Speaker 1: Welcome to Drugs. I'm Joel Webber and I'm Eric bel Tunis,
Speaker 1: and were about to talk to a lot of people
Speaker 1: this year, but we haven't made things personal. And it's
Speaker 1: the holidays, so we're gonna make it personal. I'd like
Speaker 1: you to meet my dad, and I'd like you to
Speaker 1: meet my dad. Okay, so this already happened. We brought
Speaker 1: the dad's in separately and we got to interview them.
Speaker 1: One thing for both of us, I think is that
Speaker 1: we've learned a little bit about money and investing through
Speaker 1: our dads. Yeah. I mean the way you learn about
Speaker 1: a lot is through your parents. I've learned a lot
Speaker 1: from both my mom and my dad, and my dad
Speaker 1: in particular, uh, in the financial side. I definitely picked
Speaker 1: up some things from him, not all that I applied,
Speaker 1: which is a good thing, as we're about to find out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but obviously, like we work at a media company and
Speaker 1: we're writing about, you know, how to invest stories about investment.
Speaker 1: But you know, a lot of stuff you get in
Speaker 1: life is from your immediate family. And uh, sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: say something and I'm like, oh my god, that's my
Speaker 1: dad talking. It can be both good and more and
Speaker 1: more and more as you get absolutely, So what's interesting
Speaker 1: is that they are almost polar opposites. They're like yin
Speaker 1: into each other's yang. Yes, I think that's a good assessment,
Speaker 1: which is good for this because we get two different
Speaker 1: sort of perspectives from that generation speaking, which these guys
Speaker 1: are baby boomers. Yeah, that's right. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of E t F studies that come up from I
Speaker 1: Shares and Schwab and they break down E t F
Speaker 1: usage by generation. And I've always found it interesting that
Speaker 1: the Boomers are the generation least likely to use ets.
Speaker 1: So the latest SWAB survey has of them. I think
Speaker 1: ETFs are a good choice for the portfolio, whereas millennials
Speaker 1: that numbers about double. Then you go Gen X and
Speaker 1: then the Silvers are actually more users than the boomers.
Speaker 1: So the boomers, that's another reason they're kind of fascinating
Speaker 1: is that they probably have a lot of their money
Speaker 1: in mutual funds and they've built up the wealth. Maybe
Speaker 1: they don't want the capital gains, but they're certainly the
Speaker 1: generation that uses them the least. They've also seen a lot, right,
Speaker 1: and this year has been an interesting one, you know,
Speaker 1: we've had we've been on this epic bowl market and
Speaker 1: this year things changed. Yeah, that's right. And I mean
Speaker 1: I gotta say, look, the market as of right now
Speaker 1: is down four percent this year. It's not that big
Speaker 1: of a deal. It just look, if you're walking around
Speaker 1: Utopia for like eight years and you stub your toe,
Speaker 1: it seems like the worst thing on earth. So it's
Speaker 1: not that bad of a year. The market is still
Speaker 1: up around two since the Great Financial Crisis. But our
Speaker 1: dads have seen a lot. They saw interest rate spike
Speaker 1: up to unguidly levels in the eighties. Uh, they saw
Speaker 1: the nineties they used go go back this so the
Speaker 1: oil crisis, and back in the seventies. They've seen the
Speaker 1: Internet bubble. So perspective, absolutely, perspective is really key, I
Speaker 1: think to investing and in life. This time on trillions
Speaker 1: are two dads. Okay, ken, I've never met you. Who
Speaker 1: are you. I'm a old, washed up highway paving contractor
Speaker 1: that worked in um about forty of the United States,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, paving rural highways in places like
Speaker 1: North Carolina, Arkansas, Colorado, and um here. I'm at the
Speaker 1: opposite end of the world in uptown midtown Manhattan. Well
Speaker 1: welcome and thank you for keeping our highways in such
Speaker 1: good condition, some of them, some of them. Right, He's
Speaker 1: why I moved every two years. People say, are you
Speaker 1: a military brat? I know I'm a highway paving brat.
Speaker 1: So I have a personal question for you, which is
Speaker 1: when did um the letters E T F come out
Speaker 1: of Eric's mouth for the first time? Um, I guess
Speaker 1: when he got involved with them, which in my memory
Speaker 1: like a drug only about ten years ago? Yeah, when
Speaker 1: did L first? It was before that he was just
Speaker 1: you know, hiding it under the pillow for him. It
Speaker 1: was the Sergeant Pepper's album, I'm sure, But no, when
Speaker 1: I mean, I know when, when was it? I'm curious about.
Speaker 1: To me, it seems like your involvement with him is
Speaker 1: the first time I ever heard of him, and that
Speaker 1: would be about ten years ago, even though I think
Speaker 1: you've been with Bloomberg close to twenty. That's a great twelve.
Speaker 1: I got him in two thousand and six seven. So
Speaker 1: there you go, and it was like a drug gateway truck.
Speaker 1: Then look at you now, So did you know about
Speaker 1: et F before that? No? Can you describe sort of
Speaker 1: how you view yourself as an investor? Uh, with no discipline,
Speaker 1: pretty radical, like a gambler. And I started when I
Speaker 1: was thirteen. I got my first job and I saved
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars during the summer. At that's great. It's
Speaker 1: fifty seven years ago. So my mother and father didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about money or investing or anything. So I,
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but I did from the newspaper.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to buy this little company called s O,
Speaker 1: which is that then became Exxon, and back then it
Speaker 1: was standard oil in New Jersey. And I had six
Speaker 1: hundred bucks. So we went to see a I guess
Speaker 1: you call him a stockbroker and lo and behold if
Speaker 1: he didn't my mother knew nothing, and he convinced my
Speaker 1: mother to convince me to buy some stupid mutual fund.
Speaker 1: So I bought stupid mutual fund. Ten years later, at
Speaker 1: twenty three, I went to buy my first house. I
Speaker 1: sold the mutual fund for six hundred dollars. Right, the
Speaker 1: s O was now worth twenty seven thousand. The house
Speaker 1: I was buying was twenty nine. That right, there is
Speaker 1: why funds are in trouble. This is not a guy
Speaker 1: that sounds like he helped create Eric baltunas well. The
Speaker 1: story is crazy though. That mutual fund obviously sucked. It
Speaker 1: took all you know, to have to make no money
Speaker 1: in a time when when a energy stock goes up
Speaker 1: that much. This is why people soured. That was a
Speaker 1: long time ago, so you can imagine how how in
Speaker 1: trouble mutual funds are if people have had those experiences.
Speaker 1: But but you also did talk about how you did
Speaker 1: use mutual funds for things like my college, and they
Speaker 1: did work right again, I created you, um when I
Speaker 1: was twenty five. So after after I lost all that
Speaker 1: money on what would have been Exxon, I got back
Speaker 1: into mutual funds as a matter of a conservative investment
Speaker 1: for your college. Well you were zero or one, so
Speaker 1: I thought mutual funds with to three percent compounded annually
Speaker 1: reinvest the dividend was a conservative and good way to go,
Speaker 1: and and it was. It was through the Jimmy Carter years.
Speaker 1: They were absolutely fantastic, and I ended up sending you
Speaker 1: and to step siblings of yours to college, all paid
Speaker 1: for and by the time the third one graduated, I
Speaker 1: had no money left. But that was the plan of
Speaker 1: the mutual funds. So I have you know, ambivalent experience,
Speaker 1: And did you ever put you know, that money on
Speaker 1: the roulette again for trying to buy that single stock
Speaker 1: like you thought you messed with. Yeah, then I took
Speaker 1: about I reckon a decade off. I don't know what
Speaker 1: I did, but in about two thousand and eight and
Speaker 1: early part of two thousand nine, my company went away
Speaker 1: and I got my initial investment in that company back,
Speaker 1: and my mother died and I got some inheritance from her.
Speaker 1: I took all the money because I quote unquote didn't
Speaker 1: need it. I was, you know, okay, And I bought
Speaker 1: uh straight stocks because it was the low bottom of
Speaker 1: the of the bowl man. It was I was telling Eric,
Speaker 1: CBS was five dollars, a T T was nine, all
Speaker 1: kinds of money just to throw it. It was just
Speaker 1: so I bought everything, and in I don't know when
Speaker 1: the boom was, but five seven years later my money
Speaker 1: had more than doubled, and it was just wonderful. So
Speaker 1: then I became like a degenerate gambler and quickly lost,
Speaker 1: quickly gave back all my gain. But but luckily, unlikely
Speaker 1: degenerate gambler, I stopped short of the you know, the
Speaker 1: breadline and took the exact amount of money that I
Speaker 1: came into an oh eight oh nine, which like I said,
Speaker 1: had doubled then halved, and said, the heck with this
Speaker 1: and this, by the way, it only happened two years ago.
Speaker 1: Two years ago, I was doing three to five trades
Speaker 1: a week. Now this year and I've done three trades
Speaker 1: this year, and I took all the that's the hard way,
Speaker 1: but I had the brains to get out. And all
Speaker 1: I bought since then was British Petroleum Shell, some great
Speaker 1: company that I got lucky with Williams Partners. They doubled
Speaker 1: and they paid like eight percent yield and uh and
Speaker 1: a T and T. So I put all my money
Speaker 1: just to get yield because I didn't want to see
Speaker 1: that next day go away. And now I don't even
Speaker 1: have to watch the tickers saw on TV during the
Speaker 1: daytime because I'm pretty safe, although I try to watch
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Network every chance I get. And let's talk
Speaker 1: about this situation that happened a while ago where he
Speaker 1: you called me one time and you said, listen, I
Speaker 1: think the market's going to go to hell. What will
Speaker 1: give me the most return if I think that? So
Speaker 1: I said, and believe me. I had all late, all
Speaker 1: kind of warnings down and I said, if you think
Speaker 1: it's going to go to hell in a couple of days,
Speaker 1: you can use t vix. This is the double leveraged vix.
Speaker 1: But you have to use a short term. Your opinion
Speaker 1: has to be it's going to go to hell in
Speaker 1: a couple of days or a week, and then you
Speaker 1: got to get out if it doesn't or does, so
Speaker 1: talk about your experience with this is a red light product.
Speaker 1: Oh that in our traffic light system. This is hard read.
Speaker 1: It's equivalent of an NC seventeen rating of a movie.
Speaker 1: And you use it. Talk about your actually, you know,
Speaker 1: technically played with power tools for a living, So that's true.
Speaker 1: And I did. I gave him all the warning labels,
Speaker 1: you know, I sold him the chainsaw and stood there
Speaker 1: and told him everything that can go ken. What did
Speaker 1: you do? Um everything? I shouldn't have disobeyed all the
Speaker 1: good advice, disobeyed the warning sides and went in. But
Speaker 1: it was a little bit of mad money over the
Speaker 1: next stag money. So anyway, it's all gone. And uh,
Speaker 1: t vix just wiped me out three different times. That's
Speaker 1: how stupid I am. Three and so. Talk about one
Speaker 1: of those times that you thought the market was going
Speaker 1: to tank and it didn't. What happened? Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: um some mad money and when the election of Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton against um Mr Trump occurred, I was positive that
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton would win and in my view, the stock
Speaker 1: market would tank with her victory. And anyway, that was
Speaker 1: my view, So I loaded up on t VIX. The
Speaker 1: rest is history. Next monthly, what we need to do
Speaker 1: is have him on TV telling you what to do
Speaker 1: and then do the exact option. We need an inverse, Kenny,
Speaker 1: So we did okay with the energy stocks. I don't
Speaker 1: that could be a ticker, can I have? I have
Speaker 1: a friend who gives me recommendations on college football and
Speaker 1: I bet the opposite I win. Someone could this could
Speaker 1: be a lucrative product, And you know you bring up
Speaker 1: college football and gambling like talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: that aspect of do you find similarities between betting on
Speaker 1: sports and the market. Absolutely, to me, it's all a gamble,
Speaker 1: except for like I said recently, a conservative and went
Speaker 1: with these oil and m A T and T. But
Speaker 1: any time you've been on a football game, where baseball game,
Speaker 1: or go to Vegas in my view, you have to
Speaker 1: be prepared to lose your budget, you know, and when
Speaker 1: you lose your budget, you go home, you quit gambling.
Speaker 1: Well that's what I did with a lot of stocks,
Speaker 1: and UM lost most of the time. That's an untraditional
Speaker 1: way of thinking about investing. How do you feel about
Speaker 1: E T F? I think, from my limited knowledge, which
Speaker 1: is through Eric, it's a great product because they, as
Speaker 1: he always says, the expense ratio is good and low.
Speaker 1: But the other thing about him that makes them logical
Speaker 1: to me, even though I don't have any except for
Speaker 1: the dreaded t VIX, which, by the way, keeps flitting
Speaker 1: it one to ten, not ten to one, one to ten,
Speaker 1: then it does it again, So I think I'm down
Speaker 1: to like one to five hundred, So I think I
Speaker 1: have five shares of I'm gonna get fill aid for
Speaker 1: being the E t F analyst who recommended his dad
Speaker 1: used t vix. It's probably it's the worst possible thing
Speaker 1: that I could be known for. However, you can redeem
Speaker 1: yourself with kidnex. Well, no, at least this is good
Speaker 1: for posterity. Now everybody knows that this guy learned the
Speaker 1: hard way. Happens to my dad but again, I want
Speaker 1: to make it clear. I did give over all of
Speaker 1: the warnings and I said hold it for a week.
Speaker 1: When when you buy t VX by a shop through
Speaker 1: Charles Schwab, they say in the beginning, this is a
Speaker 1: this is a scary thing you're buying, Mr. Are you sure?
Speaker 1: You honestly and you're like yes, yes, yes. Three times
Speaker 1: you have to say I want to commit suicide. I
Speaker 1: really want to commit suicide. Yes, I'm gonna jump off
Speaker 1: this bridge. So but they warn you that's how crazy
Speaker 1: you do is. So let's uh forget t VIX and
Speaker 1: just talk E t F It seems like a great concept,
Speaker 1: the way they combine, like a country, you know, Vietnam
Speaker 1: et f UM, I mean all of like diversification, we
Speaker 1: get all thirty stocks at once. Do you step back everyone,
Speaker 1: look at your portfolio and say, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: this much in equities and this much in bonds or
Speaker 1: are you just playing it based on on feel the ladder?
Speaker 1: And you don't have an advisor? Do you? No? Any
Speaker 1: time I ever had an advisor, I got killed, including
Speaker 1: that first time. Yeah, the first time. Yeah, I've had
Speaker 1: bad taste, I've had two or three and then my
Speaker 1: my only son told me to buy t VIX just kidding.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that's for letting me go sledding backwards downhill.
Speaker 1: And when I hit the tree and almost died, I
Speaker 1: remember even to get rid of the kids. One other
Speaker 1: question I had, and because when I see my dad,
Speaker 1: I sometimes recount my childhood in the eighties, and I
Speaker 1: remember how much fun I had. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously we have a lot of eighty references. We have
Speaker 1: a fond memories of that decade. When I work with
Speaker 1: our rate strategist, Ira, you know, he'll show me a
Speaker 1: chart of the ten year yield. I know where you're
Speaker 1: going with this, Like it was. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: different world right in the eighties, and we don't remember
Speaker 1: we were kids running around watching yeah, playing outside. Uh
Speaker 1: what was that like? Did you know how abnormal it was?
Speaker 1: Because if you go back a hundred years, it was abnormal.
Speaker 1: And what do you think of versus today? Is it
Speaker 1: crazy you can't get more than say two or three
Speaker 1: percent from a treasury bond by comparison you of course,
Speaker 1: but back in that era, remember that was a double
Speaker 1: edged sword. Everything was yielding and going up through the roof.
Speaker 1: But so was interest rates. So if you had to
Speaker 1: buy a house, you were commonly paying twelve percent for
Speaker 1: your loan, even fourteen. And I had I've always worked
Speaker 1: for companies owned by foreigners for some reason, and Arabs,
Speaker 1: Germans and Englishmen, and they always said when that era came,
Speaker 1: they said, Oh, America's finally catching up to the rest
Speaker 1: of the world. That's reality. So where they were from
Speaker 1: borrowing money was more than ten percent for a long time,
Speaker 1: which you know, as Americans, we we we didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Some people call this bull market
Speaker 1: the most hated bull market ever because the Fed got in.
Speaker 1: People think it's a little bit set up from like
Speaker 1: the Fed providing sugar to the market. Does this one
Speaker 1: feel you know, stocks are up at two roughly? Does
Speaker 1: this one feel less legitimate than say the eighties or
Speaker 1: the two thousand or the you know nineties, to you know,
Speaker 1: to me, yes, but only because I'm older, less optimistic,
Speaker 1: been through some crashes, you know what I mean. It
Speaker 1: just feels like this can't go on. So I'm curious, now,
Speaker 1: how old are you can uh? Next birthday seventy So
Speaker 1: when you look out over the next you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of decades of your life, we hope. How are
Speaker 1: you preparing for that? Financially? Just hoping to um break even.
Speaker 1: And I don't care if I use up nest egg money,
Speaker 1: you know, it's that's what it's for. Um. So I
Speaker 1: feel like, as they say, where I come from, I'm
Speaker 1: in tall cotton, tall cotton, all right, tall cotton with
Speaker 1: the Kennecks creator. Well that was fun. Yeah, he is,
Speaker 1: my dad is he is an amazing shirt collection because
Speaker 1: that one that he has had on. So he's gone
Speaker 1: full Floridian. Yeah, he likes his shirt. He's got quite
Speaker 1: the life. He's retired, lives right at the beach on
Speaker 1: the on the Panhandle, the Gulf Shore's White Sands, goes fishing,
Speaker 1: watches football, bets on football plays. Yeah, he's got you know,
Speaker 1: dabbles in the market with some power tools. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he could be doing worse. It's a good little life. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: So from Florida's Panhandle, we're going to transition to West
Speaker 1: coast Oregon, where my dad's visiting from. So you know
Speaker 1: they call that the panhandle l A, Lower Alabama. So
Speaker 1: from from l A to Oregon to the woods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what a swing. Yeah, so this is and it speaks
Speaker 1: to Yin and yang like these guys really couldn't be
Speaker 1: more different from an investing standpoint. Yeah, absolutely, Um, and
Speaker 1: I was you know, when I think of someone from Oregon,
Speaker 1: I guess I just picture fed Armison from Portland. You
Speaker 1: did not get that? Yeah, I did not get that.
Speaker 1: Your dad very professional, carries himself very well as a doctor,
Speaker 1: really um retired doctor, right, and uh you know, has
Speaker 1: a really nice disposition. It's kind of like you in
Speaker 1: a way. Well, thank you. Erica brought my dad and
Speaker 1: I got a chance to talk to him before we started,
Speaker 1: uh of taving here, and it seems like a nice guy.
Speaker 1: Welcome from Portland wherever I'm from, right outside of Portland.
Speaker 1: So I've been up close and personal with Larry for
Speaker 1: a really long time and know a little bit about
Speaker 1: how are you? It sounds really weird. That's a little
Speaker 1: too professional for I've I've interviewed Larry several times before.
Speaker 1: It's true. Um, okay, so Dad, you've been a d
Speaker 1: I Y investor for decades now, sinstmid eighties. Excellent. What
Speaker 1: was that impetus for that? How did you get into it? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: actually it had to do with your grandfather. He had
Speaker 1: a bunch of investing books that were at the time
Speaker 1: put out by US News and UH and World reports
Speaker 1: at the time, and he himself was a little bit
Speaker 1: of a play investor. He was basically a fairly successful
Speaker 1: businessman in auto My mom's dad right, right. And so
Speaker 1: when I went to medical school in Portland's uh there
Speaker 1: I was. He had this little funky library that UH
Speaker 1: and he'd supply the drinks and we'd go over Friday
Speaker 1: night and we'd get the book that I would read.
Speaker 1: And so that led to some accumulation of money that
Speaker 1: then what do you do with it? And that was
Speaker 1: a time when the money markets were just hitting and
Speaker 1: so that was pretty good. High interest was ruling the
Speaker 1: day at that point in time, so you could actually
Speaker 1: make some money with just cash put away. One thing
Speaker 1: led to another, and then I began taking newsletters and
Speaker 1: buying what some guru was telling me to buy, and
Speaker 1: that ended up being a mixed bag, which is funny.
Speaker 1: I remember value line was always around, which value line
Speaker 1: is a UH subscription h newsletter in print and it
Speaker 1: has all kinds. At the time, it was just stock
Speaker 1: stock stock stock stock, Well, it's it still goes. And
Speaker 1: actually that's what I ended up taking because I felt
Speaker 1: like you could rely upon it. It's basically they take
Speaker 1: sevent companies that are big companies, well diversified portfolio of it,
Speaker 1: and then once a week, so thirteen weeks, they just
Speaker 1: kind of rotate through different industries talking about these sevent
Speaker 1: hundred countries companies. But I took a couple of newsletters
Speaker 1: before that that sort of led me to realize that
Speaker 1: advice was advice and not necessarily successful. So me, my
Speaker 1: friend Eric, that's a good second. Well, it's funny you
Speaker 1: say value line. There's actually a couple of value line
Speaker 1: ets at least one, and they do exactly that, and
Speaker 1: you just buy and you own all value line picks.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, though, in any of these listic to value lines.
Speaker 1: When you said some worked out mixed bag um, how
Speaker 1: long did you typically hold the stocks before you gave
Speaker 1: up on them? How is that like uh period? As
Speaker 1: you well know, following stocks and stuff like that can
Speaker 1: it's just consumptive and the market is very unforgiving. And
Speaker 1: so I realized that the more I could distance myself
Speaker 1: from the market and the activity in the market and
Speaker 1: go with the so called blue chips and stuff that
Speaker 1: have a mixed bag of success if you look at
Speaker 1: them over decades and stuff like that. They were sort
Speaker 1: of long term buy and holds for the most part.
Speaker 1: So there's been years where I've had like turnover most
Speaker 1: years it's about five to ten twelve percent turnover. And
Speaker 1: were you buying because in the eighties is when mutual
Speaker 1: funds became popular. Were you buying those in addition to
Speaker 1: this sort of like because you it's was like you
Speaker 1: were running your ow mutual fund in a way. Were
Speaker 1: you also owning mutual funds like in a retirement account
Speaker 1: as well or just doing this? No, Actually, it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I uh started buying mutual funds, and believe me,
Speaker 1: I didn't know the difference between a stock and a
Speaker 1: bond for the most part. I began buying individual stocks
Speaker 1: and putting money into Dodging Cox Stock Fund and a
Speaker 1: couple of other mutual funds and just letting them grow
Speaker 1: just to see how's it gonna go. Because this was
Speaker 1: really my way of gambling. I'm not much of a gambler.
Speaker 1: When I go to Vegas, areno you know, I would
Speaker 1: give myself two hundred bucks and when I ran out
Speaker 1: of two hundred bucks, you know, that was the end
Speaker 1: of the night. And that's my gambling history. And the
Speaker 1: one thing I had learned in medicine never confused luck
Speaker 1: with skill. It's a good, good lesson in medicine especially.
Speaker 1: I guess, well, it's a good lessons and investing too.
Speaker 1: What about is it better to be lucky than good? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. You have to understand that luck is luck
Speaker 1: and skill is skill, um, and that's been always the
Speaker 1: challenge to balance those. So you were effectively a stock
Speaker 1: picker right for a long time. And then the mutual
Speaker 1: fund phenomenon caught on, and you know that, I think
Speaker 1: is a lot of what you taught me growing up.
Speaker 1: So I'm really interested in how you use E T s.
Speaker 1: How did that start to enter your investing flash I was,
Speaker 1: I was probably fifty fifty on mutual funds versus individual stocks.
Speaker 1: And then when I had two kids, Joel being one,
Speaker 1: I would put some money away for college growth into
Speaker 1: mutual funds and I used that as everything because et
Speaker 1: f s had not come along. And then fast forward
Speaker 1: to all this kind of stuff, and the work coming
Speaker 1: out of Vanguard was pretty impressive, not dramatically, so but
Speaker 1: you know you're picking up one or two percent just
Speaker 1: because the overhead is less with E t f s.
Speaker 1: And so I I sort of sit back on the
Speaker 1: sidelines for two or three years looking about it, scratching
Speaker 1: my head because Wall Street comes up with all kinds
Speaker 1: of new ways to make money. And this is when
Speaker 1: like in the utts, Yeah, yeah, so this is eighteen
Speaker 1: probably I just sit there and watched, and then of course,
Speaker 1: oh eight came along and everything went like, you know,
Speaker 1: you just didn't even want to look at your portfolio.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like, just have a cup of
Speaker 1: coffee and enjoy the day and smile, because it's not
Speaker 1: what you want to do is look up how bad
Speaker 1: things were going. And then coming out of that, I
Speaker 1: began to diversify into E t f s just because
Speaker 1: of their low overhead, uh, their sector emphasis, and it
Speaker 1: seemed like another way to basically diversify what I had.
Speaker 1: So you have an E t F portfolio right now,
Speaker 1: what's interesting about it? I looked at the tickers. I
Speaker 1: sent Eric the tickers. There's a dozen or so, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious, a what platform you're using? And then
Speaker 1: be like, do you even know what these tickers are.
Speaker 1: Do you know what you're holding? Yeah? Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: them down on it a spreadsheet, and um I ended
Speaker 1: up currently with E t F platform in both Fidelity,
Speaker 1: Schwab and more recently Vanguard. So it's interesting because those
Speaker 1: are the three three of the biggest E t F
Speaker 1: trading platforms. And Fidelity has ey shares trading for free,
Speaker 1: Vanguards now all for free, and Schwab is I have
Speaker 1: to look at the numbers, it's probably one of the
Speaker 1: most popular. And I'm looking here at your tickers. I
Speaker 1: can see some Schwab ETFs on here. And honestly, if
Speaker 1: your goal is low overhead, you pick the right ones
Speaker 1: because I mean s c H A, s c H P,
Speaker 1: s c H these are all the cheapest or within
Speaker 1: a basis point of the cheapest in the category. And
Speaker 1: if you're the cheapest in E t F to, you're
Speaker 1: the cheapest overall. So I mean, and you even have
Speaker 1: fn d E and f n d X, which are
Speaker 1: Schwab's fundamental so it's cheap active. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: like basically, but it's you know, the rebalance has happened.
Speaker 1: It's more systematic than a discretionary active manager. But this
Speaker 1: is low overhead is what you're looking for. You got it,
Speaker 1: And a lot of people would argue that is a
Speaker 1: good idea because if costs are the biggest predictor of performance, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you've eliminated almost all the costs and if
Speaker 1: you're buying them on Schwab, you're not really paying much
Speaker 1: to trade them. But I mean, these look like products
Speaker 1: you're not going to trade. These look much more like
Speaker 1: a portfolio. Yeah, absolutely, Like I don't really I don't
Speaker 1: see anything like um, I don't know, like the internet
Speaker 1: et F. Definitely no t vix on here. Uh yeah
Speaker 1: every night and I yeah, and I don't think about it.
Speaker 1: This is the peace of mind portfolio right here. So,
Speaker 1: because you've always been such a long term investor, I'm
Speaker 1: curious how you dealt with there's been a lot, there's
Speaker 1: been a route lately, right, So how much were you
Speaker 1: looking at that route while it was happening, and how
Speaker 1: did you prepare for it and how have you reacted
Speaker 1: to it? Since it's funny that you brought up the
Speaker 1: fundamental um E t F that I've gotten into. Those
Speaker 1: came about a little bit early here. Just if you
Speaker 1: look at the makeup of everybody can buy mitual fund,
Speaker 1: everybody can buy an e t F but really what
Speaker 1: matters about those is there their investments and what are
Speaker 1: they investing in. And the nastac is, you know it's
Speaker 1: pretty tech oriented, Uh, pretty high p s, lots of growth.
Speaker 1: Everybody loves that. You've got to be aware of what
Speaker 1: a PE means. I mean if they cut, if the
Speaker 1: market cuts your pe and half, you just lost half.
Speaker 1: Period being in e t f s, you are the market.
Speaker 1: There's no body advising and no, you've just bought into
Speaker 1: some index that's just gonna go where the market goes.
Speaker 1: So you are the market. So whatever happens in the market,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get it right smack dab in your face.
Speaker 1: And there's not going to be an exit plan as
Speaker 1: as two thousand and eight showed. You know so, Um,
Speaker 1: it's long term buy and hold. And although the fundamental
Speaker 1: um there, those are ones that will let's say there's
Speaker 1: a big sell off and um, a certain sector like
Speaker 1: tech looks cheaper, they may add a little tech in
Speaker 1: the next rebalance. Um, you know so, but at the
Speaker 1: time the sell off, whatever is in there is just
Speaker 1: gonna happen. There's not somebody trading around the sell off
Speaker 1: that day. Right now, when I think of baby boomers
Speaker 1: and your your generation, I think of them wanting income,
Speaker 1: you know, right right, Rachel, what do you do for that?
Speaker 1: Have you worked to try to get that steady income
Speaker 1: or you're you're not really You just look at the market,
Speaker 1: your portfolio going up as all the income you need? Well, uh, no,
Speaker 1: not at all. Actually, Uh what I've done is I
Speaker 1: worked as a physician up until about a year and
Speaker 1: a half ago. But up to that time, you know,
Speaker 1: I just lived off of my income and invested. But
Speaker 1: since that time, I've had to realize that retirements coming,
Speaker 1: the paycheck went away. What do you do? And so
Speaker 1: I have a big cash kettle that is going to
Speaker 1: take care of me. I have on an Excel sheet
Speaker 1: figured out exactly how much I spanned every month. It
Speaker 1: all gets categorized, so I have, you know, twenty different
Speaker 1: categories and know where the money goes. And it's typically
Speaker 1: Larry Webber. It's a very calculated, mathematical approach to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's impressive. I'm I'm not good at that. Oh I
Speaker 1: was forced to it. I was forced into it. I
Speaker 1: didn't do it during my life. It was like, I
Speaker 1: don't even know where my money goes. My wife is
Speaker 1: more she I think she actually enjoys keeping those tabs,
Speaker 1: and I guess I've I've been lazy because she sort
Speaker 1: of takes all that up. But it's really good to
Speaker 1: do that. A lot of people who do invest thing
Speaker 1: on Twitter, they will remind you that it's really how
Speaker 1: much you save and your budget that ultimately is way
Speaker 1: more important than the market returns and Whatnotloever, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us. Great to meet you. We
Speaker 1: just had too totally different perspective. What did you learn? Um?
Speaker 1: I learned which is something I hear more and more about,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, investment has to be right for you.
Speaker 1: It's there's not one size fits all. And what your
Speaker 1: personality maybe one that wants to take more chances, and
Speaker 1: there's and their personality maybe one that wants to take
Speaker 1: less chances. So you have to find the right shoe
Speaker 1: that fits. And I think they both did that. They've
Speaker 1: worn some different shoes, yeah, every time. But that's the
Speaker 1: other thing. Over time, they learned by doing. Obviously they read,
Speaker 1: but they also just learned by doing and that to
Speaker 1: me is the best teacher in life is experience. The
Speaker 1: best teacher in life is experience. If you heard it
Speaker 1: from Marrick Baltuna, you like that. It's it's been Franklin
Speaker 1: asked for somebody from Philly. He probably said it. He
Speaker 1: said everything, but I didn't think of that, so he
Speaker 1: came out channel. Thanks for listening to jog Until next time.
Speaker 1: You can find us on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, and whatever else you want to listen. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. We're on Twitter, well some
Speaker 1: of us, Cannon, Larry are, but Eric and I are.
Speaker 1: I'm at Joel Webber Shows, He's at Eric Baltunas. Trillions
Speaker 1: is produced by Magnus Hendrickson for Jessica Leedy is the
Speaker 1: head of Bloomberg podcast. Bye