Foreign.
Speaker BWelcome to Ditch the Suits podcast, where we share insights nobody in the financial services industry wants you to know about.
Speaker BWe're here to help you get the most from your money in life.
Speaker BSo buckle up and welcome to Ditch the Suits.
Speaker AWhat are we talking about today, Steve?
Speaker BWhy the stock market is like an emotional teenager.
Speaker AOh, yeah.
Speaker AAnd maybe why real investing is really just kind of boring.
Speaker AInteresting.
Speaker ASo I think a lot of people would like to know why their investments seem to have less good days.
Speaker AYou know, why there's so many bad days.
Speaker AAnd I think most people would like to have more good days and less bad days.
Speaker ASure, but how do you actually do that?
Speaker AI think people are tired of logging in and seeing their investments, especially early this year so far.
Speaker AYou know, it's new administration, everything going on, lots of changes.
Speaker AYou kind of expect to go in and hopefully see the investments going up, and then all of a sudden they're going down.
Speaker AAnd what's happening with that?
Speaker AI think a lot of people are concerned for their investments when they talk to their friends or the news and all the changes that are going on.
Speaker AAnd regardless of if people think the changes are good or bad, it's causing volatility in the market.
Speaker AIt's causing your investment accounts to do things that, you know, is a little bit.
Speaker AA little bit normal, it's a little bit volatile.
Speaker AI kind of feel like the stock market is an emotional teenager.
Speaker AAnd if we go back, if we turn back the clock four years, that's pretty much what it's been doing for a long time now, actually, if you go back eight years and.
Speaker AAnd it's.
Speaker AIt's.
Speaker AOr even further, it's just.
Speaker AIt's an emotional teenager.
Speaker AEvery now and then it froze.
Speaker AA hissy fit or a tantrum, and you're like, what's your problem?
Speaker AAnd, you know, somebody didn't give them something they wanted or something like that.
Speaker ASo the.
Speaker AThe kids are kind of being brats.
Speaker AAnd that's kind of exactly how the market's acting or has been acting now for quite a while.
Speaker AAnd so over the next three episodes, we wanted to talk about what you can actually do about that.
Speaker AYou know, just like in parenting, there's things you can do so that you're, you know, your emotional teenager doesn't wreck your day.
Speaker AWe want to kind of do that for our investments, too.
Speaker AAnd we've got a couple of syndromes just to kind of make this a little bit playful or really make it kind of hit home.
Speaker AIn the first syndrome that we're going to talk about is the YYY syndrome.
Speaker ASo this is like the spoiled person out there going, why, why, why, why?
Speaker ANo matter what answer you give them, it's like, why?
Speaker AI need to know why?
Speaker AI need all the answers right now.
Speaker BSounds like kids.
Speaker AOkay, maybe not quite teenagers, but, you know, so this could be like the emotional pre teenager.
Speaker AYeah, but so we have the YYY syndrome and how the financial market and really the.
Speaker AThe media machine.
Speaker ASo the financial marketing machine and the media, which, you know it, we pick on the media a lot, but it's not really the media's fault.
Speaker APeople react to investments going up and down very emotionally, and so they'll turn in and the media can.
Speaker ACan run news shows that really don't even understand the principles of investing.
Speaker AI'm sure they understand it behind the scenes, but they dummy them so far down for the average viewer that the average viewer is thinking certain principles exist that aren't real, where they're not getting the whole picture.
Speaker AAnd so.
Speaker AAnd they're trying to give you the why.
Speaker ASo every time, if you've noticed, when you go to the news, they tell you why the market went up or down today.
Speaker AAnd it's just not.
Speaker AI mean, that's like you trying to placate a child who's saying, why is the sky blue?
Speaker AAnd you have to come up with a reason, you know, why.
Speaker AWhy is dad mad?
Speaker AOr why is mom mad?
Speaker AYou got to come up with a reason and give it to them.
Speaker ARight.
Speaker AAnd sometimes the answer isn't quite as clear as you're actually giving, but you feel kind of obligated to give an answer.
Speaker ASo we're going to unpack the marketing machines a little bit.
Speaker AThey really get you addicted to some of this vicious cycle and what I would call the emotional roller coaster.
Speaker AWe wrote a piece a couple of years ago about the emotional roller coaster of the market.
Speaker AI think back during COVID and just that ride and what the market feels like to people.
Speaker AAnd you know, you're on, you're.
Speaker AYou're in the seat of a roller coaster.
Speaker AYou're strapped in and you're going up this big incline, you know it's going to come back down.
Speaker ASo do you go up to the top of the incline and just jump off or when it starts to go down and starts to pick up speed, you go, okay, I guess I better get off now.
Speaker AOr do you go, I can't believe this roller coaster would do this to me?
Speaker ANo, you signed up for the ride.
Speaker BYep.
Speaker ASo we want to maybe talk about how to Put this in context and how to simmer down a little bit and maybe even take advantage of it.
Speaker BWell, and even just to help people.
Speaker BI mean, it's now been four and a half years since we started Ditch the Suits.
Speaker BI'm going to refer to you as Uncle Travis and I'm Uncle Steve.
Speaker BOur emotional teenagers are like the nieces and nephews.
Speaker BIt's been four and a half years of us recording.
Speaker BWe've done multiple series on the stock market and what happens, We've talked people off the ledge.
Speaker BWe've talked through market cycles and through these four and a half years of doing this, we've seen that over time, you know, you have market corrections, things happen.
Speaker BAnd so you can go back through the litany of Ditch the Suits and hear all the different series that you and I have done on the stock market and how Covid and China and all these things of it.
Speaker BSo this isn't just our first conversation talking about the markets, right?
Speaker BSo to try to, it's like looking at people's kids and say you're going to get through it, right?
Speaker BBecause they're just experiencing the pain of the unruliness.
Speaker BBut we're coming at it from an uncle viewpoint to be like, hey, we've seen this before with the kids.
Speaker BDon't forget last time.
Speaker BThis is what happened.
Speaker BSo this is Ditch the Suits.
Speaker BHe's really not Uncle Travis.
Speaker BI'm not Uncle Steve.
Speaker BI am Steve Campbell, your senior marketing director at Seed Planning Group.
Speaker BTravis co hosts the Ditch the Suits is our CEO and Seed is a fee only financial planning firm where we have a fiduciary obligation to put our clients best interest first.
Speaker BAnd Ditch the Suits is all about us bringing our collective experience working with clients to help you and them get the most from your money in life.
Speaker BAnd so this is going to be a great conversation as we talk about why the stock market feels like an emotional teenager.
Speaker BLet's take a quick break to hear a word from your sponsor.
Speaker BThis episode is brought to you by Seed Planning Group.
Speaker BIf you're looking for a life giving experience working with a financial planner, then Seed is here for you.
Speaker BSeed is a fee only financial planning firm with a fiduciary obligation to put your best interests first.
Speaker BIf your goal is financial freedom and independence without sales products or really glorified salespeople, then check out Seed Planning Group today you can visit www.seedpg.com.
Speaker Bthat's www.seedpg.com.
Speaker Band the best part, you can schedule a free consultation to find out if their fee Only planners and their process are right for you.
Speaker BDo you want more of Ditch the Suits?
Speaker BWell, let's take a break to tell you about our Patreon Channel.
Speaker BIf you're wanting more announcements, notifications, even access to prior seasons, you can head to patreon.com search ditch the suits and subscribe to our channel.
Speaker BYou'll get notifications of all episodes right in your inbox.
Speaker BSo visit patreon.com search ditch the suits or head to our show Notes where we got links to our channel.
Speaker AYes.
Speaker AThink about for a quick second.
Speaker AYou have a teenager and they have their first love.
Speaker AThey come home and they're in love with this other person.
Speaker AAnd you as a parent, you're excited for them, but you're also a little bit nervous.
Speaker AAnd then a couple weeks later, their first love has a new boy or girlfriend and has decided to dump your child or whatever.
Speaker ASomebody is moving on.
Speaker AWhat do you tell your child when their heart is broken?
Speaker AIt's going to be okay.
Speaker AYou're going to have lots of loves in your life.
Speaker AYour life is going to continue.
Speaker AThis is not the end, right?
Speaker AYep.
Speaker ALife will go on.
Speaker AThere will be better days ahead of you.
Speaker ABut for some reason, when we see the financial news, you know, we, we give that advice to kids, but we don't take that advice for ourselves.
Speaker AIt's like, this time is different.
Speaker AWe're ruined.
Speaker AThere'll never be another good day over and over and over again.
Speaker AAnd it always shocks me, too.
Speaker AI would think that investors who have been around the block a while, those who have been investing for 30, 40, 50 years, would be a lot more confident and comfortable with the fact that what goes up comes down and what goes down goes up.
Speaker AAnd it's like this giant cycle.
Speaker ABut.
Speaker AAnd they've seen the news cycles over and over again about, okay, we're all doomed.
Speaker ABut still we keep falling for this cycle.
Speaker AWe keep thinking this is the last great relationship and our life is forever going to be dull after this and it's never going to be okay.
Speaker AAnd that gets us to that YYY syndrome.
Speaker AAnd, you know, let's think about it from a perspective of investing everything.
Speaker AFor some reason, we have to have the answer to why.
Speaker AWhy does it hurt like this?
Speaker AWhy does it feel like this?
Speaker AWhy did the market go down?
Speaker ARight?
Speaker AWhy?
Speaker AYou know, why?
Speaker AThis is where you just get to why, why, why?
Speaker ALike, everything's a why.
Speaker AWe have to, for some reason, have an answer for everything.
Speaker AAnd you know what?
Speaker AFrankly, sometimes you just won't get the answer or you won't know the answer.
Speaker AOr sometimes the answer comes well down the road, or sometimes, you know, there's things that move.
Speaker AEverybody thinks that the market just moves on, just simply based on supply and demand, and that there's other people out there going, good investment or bad investment.
Speaker AThey don't take into account the fact that there's also algorithms and other things that are buying and selling investments, not on the merit of the investment, but just on price movements and just trying to take advantage of a price movement, not because they think the price is good or bad, but they think it's going to go the other way.
Speaker AThey can make a couple pennies on it, and if they trade enough shares, they make a lot of pennies.
Speaker AAnd so we're going in there and we're like, why the market go down?
Speaker AOh, because, you know, Trump said this on tv or because the treasury did this with interest rates, or because this happened or that happened.
Speaker AAnd sometimes the real answer is much, much either much, much more complicated or much, much simpler than what's actually being said.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BAnd for you as a listener, we're not necessarily saying that this is your mindset, so we're trying to give you a course correction.
Speaker BThis could be colleagues that.
Speaker BThat wear you out with negativity every day.
Speaker BThis could be family members.
Speaker BWhy do you even invest?
Speaker BThe market is some of the stuff we talked about.
Speaker BBut you and I have also talked about how our lives.
Speaker BIt's very hard for us to disconnect all the moving pieces in our life.
Speaker BSo everything seems to have a cause and effect.
Speaker BWe're blending social and moral issues with the stock market, when sometimes those things have nothing to do with each other.
Speaker BSo you read a headline on the news, that's a moral issue of the day, and you go check your 401k balance.
Speaker ABut it's.
Speaker AIt's like our addiction to gambling as a country.
Speaker AYou know, gambling's everywhere.
Speaker AAnd I would say, you know, we've done episodes in crypto, too.
Speaker ACrypto's a lot like gambling.
Speaker AIt's this dream that I can get rich overnight, that I'm going to win big over overnight.
Speaker AWe're so addicted to needing an answer and needing to win immediately.
Speaker ALike, that's.
Speaker AGambling's all about the short term.
Speaker AIf you're buying an investment, I think Warren Buffett says it, if you're buying an investment, you can't hold it for 10 years.
Speaker AYou can't stomach holding this investment for 10 years.
Speaker AYou have no business buying the investment in the first place because you are gambling, you are betting on a price movement.
Speaker AYep.
Speaker AAnd that's part of the problem.
Speaker AOur, our whole financial marketing machine has kind of turned into this.
Speaker ALike when you watch E Trade commercials and all that kind of stuff and they talk about options and how you can do all this stuff yourself and things.
Speaker AThey're talking about short term purchases, they're talking about short term trades, which is akin to gambling.
Speaker AI'm just going to make a bet on where the price movement's going to be.
Speaker AIt's not about investing because you understand the company that you're buying.
Speaker AAnd I think that that's where it gets to kind of what you're talk is, it's just, you know, when you gamble, you don't look long term, you look short term.
Speaker AAnd that's where people are kind of sitting right now with investing.
Speaker BWell, and even as a parent, I think we all love some sense of control.
Speaker BYou don't want to be controlling over your kids, but you want to have a sense of control.
Speaker BYou want to know where they go, who they hang out with, who they talk to so that you can parent them correctly.
Speaker BI think it's the same thing when it comes to our investments.
Speaker BWe all as human beings like to know that we're in control.
Speaker BAnd so I guess, you know, you talked about this yyy but Travis, where does the need for control, stability and having all of our question answers come from or what does it seem to do for people?
Speaker AWell, it gives people confidence, right?
Speaker AMost people are just running around in this world and they're trying to figure out how they belong and what they should be doing next.
Speaker BThat's deep.
Speaker AAnd so when you don't have answered questions, when things seem like they're chaotic around you, and let's face it, money is one of those things that we rely on.
Speaker ASo, you know, we like to know what we have.
Speaker AAnd a lot of people identify how they're doing based on how much money they have.
Speaker AAnd so if that money is moving all over the place, we want to know why we want to control it.
Speaker AWe want to know, you know, if your kids are sad, you want to know why they're sad, and you want to know what you could do to help them.
Speaker ASo if the investments are down, we want to know why they're down and should we be panicking, should we be doing something different, that type of thing.
Speaker ASo first and foremost, I think it's for confidence so that we can feel like we're doing the right things.
Speaker AMost people want to do the Right.
Speaker AThings.
Speaker AAnd when something doesn't work or doesn't appear to be working, you know, and that's a paradigm issue because when we look at investments, if you're making an investment for 10 years and you look at what it's doing in year one, if it's down, that doesn't mean it's not working.
Speaker ARight.
Speaker AThat means that there could be a system kind of if you, if you get injured and you start to heal as you're healing, that doesn't mean you don't have any pain.
Speaker ARight.
Speaker AThere's still a progression that you're going through.
Speaker AThe body is healing.
Speaker AIf you go and have surgery to have something fixed, Right.
Speaker AYou may not have pain with that thing that you had fixed, but now you have pain, a different kind of pain, because you know, your muscles were cut and bones were shaved and stuff like that, right.
Speaker ASo when you think about the, how the body recovers, you know, it's a long term thing.
Speaker AIt's like, okay, we went in and we fixed it, but now we have to recover and we're still going to have pain as we go.
Speaker ASo I think, I think with investing, we're looking at it sometimes and we're thinking, you know, it's going to give me confidence if I know why this thing is not working.
Speaker AAnd the typical answer to something that's not working is just to get rid of it.
Speaker AIf you can get rid of it, right.
Speaker ALike if you broke your arm and you could just chop it off and grow a new one, you wouldn't have to, you know, worry about healing and intended damage and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker AThat'd be a good answer, right.
Speaker ABut you can't.
Speaker ABut with your investments, you can go in and you can just chop it off.
Speaker AYou can say, get rid of that one and it's gone.
Speaker AAnd now that source of discontent or anxiety is gone.
Speaker AIt's not on there.
Speaker AWhen you log into your account on Monday, you won't see something in the red and so you'll feel better about it.
Speaker BYep.
Speaker ASo you're doing it based on your feelings, which is based on your desire to control something.
Speaker AAnd you're not controlling anything.
Speaker AWhat you're doing is misunderstanding what you're, you're doing.
Speaker AYou're actually hurting yourself.
Speaker AIt's like overdoing painkillers to heal, you know, like, like hiding pain doesn't mean that you're healing, you know, and being afraid of pain doesn't mean that you're strong.
Speaker AYou know what I mean?
Speaker AOr covering it up and you need to deal with it.
Speaker AYou need to face it sometimes.
Speaker AAnd so, you know, and I think it hurts people.
Speaker AI think, I think people, because they don't understand the fact that they can't control everything, the fact that they can't have an answer to everything.
Speaker AHave you ever had with your kids where you're like, jesus, no answer to this question they're asking, or you don't know, you're like, hey, dad, why are there waves in the ocean?
Speaker BOr not even that.
Speaker BJust as a parent, the parallels to investing, you try to gather enough information to be a good parent.
Speaker BWe're going to do certain things a certain way, raise our kids a certain way, and you can put all those practices into play and then life just, it doesn't go the way you thought.
Speaker BAnd so your question is, am I a bad parent?
Speaker BWhen it's like you did all the right things.
Speaker BSometimes there are things that are beyond your control and you're dealing with human beings when you're dealing with children who are not going to respond the way that I think every parent wants their kids to respond the way they are at their current age.
Speaker BAnd sometimes we have this dissonance where it's like, man, my kid's 8 years old, he's 9 years old, he's not me.
Speaker BSame thing with investing.
Speaker BIt's like, I did my due diligence, I thought I made a good investment.
Speaker BWhy is this thing, quote unquote, losing me money or not doing what it's supposed to do and fear sets in and so do you kind of want to talk about.
Speaker BWe've talked about the why.
Speaker BWhy, why, Right.
Speaker BMaybe being a symptom.
Speaker ABut before, before we go to where you're going, though.
Speaker ABut I think what the financial industry is doing to people and what the media is doing to people is they're putting really fancy people out in front of them.
Speaker AWell spoken people, nice suits, good pedigrees, PhDs, and that kind of stuff.
Speaker AAnd they're saying, this person is going to give you a well articulated why or why from a place of authority, right?
Speaker AYou get people running some of these afternoon or early evening shows talking about the economy and they sound very convincing.
Speaker AAnd that's a major, major issue because they're feeding you a bunch of bull.
Speaker AMost of the time they don't know why something's happening.
Speaker ARight?
Speaker AThere could be some volatility in one area.
Speaker ASo they pass a bill and it causes a disruption in a particular industry and then that causes a disruption in other industries and then something else happens over here that causes a sell off of certain of a portfolio and that causes an upset and then it's a compounding effect.
Speaker ASo it's not the one, the first thing that happened that caused the market to go down by X.
Speaker AIt's the combination of the first thing plus the second thing plus the third thing, you know, and then kind of multiplied because of, you know, the amplification of everything happening at the same time and you're not getting that much information.
Speaker AAnd a lot of times that they came out and said this is just a price hit, this isn't a value hit, meaning companies haven't lost value on this.
Speaker AWe're not seeing deflation.
Speaker AWhat we're really seeing is that, you know, a bunch of money left the market today because XYZ went bankrupt and they had to liquidate portfolios or whatever and then that caused this sell off over here.
Speaker ABut there should be an ebb and flow with that where that's likely to recover because now there's incredible value.
Speaker AI mean, bonds are one of the best places you can look at that.
Speaker ABonds have a finite life to them.
Speaker AThey're going to mature at a certain date.
Speaker ASo when there's a sell off in the bond market and you can buy $1,000 bond for 900 bucks or $950, instead of the media and the financial machine coming out and saying, oh my gosh, bonds are down so bad, it's horrible.
Speaker ARun for your lives.
Speaker AIf they turned that and said, oh my gosh, you could buy a thousand dollar bond for $900 or $950 today, you'd be like, oh this is great versus oh my gosh, I'm so afraid of what's happening.
Speaker AThe financial companies do it because they want you to think that they have all the answers.
Speaker ASo you're gonna go to the financial company with the Ph.D.
Speaker Aand with and the CFAs and all this other stuff because they will provide the answers to you about what you should be doing next.
Speaker AAnd then when you look at their performance, it's like, well, there's consistently underperformance here.
Speaker ASo how are they?
Speaker AAnd the real answer is you're trying to tell the future and what's going to happen in the future.
Speaker AYou're talking about investing like you're gambling and you're trying to give short answers on very complicated things without putting any research into it, without really overanalyzing the situation.
Speaker ALike just simply what was the biggest headline today?
Speaker AThat's the reason.
Speaker BWell, and you think about it too, right?
Speaker BWhen you turn on the news at night, you've had a full day of work.
Speaker BNow you're turning on the news and you hear an anchor say, another bad day in the market.
Speaker BWhat does that mean?
Speaker BRight.
Speaker BIf your wife goes to the grocery store and you go, how's the grocery store?
Speaker BIt's a bad day in the market.
Speaker AWell, why was it a rotten.
Speaker BThe cost of eggs were really high today.
Speaker BOkay, so there was one thing, but.
Speaker ADid you get a discount on.
Speaker BDid you get a sale on other stuff?
Speaker BWhen you hear stuff like this, we don't always apply that same, and that's a very elementary analogy.
Speaker BBut when you're putting in time, you're building your career, and you hear it's a bad day in the market, the assumption is that everything is bad, which creates a lot of fear.
Speaker BSo.
Speaker ASo talk about, if I create fear, you're going to take action.
Speaker AFear sells.
Speaker AIf I want to get you to call me, if I want to get you to buy the book, if I want to get you to tune into my radio station or my TV channel, what am I going to do?
Speaker AI'm going to make you afraid, and then I'm going to make you think that I have the answer.
Speaker AThat's what I'm going to do.
Speaker ABut this is like you were alluding to where you wanted to go with this.
Speaker AI think is this is a symptom, right?
Speaker AThe root cause of all this is fear and uncertainty.
Speaker AAnd that's human nature.
Speaker AHuman nature is to survive.
Speaker ARight.
Speaker AAnd what do you do?
Speaker AThe basic instinct of survival is when you don't know something, it's a danger.
Speaker AAnd so you should be cautious about it or you should.
Speaker AIt's fight or flight, right?
Speaker AAnd so everybody's got a personality profile.
Speaker ASome of us, you know, if there's something we don't know or something that, that, that's dangerous, we'll put our heads down and barrel right into it.
Speaker AAnd some of us will say, nope, I'm going to avoid that at all costs.
Speaker ABut it's going to trigger this type of emotional reaction to it that then is behavioral.
Speaker AAnd, you know, we're conditioned to try to control everything.
Speaker AWe're convinced we can control everything.
Speaker AThere's an answer to everything.
Speaker AYou go online, you web.
Speaker AI mean, talk to a doctor.
Speaker AI, I know for a fact I cannot stand it when people WebMD, everybody's got cancer.
Speaker ANo, you don't.
Speaker ARight?
Speaker AEverybody's got this problem.
Speaker ANo, you don't go in, go through the task, get it done.
Speaker ADon't convince yourself you have something and then you make yourself sick and actually manifest real disease into yourself because of stress.
Speaker ABut we're so conditioned because we can get the answers.
Speaker AI can just Google it and get the artificial intelligence.
Speaker AI'm telling you what, I'm still, I still look up stuff on, you know, I'll go on Google now and you know, because of Microsoft, they've built it and Google, they've all built AI into your search browser.
Speaker AI'm still finding incorrect stuff all the time.
Speaker BTravis is a huge fan of AI.
Speaker AWell, I think AI, it serves a.
Speaker BPurpose but there's an over reliance on it.
Speaker ABut we're ignorant to the fact that it's still reliant on information man has already created and put out there.
Speaker AAnd the problem is that we created so much information, which information is actually the right information.
Speaker AThat's the hard part.
Speaker AAnd you're telling a computer to figure that out.
Speaker AWell, the computer doesn't have real life experiences.
Speaker ASo we're so conditioned that we can just go out there and get the answers and we can blindly follow whatever somebody tells us because it's easier.
Speaker AAnd then what do we do?
Speaker AWe panic.
Speaker AYep.
Speaker ABecause it doesn't happen the way that these experts or the way artificial intelligence or somebody else tells us it's supposed to happen.
Speaker AWell, was supposed to happen like this because that's what the suit said.
Speaker AAnd then it doesn't happen.
Speaker AWe go, oh my gosh, it is, this is it.
Speaker AThis is the end.
Speaker AI mean I go on YouTube and I followed all spectrum of people.
Speaker AThe end has, has come and gone about 50 times in the last two years.
Speaker ALike the complete collapse of China has happened 15 times over.
Speaker AAccording to them, Europe has already clapped 5 times, the United States has clapped 10 times.
Speaker AThe markets are gone.
Speaker ALike, like it's over and over and over again.
Speaker AAnd it, you know, if you're buying into this stuff, you're, that's kind of like the stress that is going into your life has got to be horrible.
Speaker AWhy?
Speaker BWell, and also just the, the competing agendas.
Speaker ARight.
Speaker BFor you.
Speaker BYou're, you're trying to build your career, you're trying to raise your family, you're trying to make good decisions, you're trying to put yourself in the best position.
Speaker BYou have all these competing, not agendas, but things competing for your time and your attention that the AI, the Google, sometimes that seems like in the easier want an instant answer to a problem.
Speaker BBut like we've talked about, sometimes we ask very simple questions in the financial world that have very complex answers.
Speaker BAnd then because we don't understand, we say, well, screw it, this is too hard.
Speaker BNobody can figure out this whole thing is rigged, and we push it away.
Speaker BSo there is a balance between.
Speaker BYou've survived more than you even thought you could because of everything that's happened in the news and taking place.
Speaker BBut again, then how.
Speaker BFor the need for control, panic sets in.
Speaker BAnd this is one of the things that I know we were talking about too.
Speaker BWhen it comes to finances, investments, financial planning, it's kind of boring.
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker BAnd so, like, how do you also help bring some light, especially from your work with clients over the years?
Speaker BThe boring things are the things we don't want to pay attention to, and the sensational things are the things that we're drawn to but actually cause some of the most pain.
Speaker AThat's one of the hardest things with.
Speaker AWith financial planning and working with people.
Speaker A90% of the noise out there is just no ways.
Speaker AAnd so everybody comes in with, like, a baggage full of what people have told them.
Speaker BYep.
Speaker ARight.
Speaker AOr what they've seen on TV or something like that.
Speaker AAnd even clients we've been working with for a long time, they get very worked up with the politics and the social issues.
Speaker ANot understanding the difference between politics and social issues and how a company is making money someplace.
Speaker ARight.
Speaker ALike, you can.
Speaker AYou can literally have the social issues and the politics falling all apart all around you.
Speaker AYou can have it burning down.
Speaker ABut Company XYZ is still making a ton of money.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker AYour job as an investor is to find company XYZ that's making a ton of money and figure out how to get a cut of that money for a good price.
Speaker AThat's your goal, you know, be damned.
Speaker AAbout the social and the political issues, that's a whole separate issue.
Speaker ABut people come in with that baggage because it's been pushed on them and it's been commingled and it's been dishonestly put, put forth as though it's all the same issue.
Speaker AAnd they're really separate issues.
Speaker ASo the first thing that we try to do or that we really have to do is we have to look at knowledge level.
Speaker AAnd this happens with people coming with investments that don't.
Speaker AI mean, we worked with incredibly brilliant engineers and educators and people like that that come in and don't know what mutual funds are and how they work.
Speaker ASo somewhere along the line in the education system, our financial literacy system is broken.
Speaker AAnd it does promote gambling.
Speaker AI mean, a lot of the.
Speaker AA lot of the kids that come in that we interview about financial planning and investments.
Speaker ATheir experience has been a stock picking contest at college, you know, over a very limited amount of time where they were rated for results over that limited amount of time.
Speaker AThat's again pushing the kind of this gambling aspect of it.
Speaker ANot that necessarily making long term investments because the long term return is going to be there.
Speaker AWhen you look at most great companies, they were long term in the making.
Speaker AThey didn't just become great overnight.
Speaker AIt took them 10 or 20 years to get there.
Speaker AWell, that means it takes your investment time to mature.
Speaker AI mean, even small companies like local restaurants and things like that, a lot of times take time to get going.
Speaker ASo 90% of whatever everybody's coming in with is just noise.
Speaker AAnd it's just, it's there to fill your head because we need entertainment and something to do when we get home at night.
Speaker AYou know, it used to be in the old days, you'd get home and you'd go out and work in your garden and you know, do stuff outside with the family.
Speaker AAnd you had a lot more.
Speaker AYou got to split wood and carry the coal in and all that.
Speaker AI mean, that's how I grew up.
Speaker AYou had to do all that kind of stuff.
Speaker ANow you go in and you watch the news and you watch, you know, whoever your favorite talking head is.
Speaker AEither every.
Speaker AAnd you know, the issue is that, that either, either no one knows and you're.
Speaker ASo you're going to be helpless.
Speaker ABasically.
Speaker AThis is the polarization that you have wherever you tune in.
Speaker ANo one knows anything, so you're helpless.
Speaker ASo you should come to me and I'll save you from being helpless.
Speaker AOr everyone knows everything and all the answers, all the questions have already been answered.
Speaker ASo you're basically, there's nothing you can do about it and you just need to just trust us, we'll just run it for you.
Speaker AOr you could do it yourself and the answer really is, is somewhere in between.
Speaker AAnd I, and I preface it kind of like this.
Speaker AIf you track the price of every single house in every single neighborhood across the country, right?
Speaker ASo you got millions and millions of houses, but you're going to track it literally every single day.
Speaker AHow the price moves on that house would kind of like Wazilla does.
Speaker AYep.
Speaker ARight.
Speaker AYou're just going to track that price moving, but of every single house.
Speaker AYou could not consume that data in any way that makes sense.
Speaker AIf I went down millions of houses and told you exactly how the price moved yesterday, it would mean nothing to you.
Speaker AYou could not comprehend what that means.
Speaker AYour brain cannot handle It.
Speaker AIt won't be able to create patterns or anything.
Speaker ASo what do you do?
Speaker AYou plot it out in the spreadsheet.
Speaker AAnd I say to you something like, hey, the price of housing across the country is up 5% or down 5%.
Speaker AAnd you go, okay, well, that sucks.
Speaker AIt's up 5%, and I wanted to buy a house, or it's down 5% and I wanted to sell a house.
Speaker AAnd I'm really worried about the price of housing.
Speaker ABut that's generally what you do.
Speaker ABut the reality is, is that it should be something more.
Speaker ALike, if you're considered concerned about the price of housing, what did the price of the houses in your neighborhood do?
Speaker ANot all the houses, the houses that are make mean something to you?
Speaker AWhat did those.
Speaker AThe price of those houses do?
Speaker AAnd remember, price goes up and down.
Speaker ASo the price is down this week because there's no buyers trying to move to your street.
Speaker ANext week, the price goes up because buyers are trying to move to your street.
Speaker AI mean, that's.
Speaker AThat's how that works.
Speaker ASo you want to look at that and say, oh, my gosh, you know, the price of houses is down across the country, but on my street, the prices are up because there's people that want to move to my street.
Speaker AI guess I should panic because the price of housing is down.
Speaker AYou know, it's just kind of like this weird.
Speaker AWe're getting macro data and we're making micro decisions with it.
Speaker AYou know, like, we're making very personal decisions with it, which are.
Speaker AIt's just really kind of silliness.
Speaker AAverage means that when I say average, if somebody says the average price of housing is down 5% and you should be very worried.
Speaker AWell, remember, average means that there's a bunch above the line and a bunch below the line.
Speaker AIf I say that, the market is down 5%, but there's Nvidia, which happens to be one of the largest companies in the world right now, is down 20%.
Speaker ANvidia has pulled the average way down.
Speaker ASo you could own a whole bunch of other investments that might be doing just fine.
Speaker ABut that one investment, if you own everything, that one investment pulled your average way down.
Speaker ASo the question there is, did you even have that on your street?
Speaker ARight.
Speaker AOr didn't you?
Speaker AAnd so if that went down and you didn't own it, yes, you might have gone down a little bit, but you certainly didn't do as bad as everything else.
Speaker AThat's just the average.
Speaker ARight?
Speaker ASo I would just look at it like that.
Speaker AIf you have to ask what the reason is, Realize that there might be more than one reason, and it might be nuanced.
Speaker AIt's almost always nuanced.
Speaker AAnd if housing is down in your neighborhood, it could be that the houses on your street aren't being kept very nice.
Speaker AIt could be that people aren't moving into your neighborhood.
Speaker AIt could be that property taxes are high.
Speaker AIt could be that there's a special tax because they're going to have to put in, you know, new sewage lines on your street.
Speaker AAnd it could be a combination of all those issues.
Speaker AIf one of those issues was fixed, prices would be coming back up.
Speaker ABut if you just look at it as prices are down because nobody likes living here.
Speaker AWell, where does that go?
Speaker BWell, and, you know, we've worked with new people, we've done speaking engagements in communities, and I think sometimes you hear people that are concerned.
Speaker BConcerned about the stock market, but the irony is that they don't even know what they're actually invested in.
Speaker BYeah, right.
Speaker BSo when we speak more times, they're like, what should I do with my investments?
Speaker BAnd then you say, well, let's talk about your investments.
Speaker BAnd they pull out their statements.
Speaker BAnd if this is you, you're just like everybody else.
Speaker BPeople don't actually know what they're invested in, whether it's mutual funds, whether it's stocks, whether it's their or what the.
Speaker AMutual funds invested in.
Speaker AThey'll say, this great mutual fund, you'll say, well, what kind of mutual fund is it?
Speaker AI don't know.
Speaker BSo you'll have people that'll say, I'm very concerned, but yet they don't know what they own and how it works.
Speaker BAnd so that's also, I think, some of the things that we've noticed just over the years and you guys have.
Speaker BAnd I'm excited for the next two episodes that we're going to do.
Speaker BAnd I'll let you close here because I think you and the planners do a really nice job of.
Speaker BOf helping our people understand the importance of understanding what you own, why you own it, and how your investment fits into the larger story that is constantly taking place around you so that you really do have a filtering system, too.
Speaker BIs this crap or do I need to actually understand this information?
Speaker BIf that's you get from listening to Ditch the Suits is a mindset and a filter that allows you to know, does this information I'm receiving today from the media that clearly has an agenda and a story to tell.
Speaker BWhen I hear things, how do I know if this is really applicable to My life to my family's life to our money, to our, our well being.
Speaker BOr is this just what Travis and Steve talked about?
Speaker BI can let this go so I can go.
Speaker BWhat did you say?
Speaker BGo carry more coal.
Speaker BWas that part of split some wood?
Speaker BSplit some wood and carry coal.
Speaker BOur goal for you folks.
Speaker BLet's go split some coal dirty Uncle Travis and Uncle Steve.
Speaker BCarry some coal.
Speaker BSo any final thoughts?
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker AGood investing is like anything else if you want to get good at any.
Speaker AWhat would you tell your kids if your kids want to, want to be, you know, so you have a daughter in dance or son who's playing baseball or something like that and you want them to and they really want to be.
Speaker AWell, what you going to say?
Speaker AYou're going to say practice and have discipline.
Speaker ARight.
Speaker AAnd so good investing is like anything else.
Speaker AYou have to have a lot of discipline and that means you don't easily get distracted and make knee jerk reactions to things you can't do.
Speaker AControl.
Speaker ASo 90% of that noise out there is designed to get you to take action.
Speaker AThat does not benefit you, it benefits somebody else.
Speaker ASo you have to have the discipline to say that's entertaining, but it's not for me.
Speaker AOr you know what, I'm going to go down that rabbit hole, but I'm not going to take action on it.
Speaker ARight.
Speaker AI want to see where it goes and why people are talking like that.
Speaker ABut it doesn't mean that I'm going to take action or panic myself.
Speaker AYep.
Speaker BAnd so for this, this is a three part series.
Speaker BWe got two more episodes as a little teaser to get you ready.
Speaker BSo this first one was talking about how investing is kind of like an emotional teenager.
Speaker BBut next you might be interested in this if you're somebody who does it yourself or you have curiosity.
Speaker BThe next episode we're going to talk about a guide to buying investments.
Speaker BTravis is going to give you insights as to how he sees things over his profession, how you can actually look at buying investments.
Speaker BAnd then the last episode two weeks from now, are the markets rigged?
Speaker BYou might be saying this to yourself, you might hear others saying it.
Speaker BSo these are the two things that we're going to help address in the next two episodes.
Speaker BBut until then, thanks for stopping by.
Speaker BDitch the Suits.
Speaker BThanks for checking out Ditch the Suits.
Speaker BBe sure to write a review or drop a comment about this episode.
Speaker BAnd if you want more like this, head over to ditchesuits.com you can send us a message and get in touch.
Speaker BLet us know how we can help and be sure to share any topics you'd be interested in having us cover on the show.
Speaker BWe're here to help you get the most from your money in life.
Speaker BThanks for being our guest and checking out.
Speaker BDitch the suits.