:55.980 | Let me give you an example.
00:56:58.900 | Over the last few years, you've seen most stock analysts, most people involved in stock
00:57:03.420 | analysis have minimized and have put themselves in a situation where they downgraded some
00:57:10.260 | of their predictions.
00:57:11.860 | They said, "You know what?
00:57:12.900 | We think that there's some major headwinds coming up over the long term, and because
00:57:18.420 | of that, we're going to downgrade.
00:57:19.420 | We think the winds are going to be more difficult."
00:57:21.260 | Vanguard, right?
00:57:22.260 | Everyone's darling.
00:57:23.260 | Vanguard comes out and says, "We know that there are headwinds."
00:57:26.540 | Jack Bogle, before he died, "Things are going to be more difficult."
00:57:29.060 | Why?
00:57:30.060 | Well, I look at something and I see a lot of reasons why.
00:57:31.980 | An example would be this.
00:57:33.140 | I think one major headwind against US growth and also global growth is going to be the
00:57:40.340 | plummeting or destruction of population growth, the population decline.
00:57:47.020 | There's been such a destruction to birth rates that you have this entire economy that was
00:57:52.100 | predicated upon basically constant and never-ending growth fueled by large birth rates, and you
00:57:56.700 | see the birth rates are going, "Boof," right off a cliff.
00:57:59.780 | Now, most of the wealthy nations of the world, including the United States of America, are
00:58:05.580 | below replacement birth rates, which means you can expect to see population shrinking.
00:58:10.220 | Is this any kind of overnight thing where all of a sudden it's going to happen right
00:58:13.460 | now?
00:58:14.460 | It's going to happen and boom, things are going to fall apart?
00:58:17.060 | No, it's not.
00:58:18.500 | But what you do see is this is going to have a long-term impact.
00:58:21.500 | Now, here's the question.
00:58:23.740 | How do declining birth rates impact the stock market?
00:58:32.420 | I don't know, because the stock market is this giant amorphous thing made up of thousands
00:58:38.620 | and thousands of companies.
00:58:40.660 | How do declining birth rates impact Toys R Us?
00:58:43.780 | Well, they result in the total destruction of Toys R Us.
00:58:47.380 | I can understand that because people aren't having children, children aren't buying toys,
00:58:51.220 | the toys that they are buying are often more electronic, more digital, and so physical
00:58:54.800 | toys is a market that's completely fallen apart and led to the bankruptcy of companies.
00:58:59.620 | So I can understand a company, or maybe I run a company locally, maybe I have a local
00:59:05.000 | toy store, now I can understand what the impact is.
00:59:08.060 | Or I can look and say I run an education company, now I can understand what the impact is.
00:59:12.180 | So I can chart a trend out and I can think how it impacts my company that I know, but
00:59:16.940 | I can't bring that over and apply it to the stock market.
00:59:21.660 | I don't understand the stock market.
00:59:23.460 | I can only understand companies in the stock market.
00:59:26.460 | So it goes on and on and on when you think about the lack of understanding.
00:59:32.060 | But I guess one day I woke up and I said, you know what, now that my paycheck doesn't
00:59:36.300 | depend upon my pretending that I understand the stock market, I honestly have to acknowledge
00:59:41.940 | that I don't understand it.
00:59:44.060 | I can make some arguments for it.
00:59:45.500 | I can make some arguments as to why it's good.
00:59:50.020 | In the last weeks, I have encouraged family members to keep their mutual funds.
00:59:54.540 | I'm not saying sell out of mutual funds, but for me as an investor, why should that be
00:59:59.320 | a primary part of my life?
01:00:03.220 | Final train of reasoning where you realize the stock market is just woefully not nearly
01:00:11.780 | a superior answer as some other things are.
01:00:15.740 | About the only thing I get from investing in the stock market is financial return.
01:00:25.180 | But investing in so many other areas gives me additional returns.
01:00:29.460 | For example, pretend I live in New York City.
01:00:31.860 | Well, I can invest into mutual funds in my IRA.
01:00:37.060 | I can also lend money to a friend.
01:00:49.740 | I can also lend money to a friend just to make sure I don't get the prohibited person's
01:00:54.940 | rules wrong.
01:00:55.940 | But I can also self-direct my IRA and I can lend money to a friend and that friend can
01:01:00.780 | purchase a rental house in Florida and then simultaneously my friend can lend me money
01:01:07.060 | from his IRA to purchase a rental house in Florida.
01:01:10.660 | So I've established a source of financing from my IRA.
01:01:13.420 | We'll choose some rental houses and then once a year I need to go to Florida to check on
01:01:18.020 | my rental house and so now my travel expenses to check on my investments are now going to
01:01:22.540 | be deductible to me and my friend might also choose that week for him to go and check on
01:01:28.780 | his rental house and we'll go and during the day I'll work on my rental house.
01:01:34.060 | Notice I'm not saying I'm specifically steering clear of a prohibited transaction because
01:01:39.420 | I'm not working on my rental house that my IRA owns.
01:01:41.860 | I'm working on my rental house that my friend's IRA has a mortgage on that lent me.
01:01:46.740 | So I'm there working in the daytime on my rental house and then at nighttime we can
01:01:51.700 | go down to the tiki bar and hang out together and have a nice time together.
01:01:56.260 | I can't do that with mutual funds at least not in a tax efficient way and oh by the way
01:02:00.500 | the returns on that rental house depending on what I do I can juice those returns by
01:02:04.860 | actually applying all the techniques of real estate investing.
01:02:07.380 | I can juice those returns by putting myself in a situation where I just dramatically expand
01:02:13.260 | my opportunity for profit.
01:02:15.220 | I can do that all over the world.
01:02:17.660 | I can go into markets that are far more interesting, far more profitable than Florida.
01:02:21.460 | There's plenty of investors in Florida but I can go into markets all around the world
01:02:25.540 | and do exactly the same thing.
01:02:27.300 | Now I can get a little bit of currency play.
01:02:28.900 | I can get a little bit of political play.
01:02:30.100 | I can do some things in ways that should over time dramatically enhance my returns.
01:02:35.260 | One of the most fascinating things to me that I've been studying a lot is just banking rates
01:02:39.060 | around the world.
01:02:40.220 | You wind up stuck like in the United States or in the United Kingdom.
01:02:44.460 | You wind up stuck in these banking situations where you get no return on your money because
01:02:49.100 | you're living in a calcified economy with low interest rates because the Fed is desperately
01:02:55.940 | trying to boost some growth in the economy.
01:03:00.780 | Meanwhile you can't get any return just on your savings.
01:03:04.180 | But if you go around the world there are all kinds of markets around the world where they'll
01:03:07.220 | actually pay you a return on your savings in the bank.
01:03:10.960 | So how do I wind this down?
01:03:14.860 | I hope this wasn't a screed.
01:03:16.360 | My goal was not to sit down and record a screed of everything wrong with it.
01:03:20.260 | The stock market is good at giving you easy ways to invest money and it's good at giving
01:03:27.140 | you something of a return maybe over the long term with zero input from you.
01:03:34.980 | So if you are a high income professional and you say my day job is fine.
01:03:41.340 | I don't want to go and be a plumber.
01:03:43.140 | I don't want to go and invest in timberland in Nicaragua.
01:03:47.620 | I don't want to go and do this stuff.
01:03:49.500 | I just want to work my day job, earn my money, put money in my 401k and relax.
01:03:53.580 | Well the stock market is going to be the best solution for that.
01:03:58.460 | But there's a percentage of us, I don't know what that percentage is, but there's a percentage
01:04:02.340 | of us who are just involved in that automatic system by default.
01:04:11.860 | Not because we chose it, but just that's the default option.
01:04:17.220 | And so what I would tell you is that from one guy who went into that automatic default
01:04:22.220 | system, I went into it as a default system as a Roth IRA investor when I was a teenager
01:04:30.740 | going through college.
01:04:31.740 | I went into that default system as a mainstream financial advisor.
01:04:36.780 | And as one guy who's come out of it fairly slowly and set out and kind of charted for
01:04:42.780 | myself the radical personal finance approach, when I see the wealth of options that are
01:04:49.860 | available beyond that, I have no incentive to go back.
01:04:58.540 | And when you see the costs that come with it, right, the crazy volatility for reasons
01:05:03.500 | that you can't be sure of, the impenetrability of the markets, you sit back and you watch
01:05:09.740 | people's portfolios just decline.
01:05:12.100 | I know, right now, I know how well my investments are doing because I understand them.
01:05:18.500 | And this is the first market crash that I didn't have money in the stock market.
01:05:21.500 | And as I've tried to make very clear, it wasn't because I timed it.
01:05:24.660 | Respect to those who want to do that, that was not my thing.
01:05:28.780 | But I understand my investments now.
01:05:34.620 | And even if I don't get as good of a result, which I think is probably unlikely in time,
01:05:38.620 | at least I understand them.
01:05:40.340 | And I feel good about investments contributing to society instead of being destructive to
01:05:47.740 | society.
01:05:49.940 | In the future, I want to invest in a lot more private businesses.
01:05:52.340 | I haven't figured out how to do it effectively yet.
01:05:54.900 | It's a project of mine.
01:05:56.740 | But I want to invest in businesses that actually help their neighbors and serve their neighbors
01:06:00.740 | instead of enslave their neighbors and put their neighbors into debt.
01:06:04.520 | I want to invest in businesses that lead to peace and prosperity, not to war and destruction.
01:06:11.580 | And I want to invest in businesses that are on a good moral standard instead of corrupting
01:06:18.440 | society and corrupting youth.
01:06:20.580 | And I sound like such an old man.
01:06:23.620 | Apologies.
01:06:24.620 | But I guess I'm becoming an old man.
01:06:27.620 | Just that at the end of my life, I don't want my investments to be an area that doesn't
01:06:34.420 | count.
01:06:35.660 | I want my investments to be an area that I'm proud of.
01:06:38.580 | I don't want to sit back at the end of my life and say, "Yeah, yeah, Lord, I made some
01:06:42.780 | money.
01:06:43.780 | Isn't that great?"
01:06:44.780 | I want to sit back and at the end of my life be proud of what I built.
01:06:49.700 | I want to be proud of that.
01:06:52.060 | I always think of a guy like, I don't know, Munger and Buffett, right?
01:06:56.980 | You think of that.
01:06:58.380 | Buffett and Munger are proud of what they've built because they built a giant business
01:07:03.800 | that has a legacy and a lasting legacy and they built this culture around it.
01:07:11.980 | Many entrepreneurs get to the end of their life, they're proud of what they built.
01:07:14.980 | They're proud of their store.
01:07:16.180 | They're proud of their business.
01:07:17.180 | They're proud of their impact.
01:07:18.180 | At the end of my life, I want to be proud of what I've built.
01:07:22.220 | I want something that's going to be handed down throughout the generations of my family.
01:07:30.280 | I want there to be a sense of identity, a sense of, "This is us."
01:07:40.540 | I don't see any way to get that with some shares of an index fund.
01:07:45.500 | I see a way to get that with a vineyard in Argentina.
01:07:51.140 | I see a way to get that with an office building in Miami.
01:07:57.460 | I see a way to get that with a farm in Mexico.
01:08:01.860 | I don't see a way to get there with ... I see a way to get there with radical personal
01:08:06.380 | finance, right?
01:08:07.380 | Maybe we spin off a bunch of businesses in the coming decades.
01:08:10.220 | I don't know.
01:08:11.220 | I don't know what the future holds.
01:08:12.820 | But I see a way to get there with a sense of pride.
01:08:16.980 | Having a sense of pride in my investments, I've realized, is something that I really
01:08:20.980 | care about and that I really want more of in my life.
01:08:24.740 | It's much more satisfying than the disgust that I used to feel when I opened the pages
01:08:30.200 | of the Wall Street Journal.
01:08:31.200 | I guess I should say these.
01:08:32.540 | I'd open the screen of the Wall Street Journal and read about the latest shenanigans on Wall
01:08:40.140 | Street.
01:08:43.140 | That's all I got to say, but that's my answer on why I don't miss investing in the stock
01:08:48.980 | market.
01:08:49.980 | I don't know what's right for you.
01:08:52.540 | What I would encourage you, though, is think about it.
01:08:55.940 | Think about it.
01:08:56.940 | More and more, I've become convinced that if you think about your decisions very carefully,
01:09:02.340 | at the end of the day, you can often be prouder of those decisions.
01:09:07.900 | And whether you make the same choice or not, at least it was an examined decision.
01:09:11.100 | There's the old quote, because Socrates, "An unexamined life is not worth living."
01:09:14.420 | Well, I think there's a real sense of truth in that, that an examined life is really nice.
01:09:20.780 | And so when you examine the basics of your life, you examine where you live, you examine
01:09:25.020 | how you earn an income, and you examine how you invest your money, when you wind up doing
01:09:29.600 | it over again, you'll probably feel happier about it.
01:09:33.300 | What I found for me is that although I think I'll buy more stocks in the future, I think
01:09:38.540 | I will, I don't think I'll ever go back to that default approach.
01:09:44.980 | I don't want those feelings again.
01:09:46.180 | Thank you for listening to Radical Personal Finance.
01:09:48.420 | If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, please make sure you pull open your podcast
01:09:52.020 | player and subscribe.
01:09:53.020 | During the month of May, we're testing out live streaming.
01:09:55.900 | I have live streamed the entire show here.
01:09:58.780 | Hopefully the internet connection worked out, but I've live streamed the entire show here
01:10:01.960 | on Facebook and on YouTube and on Periscope, so feel free to check out those.
01:10:06.420 | We're live streaming at the very least Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 2 p.m. Eastern time,
01:10:10.300 | although I may change that a little bit.
01:10:12.620 | We'll see, but I've enjoyed that.
01:10:14.980 | In future live streams, I'll interact more with the audience, so I would invite you to
01:10:17.780 | come and join me on Facebook, facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance.
01:10:20.940 | Like the page there, and you'll find those details.
01:10:23.100 | Thank you for listening, and I'll be back with you very soon.
01:10:28.580 | The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions
01:10:32.840 | old and new.
01:10:34.060 | Whether you're making a traditional roasted turkey or spicy turkey tacos, your go-to shrimp
01:10:39.360 | cocktail or your first Cajun risotto, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace
01:10:45.000 | your traditions.
01:10:46.000 | Ralph's, fresh for everyone.
01:10:48.320 | Choose from a great selection of digital coupons and use them up to five times in one transaction.
01:10:53.360 | Check our app for details.
01:10:54.760 | Ralph's, fresh for everyone.
01:10:56.680 | [MUSIC PLAYING]