Small company stocks were up nearly 22% in the first six months of 2026. Emerging markets were up 24%. Meanwhile, plenty of people sat on the sidelines convinced those asset classes were dead, chased last year’s winners, or just didn’t know what they owned. Joe, OG, and Len Penzo break down the first-half scorecard, explain why the lesson isn’t about timing — it’s about diversification — and walk through what an investment policy statement actually is and why having one would have kept most people out of trouble.
What You’ll Walk Away With
- The first-half 2026 scorecard: Russell 2000 up 21.9%, MSCI Emerging Markets up 24%, S&P 500 up 9.6%, and why the breadth of the rally matters more than the headline number
- Why OG’s one-sentence takeaway — “the plan always works” — is both right and incomplete, and what Len’s personal experience this year adds to the conversation
- What an investment policy statement actually is: the one-page written decision tree that protects you from making bad moves when markets spike or crash
- Why the market closes at an all-time high roughly 30% of the time — and what that means for the “I’m waiting for it to come down” crowd
- How to x-ray your portfolio: the specific inventory OG recommends taking before you make any changes
- Why you should rebalance all at once rather than filling in holes slowly — and the one asterisk that applies before you do anything in a taxable account
- Len on the mining sector: why GDX returned 154% last year and is down 10% this year — and exactly what that pattern teaches about chasing returns
- Why trying to explain your investment plan to another human being is the best stress test you have
- The allowance micro-economy problem: what happens when you pay kids per task and they start pricing everything in units of dog poop
- Jessica’s win from the Basement: how one Stacker helped her 25-year-old cousin sign up for her first 401(k), get the full company match, and choose index funds
Why This Matters Now
The second half of 2026 starts now. If you don’t know what you own, why you own it, or what you’d do if it dropped 30%, this is the episode to act on before the next six months get away from you.
From the Basement
Joe, OG, and Len Penzo review the first half of 2026, build a case for why diversification beats prediction every time, and explain what an investment policy statement is and how to write one. Doug celebrates the Hollywood sign’s origin as a real estate advertisement and shares two things social media actually taught us — including a TikTok comedian voicing the thoughts in Mark Zuckerberg’s ear during a very long beef discussion. Len’s annual sandwich survey is about a month away. True Money Stories is climbing the Amazon charts.
Resources Mentioned
OG financial planning calendar — stackingbenjamins.com/og
True Money Stories by Len Penzo — available on Amazon; lenpenzo.com
Len Penzo dot com — lenpenzo.com; 3,000 articles, 18 years of personal finance writing
Stacking Benjamins Field Kit — stackingbenjamins.com/fieldkit
Stacking Benjamins Newsletter (The 201) — stackingbenjamins.com/201
Stacking Benjamins Community — stackingbenjamins.com/basement
Monday Mentor: Len Penzo
Big thanks to Len Penzo for joining us today. To learn more about Len, visit Len Penzo dot Com. Grab yourself a copy of the book True Money Stories: Madcap Musings About Family Life and Personal Finance
Doug’s Trivia
- July 13 marks the dedication of one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world: the Hollywood sign. When the sign was first dedicated, what word appeared after “Hollywood”?
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
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Other Mentions
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when Dr. Joseph Moore joins us to talk about his New York Times bestseller, How to Get Rich in American History, and why the money lessons we think we know may not always tell the whole story. Plus, we’ll look back at some of the best mentor lessons from earlier this year to help you start the second half of 2026 with a sharper plan.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Can You Save Too Much? Finding the Sweet Spot Between FI, Spending, and Life (SB1866) | Stacking Benjamins
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: We have Mr. Railroad hanging out with us today, so check this out, Len. I wore a shirt just for you.
[00:00:05] Len: Oh, very cool.
[00:00:06] Joe: Yes.
[00:00:06] Len: Union Pacific.
[00:00:07] Joe: A Union Pacific T-shirt. I’m like, well, whenever Len joins us, we gotta get the railroad thing going. Did you
[00:00:11] Len: get that in Omaha?
[00:00:13] Joe: I did not, no. I actually ordered it from this little-known website called Amazon.com.
[00:00:20] Joe: I don’t know if you’ve- Yeah, you can get anything there …
[00:00:22] bit: Dave, have ever heard of it. You can get anything there.
[00:00:24] Joe: It is surprising. How’s the railroad coming, by the way?
[00:00:26] Len: It’s coming along. I’d say it’s about, uh, 40% finished. I’m five to six years in on it, and it’s, like, 40% finished. I’m, I’ve been working very hard on it lately.
[00:00:36] Joe: At this rate, it’ll be done in, uh, 2045.
[00:00:40] Len: You know what? I should send you some pictures, and you can post one or two on your blog-
[00:00:44] Joe: Absolutely … on
[00:00:44] Len: your, on
[00:00:45] Joe: your website. Yeah, post them to the, the basement. I have a question for you, ’cause this is the part of the show, we always start our Monday show, of course, by saluting US military, who kept us safe all weekend, but do you have any military members, like little miniatures in your, uh, diorama?
[00:01:01] Len: Uh, no,
[00:01:02] Joe: I- As part of your train set? Not yet.
[00:01:03] Len: No, I don’t, but do you know what? I, I can do that. You know, you know those little figures are, like, five bucks each for each of those little figures. Those, those little guys add up, and I bet you right now I-
[00:01:11] Joe: They’re so expensive …
[00:01:12] Len: I bet you right now I have probably, uh, 40 to 50 figures on that diorama right now.
[00:01:17] Joe: You could have the one with the parachute that I loved when I was, like, seven, and they’re, like, parachuting into the town maybe to save them, or they’re having, like, a parade, you know? Or, uh- You’re full
[00:01:26] bit: of
[00:01:26] Len: ideas. You know what? I can do that. You know, I do take requests, like the Honeybee asked for a river with the kayakers and, and I sent you pictures of that.
[00:01:33] Len: I sent you and Doug, I think, pictures of the- It, it
[00:01:34] Joe: looked real. It was
[00:01:35] Len: great. It looked real. Yeah, so I do take requests, and I do like the parachuting idea. So I can… That I can do. I can hang one of those from the ceiling and so it’s looks like the guy’s coming right in. Matter of… I will do that.
[00:01:46] Joe: Well, I’ve got a request for you, Mr.
[00:01:48] Joe: Penzo- Yeah … and to you, Mr. Bannerman, and to you, Mr. Neighbor Doug. Raise your mugs. We’re gonna salute our troops who kept us safe all weekend while we was busy playing around. Thank you for all you do. On behalf of the men and women making podcast in mom’s basement, and the men and women stacking benjamins across the USA, thank you so much.
[00:02:09] Joe: Let’s all go stack some benjamins together now.
[00:02:12] Doug: Thanks, everybody.
[00:02:14] opener: Here’s a song that we’d like to do for all the younger set of people, the teenagers and what have you. This one’s called Vacation’s Over.
[00:02:26] opener: Patient’s all but in It’s over, it’s over
[00:02:35] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement, it’s The Stacking Benjamins Show
[00:02:49] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and did you miss us? Of course you did. On today’s show, we’ll check in on the financial markets. What should we have learned during the first half of the year? How have the financial markets performed? What does this mean for your investment policy statement? Joe, you’re using big words again.
[00:03:07] Doug: What the heck is an investment policy? Oh, you’re gonna cover that. Okay, awesome. All of that, plus some lessons we’ve learned recently from social media. Are there actually lessons? We found exactly two, and we’ll share ’em both. And now, here come three guys who spent the first six months talking about money, their favorite topic.
[00:03:28] Doug: It’s Joe, OG, and Len P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-Penzo. I couldn’t get it out.
[00:03:37] Joe: Thanks a ton, Doug. Welcome back, everybody. Did you miss us? We’re back live from mom’s basement where the meatloaf is over-diversified and Doug is under-supervised, and we are gonna look at the first half of 2026. How did you do? We’re gonna look at the scorecard, and we’re gonna start off by saying hello to the gentleman across the card table from me.
[00:03:57] Joe: Mr. OG is here, except today he’s not across the card table from me. He’s actually in distant parts. You’re all the way out in Colorado, Mr. OG?
[00:04:07] OG: Uh, yes. I’m in Colorado today in this, uh, glorious condominium. Word to the wise, if you’re a renter of places, Airbnb, VRBO, double-check to make sure that they have air conditioning in the United States, which is absolutely bat-crazy that that wouldn’t be a standard feature in a town full of million-dollar properties.
[00:04:34] OG: Um, and if you’re a leaser, lessor… Uh, what is that? Less, lee… Who… The person who owns- If- … a place and gives it away.
[00:04:41] Joe: If you’re lessoricious.
[00:04:43] OG: If you’re that guy, don’t hide the fact that it’s… doesn’t have AC. Just put that out there, you know?
[00:04:50] Joe: So you’re sweating to the oldies, OG? No,
[00:04:52] OG: it’s 40 degrees out here, but- But I-
[00:04:56] Joe: Why are you complaining?
[00:04:56] OG: I don’t like having the win- It’s… There’s a lot of… Listen, this isn’t a Four Seasons, and there’s a lot of opportunity for improvement here. I will write a strongly worded email. It’s the little things that compound, right? So you gotta have the windows open, which is fine, ’cause, hey, it’s mountain air. It’s fresh.
[00:05:12] OG: Okay, cool. But then it’s breezy, so then the frigging blinds, which by the way they got from probably whatever’s lower than Walmart in terms of home decor, so they don’t really work. But then the blinds, like, blow against the bed frame because the windows have to be open, but you want the windows shades down because, you know- Sure
[00:05:30] OG: it’s gonna get light at 5:00 in the morning. So then it’s hotter than it should be and noisier. Just have frigging AC, shut the windows, shut the blinds, go to sleep. You know
[00:05:40] Joe: what I mean? Who cares about talking about the first half of 2026? Let’s talk about this.
[00:05:44] OG: This, this is how I wrapped up the first half of my 2026,
[00:05:47] Joe: so.
[00:05:47] Joe: This is wild. And a guy who wrapped it up apparently working on the train set, Mr. Len Penzo is back. What’s up, man?
[00:05:55] Len: You know, uh, I, I wanna tell OG right now, uh, you know, at least you probably don’t have to pay for your air condition… We, we just got back from Hawaii, and we were- Scoreboard … renting a condo.
[00:06:03] Len: Yeah, we had a… Uh, well, actually it was a house, this beautiful house overlooking the ocean. But to use the air conditioner, they wanted $50 a day.
[00:06:12] Joe: It was an extra… It was an add-on extra.
[00:06:14] Len: It was an add-on extra. I mean, that really piles up. And I’m thinking, “Can you really use $50 worth of air conditioning a day?”
[00:06:20] Len: I, I guess if you, you know, turn it down to 61 like you’ve got it at your place right now, OG, maybe, maybe that’s 50 bucks a day’s worth, but-
[00:06:28] OG: Our electric bill Well, I was just thinking about ours. I, it seems, I mean, we, we definitely have our house like a meat locker, so ours isn’t $50 a day. So yeah, they’re, they’re putting a little on top there.
[00:06:41] Joe: They might be, uh, making a little extra. That’s where they get you, Len. They let you have the house for free, but then they get you on the air conditioning.
[00:06:48] Len: Can you imagine if they did stuff like, okay, at $50 a day for the air conditioning, you got $10 a day for the stove, you got, uh, $20 a day for the refrigerator.
[00:06:55] Len: Yeah, they can, they could really make a fortune. I hope that does, this doesn’t catch on and s- expand.
[00:07:00] Joe: No, and I think that’s a little lesson here is that when you’re renting, especially on an Airbnb, look at all of the factors. Like, you know, we are very good at, at noticing what seems off, but we’re not good at noticing what’s missing.
[00:07:14] Joe: So to not see that there’s no air conditioner or to not know that there’s 50 bucks, or did they have the 50 bucks a day in the listing, Len? Did you see that in the listing?
[00:07:23] Len: Ugh. Okay, I’m guilty. Yes, it was in the listing and, uh, I, I went ahead and did it anyways.
[00:07:30] Joe: Well, there you go. Then you just factor it in.
[00:07:31] Joe: Yeah. I mean, it’s a part of the- I know …
[00:07:33] OG: overall cost. I mean, I’m sure it was in my listing too. I, I just think it should be a little bit more prominently displayed when, you know… Like, everybody’s here from the World Cup, right? You know, and the, and all that stuff, and just the differences between the US and Europe, and one of the major differences is that it’s not standard to have air conditioning in Europe, right?
[00:07:50] OG: And so, you know, tell people, “Hey, make sure that you know that you’re getting it.” It’s standard here. So I think the opposite should be true, right? The opposite should be like, “Oh, hey, by the way, in case you’re wondering, there’s no air … It’s, it’s 40 degrees outside, so you’re not gonna need it. You’re in the mountains.
[00:08:06] OG: It’s gonna be fine, but we wanted to let you know.”
[00:08:09] Joe: I know in most places in the US they have it, blah, blah, blah, but here you won’t have it. Yeah.
[00:08:13] OG: Yeah.
[00:08:14] Joe: Read the contract, everybody. Lesson number one, we started the lessons early today on Stacking Benjamins. That’s the first lesson of the second half of 2026.
[00:08:23] Joe: We’re gonna talk about lessons that we should have learned from the stock market in the first half of 2026. We’ll go over the numbers and some of the surprises that, uh, well, I saw. We’ll see if, uh, OG and Len thought they were surprises as well. So grab something to take notes. We’re going to dive in and hopefully help you get ramped up for a fantastic second half of 2026.
[00:08:48] Joe: Before we do that, we have a couple sponsors who help us keep on keeping on. You know, the vault is becoming the field kit. You know how we’ve always described the vault as the Swiss Army knife of financial tools. Why have seven or eight different tools when you can have just one? We have now added the ability to track your budget and track your net worth, along with a ton more.
[00:09:09] Joe: Work with your financial coach, uh, using the field kit. It’s 100% the thing to pack on your next financial adventure. Stackingbenjamins.com/fieldkit gets you to the field kit finance website, and the teams at Array and, uh, BudgetSimple have done a heck of a job. Man, they’ve worked with banks, they’ve worked with institutions much, much bigger than Stacking Benjamins, so we’re so happy to be a part of, uh, field kit finance.
[00:09:37] Joe: All right. We do have a couple sponsors, as we said, who help us keep on keeping on. We’re gonna hear from them, and then Len, OG, Doug, and I diving into the first half of 2026.
[00:09:54] Joe: All right, guys, let’s start here. Let’s just go cold. OG, in one sentence, what’s a lesson you think that investors should have learned from the first half of 2026 without it being a prediction? What’s one lesson that would be a great takeaway?
[00:10:10] OG: This is really challenging for me because six months is such an insignificant amount of time in anything.
[00:10:17] OG: I would say The plan always works
[00:10:23] Joe: Excellent. I wanna dive more into that because I think that’s where a lot of my notes were headed, too. Len, first half of 2026?
[00:10:31] Len: Uh, well first off, I’m gonna disagree with OG in the sh- in the short term, the plan doesn’t always work. I, I can tell you all my personal experience, we can talk about it later, but m- right now I’m not having a very good year with my portfolio, where I think a lot of people are having a very good year.
[00:10:46] Len: So, but, but again, this is short term we’re talking. I, I, I agree in the long term, yes, the plan will always work. But I think right now, these first six months, I would say expect the unexpected. I think that’s, uh, something we should all learn at any one time. But don’t let that ever influence you, uh, you know, these short term unexpected things.
[00:11:06] Joe: Yeah, Len, let’s pick it up there with some of the data. I think a lot of people thought the interest rates were going to plummet, which would fuel an up stock market. Interest rates did not plummet during that period. They also thought that we would see maybe a stock market decline. We definitely didn’t see a stock market decline.
[00:11:24] Joe: I’m gonna go into that next. We actually saw something that I think personally is very healthy, and we can talk about if you guys agree or not. I saw somebody on, I’m gonna call it Twitter, that had a disagreement with that thought, that said that, uh, because of the way the market acted the first six months, they thought the market’s crazy.
[00:11:44] Joe: I actually think that whenever the market widens out, whenever you get this broad, broadly up moving market versus just a few companies, that’s pretty, pretty healthy. Uh, so a lot of doom and gloom if you watch CNBC or watch the popular press, yet when you look at the financial markets, lots of good news.
[00:12:07] Joe: Let’s go over that good news. The Russell 2000, which is small company stocks, led the way 21.9% for the last six months alone. 21.9. The NASDAQ 12.8%. These numbers, by the way, are as of July 1st, so if they’re different today while you’re listening to this, we’re doing exactly the first six months. The S&P 500, uh, the 500 biggest stocks in America, 9.6%.
[00:12:35] Joe: The Dow Jones Industrial Average 8.9%, and the S&P midcap 400, 16.5%, which means these midsize companies weren’t sitting at the kids’ table either. Let’s start with you, OG. When clients see a scoreboard like this, they see those numbers, what’s the first mistake that people generally make when they hear numbers like I just rattled off?
[00:13:00] OG: Well, I think first you’re missing about, uh, 50% of the overall market in your quotes there, as you’re missing every other country outside of the United States, which based on an economic output is somewhere in the 40 to 50-ish percent, depending on the timeframe and day that you looked and that sort of thing.
[00:13:22] OG: So I would even submit to your posting that outside of the United States even did even better than some of the United States positions. Emerging market was up, uh, almost 30% this, uh, six-month period. And that information, you know, based on the, uh, iShares index fund that kind of tracks those, those markets.
[00:13:42] Joe: You’re right there, OG. I was just going inside the United States. Outside the US, the developed international index up at 9.9%, and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, to your point, 24%. Mm-hmm.
[00:13:59] OG: But your question was, like, what do people do with this information? I cannot actually remember a conversation that I’ve had with anybody about a six-month performance of anything, other than to say, “Is this where we expected we should be based on what your plan was over the last three or five or whatever period of time?”
[00:14:23] OG: Like, where are we relative to where we thought we should be? And it has absolutely nothing to do with what small caps have done or what international have done or what, you know, any of that, interest rates, any of that nonsense. Because nobody cares, at least, I think if you drill down to it, nobody cares about the S&P returns or in Len’s case, gold returns, you know, or silver returns or train returns.
[00:14:50] OG: The only thing really anybody cares about is, do I have enough money to do the stuff I wanna do and not run out? And that’s the basis for all of your financial decision-making. And so then, you know, you take all that and kinda put it together and go, “Here’s where I need to be to be able to be on track for the goal of never running out of money and being able to do all the stuff I wanna do for the next 50-odd years of my life.”
[00:15:10] OG: And then you evaluate yourself based on where you are relative to that. I think if you’re not on track, I think it’s fair to look back and say what might have caused that. And m- most times it was a fact, a, a, a decision-making around, um, expectations, and we can talk more about that in a little bit. But for the vast majority of people that are, you know, building a plan and implementing it, I, I don’t think anybody knows what the small cap value market did the last six months ’cause it doesn’t matter.
[00:15:40] Joe: No, but what is interesting is when you look at, uh, in the financial groups where you see people that love to talk personal finance gather, you saw this last six months, OG. You saw, you saw financial nerds really going, “Y- you know what?” Paul Merriman and his love of small caps, like, “Why should we invest in small caps again?
[00:16:01] Joe: Looks like these AI companies are gonna run the day for a good long time. I don’t need small companies.” It feels a lot like, you know, with emerging markets this year leading the way so far, that it’s the same thing we had last year. Last year at the halfway point we were saying, look at all the people that said international was dead, right?
[00:16:19] Joe: And then in the next six months, international funds doing well. International funds having another good year so far, but now small cap, another asset class that some of the, um, maybe people that think too much thought, “Well, maybe, maybe I should ignore this.” They missed it.
[00:16:37] OG: You know, you said something earlier at the beginning of your speech there about the financial nerds and hanging out with them, and, like, these are bad people to hang out with.
[00:16:47] OG: So I wouldn’t hang out with those idiots. Like, just friggin’ talking, you know, people that have opinions on LinkedIn or friggin’ Reddit, like No. Barely you should hang out with people on the, on podcast circuits. Like, I’ll allow hanging out with a few select dealer’s choice, you know, podcast people. But I, I, I just don’t understand.
[00:17:13] OG: I get that we talk about this, or we, we have to bring this up, and we have to talk about this because, you know, there’s new people, and, you know, it’s like vitamin C. You just, if you, if you consume a whole bunch, you just pee it out. It never stays in your body. Like, you just have to keep on having more and more of it, right?
[00:17:30] Doug: What are you doing?
[00:17:31] OG: But it, it doesn’t process in my brain around- He’s on a
[00:17:34] Doug: roll, Doug.
[00:17:35] OG: Just let him go. It doesn’t, it doesn’t process in my brain how all the smartest people in the universe can tell you to do something, and then you with your, you know, profoundly amazing seven minutes of experience or 24 years of life on this earth or, you know, only bull market investing, in investing life- Go, “Nah, I’m not gonna do that,” and then act surprised when the thing that everybody told you was gonna happen happens, and you go, “Well, I just really, eh,” you know?
[00:18:07] OG: Like, everybody told you, own one of everything. Just friggin’ do it. It’s so much easier than trying to, like, figure any of this other crap out. But you wanna do it a different way and then act surprised? Like, you know, it’s like, “I don’t understand why I’m fat.” You guys just sa- saw me put down a friggin’ sleeve of Oreos.
[00:18:25] OG: Like, I think we can narrow down the reason, ’cause all the smart people say, “Don’t eat Oreos for breakfast,” and yet I’m eating Oreos and then complaining about the result in my own brain.
[00:18:34] Doug: Okay, Joe, I’m just realizing it’s a really good thing we record where it’s nice and cool in the basement, ’cause OG is gristly-
[00:18:42] Doug: when he’s warm.
[00:18:44] OG: I’m, I’m not. I just- The air conditioning- …
[00:18:46] Joe: I just- … unit …
[00:18:46] OG: you know, I just think it’s interesting that, first of all, I don’t know these people that you’re talking about. You’re like, “All the financial nerds I say…” I’m like, I, that’s not a s- I don’t play in that sandbox. So I don’t, I don’t follow- Yeah
[00:18:57] OG: people on Instagram. I don’t follow those people on LinkedIn. I don’t follow those people on… I don’t see their content- Well, I think that’s a great- … on
[00:19:03] Joe: YouTube. I think that’s a great thing. When, whenever somebody… Listen, part of this is the way that social media works, right? Somebody says some hot take like, “Why would I buy small caps?”
[00:19:12] Joe: 50 people respond, so then thousands of people see it because of the fact that it’s, it’s crazy to say that I should not have one piece of the puzzle in my portfolio that, that in common, well-diversified portfolios is always there. International is always there, is small companies are always there. And so you get the one person, and because social media doesn’t care if it’s a good comment or a bad comment, they just want you to hang out, so if lots of people are commenting, they’re gonna show even more people, so maybe that’s why I saw that.
[00:19:45] Joe: But there is a lesson there, OG, which is beware who you get your advice from. Am I getting my advice from the person with lots of comments, or am I getting my advice from somebody that has lots of credentials and actually knows what the heck they’re talking about? Our, our friend Ruben Miller, who was on just a few weeks ago, OG, a very reliable, responsible CFP, was talking about, “Don’t look for the needle in a haystack.
[00:20:07] Joe: Buy the damn haystack.” Like I… Those are the takes that I, that I think most of us really need. Len, I wanna loop you into this discussion. Falling back on your engineering background, it’s the end of the first half. Emerging markets, small economies, and then small caps, these small companies in the United States and around the world led the way the first six months of the year.
[00:20:32] Joe: If you put your engineering hat on, how do you diagnose somebody’s portfolio that isn’t holding those?
[00:20:38] Len: Well, if they’re not holding them, that’s probably… I mean, I mean, that’s a sign to probably go back and relook at your whole portfolio. I mean, are you diversified enough anyways? I… Like you mentioned, great comment on buy the whole haystack.
[00:20:50] Len: I mean, first off, your diversification, you should try to have as many different sectors and indices in there if you’re doing via indices, which I think most people do As possible. Uh, you, you probably weren’t… If you didn’t have small caps in there, I, I’m gonna argue you weren’t diversified enough to begin with.
[00:21:08] Len: I mean, I think that’s just a natural thing, that you should have small caps as part of any portfolio. Question is, how do you, how much do you allocate? You know, how, how is it allocated? And that, you, that takes care of itself if you do it at the year-end. You s- something called rebalancing. If you’re properly, thoroughly diversified and then adjust your, uh, allocations at the beginning of each year, all this stuff, it’s, it’s noise.
[00:21:32] Len: It doesn’t matter where one sector is at the halfway point of any year. It just doesn’t. You, you don’t… What you don’t wanna do is you don’t wanna start chasing returns. You don’t wanna say, “Oh, I don’t have anything in small caps, and now I’m going all in on small caps ’cause it’s up 20% for the first half of the year.”
[00:21:47] Len: ‘Cause what you’re doing, uh, the odds are, you’re, you’re, you’re probably buying a little high right now.
[00:21:53] TikTok: Right, yeah.
[00:21:53] Len: When things look- Yeah … the, the most rosy, you know, you should probably be selling or, in our case, holding for long-term, reallocating, maybe pulling some back and reallocating something that wasn’t performing as well.
[00:22:04] Len: That’s what I would do to begin with. But I, I’ll say this. I, I rediversified here at the beginning of the year in my portfolio, and now I’m losing across five different sectors. So, you know, that’s just how it works.
[00:22:16] Joe: Yeah, let’s get into that a little bit because I don’t know that I worry, number one, about where the market’s at, whether it’s high or low before I do the right thing.
[00:22:25] Joe: You missed out if you shoulda had small companies in your portfolio. And by the way, if the goals are close, if the goals are close and you’re not a long-term investor, I think that small company investing and international emerging market investing might be a little too risky for short-term needs. But if you’re a long-term investor and you’re not there, I think you, you might have to ask yourself about your investment policy statement.
[00:22:47] Joe: I know enough about engineering, Len, to be dangerous, but don’t you guys use something called, like, a, uh, requirements document usually?
[00:22:55] Len: Yes. Oh, yeah, of course, yeah. You have requirements documents.
[00:22:58] Joe: Would you say an investment policy statement would be like a requirements document for investing?
[00:23:03] Len: A policy statement?
[00:23:05] Joe: An investment policy statement. Well, first of all, let’s talk about what investment policy statement is. So O.G., you mind giving us a brief definition for people that are new to the show about what we’re talking about with investment policy statement?
[00:23:17] OG: I mean, it’s basically your decision tree for how you’re gonna make decisions around investing.
[00:23:23] Joe: Yeah, it should have on it, like, things like your goals, your time horizon, your risk tolerance, and then what are your target allocations. I wanna have X amount in this, X amount in this, X amount in this. So instead of following the news or following the stock market, you have this written decision tree about how you’re gonna invest money, so then you don’t make dumb decisions during market downturns or times when the market really spikes.
[00:23:48] Len: Yeah, let me take a crack at that. So for example, I don’t have one written down, but I do have one that I follow in my, my investing policy, okay? So mine is basically to be diversified in- Every index, major index that’s out there. And then I have different sectors as well that are… Like, I wanna be in the oil sector, I wanna be in the mining sector, I wanna be in the utilities, I wanna have…
[00:24:09] Len: And I- I define all of my different investment indices and sectors that I wanna be invested in. And then I also have a policy of when something’s performed very well, after a year I will reallocate and bring that, uh, allocation down in my overall portfolio. And things that performed not as well, or I will push them up and I will increase the allocation.
[00:24:32] Len: So
[00:24:32] Joe: you have, so you have target percentages.
[00:24:34] Len: I have target percentages, that’s correct. So… And that, and that way that I try to not only be diversified fully, but I try to balance the allocations. I make sure I’m not over-invested in one sector or one indice at the… And I only do that once a year. You, you can’t do it every six…
[00:24:49] Len: I mean, I guess you could. I mean, but there comes a point where you become a day trader instead of just a long-term investor, and that’s, that’s something you really wanna stay away from because day trading is, it’s tough.
[00:25:01] Joe: Well, you’re gonna… You’re gonna lose. Yeah. When we talked to, uh, Claire Finn Levy and, uh, Lee Freeman Shore about this on our Stock Market Maestros episode, even the best of the best are right about 45% of the time on their pits, so day trading is gonna be, gonna be very difficult.
[00:25:20] Joe: OG, Len mentioned, uh, one thing that we’ll see often on an investment policy statement, which is, “I’m gonna rebalance to X, Y, Z.” Uh, what are a couple other things we commonly see on an investment policy statement?
[00:25:32] OG: Well, I don’t think that there’s any real common, you know… It’s not a prescription. It’s just really, it’s, it’s, it’s your, uh, ability to step away for a second when things aren’t stressful.
[00:25:44] OG: Because people make investment mistakes when expectations don’t match reality, and it works in both directions. So, “Oh my gosh, the market’s down, my portfolio is down. I didn’t know that could happen. I’m gonna make a change.” Or alternatively, “Holy crap, the market’s up, but I’m only up this. What the heck is going on?
[00:26:06] OG: I’m gonna make a change.” And 99 times out of 100, those times for those changes are really- Bad decision times, right? The market’s down 25%, your portfolio’s down 25%. That is not the time to be going, “You know what I’ve, I, I’ve always thought that I should have 40% of my money in fixed income.” You know what I mean?
[00:26:25] OG: Like, no you didn’t. You didn’t just always think that. You just didn’t have any expectations around what the reality was. Or, “Holy crap, small caps are up 25%. I’ve always thought that I should have 30% of my money in small cap.” No, you didn’t. You didn’t always think that, you know?
[00:26:40] Doug: I’ve always thought about joining the priesthood.
[00:26:42] OG: At the end of the day, this is designed, however you need to design it, whether it’s on a freaking napkin or, you know, a three-ring binder, it has to be designed to protect you from yourself and give you the rules for how you’re gonna make your decisions and, and lay out what’s the reality of what can happen, you know?
[00:27:00] OG: A lot of times people will say like, “Well, if small caps are so good, right? Small, smaller companies are so great, why don’t I just have all my money in small companies?” And I would say to you, that’s a fantastic idea. You would beat the living snot out of, you know, the whole VTSAX idiots and, and chill people and be like, oh, you know, you’d smoke ’em by 3% a year.
[00:27:23] OG: Except You have to be okay with a minus 65 every so often. Most people can’t put a million bucks in something, watch it go to 350 and then go, “Yeah, I’m good. I just, I just chill. You know, I just let it, let it ride.” You know? Somewhere on that trip from a million to 350 you’re gonna go, “I’m out.”
[00:27:42] Len: I wanna expound on that a little bit, OG, just ’cause something I, I talk, I’ve talked about here before is, like, one of the things I do, a, a sector that I invest in that not many people do is the mining sector.
[00:27:52] Len: And it is a bear to hold. It’s something that’s, it can be very painful. If you’re holding and you’re staying and you’re, you’re dollar cost averaging, it pays off over the long run, not over the short run, unless you’re day trading. For example, last year, there’s an index for gold miners, there’s an index for silver miners.
[00:28:10] Len: The gold index, GDX, returned 154% last year. The silver index, SIL, returned 164% last year. This year it’s down 10%, both are down about 10%. That just shows you how things can go way up and then they go down, and you just, you know, you don’t go chasing. People that bought at the top last year on those indices are down, they’re probably cursing themselves right now.
[00:28:34] Len: I
[00:28:35] OG: mean, this is no different than people who were, like, buying SpaceX at 210. Yes.
[00:28:39] Len: Yes. And
[00:28:39] OG: they’re down 40%.
[00:28:39] Len: Yeah,
[00:28:40] OG: the,
[00:28:40] Len: the, the point is- You know, as of today … don’t chase. Don’t look at a number then go all in on something. Just be diversified and reallocate.
[00:28:47] Joe: Len, to your point, and OG also to, the point that Len is expounding upon, we had one of the biggest thinkers in silver on the show, and my favorite quote from him was that silver, and Len you’ll appreciate this, silver will frustrate you longer than you can stay solvent.
[00:29:08] Len: Yeah.
[00:29:08] Joe: You will finally decide it’s never going anywhere, you will get out, and then finally it will, it will move. Yeah. He’s, like, trying to figure out the silver market is.
[00:29:15] Len: And I’ve always been of the, the fact that I, I say when it comes to the precious metals themselves, those aren’t investments. Those, if you’re buying those, you’re buying those to hold until the day you die, or you have to liquidate them because you’ve got into some serious trouble somewhere down the road.
[00:29:28] Len: Those aren’t investments to me, those are wealth insurance. If you’re gonna invest in precious metals, it’s in the mining sector or it’s, it’s in the ETFs themselves, the silver ETF and the gold ETF. That’s the investment part. But if you’re buying the physical metal, you don’t plan to ever sell that, and so you just live with- With the ups and downs, and that’s just the way it is
[00:29:49] Joe: Or as OG would say, the frustrations and more frustrations and more frustrations, and then, and, uh, a big up and then more frustrations.
[00:29:55] Joe: It’s
[00:29:55] Len: frustrating, yes.
[00:29:57] Joe: And I wanna start to wrap this up, and I think a key distinction we made for everybody was, in a period like this last six months, do not update your investment policy statement because small caps or because emerging markets were hot. However, if you’re not holding them, I think you have to ask yourself why.
[00:30:15] Joe: Go back and look longer term and go, “Okay, I missed it this time, but is this something that should be in my portfolio?” And then begin to build your allocation and put it into your investment policy statement that, you know what? I messed it up before. Like I wonder, OG, a client comes in, they’re like, “I’m all S&P 500.”
[00:30:32] Joe: You said the S&P 500 early on today, you said the S&P 500 has nothing to do with Len’s goal, your goal, my goal. Let’s say a client comes in and says, “I’m 100% S&P 500 because that worked.” What’s your process? Do you start with risk tolerance, goals, tax situation to begin to get them better diversified? Or do you start with that investment policy statement?
[00:30:54] OG: Well, I think the first thing is you have to have an understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish. If this is money for financial independence, if it’s money for college, you know, that really is the first piece of it. And then from there, yeah, you’ve gotta work down and say, do you philosophically believe that adding more exposure to other areas of the economy globally, both US-based and non-US based, do you believe that that makes sense?
[00:31:22] OG: If you don’t believe it, I can’t, you know, I can’t make you believe it. That’s just part of it. You have to understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it because of that same reasoning before, because there’s wild periods of time where the S&P doesn’t do well. There’s wild periods of time when small companies don’t do well, and there’s wild periods of time when international doesn’t do well, or silver or gold, you know?
[00:31:42] OG: And if you don’t know why you have it, you’re gonna make a bad decision at the wrong time on both ends, right? You’re gonna say, “Well, I, I don’t know why I didn’t have emerging market. I should get all in.” Now, I will say this This came up earlier, and we didn’t come back to it, but the theory of like, “Well, I don’t wanna bu- I don’t wanna invest right now ’cause it’s high, and it might go down.
[00:32:03] OG: You know, it’s higher than it should be.” Like, there is no shoulds. Statistically, the market closes at an all-time high 30% of the time. You’ve got a pretty good chance that it’s gonna keep going up from here. There’s periods of time where, you know, if you bought SpaceX, and you believe in SpaceX, and you bought it at 200, and it’s sitting at 150, and you go, “Yeah, I’m just holding it forever.”
[00:32:24] OG: You buy small companies today, and it’s at 300 is the, is the Russell 2000 and, and it goes down to 250, that’s just part of the deal. Or gold goes down f- 100%, so be it.
[00:32:35] Len: That, that’s why you gotta think like a shopper. L- I mean, that’s, you gotta, you gotta put the shopper’s mindset in- Yeah … into it. It’s like if a price is going down, you gotta look at it like, I’m, and you’re dollar cost averaging.
[00:32:43] Len: You say, “Hey, this is an opportunity for me to buy something on sale.” Uh, investing is the only thing I, I know of where people somehow are av- g- have an aversion to b- buying a stock that’s a g- of a good company that’s dropping, and they’re all jumping in when the price is going through the roof. Can you imagine seeing that at a, you know, your Walmart or wherever?
[00:33:02] Len: Price is going up, and people are running to the stores to spend. I mean, it does happen. It does happen. Right? During the COVID. But I’m saying it, I mean, that’s not how we’re wired when usually go shopping. Real estate. We’re looking for the lowest price possible.
[00:33:11] OG: Yeah.
[00:33:12] Len: Look at a falling market as an opportunity.
[00:33:14] Len: It’s to buy more stock at, at a lower price.
[00:33:18] OG: Agreed
[00:33:19] Joe: I think there’s also two ways to build your allocation. If you think you need to be in small company stocks or you need to be in emerging market stocks, then definitely buying an index makes sense in both of those areas. Or if you need to be just in any sector where you’re not, you can either jump into it by reallocating now or, oh gee, what some investors like doing is just fill in the holes, which means that in your 401, change it so that now you’re gonna add emerging markets at a much quicker pace to get it caught up or add small company stocks to get it caught up.
[00:33:53] Joe: Do you like that way of going in, the hole filling, versus the just reallocate or pick your poison?
[00:34:00] OG: No. I mean, absent a tax problem, which could be a pretty substantial situation, so you gotta be aware of, you know, tax situation. But let’s say that you’re thinking about your IRA or your Roth or something that’s not having any tax issues with rebalancing, um, I would do it all in one day.
[00:34:16] OG: There’s no benefit, there’s no statistical evidence to suggest that waiting to do the right thing is better. Now, depending on the timeframe, you might be right or you might be wrong. You know, you can be that person that reallocated on April 7th of 2025, and in a year their portfolio’s up 50% because that just happened to be the day that they rebalanced the stuff and it looks really great on paper.
[00:34:37] OG: But the reality is, is like you could have also done it on April 1st of 2025 and be even money because, you know, you just, the first seven days where you got clobbered by 30%, you know, or whatever the, the decline wasn’t that bad, just 12%. You can’t judge how the outcome is in a, in a short window, six months or a year.
[00:34:57] OG: Do the right thing in the time when you know it’s the right thing to do. This is another great example of just completely different side of the equation. You’ve got credit card debt and you’ve got an excess cash reserve. Do you, A, just pay it off a little faster, or B, write a frigging check and be out of debt tonight?
[00:35:15] OG: B, write the check, be out of debt, sleep better. Like it’s just so much easier to do. Just rebalance it the way it’s supposed to be, go to bed tonight and feel good about yourself. Absent asterisk tax situation.
[00:35:27] Joe: What I love about your opinion on that is, um, the unwritten rule here is stop trying to think you can predict the future ’cause you can’t.
[00:35:35] Joe: You can’t predict the future.
[00:35:37] OG: You know that scene in Waterboy where Vicki Vallencourt says, you know, that Mud Dogs are gonna win? And, uh, and, and do you know what I’m talking about?
[00:35:45] Joe: No.
[00:35:47] OG: No? It’s the way it’s gonna be. That’s how. It’s not my opinion. This is the way that it is. I can’t believe you guys don’t have the quotes from Vicki Vallencourt at the ready.
[00:36:00] Joe: I know. What
[00:36:00] OG: are we
[00:36:00] Joe: doing?
[00:36:01] OG: That’s pretty, pretty ridiculous.
[00:36:03] Joe: Here’s what I’d like you to do, stackers. I’d like you to x-ray your portfolio. Look at what do you have. If you don’t know what you have in large companies, midsize companies, small companies, international bonds, cash, gold, et cetera, write it down.
[00:36:17] Joe: Find out across accounts how much you have. Actually take an inventory and know what you have, and then check and see really then what you own, and write out your one-page investment policy statement. As OG said, it could be very, very simple, but by following an investment policy, you’re not gonna react to markets.
[00:36:34] Joe: And then ask yourself, “If I should be in some of these asset classes that I’m not in, what needs to move? How do I need to change my, my allocation?” Then to OG’s point, make sure that you look before you sell in taxable accounts because there might be a, uh, there might be some tax consequences. It… And I think last, and I’ll add one on here, try to explain your plan to another human before you do it.
[00:37:02] Joe: ‘Cause if you can’t explain it to somebody else, then it might not be the cool plan that you think it is. I know often I go to Doug and I’m like, “Hey, Doug, what do you think about this?” Which buyer beware, ’cause Doug’s always like, “That’s a great plan, Joe. You should definitely do it.” Yeah,
[00:37:17] Doug: I’m pretty much the same as ChatGPT.
[00:37:19] Doug: I am gonna tell you your idea is awesome. It’s
[00:37:22] Joe: great. It’s great. You know what is great though, is that after those takeaways, Doug, you, uh, telling us what are we celebrating today in our money-related trivia segment?
[00:37:38] Doug: Well, hey there, Stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. July 13th marks the dedication of one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world, the Hollywood sign. You know, Hollywood has given us some incredible things over the years, the movies, uh, uh, Battle of the Network Stars, uh, the ability to make me watch a two-hour film about a guy whose superpower is talking to ants.
[00:38:00] Doug: It’s a great place. You know, when workers finished building the Hollywood sign back in 1923, it stood 50 feet tall, stretched nearly 450 feet across the hillside, and was lit up more than Joe’s mom on Christmas Eve. It also cost about $21,000 to build, which was a pretty big gamble considering they figured it’d only be around like a year, year and a half tops.
[00:38:24] Doug: So here’s today’s question. When the sign was first dedicated, what word appeared after Hollywood? I’ll be back right after I see if my agent sent me another great script.
[00:38:44] Doug: Hi there, Stackers. I’m inevitable Oscar winner and guy who still thinks method acting means refusing to break character while ordering at The Sizzler, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Before the break, I asked you what word originally appeared after “Hollywood” on the famous sign overlooking Los Angeles. The answer?
[00:39:03] Doug: Land. The sign originally read “Hollywoodland” because it wasn’t built to celebrate the movie industry at all. It was actually a giant advertisement for a brand-new housing development in the hills above Los Angeles. The developers figured it’d stand for, like, 18 months, sell a bunch of lots, and then disappear.
[00:39:23] Doug: Instead, they accidentally created one of the most recognizable landmarks on the planet, which just goes to show ya, if you leave something alone long enough, eventually people call it historic, which is exactly why I haven’t cleaned out my garage since 1998. See ya. Len, that’s right down the road from you.
[00:39:43] Len: Indeed it is. Yeah, I can almost see it from my house.
[00:39:45] Joe: And of course, one of the most recognizable monuments, I guess, on Earth is just the top w- was at one point the top of somebody’s marketing funnel. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Leave it to capitalism to win the day. Uh, hey, guess what? We no longer do our TikTok Minute, but we have learned a couple things from social media recently, and we’ve had some Stackers send them in.
[00:40:11] Joe: So I thought we would play a little game called Lessons We’ve Learned From Social Media. The good news is I’ve, I’ve maybe read a thousand things on social media, guys, and I’ve learned two lessons during that whole time, so a great use of time. But the first one is around kids and allowances. It was sent to us by Stacker John.
[00:40:31] Joe: Len, d- did you give your kids allowances?
[00:40:33] Len: No. W- we gave them chores, and we paid them for their chores based on if they did them or they didn’t.
[00:40:40] Joe: OG, how about you?
[00:40:42] Len: No.
[00:40:43] Joe: Nope, no allowance. No allow- no allowances there. Well, it’s funny because, uh, this particular TikToker, this is, uh, dorancomedy on TikTok, he did a lot of what you did, Len, and, um, well, let’s listen to what happened with his allowance scheme.
[00:41:02] TikTok: I pay my kids twenty-five cents for every dog poop they pick up in our backyard. I’ve been doing it for years. Keeps the yard clean, gives them a little bit of spending money. The problem is I’ve created a micro economy where all labor or the cost of things is compared to dog poops. We’ll be walking through the grocery store, and my kids will be like, “Dad, how many poops is this bag of chips?
[00:41:22] TikTok: Dad, this chocolate bar, that’s six dog poops.” We’re at a restaurant, my son’s looking at the menu. He’s like, “Dad, these ribs, that’s a lot of poop.” It’s affecting me. I was at Costco the other day buying groceries, and I thought, “This isn’t worth sixteen hundred poops.” My son heard somebody say, “Kids nowadays don’t know the value of a dollar.”
[00:41:40] TikTok: He’s like, “I know. Four turds. Four turds to a dollar.” They ask me, “How many turds do you make an hour, Dad? How many turds do you get paid?” Not enough
[00:41:53] Joe: Not enough. Doesn’t get enough turds per hour.
[00:41:56] Len: That’s funny, ’cause that, that’s what one of the chores that they get 25 cents for- This was, this was a long time ago, so he’s underpaying his kids.
[00:42:04] Len: He’s underpaying. My kids were getting that 20 years ago.
[00:42:07] Doug: The way you can really stretch out your turds per hour is to only poop on company time.
[00:42:14] Len: Everybody knows that one, Doug,
[00:42:16] OG: yes. I thought he was gonna say- Absolutely … that the kids were taking a in the yard. And being like, “Look.” “
[00:42:20] Doug: I picked it up.” “
[00:42:21] OG: That’ll be another quarter, Dad.”
[00:42:23] Doug: If Mom was paying
[00:42:24] Joe: me to get rid of poop in the yard, pay me per poop, I would only poop in the yard. Like, that is- Or- I would just… That’s free money. That is free money.
[00:42:34] Doug: You could also just save them and then put them back out there.
[00:42:37] Len: Oh, now that’s clever. Clever.
[00:42:39] Joe: No, that’s just cheating your employer, Doug.
[00:42:41] Doug: It’s called poop laundering.
[00:42:42] Joe: That, that is poop laundering. Right. Exactly. But it is interesting, Len, you tied it to tasks, to family tasks, your allowance system.
[00:42:51] Len: Yeah. They’d make their bed, clean their room, pick up the dog poop, set the table, uh, I forget all the, all the stuff they did.
[00:42:59] Doug: Yeah. You know, one of the things we tried briefly along those lines, and maybe just taking it one more step is, uh, because especially at a young age, kids have a hard time conceptualizing money, ’cause it’s an abstract anyways, but it certainly helps if you’ve got a coin or a bill.
[00:43:14] Doug: So we would put… We tried this for maybe couple, three years at the most, but we would put their maximum allowance in a Ziploc bag, and then put it on the refrigerator with a magnet so they could see, “Here’s how much you could get at the end of the week if you do all of your chores, all of the things that were expected of you.”
[00:43:32] Doug: And it wasn’t always just chores. It could’ve been piano practice, or it could’ve been homework or whatever. And there was a sort of a line item amount, and if they s- missed one of those things that was supposed to be done on a Tuesday, we would just pull that 50 cents out- Pull it out … or that dollar out.
[00:43:47] Doug: Yeah. And then they would just see the money getting smaller. That worked for a little while.
[00:43:52] Joe: We had a woman on the show a few years ago, and I’m not finding the episode, but by the time this airs I’ll, I’ll have found it, and if you’ve got kids, I’d love for you to listen to it, Stackers, because she talked about her dad’s allowance system.
[00:44:05] Joe: And when she was in high school, and her two sisters were also in high school, and in middle school, Dad would post jobs to a board, and she and her sisters would bid on the jobs. So this is great- Yeah, I remember that … for older kids Early on, Len, you’ll love this as a guy that worked for a big company, th- they learned that colluding against the common enemy, Dad, was the best way to keep the rate high.
[00:44:30] Joe: And so… And Dad was actually trying to teach them that, that working together was gonna be better than working separately. Yeah. It was a life lesson that he was hoping that they learned. And so initially they bid each other down so they were all working basically for free, and finally they’re like, “What the hell are we doing?”
[00:44:45] Len: You know, I, I have an article on my blog. This is… I wrote this, my kids were, I think at the time, eight and six, and I actually did this. Uh, this is going back to Doug’s comment about kids not understanding, you know, uh, money, the concept of money, and I wanted to check that out with my kids. So the, the article if you wanna come s- you see it, just, it’s, it’s called, I think it’s called My Loan Interview With the Bank of Dad, and it’s Len Penzo, the lo- Mm.
[00:45:06] Len: My Loan Interview. And what I did is I brought the two kids into the kitchen, and I ha- I literally interviewed them as if they wanted money to g- I asked them how much money they would like to have, and then it went from there, and we, I asked them all kinds of questions. And it’s very, it’s really, uh, enlightening on how the kids looked at money.
[00:45:24] Len: And then it was- Yeah … it’s, uh, it was very interesting. It was very interesting and funny.
[00:45:28] Joe: That’s fabulous. And of course, you know, Bank of Mom or Dad gets really… There are ethical conundrums. Like we talked about, Doug, just before our greatest hits week break, a couple weeks ago, where, you know, when kids get older and they want help buying a house, and the mom and dad wanna help you buy a house, but they also wanna weigh in on what type of house you buy, where you buy it.
[00:45:49] Joe: Do you take, do you take the money? Do you not take the money? Is also a conundrum.
[00:45:53] Len: Well, what’s funny is you ask the kids, uh, you know, how much they thought a house cost, and, you know, you’ll be, it’ll be hilarious the, the numbers they come up with. You know, “Ah, $20,” or, you know, the… I mean, they really have no concept of money at that age, and it, it’s quite cute.
[00:46:05] Joe: 2,000 poops. 2,000 poops. Created a microeconomy. I d- I would just wonder what the people at the next table are thinking when, uh… Of course, you know exactly what they’re thinking when he’s like, “These ribs are a lot of poops.” Like, uh, maybe not tomorrow. Let’s pivot to one that Stacker Julia sent us. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg gave an interview on stage at a place called Complex, or at a, at, at a gathering called Complex, that kind of went viral.
[00:46:36] Joe: And of course, uh, some of the comedy people had some fun with it. But I’m wondering, working in big companies, you know, let’s talk a little bit about how you make money, and how maybe to think about communication because, uh, this is Mark Zuckerberg communicating what’s really important to him, and the comedian’s playing the voice in his ear.
[00:46:53] Joe: You know how I was on television for nine years and I wore an earpiece, and you could always hear the director talking to you and the producers talking to you during that time like, “Wrap it up. We’ve got 25 seconds,” whatever. So the comedian’s in the voice of, or is in Mark Zuckerberg’s ear hypothetically during Mark’s, uh, Complex interview.
[00:47:13] bit: You’ve been cooking. Good job. Let’s just bring this interview home
[00:47:15] bit: I think it’s, like, important to get time to recharge and relax. On the ranch, one of my, my projects is I’m trying to, like, create the highest quality beef in the world.
[00:47:23] bit: Yeah. Hey, hey, Mark. L- let’s just not talk about the beef for a second.
[00:47:26] bit: Let’s just go back to, I don’t know, like, the glasses-
[00:47:28] bit: I’m, like, very into the, the, the genetics of the cattle. We’re, like… W- okay, we’re trying to figure out, like, how do you, how do you make it so that you basically can deliver the highest density diet to them?
[00:47:39] bit: Hey, Mark, let’s kill the beef thing. Let’s kill…
[00:47:41] bit: Well, d- don’t act- … You know what I mean. Just abort,
[00:47:43] bit: abort, please. We started, uh, growing macadamia trees because that kind of nut is, like, extremely dense.
[00:47:51] bit: He’s talking about nut density. Somebody pull the plug on this right now.
[00:47:53] bit: They will eat a lot, so they will put on weight and become fat quicker and, and become delicious.
[00:47:58] bit: Mark, I wanna let you know something, and, and that is I lied to you at dinner. I’m sorry. That beef is not good. It is stringy and glowing, and I just said that to you so you would give me a raise. Please stop talking about your raising and killing cattle hobby. That is literally nobody else’s hobby in the entire world, Mark.
[00:48:13] bit: How do you, how do you get them to eat more? Well, it turns out alcohol is great, right, for that because, well, alcohol induces appetite, so-
[00:48:19] bit: He, he still runs the company, right? Like, he, he’s working there? Well, how does he have time for… Why, why does he have time for this?
[00:48:24] bit: Okay, so that’s actually why, like, very high-end beef, they, they’re fed beer, but, okay, what’s the right balance of beer versus water?
[00:48:30] bit: Mark, if you love me and you love this company, you’re gonna stop.
[00:48:35] bit: I’m never gonna stop.
[00:48:36] bit: Great. I’m out. You knew how it comes. Congrats.
[00:48:40] Joe: And, and the guy walks off the job ’cause Mark Zuckerberg won’t quit talking about feeding beer to beef during his interview about Facebook I’ve had some times when communication’s gone off the rails.
[00:48:54] Joe: I remember two stories. Number one was, you remember, what’s the movie about, um… Great lines from Jack Lemmon, from Alec Baldwin, from-
[00:49:07] Len: Glengarry Glen Ross Oh, Glengarry Glen- Glenn Ross. Yeah. That’s a great movie.
[00:49:10] Joe: Glengarry Glen Ross.
[00:49:11] Len: Always Be Closing.
[00:49:12] Joe: I was at American Express and there was a training manager leading a big group of trainees, and during that meeting, a guy got up in the back to go get coffee.
[00:49:24] Doug: Put that coffee down.
[00:49:27] Joe: And he said it, Doug, unironically. Unironically. He was not trying to be funny. He was like, “Coffee’s for closers.” That’s it. “Put the coffee down.” ‘Cause he th- ’cause he thought that that line was not funny, that was the line we needed that moment. Like, it was- Wow … somehow inspirational and was gonna, was gonna help everybody.
[00:49:47] Joe: We’re like, “Wow, uh, you need to rethink that before you open your mouth.” Yeah.
[00:49:50] Doug: You’re scaring the children, dude.
[00:49:52] Joe: Right. Len, uh, you guys had emails, I’m sure, go back and forth that maybe some of the people sending the email maybe should have rethought.
[00:50:01] Len: Yeah. We’ve had, uh, there’s, there’s a couple times people would…
[00:50:04] Len: Uh, there’d be disagreements and, but people would get hot and, and they would, they’d disagree with something somebody else had sent an email on, and they would, they would immed- they wouldn’t think before they’d send, and bam, and then they would insult and then it, things would get very ugly. The, the, the other thing that I used to hate was, I called the reply all doom loop.
[00:50:21] Len: Have you ever got caught in that? Where somebody… This is on like i- i- especially in big corporations, there would be a, you know, there’s thousands of people that work at these corporations, and somebody was sending an email to everybody, and then one of the res- one of the people it was sent to should have just responded to the person who sent to the single person instead of the 20,000 people that are on the email, but they would hit reply all.
[00:50:45] Joe: Oops.
[00:50:46] Len: And so that went to all 20,000 people, and then one person in that group of 20,000 said, “Don’t hit reply all,” and then somebody else would say, “Don’t hit reply all,” and they’re doing the same thing, hitting reply all. So now you’re getting, you’re getting all these don’t hit reply all emails, and then people are saying, “You idiot, you hit reply all,” and now, you know, “Stop it.”
[00:51:06] Len: And it would snowball, and it would never stop, and then, you know, the company would have to just put a, go into the email system and completely shut things down. But, uh, oh, yeah, the, the doom loop used to be, those were hilarious.
[00:51:17] Joe: Back in the early days of Stacking Benjamins, there’s a popular blogger, The Bloggess.
[00:51:21] Joe: OG, remember this one? The Bloggess was accidentally CC’d on a email- Between people trying to get her to advertise stuff on her blog, and she doesn’t do advertisements on her blog. And, uh, the, the one gentleman, what did he say, OG? It was something like, “Let’s show this irrelevant blogger…” I don’t think he said blogger.
[00:51:43] Joe: “Let’s show this irrelevant other B word.”
[00:51:45] OG: Yeah, I don’t think he swore. I think it was something like, “You’re irrelevant. This person’s irrelevant anyway,” or something like that.
[00:51:51] Joe: Yeah. And then the best line ever, best line ever from any blog was what she replied with
[00:51:58] OG: Standby for demonstration of relevance
[00:52:00] Joe: So then she made it public, and that dude was fired.
[00:52:04] Joe: I think you gotta watch out for, for hitting the reply all. Doug, you never saw any of this in your long corporate career?
[00:52:10] Doug: Oh, emails gone astray or proliferating? Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:52:15] Joe: I mean,
[00:52:16] Doug: every-
[00:52:16] Joe: Or bo- or bosses like Zuckerberg ostensibly talking about Facebook and decides to talk about beef and macadamia nuts instead?
[00:52:22] Doug: No. I actually didn’t see, I didn’t see too much of that. I, I didn’t see too much of, uh, senior leadership going off the rails and being out of touch, believe it or not. You’d think you would, ’cause I, I was in some pretty large organizations, but, uh, maybe that’s why. Those people get to that spot because they have some ability to communicate.
[00:52:41] Doug: Yes, yes. But la- especially in the early days of email, yeah, there were so many times when people didn’t realize they were doing a reply all, and then the dirty joke slips in there. I saw that at General Motors. Oh. Like, I saw one that went to tens of thousands of people- Oh, yeah … at General Motors with a dirty joke.
[00:52:57] Doug: Oh, yeah.
[00:52:57] Joe: Were they gone?
[00:52:58] Doug: Oh, before the day was done- What was the joke? … they were gone. Yeah,
[00:53:02] Joe: come on. You can’t leave us hanging.
[00:53:04] Doug: Yeah. And it’s hard to get fired from GM, and they were gone fast.
[00:53:09] OG: So the joke was?
[00:53:11] Doug: Nope. Not going there, ’cause I don’t feel like getting fired before the end of the episode.
[00:53:15] Joe: Some, some lessons there, Stackers.
[00:53:18] Joe: Before you open your mouth or, uh, hit, hit send, I think that’s good stuff. Thanks to people that sent us those from time to time. We love showing, uh, when we finally find some goodness around social media. Send those to me, joe@stackingbenjamins.com. Hey, great episode today. If you know anybody who looked at the first six months of this year and is making what you think might be some sketchy choices, well, maybe send this to them.
[00:53:44] Joe: And on the back porch before we say goodbye, Doug, we actually had a Stacker that helped another future Stacker, it sounds like.
[00:53:51] Doug: We did. We did. We heard from Stacker Jessica when she responded to Gertrude in our Facebook basement group, and Gertrude will, will periodically ask for people’s, uh, wins or success stories.
[00:54:02] Doug: And Jessica said, “After years of me proclaiming to my extended family, ‘Hey, if you ever wanna talk about finance, I’m here for it with zero judgment,’ it finally happened,” Jessica says. “My 25-year-old cousin reached out to me with a question about the 401at her new job. She was feeling completely overwhelmed by the number of choices and jargon.
[00:54:21] Doug: After some encouraging conversation, she signed up, set her contribution on autopilot, and chose investments,” index funds, of course. “She’s now getting the full company match, so it’s like getting a raise she didn’t even know about.” This is so awesome. “I’m so proud of her.” Yeah, “I’m so proud of her for starting to invest while so young, and I’m even more proud of her for reaching out with the questions when she didn’t know how to start…”
[00:54:42] Doug: That’s so like Jessica, making it about herself. Jessica, this is about your cousin, not about you. I’ll get back to it. Here, here she continued. Jessica said, “It also felt really good to finally share some of the things I’ve learned…” We’re back to Jessica again. Anyway, I’m sorry, Jessica. Having a little fun here.
[00:55:00] Doug: Uh, finally, uh, “share some of the things I’ve learned over the last decade of listening to personal finance podcasts like Stacking Benjamins.” Okay, she reeled it in right at the end and gives us credit. Thanks, Jessica.
[00:55:13] Joe: Jessica, that is awesome, and putting it out there to friends. Len, that’s hard to put it out there to friends.
[00:55:18] Joe: Like, “Hey, if you want some help- Come talk to me, no judgment
[00:55:22] Len: Well, I, uh, more than a few times I get asked, you know, what, what’s my portfolio allocation, and I tell them it’s 85% hope, 10% panic and, and 5% actual money
[00:55:32] Joe: That’s Len’s
[00:55:33] Len: IPS.
[00:55:33] Joe: That’s right. He’s got that all in writing That’s
[00:55:35] Len: right …
[00:55:38] Joe: the whole thing in, in, in writing.
[00:55:38] Joe: Mr. Penzo, thanks for hanging out with us again today.
[00:55:41] Len: Thank you. I- it’s always a pleasure to stop on by.
[00:55:45] Joe: Well, and I know we’ve got you again coming up shortly because we’re on final approach, man. It’s almost… God, it feels like we just did this, but the new sandwich survey results are- Yeah,
[00:55:54] Len: we’re a month away.
[00:55:55] Len: Yeah
[00:55:55] Joe: Yeah … they’re coming out of the oven fairly soon. It’s
[00:55:57] Len: coming up, sandwich survey.
[00:55:59] Joe: And if you’re new to the sandwich survey, what’s that all about, for people that don’t know, Len?
[00:56:03] Len: I think this is gonna be the 17th year. I, I started way back when my kids were in school. I just wanted to see whether it was cheaper to make your own lunch or get the kids, you know, have them buy their lunch every day at school.
[00:56:14] Len: And so I started, uh, pricing the ingredients of 10 different brown bag sandwiches, and, uh, I just total that up every year and I track the prices and it’s a great, uh, it’s a great tracker of inflation. It’s very interesting to see which sandwiches are the, you know, the cheapest and most expensive every year.
[00:56:32] Len: And usually it’s a war between, uh, peanut butter and jelly and bologna, but that’s usually the big, uh, that’s like the, uh, Yankees and Dodgers, I guess, in the baseball world, so.
[00:56:39] Joe: It is, right.
[00:56:41] Len: So that, that’s always fun to see who comes out on top every year. But there’s other sandwiches in there as well and, uh, it’s just something fun.
[00:56:46] Len: It’s fun doing. Like I said, this is 18 years now, so there’s a lot of data and it’s very interesting to track how the prices of sandwiches and those ingredients have gone up or, and down over the years.
[00:56:55] Doug: Do you ever do interleague play between bologna and peanut butter, and like have- Yeah, we could- … that together?
[00:57:01] Doug: Like have
[00:57:01] Len: a bol- That’s kind of a good idea … bologna, peanut butter. Like a peanut butter and banana or so- sandwich. I could do that or something. Yeah, we could kind of do that too. No, I don’t. I-
[00:57:07] Doug: No.
[00:57:08] Joe: I’m most interested in the other end of the survey, the expensive sandwiches. The, uh, BLT- Yeah, and roast beef
[00:57:15] Joe: the roast, roast beef. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some goodness there. Of course, I don’t know, man, on the right day, nothing beats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Uh, Len, you also not only write at lenpenzo.com, but you also have organized a bunch of Len Penzo greatest hits into a book.
[00:57:31] Len: Yeah. And, and let me just say, I’m, I’m extremely happy.
[00:57:34] Len: The, the book has been climbing, it’s been rising up the charts. It went up 10 spots last week. It’s now at 2,636,150- … on Amazon, so.
[00:57:43] Doug: Wow.
[00:57:44] Len: We are m- moving forward and-
[00:57:46] Joe: Dude, we knew you when you were only 2 million. Yes. Look
[00:57:49] Doug: out, John Grisham
[00:57:51] Joe: And the name of it is, uh, True Money Stories
[00:57:54] Len: True Money Stories, that’s correct
[00:57:55] Joe: available on Amazon or just head to limpenzo.com and-
[00:57:58] Len: Yeah, it’s basically, it’s a, it’s a… I’ve handpicked, uh, I, I’ve done three, there’s 3,000 articles on that blog over 18 years, and I handpicked the, uh, 165 most popular ones that, over the years. It’s a great
[00:58:09] Joe: way to introduce people to the magic of limpenzo.com.
[00:58:13] Joe: All right, that’s gonna do it for today, Stackers. Thank you for hanging out with us today. Guess what? Coming up on Wednesday, we go into history. There is a bestselling book, How to Get Rich in American History. We’re gonna talk to historian Dr. Joseph Moore about, well, some of the things that we think are bedrock personal finance might not be as bedrock-y as you think they are.
[00:58:36] Joe: It is super fun. I love going into how all this stuff works, and really getting rid of some of the myths and getting into what really happened, and, uh, Joseph Moore is gonna bring that all home on Wednesday. Plus, we’re gonna go back again into the first half, and we’re gonna replay some of the biggest lessons that we had from the first half of 2026.
[00:58:56] Joe: We did this last year and it was so fun, so we’re gonna do a little bit of that as well on Wednesday. All right, that’s enough foreshadowing. Doug, we gotta go back, ’cause people got one more thing that they gotta do with that piece of paper in front of them. What are the three biggest things we should learn today?
[00:59:09] Doug: Well, Joe, first, take some advice from our featured topic. Did you miss the small cap rally? Don’t worry, there’s gonna be another one at some point. Just focus on building a portfolio to meet your goals, but include wide diversification so that you catch these wins without trying to figure out when is the right time to jump in.
[00:59:28] Doug: Second, allowances? It’s a great idea to get kids used to the idea of money, but don’t inadvertently create a micro economy around, um, uh, the poop. Poop. Don’t, don’t do that. But the big lesson, just like the Hollywood sign, don’t believe anyone when they tell you something’s only temporary. I’ve had one of Joe’s mom’s casseroles in my freezer since ’06.
[00:59:54] Doug: Thanks to Mr. Len Penzo for joining us as guest co-host again. Catch all of his musings in his new book, True Money Stories, and also visit his website, thepersistentitch.com, AKA LenPenzo.com. This show is the property of SP Podcast LLC, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. You’ll find out about our awesome team at stackingbenjamins.com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots.
[01:00:27] Doug: Come say hello. And oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamins show.
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