Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. Welcome to Merin Talks
Speaker 1: Your Money, the Personal Finance edition of Merin Talks Money.
Speaker 1: In these bonus podcasts, we talk about the best strategies
Speaker 1: for making the most of your money. I'm Merin Sunset
Speaker 1: Web and this week we are tackling what sounds like
Speaker 1: a very simple question, if you had one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars right now, where would you invest it? Now we
Speaker 1: know that at the moment, at least the majority of
Speaker 1: our audience are in the UK, so that's you know,
Speaker 1: roughly eighty thousand pounds if we want to be specific.
Speaker 2: But it's the same kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So the point anyway, is not the currency. The point
Speaker 1: here is to think about where you would put the money.
Speaker 1: So what we've done is we've got on the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Personal Finance and Wealth reporter Susanne Willie, who joins us
Speaker 1: from New York.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Susan.
Speaker 3: My pleasure.
Speaker 1: And what you do fairly regularly is you look at
Speaker 1: particular amounts of money ten thousand dollars, one hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: a million dollars, and you go out and you ask
Speaker 1: experts what they would do with the money. Is that right?
Speaker 2: Is that how it works?
Speaker 3: That's how it works? You know, I was looking and
Speaker 3: this series actually started in twenty sixteen, which means I've
Speaker 3: been written a shocking number of these things. But you know,
Speaker 3: we're trying to get people to tell us where now
Speaker 3: do they see a compelling sector or a strategy that
Speaker 3: you know one of the dynamics behind the strategy make
Speaker 3: it particularly interesting right now? And how people can you know,
Speaker 3: can move into that strategy if they want to.
Speaker 1: Okay, so your latest one is on one hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and can I let's ask before we go into looking
Speaker 1: at what these money managers said, how do you choose them?
Speaker 3: A chunk of them are people that I already know
Speaker 3: and respect. If we're going to allow this person to
Speaker 3: share their views, I want to know that they're legitimate,
Speaker 3: they've been in the market for a while, that they're
Speaker 3: not completely talking their own game. So a lot of
Speaker 3: these are people I know. There are people that we
Speaker 3: speak to at Bloomberg or Markets team or Cross Assets team,
Speaker 3: so they're people with good experience. But I try to
Speaker 3: get a broad range, so I don't just get like strategists.
Speaker 3: Chief of investment officers. Sometimes I get portfolio managers, so
Speaker 3: sometimes I'll get somebody who is at a family office,
Speaker 3: so different little spots in the wealth management world. I
Speaker 3: try to have a mix of people to get a
Speaker 3: wide range of views.
Speaker 1: Okay, and here's the key question that I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people are now thinking.
Speaker 2: Max.
Speaker 1: We've got quite a big professional audience on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Although it is by the way aimed the ordinary investor.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of pros listen to it. Do
Speaker 1: you take suggestions? If they will email in going geez,
Speaker 1: I can do better than that.
Speaker 3: Yes, I do. I'm always open to finding new people
Speaker 3: that where to invest ten thousand. We have the same
Speaker 3: people pretty much every time, three out of four, but
Speaker 3: the other ones one hundred thousand, the one million. My
Speaker 3: colleague Charlie Wells in London does a great one on
Speaker 3: word invest in real estate. I am always looking for
Speaker 3: new people because I don't want to just present the
Speaker 3: same people. So there's always a mix of new people.
Speaker 3: And I'm very open to getting pictures. Although Amaron, I
Speaker 3: may really regret saying that, Well.
Speaker 1: You won't regret it because what's going to happen. Is
Speaker 1: it going to come into our email. Excellent, I'm going
Speaker 1: to regret it, and they're going to come to us
Speaker 1: and I'm going.
Speaker 2: To filter them for you.
Speaker 4: That is fabulous, So then they'll be never filtered by
Speaker 4: me and you so hear that, everybody. If you want
Speaker 4: to do this, you've got to be brave because I'm
Speaker 4: filtering you, and then Susanna is filtering you. So you know,
Speaker 4: have something you stant to say before you even touched
Speaker 4: on to the people who do have useful things to
Speaker 4: say and have already got your trust. When I was
Speaker 4: looking through your most recent article, which by the way,
Speaker 4: we'll put the link to that in the show notes
Speaker 4: for subscribers, what struck me. There's a lot of home
Speaker 4: buyers here, a lot of the people you talk to
Speaker 4: a still very heavily invested in the US and in
Speaker 4: US large cap stocks.
Speaker 3: It's really true. I was a bit surprised by some
Speaker 3: of that. I talked to Shaneade Colton Grant, who is
Speaker 3: with BNY Mellon, and she was very big on US
Speaker 3: large caps and was saying that people who are concerned
Speaker 3: about tech valuations are thinking back to the dot com bubble,
Speaker 3: but the sector looks different today because of the cash
Speaker 3: flow that the Mag seven are throwing off. I guess
Speaker 3: I had expected a little more more valuation concern. I'd
Speaker 3: had a different take from Shanead's back in late December
Speaker 3: when we did the Word to Invest one million story
Speaker 3: and Jack Ablin, who's the chief investment officer of Cressa Capital,
Speaker 3: his big picture take was that he thought the SMP
Speaker 3: was overvalued by twenty five percent and noted that can't
Speaker 3: be made up by earnings a loan. But he also
Speaker 3: noted something that is very true obviously, which is that
Speaker 3: expensive Marcus can stay expensive. He just wouldn't. He just
Speaker 3: was saying he wouldn't have put new money into the
Speaker 3: Mag seven because he actually probably, like your guests the
Speaker 3: other week, Jeremy Grantham, thinks we could see every play
Speaker 3: of two thousand and that all we need is some
Speaker 3: sort of catalyst and we could be down a very
Speaker 3: unhappy path.
Speaker 1: Then already, if you decided to stay only in US
Speaker 1: lunch cap this year, you're already seeing fairly hefty relative
Speaker 1: informance right now, as you got my Bloomberg up in
Speaker 1: front of me, and the S and B five hundred
Speaker 1: and at one point two four percent as we speak
Speaker 1: eurostocs thirteen point five percent, even the foot two one
Speaker 1: hundred up nearly nine percent, and the Dack's up well
Speaker 1: over sixteen percent.
Speaker 2: So this year, if you'd.
Speaker 1: Stuck with US large gap so far, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: can turn around any second, we know markets, right, but
Speaker 1: so far that home bias isn't looking great for American investors.
Speaker 3: It's true, and I personally kind of welcome this to
Speaker 3: some degree because I'm a big believer in diversification, and
Speaker 3: one aspect of diversification that hasn't paid off for so
Speaker 3: long that people have moved away from is diversifying internationally.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of people, to some asset
Speaker 3: managers and their clients want to move away from asset
Speaker 3: perstation their home biases getting even stronger. And I'm a
Speaker 3: big believer in international diversification and that's where the value
Speaker 3: is now.
Speaker 2: And of course she could still be right.
Speaker 1: I mean, she says, doesn't she when you talk to her,
Speaker 1: that this is the year that AI needs to prove
Speaker 1: itself and if it really does prove itself, and it
Speaker 1: is the case as everyone felt pret deeps that the
Speaker 1: US is the center of the most exciting bits of
Speaker 1: AI tech. Then these valuations that we're so worried about
Speaker 1: you and I may mean nothing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's not going like raw ra. She has a
Speaker 3: smart take on it. You know, she definitely wants to
Speaker 3: see the results that were all watching for. In this
Speaker 3: most recent one, there was someone who did like small caps,
Speaker 3: which is another sort of interesting one to me because
Speaker 3: I'm personally a little like Leary of small caps. I
Speaker 3: know that they'll benefit from lower interest rates because most
Speaker 3: of their debt is floating rate debt, But I just
Speaker 3: wonder where do tariffs come in with small caps?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Look, tariffs are there are a moving, a moving nightmare,
Speaker 1: aren't they know? We're never really got We still don't
Speaker 1: really know very much about what's actually going to happen,
Speaker 1: so it's difficult to invest anywhere where you might feel
Speaker 1: those intense tariff risk.
Speaker 2: So true, and then of course you talk about small caps.
Speaker 1: He only talks about US small caps And we have
Speaker 1: a rewarding in the UK out in the last couple
Speaker 1: of days from Aberdeen suggesting that UK small cabs are
Speaker 1: basically the most unloved cheapest asset class pretty much globally.
Speaker 2: No one mentions those.
Speaker 3: No, No, there was somebody in recent times who recommended
Speaker 3: like thirty percent in the UK. So there have been okay,
Speaker 3: you know, like glimmers of diversification.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: And then so we're moving on to Jerry from Brazilian
Speaker 1: who suggested we go abroad for value, right, So that's
Speaker 1: that's interesting. And then he also when he says go aboard,
Speaker 1: he was talking about not just Europe, briddles as your
Speaker 1: markets and age Agia specific so anything not US, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I mean there have been people who've talked
Speaker 3: a lot about value in looking at areas that have
Speaker 3: been underappreciated and are obviously you know, it's not hard
Speaker 3: to be cheaper than the US market today, many markets
Speaker 3: are significantly cheaper. So this is the idea to sort of,
Speaker 3: he said, think differently, embrace diversification, and look at growth
Speaker 3: areas and under explored parts of the market. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you'd call it Europe, em and Asia Pacific
Speaker 3: completely under explored.
Speaker 2: But but maybe under explored for mainstream American investors. I
Speaker 2: guess perhaps.
Speaker 1: And then I'll just go back to Michael of Levity
Speaker 1: Financial Group. He was the one he said small cap
Speaker 1: stocks in the US. But interestingly he very much recommended
Speaker 1: actively managed small cap funds overpassive. From our side, we
Speaker 1: always think of the US market as somewhere where everyone
Speaker 1: always goes passive overactive, because there's such a huge and
Speaker 1: well researched market, and even at small cap level, almost
Speaker 1: people went passive.
Speaker 2: But he's very clear on active, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was very clear and active. He thinks there's
Speaker 3: more maybe due diligence that sort of needs to be
Speaker 3: baked into it. There are obviously small cap ETFs to
Speaker 3: focus on more quality, I believe, but yeah, there was
Speaker 3: not a focus on international in the small cap space
Speaker 3: for Michael, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing that struck me as interesting
Speaker 1: from the first three people who spoke to is they
Speaker 1: all suggested some kind of private part of the portfolio.
Speaker 1: So even with one hundred thousand dollars, which doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like that huge a portfolio, is still suggesting that there's
Speaker 1: something private. So oncegested fifteen percent between private equity and
Speaker 1: bench capital, five percent and private credit, and I think
Speaker 1: was it.
Speaker 2: Michael also suggested private.
Speaker 3: Credit, right, yeah, private credit is pretty pretty hot. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is not meant to be like your one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand portfolio.
Speaker 1: At all.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like, if you got one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: portfolio today in addition to what you have, how would
Speaker 3: you sort of dole it out? But yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: there is so much talk or I don't know if
Speaker 3: you call it hype about private market investments. There's this
Speaker 3: talk about trying to get in the US, trying to
Speaker 3: get private market investments into our workplace retirement plans such
Speaker 3: as our four oh one k's. It's interesting. We've even
Speaker 3: seen recently some attempts to launch ETFs. Not attempts they
Speaker 3: have launched ETFs focus on private credit. It's a tricky area.
Speaker 3: They're going to be large, smaller companies, and it's sort
Speaker 3: of hard to see the vetting that is being done
Speaker 3: behind the scenes to get into these investments. So I
Speaker 3: love the idea of having non correlated assets, but you
Speaker 3: have to weigh that against the risks known and unknown
Speaker 3: that are in some of these pockets of the market.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be too negative. I'm just sort
Speaker 3: of saying that you really have to be cognizant of
Speaker 3: what you're getting into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's also a little argument about the extent
Speaker 1: to which that non correlation exists. But the podcast all
Speaker 1: together about another time. Now your fourth person, John from
Speaker 1: twin Focus. He was very much safety theme, which brings
Speaker 1: us back to taros and the threat of tarots, which
Speaker 1: we briefly mentioned earlier. Very hard to see where that's
Speaker 1: going to go, but if you want to play, it's safe.
Speaker 2: He was very much about treasuries, right, He was very.
Speaker 3: Much about treasury. As we were talking when treasuries were
Speaker 3: I don't know, around four point five percent the tenure.
Speaker 3: They have obviously gone down since then, but at his
Speaker 3: point when we came out was that you get the treasure,
Speaker 3: you get the safety, but that also you might be
Speaker 3: able to get appreciation, which probably has worked out if
Speaker 3: you bought it right when he put this right when
Speaker 3: we put this story out, and.
Speaker 1: Maybe if we asked him again today right now, he
Speaker 1: might say something a little different.
Speaker 3: I wonder. And he also talked a little bit about gold,
Speaker 3: which I know you are, Oh we like gold, Yeah,
Speaker 3: a fair enough.
Speaker 1: You know. He made me happy in all sorts of
Speaker 1: ways because the way he talked about taking profits out
Speaker 1: of his the growth part of his portfolio and moving
Speaker 1: it towards value and midcaps as a potential reversion to
Speaker 1: the means strategy. I'm very big on reversion to the
Speaker 1: means that that really resonated with me. And then of
Speaker 1: course he talks about gold. When he talks about gold,
Speaker 1: he talks about owning a combination of billion coins and
Speaker 1: a gold ETF, so making of about three to five
Speaker 1: percent of the portfolio.
Speaker 2: I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what he generally. They have very ultra high
Speaker 3: networth clients. He's with twin Focus, and that's something that
Speaker 3: they generally advise for their clients. He basically feels gold
Speaker 3: has a place a permanent place in portfolios.
Speaker 1: Interestingly, he doesn't seem to think that crypto has a
Speaker 1: place a permanent place in portfolios. So, you know, looking
Speaker 1: through this, I wonder none of these people mentioned in
Speaker 1: crypto at all. I wonder if they would with Trump's
Speaker 1: talk about crypto over the weekend. But have any of
Speaker 1: the people you've interviewed previously, perhaps the people what you've
Speaker 1: asked when you're looking at million dollar portfolios, have they
Speaker 1: mentioned crypto?
Speaker 3: Yes, they have mentioned crypto. They've mentioned you know, bitcoin
Speaker 3: in particular, since that's sort of where it's at with
Speaker 3: the you know, the crypto, the ETF focused on crypto
Speaker 3: that the I shares etf taking in so much money
Speaker 3: this year, although some of it has flowed out recently obviously.
Speaker 3: But people have also talked about bitcoin in terms of
Speaker 3: a correlated asset. But that's not really true because you know,
Speaker 3: if you look at bitcoin and how it responds when
Speaker 3: the market is a risk off, it's not pretty right, No,
Speaker 3: it's not.
Speaker 2: And we talked about this last week.
Speaker 1: We went three podcasts last week and in one of them,
Speaker 1: John and I talked about people who had a lot
Speaker 1: of bitcoin and I suddenly found they'd lost rather a
Speaker 1: lot of value very quickly. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: we were talking about where you might buy a Golden
Speaker 1: visa if you wanted to move to a new country,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that we ended up talking
Speaker 1: about was how be a really great idea to move
Speaker 1: to Greece. Oh, now, I look at the final question
Speaker 1: that you ask all your participants. You say to them,
Speaker 1: what's their alternative investment idea that isn't necessarily in an
Speaker 1: asset class at all? And I see that one of
Speaker 1: them said he's buying a small place in the southern
Speaker 1: part of Greece.
Speaker 2: Yes he is.
Speaker 3: John Panta Kidtis of Twin Focus, who was born in Greece,
Speaker 3: and he travels back there quite often, and he and
Speaker 3: his wife for buying a place on what they call
Speaker 3: the Athens Riviera, and he is very bullish and buying
Speaker 3: real estate in Athens. He was just saying, if you
Speaker 3: have one hundred thousand, putting that toward a home in
Speaker 3: some high end neighborhood in Greece could be a big investment.
Speaker 1: When I read that, I slightly misunderstood because I read
Speaker 1: it very quickly, and I thought, wow, you can buy
Speaker 1: a nine thousand Greece for one hundred thousand dollars. And
Speaker 1: so then I went on to have a quick look
Speaker 1: on some of the real estate sides and found that
Speaker 1: when he says put one hundred thousand dollars towards a
Speaker 1: home and some high end neighbors in Greece, he means
Speaker 1: put one hundred thousand dollars towards a home in a
Speaker 1: high end neighborhood in Greece as a five percent deposit.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is cheap.
Speaker 3: No, No, he said, it's He said, you know their
Speaker 3: prices are skyrocketing, and that you know it's all foreigners buying. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but he's very bullish.
Speaker 1: Was that your favorite of the alternates recommended in that article,
Speaker 1: because there was another good stuff too, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And this particular one it was I liked the idea
Speaker 3: of buying recreational land where you could sort of create
Speaker 3: your own little compound and you have your hiking trails.
Speaker 3: And if you're in the US, people love pickleball. Here
Speaker 3: you could put a pick a ball cord on. But
Speaker 3: I loved Greece because I love travel, and I have
Speaker 3: a secret fantasy of getting some lovely stone home in Tuscany.
Speaker 3: So I'm always interested in the overseas real estate dreams
Speaker 3: of some of these people.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you one more question that which
Speaker 1: isn't even about this newsletter, this piece you wrote about
Speaker 1: these four investors. Over the last six months or so,
Speaker 1: has there been someone who's offered you an investment that
Speaker 1: is outside the main dream that really resonated with you
Speaker 1: and thought, yet, that is interesting, it's different. And if
Speaker 1: I had one hundred thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: or a million dollars right now, that's what I would buy.
Speaker 3: I've had some interesting, sort of niche ones, none like
Speaker 3: the one that your guest the other week, Dan Rusmussen,
Speaker 3: I think had which was I think Polish stocks. But
Speaker 3: I have had someone recommend Korean banks, which I thought
Speaker 3: was interesting. I'm a boring investor, Maren. I personally just
Speaker 3: go for index funds and try to keep it pretty simple.
Speaker 3: So while I'm intrigued by a lot of these ideas,
Speaker 3: personally I keep it pretty simple.
Speaker 2: Say you're not coming in with me on a house
Speaker 2: in Greece.
Speaker 3: I didn't say I wouldn't go for real estate and Greece.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, fine, all right, well we'll talk about I'll
Speaker 2: join you.
Speaker 3: I'll join you in sort of like the hard assets.
Speaker 3: You know, we can go and we can buy some gold, yeah,
Speaker 3: some bullion. I can buy some coins and because I'll
Speaker 3: have pickle ball in grease and you know, in the spring.
Speaker 1: So anyway, all right now, I don't think that you
Speaker 1: can my Greek house with an ETF. But if you're
Speaker 1: listening and that you click on the link in the
Speaker 1: show notes, you will find ETF recommendations for pretty much
Speaker 1: all the things we've talked about today, and you can
Speaker 1: see how you can get exposure to the asset classes that.
Speaker 2: We are finding interesting.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this week's Marin Talks to Your Money.
Speaker 1: If you like a show, rate review, and subscribe where
Speaker 1: ever you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to follow
Speaker 1: me and John on x or Twitter at marinasw and
Speaker 1: John Underscore Stepic Seisani on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Got a big yes, I am what's your hand on?
Speaker 3: I am at wealth Watch?
Speaker 2: Okay, brilliant, Thank you.
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