Have you ever dreamed about beating the stock market? Money in your pocket and a lifestyle beyond compare? Sure you have! Here’s a surprise…there are people out there who HAVE beaten the stock market, and the man who’s written a series of books detailing HOW they did it joins us today! Jack Schwager is the mind behind the Stock Market Wizards series, and today he joins us again to detail a couple more wizards. We walk through lessons we can glean from them about how to invest our own portfolios, using case studies from the best and the brightest traders as a guide. Jack’s last appearance was a huge it for us, so if you missed that one, you definitely do NOT want to miss today’s show.
In our headline segment, we dive into the new “hot” budgeting trend: LOUD budgeting. Surprisingly, loud budgeting has nothing to do with screaming while using your budget app…it’s a trend around financial wellness. We talk about loud budgeting, how to join the trend, and maybe help you feel less alone if you’re actually hoping to be more responsible with your cash. Of course, we also have a TikTok minute that’s inspirational (you’re closer to Elon Musk’s net worth than you may think!). Doug also shares his wizardly trivia, and more!
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
Our TikTok Minute
Jack Schwager

Big thanks to Jack Schwager for joining us today. To learn more about Jack, visit Jack Schwager – A Real Market Wizard. Grab yourself a copy of the book Unknown Market Wizards: The best traders you’ve never heard of.
Doug’s Trivia
- If you don’t have magical powers, what would the wizards in Harry Potter books call you?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG
- Stacker Kerry is approaching retirement age and has a question about how to estimate withdrawal rates in retirement to insure she and her husband don’t run out of money.
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Other Mentions
Join Us Wednesday!
Tune in on Wednesday when we’ll have the whole list of top tax software options from The College Investor website, plus an appearance by Mr. College Investor himself, Robert Farrington.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: 5 Things You Should Know Before You Retire (SB1472)
Episode transcript
It’s
Monday
morning. Monday, Monday, Monday.
Oh gee. How do you like to do affirmations in the morning? Do you do them in the backyard? Do you do them doing sun guides? Yeah, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. You know how I like to do a Monday morning affirmation, Doug. I like to raise my glass. Alright, let’s do it.
And I do it. Doug, in a very nons sarcastic way, in a very straightforward, let’s
just salute our troops kinda way. Not passive aggressive kinda way at all. No passive aggressive about what? But what exactly. Doug.
Here’s two, the men and women of our military. On behalf of the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, the men and women making podcast in mom’s basement, you’re still a great week of Stacking Benjamin.
Thanks, everybody. Bottoms up. It’s easy to grin when your ship comes in and you’ve got the stock market beat. The man
worthwhile.
It is the man who can smile. Well, his shorts aren’t too tight in the seat.
Okay, cookie to be honored.
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. Today you’ll learn whether you’ve got what it takes to be a market wizard with bestselling author Jack Schwager and in our headlines. We’re gonna talk about a new trend in budgeting. Are you kidding me? There are new trends. Oh my God, I can’t wait. Plus you are probably closer to being a billionaire than you think.
Our TikTok minute will explain just how close you are. Plus one stacker knew they’d better call SA Sea High and og. And of course, I’ll share some hairy trivia. And now a guy with an invisibility cloak covering his hair
and also
og.
Oh my God, you missed one writing meeting. One writing meeting, and all of a sudden the writing team turns on you.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin. Show up. Cho
Saul-Sehy, uh, every show, money on X, uh, Twitter slash uh, whatever. Cross the card table from me, the guy. Um, well, he’s got his hair covered up by a cap. It’s Mr. og. How are you man? I mean, it’s. It’s there. It’s still there. It’s still there. Doug is said How much hair you had when you were young and spry, like og I think I’ve
got more than that now.
More false.
I, I said I think I have more than that now. In your opinion.
Yes. If you take all the hair off Doug’s back and put it on his
head. That’s lots, lots of hair in the back of my arms. I’ve got that hair now too.
How do you manicure that?
Doug? You just don’t look at it. You don’t manicure it. You just pretend it’s not there.
Weed whip. Weed
whacker. Well wait a minute. So how often do you have to change the little thing on your weed whacker? ’cause that’s some dense growth there, right?
Yeah, it’s, you know, maybe biweekly.
Tell me about, uh, that
process. Well, first you got, you need a Torx number
- Oh. Manscaping has never been better.
Never, never been better. You can use power tools
for your personal grooming man. You have reached the pinnacle. Jack Schwager
here, one of our favorite, absolute favorite mentors. If you’re somebody that would like to be more of a stock market wizard, I. Jack Schwager studies people that, uh, that do the unthinkable.
They actually beat the s and p 500. But before that, we’ve got a beautiful
headline. And I thought you couldn’t do that. I thought you couldn’t do that.
Got a beautiful headlight Ott. Turns out budgets. So we’re almost as excited as Doug. So let’s go. Hello darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines.
Our headline today comes to us from CNBC. Uh, Jessica Dickler wrote this piece for 2024. The quiet luxury trend is out and loud. Budgeting, they call it, is in, here’s how to make the most of it. Are, are we tired of the pet names? No, I like ’em loud. Budgeting. You do like the name loud? Budgeting? Yeah. ‘
cause I’m loud and obnoxious, so this fits right in with me.
Why’d you think I was so excited about it In the Open. I suggested this headline. I’m like, yes. Finally budgeting for me. I get to walk into a restaurant, go I’m cheap as hell. And you’re not getting a tip live from Doug’s budget. I’m not paying a
damn thing. Uh, Jessica writes, just months ago we were coveting Laurel Piana, cashmere baseball hats and three still hard, still are $300 Smithson notebooks in the name of quote, quiet Luxury and justifying each expensive purchase as using quote girl math.
But in 2024. Yeah. I didn’t hear you say still are still are. Not using the girl math oog, but in 2024, there’s a new idea ticking hold that overtly rejects the urge to overspend and promote speaking up about saving money. Welcome to the era of loud budgeting. That’s what they’re calling it on TikTok, all the kids these days.
It encourages consumers to take control their finances, and be vocal about making money conscious decisions rather than modeling purchase decisions after celebrities in their bottomless pockets. And financial experts love it. Oh gee, you’re a financial expert. Do you love it? Uh,
I wasn’t listening. What am I loving?
He was out as soon as we said quiet. He’s, he’s such a big expert. He is. I don’t need to listen to that. I
got it handled. You know what’s funny about this? I’ve always thought that just because LeBron James buys something, or just because even Longoria buys something or name a, come on, celebrity.
Those are some, like, pretty disparate names.
Like how do, like,
like why do I have LeBron and even Longoria? Why do I have to, to buy it? Because they have it. I mean, the idea that because an influencer owns it, then clearly it belongs in my driveway.
I saw this funny, uh, I don’t know if it was a Instagram or I don’t go on Instagram, YouTube video or something like that.
And I think it was one of those late night talk show hosts. Might’ve been like James Corden or is it James? Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. Uh, but I think we called Jimmy. Jimmy
because the rest of ’em are, might’ve been him or, or one of those other guys. But anyways, um, they were at lunch with LeBron and he’s got the bill and he’s like, all right, so you had the salmon salad at Cooper’s, and I told you those, those soda refills weren’t free.
All right, it’ll be th gimme 32 bucks. And he’s like, no, you’re LeBron James, man. And he’s like, yeah, what’s that got to do with that? And he goes, I’m not paying for lunch. You’re LeBron. You’re paying for lunch. And he’s like, no, man, I didn’t order the. The, the cheesecake. I’m not, that’s not me. And, and like, it was just this big funny skit.
So finally he’s like, all right, fine. I’ll pay for it. Like, how much do owe? Yeah. And LeBron goes, oh, shoot, shoot. I’m, can you searching for his wallet? Searching for his wallet? Yeah. After the guy pulls it out, which is kind of funny. LeBron
and your brother have a lot in common. Yeah, they do. Yeah.
Steak brother.
I have a great story from my brother. I wasn’t there directly for this, but, uh, they were playing poker at a guy’s house during the.com boom. He had just sold his company for like $120 million, and they’re over at his giant house. This is up in, outside of Boston, and there at his giant house playing poker, ba ba.
And they’re getting pretty deep into the night and they all have to ante up. And all of a sudden the guy who’s the host who’s just, you know, bajillionaire. And he was before he sold his company, and now he, he is even more all of a sudden he goes, oh shoot. I need a, and right away my brother reaches into his pocket and goes, you need a couple of bucks, man, to Annie up.
I can help you out here sitting in like this 10,000 square foot mansion.
He’s first, he’s plumb out.
Yeah, my brother throws a five on the table. I
got you. But still, what’s funny is, you know, you, you look at Dr. Thomas Stanley, who famously wrote The Millionaire Next Door, but he also wrote a couple other books about networking with millionaires and also about selling to millionaires.
And what I found interesting in the selling book. Was that people, when they’re around millionaires expect the millionaire to pay. Yeah. They expect the millionaire to be all lavish. And Dr. Stanley made this great point. He goes, that’s not how they got there. They got there because they minded their money.
And I think it is cool when you see people that have money go, yeah, I’m not paying for that. Like, I’m not doing that. That type of outlaw budgeting, I think is, is pretty cool. It, it sets a nice example Oji. I think
that there’s just a lot of opportunities in your regular day-to-day life where, where it can make a big difference and, and you don’t think that it adds up over time, but think about like a car purchase for example.
You know, the new car smell, the how great that experience is to, to go in and get the thing that you want or order or do whatever. And you know, maybe you do that how many times in your lifetime. Five, six, maybe instead if you bought the year old version, which has still got all the same
tech in it, which is it now has a new to me smell, still virtually,
you know, brand new.
It’s just got, uh, the depreciation kicked out of it by some other gal or guy and, and you know, whatever. And it’s like that $10,000, $12,000, $15,000 change, plus the interest on the loan that you didn’t take for that money five or six times over your lifetime turns into a bunch of money just by making one, one little tweak that the only person who knows that’s not a brand new car
is you.
Yeah. And I think the, one of the points of this piece is it’s now getting trendy to be overt about, Hey, that doesn’t fit for me and what I’m doing right now. Whereas usually the stigma is, you don’t wanna look like I’m the person who can’t afford to be here or is choosing not to buy this meal or something like that.
This is really taking our Midwest values and making it national. How many times do we say, Hey Joe, nice sweater. And you’re like, oh, you like this? I got it at Target. It was only eight bucks like that. That’s a Midwestern thing. We all do that. When somebody compliments you, we talk about how, you know, how inexpensively got, we got something.
I feel like this is just magnifying that out on the front end of that discussion to say, yeah guys, I don’t wanna go to that restaurant ’cause I just, it doesn’t fit with my month right now. My budget right now. I love
that Flex Doug, how you just called us trendsetters. Are you saying we’re trendsetters?
Uh, sure
Neither of your guys’ sweatshirts are trend sweaters at all. Just, just you don’t take
my Molson t-shirt over my Mr. Rogers sweater
under my, it’s a cardigan zip up. Um, so let’s not, let’s not flex quite yet.
There aren’t even suede elbow patches on that thing, Joe.
I know, but I do like Doug what you’re saying because I saw yet another video of a, uh, frustrated person who went out to lunch with a bunch of friends that were more wealthy than she was, and she ended up, you know, everybody at the table goes, oh, let’s divide it evenly.
And she specifically didn’t want to go to the restaurant, only went because it was her best friend’s birthday, and ended up with one fifth of this bill where she specifically got a salad and water because she didn’t have the cash. Then was made to feel guilty and judged. And, uh, so for her, this is a, this is a great trend.
Yeah.
To be able to say, Nope, can’t go. Sorry. Yeah, you do.
You, I do think no matter whether we’re a millionaire, an hour or somebody working on it, being out loud, we had, uh, uh, Gigi Gonzalez on talking about that being a mentor in her family. I think it’s super important. We will dive more into this in our newsletter, the 2 0 1 stacky Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1, and ways that, uh, maybe you can have some of these conversations that at first seem awkward, but hopefully they are becoming trendy and more like us, frankly.
Stacky Benjamins dot com slash two one for that. Hey, guys, time for the TikTok Minute. It’s part of the show where we shine a light on a TikTok creator who’s either creating brilliance or creating some air quotes. Brilliance, uh, Doug, I went to you last time. Let’s go back to og. og. We’re gonna see some brilliance or air quotes, brilliance out of our tiktoks today.
Yeah, the, uh. New year, new me is over, so this is gonna be trash as the kids
say. Just, just like our New Year’s resolutions. Yeah. OGs over it.
I’m over it. He’s still bitter about failing at dry January on the third.
I’m, I’m trying, I’m trying dry first two days, February 4th. One step at a time. Doug dry day.
Don’t shame me, crystal. I’m trying
Crystal on our sister show. The, is it sister show? What is that right? Yeah. We’ll call that sister show. Okay. I like, she has damp February, I think she’s doing. Right. I like that.
I like Rainforest. February,
my, myself. That’s what you go. I go. Came Katrina February,
hydration.
February. Take it out with you guys. Here’s the cool thing, you know, part of getting up in the morning though, is getting motivated. You gotta stay motivated, you know, wet. Talk about New Year’s resolution, staying on top of it. And you know, you look at these people who might be way ahead of you in terms of their net worth.
Well, these DJs in Australia have, uh, talked about how close you are to being uber wealthy. Let’s listen in.
Just wanna remind
everyone, if you have a net worth of a
hundred dollars,
you are 32
Blackjack, hands away from Elon Musk.
It’s a very interesting way to look at it. I wonder what the odds
are of winning 32
hands of blackjack in a row. Slim to
none would be my guess. Yeah. Oh, come on. But, oh gee, you’re only 32. Blackjack. Hands away. I mean, we could listen to Jack Schwager today. Talk about the stock market, or just win 32 hands of blackjack in a row.
And you’re Elon Musk so close.
I’m gonna give it a whirl. I think this weekend I might up the casino. Just see what happens
if anybody can do it
this slow but steady thing is for losers, right? OG gets the win on that one. I think that might be trash coming up next. I absolutely love this guy’s work. Back in 1989, he released a book that went way bigger than his publisher thought than anybody thought.
And it is case studies of people that he called Market Wizards. These people that have beaten. The stock market and he just went it’s case study after case study of how these people did what they do. And there are tons of lessons in not only market wizards, but in his next book, the New Market Wizards, stock Market Wizards, hedge Fund Market Wizards, the Little Book
of Market Wizards,
and now the second printing expanded edition of the Unknown Market.
Wizards, people you’ve never heard of that are quietly beaten the heck outta the market. We’re gonna learn from Jack here in a minute. Maybe shine a light on some fantastic investors. But first, uh, Doug, who you’re gonna talk a little bit about Wizards, I believe. Absolutely I
am. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, as I’m sure you’ve already assumed, I’m a pretty avid reader.
I mean, look, I read all day, every day, signs, captions, emails, you name it. I’ve even gotten into big books lately. I’m talking like more than a hundred pages. Wow. You know, it’s unlike me to brag. I just, I don’t do it that often, but I’ve even been breezing through Harry Potter. Joe’s mom’s been teasing me saying those books are for children, which is not true at all.
Ma, first of all, I know parents that read ’em to their kids, which means they’re too advanced for kids to read on their own. They gotta have adults do it. Second, there’s pretty big words in there, like hip, hip, hippogriff and qui. And a, A pirate. A pirate and expels. I mean, like, I’m practically learning a whole new language over here, considering how popular the series is.
I should start doing magic as a side gig. You know, like strike while the higher is still moderately hot. All you gotta do is hide cards up your sleeves, and guess which one someone picked? I’d probably make millions at company parties and weddings and funerals. Hey, watch this body disappear into the ground.
I bet I’d be a huge hit at weddings too, too soon. No, but seriously, the wedding gigs, ladies love magicians, right? At least more than clowns. I used to think they love clowns at weddings, but boy was I wrong on that one that time. Hey, today’s trivia question for all of you budding investment wizards is if you don’t have magical powers, what would the wizards in Harry Potter books call you?
I’ll be back right after I practice guessing which card I’m holding up.
Hey there, stackers. I’m speed reader and closeup magician, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. During the break, I bought myself a magic kit. I don’t think I wanna jump the gun on this, but I think I may have found my calling. I’ve only practiced in front of the mirror so far, but I’ve even surprised myself. I mean, I seriously had no idea what hand the ball was in.
I mean, that’s, that’s scary. Good. Today’s trivia question is, if you don’t have magical powers, what would the Wizards and Harry Potter books call you? The answer. If you are a mere commoner like Joe or OG Wizards like myself, and my good friend, JK Rowling would both refer to you as a muggle, which is interesting because I thought if I learned magic, they’d stop calling me a cracker.
You gotta look up what that means, I guess. And now here to teach you about what you need to know before you think about becoming a stock market wizard. It’s today’s mentor, Jack Schwager.
Well, when it comes to the hundreds of smart people who’ve influenced my investing behavior more than anyone when it comes to investing, I put this guy easily in the top five, maybe in the top one or two.
Jack Schwager back. How are you man? I’m doing great. Thanks. I’m, I’m so happy you’re back with us. It’s gotta be gratifying, Jack, to see not just me, but even just all the people I talk to about your books, to see how much this work, not just the the reprint of unknown market wizard, but just market wizards in general, that it’s resonated with so many people.
Yeah, I get that feedback too, thankfully.
How did this begin for people that missed your first time here? How did the whole Market Wizard series begin?
Yeah, it, well, I knew some great traders back, back in those days. I was a research director for, for, you know, wall Street firms. And, uh, I had the idea, I knew some great traders and I had the idea of doing this book Market Market Wizards, but I, I, being a research director is a full-time job.
You don’t really have time to do it. Yeah. I had taken a sabbatical to do a, an analytical book, like nearly an 800 page book. And I, you know, that was what, that was good for what it was. And it, you know, it sold okay for what it was. Uh, but I, the next book I wanna do is more popular book, which, which ended up being market wizards, but I didn’t have the time.
And anyway, the catalyst was, wanted a pub, another publisher. It. I was familiar with the analytical book wanted me to do a whole bunch of analytical books for them. I said, no thanks, you know, I’ve done it. Been there. I don’t wanna do that again. Although I did end up doing it again, but that’s another story.
So, so he, I said, no, you know, I said, well, if I was doing anything else, I’d do this book, you know, but, so he said, okay, why don’t you do that? I said, okay, I’ll do it. You know, and I was, I just needed a push. I needed a push,
wasn’t it? Was Market Wizards a success right away?
Yeah, it was. What did, right when it came out, there was a Wall Street article that came out, or a review article and, um, you know, favorably on the book, and the book sold out.
It immediately sold out. The publisher who shall remain nameless, was just horrible. It took him like about a month to get restocked. Oh, no. So, no. Yeah, I mean, it was like, it was just, you know, total incompetence and, uh. So, but the book was an, yeah, it was an immediate success. And, uh,
yeah, I find myself devouring these because I think strong traitors have strong personalities.
You’re able to bring out their strong personalities and really just the themes, the things we can learn. I’d love to dive into just a couple of the people early in this book, and maybe we’ll make this a case study and then people can pick it up and get more. But let’s start off where you begin with a guy named Peter Brandt.
These are market wizards that most people have never heard of as you know it, Jack, it’s why it’s called Unknown Market Wizards. But tell us a little bit about Peter. Who’s Peter Brandt? Okay. So
Peter Peter’s a, a real veteran trader, the quotes around veteran there. He started trading back about 40 plus years ago.
He and once were two phases. He, he traded for about 20 years, then decided he didn’t want trade anymore. Went completely cold Turkey at trading, didn’t look, Marx didn’t do anything. And about 12 years later he decided, you know, maybe I should try trading again. You know, and he hadn’t been following Marx, hadn’t been doing anything, and, but he got started and he got caught up in it again.
That was, I guess, I don’t know, maybe about 15 plus year, maybe 15 to 20 years ago. So he is, had these two approximate 20 year careers in trading, separated by this period where he didn’t trade at all. And you know, in both periods he did, did extremely well. I mean, he averaged, I dunno, roughly, I guess around 40% or so, I maybe off by 10% one way or the other.
Yeah, yeah. But still amazing. Yeah, and he’s big, he’s really big on risk control. So, uh, for him, I mean, taking a 1% risk on a trade would be enormous. He doesn’t do that. So all his trades are like fractions of a 1% risk and he tries to get him to break even risk as quickly as he can. He’s also, uh, a classical chart trader.
Back to before Edwardson McGee, there was a book, which I know only through Peter by Schu, which preceded Edwardson McGee, which is the book most people think, started technical analysis. So he goes all the way back, uh, in his research on short analysis to that
time. I think you say tuck it about that book.
Is it like 1932? Like some in the thirties? Yeah, 1930s. Right, right. Well, and this is the first thing. Let’s dive into Peter for a little bit that I found, you know, kind of parsing. The discussion that you had with Peter, your discussion with him. All I hear about every year when I was a financial planner, the last, uh, 15 years of doing financial media, Jack, all I hear is about the new, new, new, new, new thing, right?
There’s always a new, new thing. And Peter goes completely the opposite. P Peter’s using stuff that is so antiquated that nobody follows it anymore but him. It’s is is this a trend that some of the traders or a lot of the traders stick to some of these old methods that other people have forgotten and you know, because they’re so looking at the hot stuff that’s happening today?
No,
I mean, this is, uh, like, uh, one of the points I make, uh, in all my books is that people gravitate to a style that fits their personality and he is just comfortable with that old style. You know, very, at the beginning of his career when he used to, uh, he worked for one of the, uh, he worked as a broker and.
In futures, you know, sort of hedging their, their product. And uh, you know, he was not successful in the, you know, first few years or he didn’t trade, trade it lightly, whatever. But he found success by finally going to technical analysis, chart analysis. And that’s just what worked for him. It stayed with him.
Now, he’ll be the first one to say that it doesn’t work a lot at the time, and there’s no magic to chart analysis. It doesn’t predict anything. But what he says and does for him is it identifies those points in time where he can set up a trade that has a good win to loss ratio, uh, that he has a good shot of making much more in the trade than they has to risk.
It’s a meaningful point. Something develops on the chart that they say, okay, this is a meaningful point. The market should go. Let’s up. Right? Goes back down. Where it was two days ago. Something’s wrong and I’m out. So he identifies those points. It’s not that charts are predictive so much as they allow him to pick points where he can put on these trades, and he always does it with very minimal
risk.
It’s almost like, ’cause an artist, it’s the canvas he paints on. Like he’s not gonna change canvases.
No, I mean this, this is what, this, what works for him Now, he does change. There used to be a lot of patterns that he used to use, which no longer work anymore. And uh, so he doesn’t use them anymore. So he has change in the way he applies that method.
Uh, certain patterns now more important, much more important than they were certain patterns that used to be important. He no longer follows, so he does have to adapt to the way the market has changed. But he’s using the same basic
methodology. I love this. Working on the machinery kind of approach versus going from diet to diet to diet.
If you know what I’m talking about. He’s just tweaking the machine. You write that, you know, you talk about that. This is what really works for him. You write that. There was one period where people told him, no, no, this is the new, new thing and he started losing his ass, Jack. Well, the thing
was that he had at that particular point, here’s the critical thing.
Maybe he wasn’t meant to manage other people’s money, but he’s, he, he, for years, people were asking, friends were asking him to manage their money, and finally one year he gave in, he started managing money, and as soon as he started managing money, he hit a losing streak and it was during a losing streak.
He. He started trying all these other new, so-called newer technical approaches and whatever, and you know, none of it worked. And he just got deeper and deeper in a hole. And finally, after about, I think it was a year, a year and a half, a year and a half, close to a year and a half I think, where he wasn’t this drawdown period, he just said, that’s it.
He gave all the money back to the people who invested, just went back to trading his own account. That was his exact love. The next 17 and 18 months, he was straight up. And of course he went back to his old approach. So it was a combination of both realizing that he was uncomfortable managing other people’s money, and secondly, that he had deviated from what had worked from all these years.
And just going back to, to who he was and what we, what he, what he was really comfortable
with. I feel like for several of the wizards that you have interviewed that they really feel uncomfortable with, maybe not just other people’s money and taking them along for this ride, but also. The huge asset base, and I think about how we often hear that you can’t beat the stock market and yet because these huge money managers are dealing with so much money.
Of course Jack, they gotta get in slowly. They gotta get out slowly. It is the mechanisms by which they have to trade make it nearly impossible for them to beat their benchmark because they’re trying to mirror it so much. Do you think the fact that they’re dealing with so much less money, not small sums, but so much less money.
That helps them be nimble enough that they get their big shot at it to beat their index.
Yeah, I, I certainly think it’s an advantage or maybe the absence of a disadvantage when you’re a small trader because you don’t move the market by what you’re doing. Although, well, for some people are having enough to think that they do, boy, this, the market went for my stop.
They, they might be trading, you know, one or two futures slots and they think, they, believe me, the market’s not going after the one lot, you know, position. It’s just your stop is where, where everybody else’s stop is and that’s why you got stopped out. But it’s definitely, and so it’s definitely an advantage if you are small enough to get in and out and it doesn’t cause any ripples.
Surely the, a lot of, in some of these other books where I interviewed hedge fund traders trading huge amounts, you know, billions, that’s much harder. That is much harder. Traders like somebody like Bruce Ner or or Paul Tudor Jones, some of these really. Extremely famous traders of, of recent, you know, of my, my lifetime at least, when they transitioned to, to managing these larger firms and managing billions or tens of billions of dollars, they, they still did okay, but their returns were nothing like the returns when at the point I interviewed him when we were trading mostly their own
money.
Yeah. It’s almost like the Morningstar manager back in the old days when he’d hit five stars and then he screwed because he gets so much money thrown his
way. Well, that’s another thing. That’s a regression to the mean. Right. So that’s because, but a lot of these, so-called Five Star Performances is not because the manager is great, it’s because they’re trading the right strategy or the right market.
So you get a year where energy does great. You know, who’s gonna be, well, all the five stars are gonna be energy managers. Doesn’t mean that they’re brilliant, it’s just they happen to be trading the right strategy at the right time. And I, in that book Market Sense and Nonsense, I actually did several, I did studies in that book, for example, I took you looking at the best strategies and the worst strategies, you know, and what happens in the following year.
And sure enough, you know, the worst strategies I think ended up doing better than the best strategies, you know? Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, because you get that reversion to the mean, because what does it, if something is done best, what does it mean? It means that market or that strategy is going to, and I did it over one, three and five year periods, has done really well over that.
Past year period. Sure. So it tends to get exhausted. You know, it’s like, it’s capturing a period where crude oil goes from, from $30 to a hundred dollars. So, sure. You know, and, and when that happens, you get more supply coming out. You get the mad constraint and things, you know, it, it’s sos the seeds of its own destruction.
And so that’s why you get this pattern where best performing funds often become worse performing funds and vice versa.
And a couple of the early character studies in this book, we talk about Peter Brandt. Then you go into Jason Shapiro. One thing that those two have in common, Jack, is that they both, to your point right after their best year, they say then they had their worst year.
Is, is that reversion the mean? Is that getting too cocky? Is that believing your own BS to some degree? Like what do you think creates this dichotomy between greatness and then horrible returns? That’s
some degree may be reversion to me, but that’s something, there’s something else that goes on. This is, we’re talking individual traders where they’re making these discretionary decisions, which is true for Grant and sha and actually almost all the, the traders in, in the most recent book, when you’re doing that, if you’re doing, if you have a tremendously success, super successful period, you tend to get more complacent.
I mean, it’s just human nature, you know, you sort of, you have to relax, oh, I got this, and uh, you know, you’re getting a little sloppier. Yep. And it’s that aspect of it, it’s that, you know, people sort of, when they’re coming out of a bad period or just normally, uh, these Australians tend to be very, very focused and disciplined.
And, and it’s not that they, uh, have this fault, but I think human nature, if you go through this really super successful period, there’s a tendency to get less. Less intense and less restrictive
during those times when things are down. Both of these two gentlemen are trading in the futures markets, which most of our stackers are in index funds, Jack, so they wouldn’t imagine being in these super risky markets.
And yet both of them talked extensively to you, not just Peter, who really part of his backbone is risk management, but they both talked to you extensively about getting beat up and then learning about risk management. Talk about managing risk and stop losses in volatile markets. Is that something that the average person should be doing?
Yeah. Well,
here, I gotta make a distinction for your audience. You have to know whether you’re an investor or a trader, okay? And, and also whether you are somebody who’s just investing without any. Without any, uh, belief that they are special or have any particular skill. They just want to invest money for the future and do it in a reasonable way versus people who are actual traders and think they’ve got a method that is, that can do better than the market.
So those are two different universes. Now, for the, for the audience who’s just investing reasonably for their money and don’t have any particular skill, actually the best thing they can do long term is buy index funds and forget about low costing index funds and forget about it. It’s, it’s a different world for traders.
However, their risk management, so, so the idea risk management in the, in the first instance is kind of almost impossible because then you’d end up sort of getting out of markets when they pull back, let’s say an index fund when it pulls back, which is not a good strategy because. You know, a lot of people do that.
They sort of get scared and they get out, and that’s the wrong time to get out. That’s when you should be investing. So it’s a different world. But for traders, they’re trying to make money sort of in a consistent way without, without losing much. And they can’t just sit and hold. If they sit and hold, they can get wiped out.
So there, risk management is critical. It’s more critical. As almost every trader I’ve interviewed, it’s more critical than the actual methodology. Every professional trader is successful. Will, almost every trader will tell you that risk management is the key and everything else is secondary.
Both of these guys, Jason and Peter both got wiped out.
You write several times before they finally found success too. How often has this theme of resilience been a piece of being a wizard? Well,
it, it, it’s common, I think, into the first chapter of the first Market Wizards book. You know, a fellow by the name of Michael Marcus is a whole litany of wipeouts, complete wipeouts.
And you say, God, how did this guy keep on going? Why didn’t he get up? You know, three different times. So it is common. I mean, it happens. There are people in every book that I’ve done where that point out is true. So, uh, even the best traders. May have, may have had, uh, trouble, uh, in the beginning and, uh, not so much for Peter.
Peter lost a little bit of money. Uh, you know, he, he didn’t have that experience, but Shapiro certainly did. Shapiro, you know, he made, uh, he did well. He got up to nearly a million, blew it. He bought, luckily he bought a sports car, and it’s, which was lucky because that was the only thing that was left at the end because he couldn’t lose that.
Then he went on and he, he lost it again, and finally he, he sort of got it, and, and it became a matter of risk control and he uses his early self, his early years as a model of what not to do, right. So, right. Even people who look like him in his early years. And he will fade them. He said when they get bullshit, they get bearish.
He wants to do the opposite ’cause he sees their subject to the same emotional stuff that he was falling for when he was a, a preliminary, you know, an early
trader. I love how Shapiro learns from his own experience. To your point, I love when he went to Africa. He goes to Africa and he leaves his account alone.
That’s been a disaster and he kind of feels happy. I, I get the feeling he feels happy to leave it alone. It’s a dumpster fire. He comes back, he’s made a bunch of money and he realizes that sometimes it’s what you don’t do, like investing often. Jack is, is one of the few pursuits where by not doing something, you can win.
Well that
goes, it is sort of like a hidden example of patience. So one of the many traits I point out in books is, that’s important to be successful is patients. And an important part of patience is, is staying off a position that’s a good position. ’cause most people get tempted constantly to get, oh, I gotta, I got a profit, I’ll take it, I’ll take it.
And it becomes very difficult to stay with a position, even if there’s a reason why it should continue working for a longer term. So by going to Africa, not being able to look at his account, he sort of forced patients on himself. In other words, he just ended up staying with those positions. He, I think he had stops in, so it wasn’t reckless, I mean, that the market went down against him.
He’d have been out, but in the meantime, as long as it was going, he wasn’t tempted to be getting out ’cause he didn’t see the market and sort of, that was his best performance, you know, they, and it provided a
less affair.
I love it. I, I
love, I love how each of these dispel a lot of myths. We think we gotta be perfect all the time.
We don’t, we learn, we work on the machinery. We don’t mess with get in this d get in this thing. We tweak the machine, we tweak the machine, we tweak the machine. Another lesson that I like is a lot of our stackers, I think Jack, think, well, I didn’t go to college for this. These guys probably went to college for this.
Peter Brant was an advertising. You write, right. Jason Shapiro was one of the crappiest students, I think of any of the market wizards, you,
you, you talked about, you wouldn’t argue with that.
Does education, were there many market wizards where their educational experience matter more than their on the job learning and, and development?
Well, some, I
mean, in some cases the pure intellect was the method. Somebody like, uh, ed Thorpe, who’s working on his PhD for physics decides he doesn’t know enough math. Goes and takes courses in math and writes a PhD for the math and gets his math PhD. Never bothers to write his physics PhD, but brilliant guy teaches himself.
This is back, he’s, you know, he kind of went, he’s one of the old, he goes back a long time, but he, when he was in high school was depression time and he was in the poor area, lousy schools, sort of taught himself. Physics in high school. Got into one of the top colleges and went from there ginning to start all these methods beat.
Kind of really mathematical in, in fact, he the famous black shows model on how to price options. Oh yeah. He kind of figured it out. He came up with an equivalent formula years before that paper was published. So for years he’s trading options. He’s the only, he’s probably the only guy in the world who knows how to price options.
So in this case, in his case, the education, well, the creativity, what to do with that education is a big deal too, obviously. But he couldn’t have done what he, what he did without being brilliant and, you know, brilliant quant. Uh, so you get those, you get that side too, and you get people who are just, as you said, lousy students, maybe dropped outta college and all of that and still do well.
Education is not a common denominator in success and training.
Yeah. Not a predictor. Just, just reading these people. Jason has a, uh, well, you know what, uh, while you’re telling us about people, I’ve mentioned Jason Shapiro a few times. Our stackers are wondering, who the heck is this? Tell us who Jason Shapiro is.
So Jason basically is a, as we talked about, he went through his early failures and he became a trader. Trading was a, has become, became his career essentially. But his training methodology is, is he’s a contrarian. He always wants to go opposite to where the major crowd is Now, the tricky thing in that is the crowd can keep on going for quite while.
Watching for the market to behave in a way where, where it shouldn’t. So let’s say, let’s say everybody, let’s say the, the, in the statistics he’s using, which are these, uh, CFTC, uh, commitment of traders reports, which show how large the commercial positions are, which are companies that are using the markets for hedging, uh, more professional and, and the speculative positions.
And he’s looking for the speculative positions to get, let’s say, very bullish. And then he wants to get bearish, but he waits then for the markets to like have a situation where some bullish news comes out and the market goes up and it comes down, it closes a week. That’s the type of situation where it’ll then go short.
But his approach is strictly contrary. And he watches things like CNBC to, to do the opposite. That’s his, so that’s his trading style.
But for the average stacker listening, it seems to me, Jack. This one is incredibly, um, incredibly dangerous because I think swimming against the current for a long time is gonna lead to like, going against momentum is a difficult place to
be.
Oh, well, the thing, the key is, I said there’s two things that make his, his strategy work, at least for him. Yeah. One is like the timing. He doesn’t just blindly right. He’ll let the markets go, but he waits for the market behavior to tell him, okay, now’s the time. And the second thing is he always accompanies his trade with a stop.
So if the market, let’s say he’s picking, he’s saying, okay, this is, the market has stopped. He’ll have a stop somewhere above that high. So if it goes to a new high, okay, he’s wrong, he’s out, he’ll. Otherwise, this type of strategy, as you say, could just, could be an easy way to get wiped out. You, you have to have a, a stop.
A stop, you know, protective risk, uh, methodology.
I love all the lessons we get from this. The lesson of patience, the lesson of having an investment policy statement. All of these people, frankly, even though they’re trading and a lot of our stackers Jack, are investing, still having an investment policy statement that you’re working from and a machine you’re working from versus whatever.
My tuna fish sandwich at lunch told me was a good idea. Right. Is probably a better way. My favorite quote from you though, the last time you were here was I asked you if markets truly weren’t efficient, and your quote, I think to me was, markets are not efficient. But for the average person out there listening to this, they should probably pretend they are.
Yeah. You still, you’re nodding your head. You still agree with that? Yeah. Yeah.
In fact, I think near the conclusion of this, of the unknown market wizards, there’s that I, I use a little kind of joke parable to make the point. The conclusion there is, and this comes after all the interview chapters, the conclusion basically is that.
The markets are, markets are not efficient. They’re so difficult to beat, and in many ways they do act like they’re efficient. That for most people, unless they have some special skill, they’re better. Like you said, they’re better off acting as if they are efficient, which means just invest in a, in an index fund.
They don’t, don’t try to beat it yourself.
And you know what, there’s still so much to learn by studying these people, even if you’re an investor, not a trader. I’ve learned a ton. As I mentioned earlier, the book is Unknown Market Wizards. It’s updated, there’s so much new stuff from when I read this. Uh, what feels like, it feels like yesterday.
I can’t believe this book is as old as it as it’s timeless. Jack, only three
years, the, you know, the original book came out three years and there’s about 25% new material in it.
It still may, maybe it’s because it was pre pandemic. Yeah.
Right before, which is one of the reasons I added the material because we had, we had the pandemic.
You had, so you had the bear market at that course, and you had the bull market, uh, right. You know, right after that. Then you had another bear market. You had some big bear and bull markets in the last three years. And I just wanted the, uh, these traders feared,
is it wild? How much has changed? And I love these after three year interviews, three years later, what are you thinking?
And I love how some of them have changed, but once again, Jack, what you saw was they’re changing the machinery three years later. They’re not, like, their thesis isn’t dead. They’re just tweaking. Yeah.
They’re, no, nobody changed their methodology. They’re still doing the same thing.
Yeah. Book is available everywhere.
Unknown market wizards. We’ll link to all Jack’s work on our show notes at stacky Benjamins dot com. Jack, thank you for mentoring us again on being better investors. I appreciate it. Glad to be here.
Enjoyed it. Thank you. This is Rebecca from Connecticut instead of Stacking, Hamiltons and Jacksons, I’d much rather be Stacking
Benjamins.
Huge. Thanks again to Jack Schwager for joining us and at og. Lots of great takeaways. You stay in the market, you stick with your plan. You don’t blow up your plan. But my favorite of all is don’t try to beat these people. The market is not efficient, but we should pretend it is because you don’t want to go through what these people went through.
Well, I
mean, I think that the market is efficient, especially for all the market participants as a whole. There’s gonna be some outliers that are able to succeed otherwise, but repeating that over and over again is the hardest part. That’s just, I mean, it’s no different than. Getting a six way parlay on DraftKings on Super Bowl weekend.
I know, man, you might do it, but you ain’t gonna do it every Super
Bowl. The fact that these people do it over and over and over shows me they’re playing in these little nooks where it’s not efficient, but getting to that spot. Yeah. And the number of times, look at the number of times and owning it. Yeah.
And the number of times he said these people blew up their portfolio before they found it. Like what? The one guy blew it up four times. Yeah. Imagine making some money and then going back to zero, then making some money and going back to zero. Going back to like by the third time you’re like, are you kidding me?
And then finally he, he quote finds it, finds it
not repeatable by Yeah. Somebody who has a normal
job, go work your day job, but still staying with your plan. I mean, how many times have you seen people with maybe the marginally wrong play and win because they stuck with it versus people that are hopping from good plan to good plan, to good plan to good plan.
Always searching for the next thing and they, they never go anywhere. I
mean, a great example of this is the, should I put money in my pre-tax 401k my Roth? It’s like that’s a fringe decision that we don’t know the answer to, except in 20 years from now, what tax rates are gonna be. But I can tell you should probably max it out.
So the answer is yes. And if you’re gonna wait, you’re, if you’re going to wait for the exact perfect tax strategy, you’re gonna miss out on the fact that you should have put 23 grand in this year and your company would’ve matched that. And I was reading some stuff about Charlie Munger, different quotes and stuff like that, and he was talking about how, you know, the first a hundred thousand is the hardest.
And that kind of led to something else that I mentioned a couple weeks ago, that if you save, you know, a thousand dollars a month, by the time you get to 300,000, you’re halfway to a million because of the, you know, the fact that that money’s gonna compound. And it seems like it’s gonna take this super, super, super long time to grow your wealth, but it, you can only see the progress if you look backwards.
You can’t see progress if you’re doing that calculation in the future. So the best way to do this is to do it and then measure backward and say, alright, five years ago I had this and now I have this. 10 years ago I had this, and now I have this. If you’re looking in the future going, oh my gosh, this is gonna take 10 years to grow.
That’s the wrong approach. Set it up, invest it. Don’t touch it for a long time, and you will be wildly
rewarded. There it is. Magic. Thanks again to Jack and we will dive more into that. Uh, all of that, how to have an investment policy statement that wins, how to maybe find a little bit better strategy so that you can go further.
Uh, stack Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1 time for one stacker. Who’d better call SA Sea? Hi. And og y You know, I’m not sure that I like Steve’s banjos
that he, that he plays over. It’s, it’s like, you
know, at first, I don’t think that’s
the
vibe that we’re going for. No, no. But I mean, it
sounds a little deliver doesn’t,
like, I don’t think I’m calling that segment.
I know where that goes. If we ever tell some call it to squeal like a pig, it’s over, man.
Uh,
stacky Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. And, uh, maybe, maybe,
uh, give us an idea of, uh,
maybe some new theme music. But today. Carey said that she had better call Saul. See, hi and og. Hey Kerry.
Hey Joe. And og. You too. Doug. Hey, it’s Kerry from the Chicago area. I recently was hanging out in the basement and came across a related topic, so I thought I’d ask you for your thoughts.
The question was pertaining to withdrawal rates in retirement. And while I’m not at retirement age yet, it really sounds like a great idea on a whole lot of days. I’m 49 and my husband’s 54, and when I look at the numbers that we have awaiting us in our social security projections, it seems like a lot of money.
I was always taught to not count that as part of your retirement numbers, but since we don’t really know what will be, uh, available at that point, if we wait till full retirement age, let’s say 67 sevens not early, not delayed. We’re supposed to receive nearly $6,500 per month. Our house will be paid off soon.
We have a fully paid for vacation home, uh, another rental property and commercial property, and we intend to keep those either as rentals or sell them off and invest the money. Well, I know we may spend more than I think in retirement. Can I actually rely on that over 6,000 per month projection? I know we’ll have some mandatory withdrawals in certain investment accounts, et cetera, but I don’t know how much of our nest egg we’re actually going to need to tap into if we have, you know, at least $6,000 coming in per month.
Um, appreciate your 2 cents and I’m sure looking forward to a spiffy new t-shirt. Woo-hoo.
Thanks Carrie. Great to hear your voice again. It was fun hanging out with Carrie and Stackers out in Aurora. I’m glad that you asked this question, Carrie, because, uh, we, we don’t get to cover this topic
enough. I was gonna say, it’s a hot topic in some spaces.
I think for planning purposes, when you’re looking at Social security, first of all, to get 6,000, you know, call it $3,200 a person for social security means that you pretty much had the Social Security maximum all 35 years. Pretty much, and they’re assuming in those projections that you are gonna continue to work until you’re 67.
There could be some changes to that if you choose to retire, let’s say when you’re 55 or if you’re 61 or something like that, there’ll be some slight changes as you incorporate more years on the backend. So social security is calculated based on your highest 35 years of earnings index for inflation until you’re 60.
So if you stop working when you’re 55, your highest 35 years might include the paper route when you’re 11. If you work until you’re 70, the highest 35 years might exclude the first 10 years that you worked fresh outta college, if that makes sense. So to get the maximum, which I think is around $3,200, you have to pretty much max out social security your entire life, which means that you’ve.
Probably saved a bunch of money and you’ve, and you’ve accumulated a decent amount. So I think it’s a perfectly great idea from a retirement plan standpoint to run a plan both ways to say, well, what happens if social security exists at 67? What happens if, if it exists and I take it at 70, what happens if it exists, but I only get half as much because you know, a spouse passed away or they changed the rules or they tax more of it.
There’s all sorts of different things that can happen over the next 20 years in terms of tax rates and benefit projections and all that sort of stuff. I personally believe that from our generation on, there’s not gonna be any material changes ’cause it’s too far, it’s too late. And we start voting as, as an age demographic.
You know, if you’re gonna change social security, you have to change it for 20 year olds, first of all, it’s more fair because they haven’t contributed their whole life. And secondly. They don’t vote if you’re a Congress person, right? Generally speaking, young people don’t represent themselves well at the polls.
So you can change it and they’ll just be mad and they won’t vote you out of office. If you change it for 55 year olds, they will be mad and to vote you out of office. So if there’s gonna be changes, I think it’s gonna happen on the backend. The other thing that probably will happen is they will change those retirement years.
So instead of saying, Hey, we’re gonna give you benefits at 60, 62 or 67, now I think they’re gonna change it to 70. That’s just, if you look at the trend of withdrawal, you know, RMDs, they’ve increased those to 75. Part of that is part life expectancy, but also people are just working longer. So I think there’s gonna be more of a change in that direction, which shouldn’t affect benefits.
In fact, just that simple change. I’ve read a report that says if you change the retirement age from 67 to 70, it solves all the social security problems, period. Full stop, done, fully funded, no problems. So that’s gonna take some. Stones to get through Congress, but it’ll happen eventually. From a planning standpoint, I think you can count on it.
I really do. I think it’s prudent to do some projections without it.
Uh, a hundred percent agree because what I really like in any plan is to hope for the best and plan for the worst. As an example, see how high you can push inflation up and still be okay. See how low you can accept from stock market returns and still be okay.
See how little, uh, social security you need to make your plan run and make it. Okay. And of those, I think definitely social security is a very safe bet. I think the stock market, if you’ve got, you know, 15 years or longer to play with, also a fairly safe bet just because of the nature of companies and the debt that they carry, and shareholder expectations and having to, uh, make money for those people or, or else, or we’ll see a, we’ll see a new regime running that company.
I think in order that that’s probably one and two, and then inflation, who the hell knows, right? I think the more inflation goes up, frankly, the more than the stock market goes up, just to keep pace with it, because you’re making goods that are also going up with the rate of inflation. But I kind of like, oh gee, this idea of having a plan where I know I’ve got these built-in escape hatches and safety valves where I go, yeah, I expect to get full Social Security.
But in my plan it’s only three quarters. Yeah. I think it’s
a great idea to establish guardrails and adjust your spend, especially if you’ve got discretionary spending, you know, access discretionary spending where you’re like, you know, Hey, I think I’m gonna get six grand a month from Social Security.
Obviously it’s just gonna be taxable. I’ve got 4 million in my investment account. I don’t need another 200 K out of that. I’ll take a hundred. But knowing that that upper range is. One 50 and you can dial it back to 50 based on, you know, market results or every three years you do a big family vacation and that’s gonna kind of push that withdrawal rate up, you know, during that period of time.
If you’ve got those guardrails, I think that provides some context every year of, as long as my spending’s in this range, I’m probably okay, and if all of a sudden the market performs better than expected and my portfolio goes from 4 million to 7 million, well then, hey, the guardrails have moved. Now I can, now I can do this or I can do other things.
I can plan for a big charitable gift or, or, you know, a, a legacy of some kind or whatever. Likewise, if the market moves against you or there’s changes to other cash flows, you can move your guardrails the other direction. If you have that excess, which it sounds like, you know, it sounds like they do so, or potentially will, that provides a little bit of context.
Also, I think from a, from a planning standpoint, as opposed to just saying you can take 4% out.
Right. Yeah. Uh, thank you so much, Carrie, for the question. Uh, if you’ve got a question, stacky Benjamins dot com slash voicemail gets you on the list. And as I mentioned, it’s usually this time of year where the barrel is, is a little, uh, smaller the question barrel it’s filling up.
But, uh, get in early stacky Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. If you’re here because you’re not just worried about withdrawal rates, you’re worried about just your overall plan and whether it truly makes sense or not, maybe you need better people in your corner head to stack Benjamins dot com slash og and that’s a link to him and his team’s calendar because they are taking clients and they can help you make better decisions this year.
That first meeting talks about exactly what you’re looking for and seeing how they would interface with you. Stacky Benjamins dot com slash OG is that link. All right, uh, time for us to wander out to the back porch. Guys, you know, Doug, uh, lot going on in the basement. Absolutely.
Joe, there’s a ton of great stuff coming up.
We’ve got some great Instagram lives coming up this week, but I know one thing we really want to get people excited about is the Valentine’s Day giveaway coming up. Yeah. Talk more about that. Tell us how many millions of dollars are we giving away for
Valentine’s Day? Well, here’s the deal. Doug, first of all, we don’t care.
People have a Valentine or not, kind of a Hallmark holiday, right? Yeah. I mean, tell that
to the guys in Chicago that didn’t quite make it out. Sorry too soon. Yeah, it might be too soon. I thought
the Valentine’s Day massacre is what happened when you walk into a Hallmark store
and see, see the markup on those cards?
Great. Save. You’re getting a box of roses from Costco when they’re normally $24 instead they’re
- What the heck? Right? Have you seen that Costco? Uh, that’s a, that’s a video that’s been going around where the guy’s got two slips of paper. One is eat at home and one is eat an exclusive, eat exclusive members only
club.
And
so she picks the eat at members exclusive club and it’s the hot dog at Costco, not, not quite what she was thinking about. So we don’t care if you have a Valentine or not. What we do want you to know is that you stackers are, are Valentine. Isn’t that great? Aw, yes, you’re welcome. And, uh, and we don’t want you spending money frivolously on this holiday.
So one stacker’s gonna get to spend our money instead.
I’m just picturing,
uh,
hold up. So here’s the deal. Take whoever you want out to dinner, whether it’s your Valentine, a group of friends, whatever. And we are giving one stacker $200 of our money. Now, here’s the deal. It has to be at a local restaurant.
It can’t be at a national chain because we also wanna celebrate some of those hardworking restaurants and uh, cool quirky places at the town where you live. And we will publicize that restaurant and the fact that you chose them for your super celebration and, uh, you and your friends get to spend 200 bucks of our money.
If it goes, it’ll probably go way over 200 bucks. If it does, the rest is on you. But the first 200 is on us. So how do I get this goodness in me, Doug? How do I get it? You know, how.
I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure you’re gonna tell me I’m not eligible as
usual. Yes. Uh, sadly, you are not eligible if you sign up for the 2 0 1 Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1.
We are tracking everybody who signs up between now and uh, February 12th. So if you sign up, you get an entry. If you’re like, wait a minute, I already sign up for the 2 0 1, 2 oh one’s awesome. You know, whether you sign up now or sign up later, you get three entries every time you use a referral code.
Inside of our 2 0 1 newsletters, there’s a referral code. Use that to sign somebody else up. It’s super easy. And when your friend actually signs up for the 2 0 1, you’ll get three and they will get one as well. So, uh, one person winning our stacks on stacks, yes. Winning our Valentine’s Day giveaway. So, uh, three to refer somebody, one to sign up.
Wow. Stacky Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1 is where you go. And we’re tracking all those people through, through the 12th. I think that’s our big thing today, Doug. I mean,
I don’t know why I’m gonna talk, why would I even say anything after
that? I know. Just drop the mic. We’ll just drop. Drop the bike there.
Why don’t I turn it back to you then? Doug. Besides that, what’s on our to-do list today? Well,
Joe, here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list today. First, take some advice from Jack Schwager. Wizards win at investing, not because they have some great insights they do, and not because they’re on top of the market every day, though they probably are, but because they have a plan and stick to it.
Want the first step in becoming a wizard? Stop blowing up your plan. Looking for new or maybe even a better one. Just stick to the plan. Second, from our headline, budgeting out loud, I don’t care what you call it. Tell your friends, you’re making financial decisions that help you stay in the game longer.
That will make you a wizard. But what’s the biggest to do if you’re practicing to become a part-time magician? Don’t bother asking Joe’s mom to be your assistant. She wouldn’t even let me saw her in half, even after I told her that wasn’t blood on my chainsaw.
Thanks to Jack Schwager for joining us today. You can find the new expanded edition of Unknown Market Wizards wherever books are sold. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. The show is The Property of SP podcasts, LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy.
Our producer is Karen Reine. This show is written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast. With help from me, Joe Kate Kin, Karen Repine, and Doc G from the Earn and Invest podcast, Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 2 0 1.
You’ll find the 4 1 1 on All Things Money at the 2 0 1. Just visit Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. Wonder how beautiful we all are. Of course you do, but you’ll never know if you don’t. Check out our YouTube version of the show Engineered by Tina Eichenberg. Then you’ll see once and for all that I’m the best thing going for this podcast.
Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Wanna chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude Stacey Doe, and Julia Gar. Are our social media coordinators and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.
So say hello. When you see us posting online to join all the basement fun with other stackers, type Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement. For more interactive fun, join us on Instagram every Tuesday and Thursday for our Instagram lives. Kate Yakin and Joe host those weekly. 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 Benjamin Show.
Leave a Reply