Money For the Rest of Us

By J. David Stein

Business Investing

What's Money For the Rest of Us about?

A personal finance and investing podcast on money, how it works, how to invest it and how to live without worrying about it. J. David Stein is a former Chief Investment Strategist and money manager. For close to two decades, he has been teaching individuals and institutions how to invest and handle their finances in ways that are simple to understand. More info at moneyfortherestofus.com

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The Pandemic Might Be "Over...

09.21.2022

How risk perceptions and actions have changed over several years of the pandemic. How the pandemic's impacts continue to affect politics, the economy, financial markets, how we invest, and our personal lives. Topics covered include:Is the pandemic really over?What percentage ...

Money For the Rest of Us episodes:

09.21.2022 The Pandemic Might Be "Over," but Not the Repercussions How risk perceptions and actions have changed over several years of the pandemic. How the pandemic's impacts continue to affect politics, the economy, financial markets, how we invest, and our personal lives. Topics covered include:Is the pandemic really over?What percentage ...
09.14.2022 Why Student Debt Is So High and Why Forgiving It Doesn't Fix the Problem What are the drivers that lead to higher student loan balances? Why a one-time student loan forgiveness program doesn't solve the problem of increasing student debt. What are some more viable longer-term solutions. Topics covered include:How big is the Biden ...
09.07.2022 Why Diversifying Your Portfolio Feels So Awful Warren Buffet said, "Diversification makes very little sense for anyone that knows what they’re doing." He also said, "Diversification is a protection against ignorance..." Most of us need that protection against ignorance, yet diversification often makes us feel bad when ...
08.31.2022 What If High Inflation Doesn't End? How To Invest If High Inflation Stays How economic wars, pandemics, and worker shortages could lead to years of high structural inflation. What needs to happen to avoid this dire inflation scenario. Topics covered include:What are the three inflation lessons Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sharedWhat is ...
08.24.2022 Unintended Consequences Impact Everything We explore examples of positive and negative unintended consequences, what causes them, and how to navigate a world where unanticipated things happen all of the time. Topics covered include:What leads to unintended consequencesWhat are some unintended consequences of QE and ...
08.17.2022 When Should You Hire An Investment Advisor? Two Case Studies We analyze two listeners' portfolios. One who is close to retirement and considering hiring an outside money manager. The second is 45 and just sold a business and is trying to decide whether to fire Schwab's robo-advisor service and manage ...
08.10.2022 How To Invest Based on Cycles This episode edits and remasters two earlier episodes on investing based on cycles to focus on timeless investing principles. Topics covered include:What are different types of cyclesWhy do cycles have subjective start and end dates.Why do coincidences happen so often.How ...
08.03.2022 Forsage and Herbalife—How Multi-Level Marketing, Pyramid Schemes, and Ponzi Schemes Differ Why it is challenging to distinguish a legitimate multi-level marketing company from a pyramid scheme as hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman found out in his losing campaign against Herbalife. How Forsage has taken pyramid and Ponzi schemes to a whole ...
07.27.2022 How Population Trends Will Impact Growth, Inflation, Investing, and Well Being How slowing population growth and an eventual population peak will lead to competition for foreign workers, potentially higher inflation, and ultimately the need to transition to a steady-state economy rather than one based on constantly producing more. Topics covered include:How ...
07.20.2022 How To Get Better At Risk Taking Five ways we can better take and manage risk. Topics covered include:How likely is it that China will invade Taiwan and the stock market will fall 80%Why experts tend to be humble and don't make specific predictionsWhat is the difference ...
07.13.2022 What Happens If Your Brokerage Firm Goes Bankrupt? How protected are you if the brokerage firm where you hold your stocks, bonds, and crypto assets files for bankruptcy? Why you shouldn't store your crypto assets with an online broker. Topics covered include:How traditional brokerage firms protect their client ...
07.06.2022 Part 2 - What Is Money and How To Think About It David and his son Camden conclude their conversation about money. Topics covered include:A review of money principles discussed in Part 1How money is createdHow money is energyWhy bank runs occurHow cryptocurrency fails as moneyHow money is debt backed by debt ...
06.29.2022 Part 1 - What Is Money and How To Think About It David and his son Camden hold a conversation about money, its attributes, how it's created, and how money differs from investments. Topics covered include:How our earliest money memories impact our views on moneyThe difference between public and private moneyWhat are ...
06.22.2022 How to Survive a Bear Market Three things investors can do to survive this bear market and thrive in its aftermath. Topics discussed include:What are bear markets, how often do they occur, and how long do they lastHow the current bear market differs from previous onesHow ...
06.15.2022 Why David Isn't Podcasting This Week and Our New Closed-End Fund Course This week on the show, David shares some investing lessons from fly fishing and introduces our new course on How To Invest in Closed-End Funds. Between now and the end of June get 25% off the course. You can learn ...
06.08.2022 Are BlackRock and Vanguard Too Big and Powerful? How big index fund and ETF providers have increased their sway over publicly-traded companies while potentially discouraging competition. What can be done about it? Topics covered include:How market share for assets under management has become increasingly concentrated with big fund ...
06.01.2022 Is Airbnb Intensifying the Housing Crisis? We explore whether long-term and short-term single-family home rentals are contributing to higher rents, higher home prices, and a housing shortage. What are the options for investing in this space and should we? Topics covered include:What is financializationWhat are examples ...
05.25.2022 Will Quantitative Tightening Lead To Even Greater Financial Losses? How financial markets and the economy performed last time the Federal Reserve took away the punch bowl by raising its policy rate and pursuing quantitative tightening. Things worked out fine that time. Will it be different this time? Topics covered ...
05.18.2022 Why Most Money Fails - Six Principles to Navigate the Unstable World of Money How should you approach money given most of it either collapses or loses its purchasing power due to inflation. Get our free six-day email course on how to beat inflation. Topics covered include:How supposedly safe savings apps collapsed, wiping out ...
05.11.2022 When Should You Pay a Premium? What are examples of when it makes sense to pay more than the usual price or fair value for an item or asset? Topics covered include:Why we are willing to pay a premium for convenience, scarcity, status and to avoid ...
05.04.2022 Is It Time To Invest In Big Tech or Medium Tech Stocks? (FAANGs and FANMAGs) With many of the largest tech stocks falling over 20% year-to-date, is now the time to invest? Has the market changed to where tech investing is a safe bet? Topics covered include:What happened to NetflixWhat contributed to the astounding performance ...
04.27.2022 Has A Commodities Bull Market Super Cycle Started? If So, How Do You Invest In It? What causes secular bull and bear markets in commodities. What factors suggest a new commodities bull market has started and how can investors participate. What are the risks. Topics include:What is a bull and bear marketHow long have earlier commodity ...
04.20.2022 How To Be A Successful Contrarian Investor How contrarians combine value and momentum to take positions opposite what the consensus believes. What is the consensus view in today's financial markets and how are contrarians positioned. Topics covered include:Five attributes of successful investorsWhy does the consensus expect stagflationHow ...
04.13.2022 Is A Famine Next? Food Inflation, Food Riots, and Investing in Commodities and other Real Things Why food costs are soaring and what we can do about it. Why inflation rates could start to drop. Why commodity futures, including agriculture futures, have been lousy inflation hedges, and what has worked better. Topics covered include:Previous investment recommendations ...
04.06.2022 Investing in Business Development Companies (BDCs) and other Niche Assets That Trade on Stock Exchanges We review the ten asset categories that trade on major stock exchanges, many of which are smaller niches in which individual investors have an edge over institutional investors. How to invest in business development companies, a small segment of the ...
03.30.2022 How Stories Drive Our Happiness and Financial Success Stories determine economic and financial outcomes, both our own and the world in aggregate. Here's how to craft and follow stories that will lead to better financial outcomes and greater happiness. Topics covered include:How financial narratives give us the confidence ...
03.23.2022 People Like Us Invest Like This - Remastered with New Introduction This week, we revisit a classic episode released five years ago. In a newly recorded introduction, David shares the background on the episode and why he chose to release it again in its newly edited form. Topics covered include:The availability ...
03.16.2022 Do We Even Need Leaders? How societies have functioned without leaders, including leaderless megacities that survived over 800 years. Topics covered include:Is geopolitics more like chess or pokerWhy analysts think Putin will soon agree to a settlement with UkraineDo most development occur from the top-down ...
03.09.2022 Is Stagflation Coming? Will the world experience both inflation and subpar economic growth at the same time? Topics covered include:What is inflation and what causes itWhat have been the largest contributors to recent high inflationWhy does not everyone experience inflation in the same ...
03.02.2022 What If It's Different This Time? - The Impact of the Russian-Ukraine War What can we do to prepare if the Russian-Ukraine war gets even worse? Topics covered include:How risk and uncertainty differ as does how we manage themWhat we can learn from Ukraine and Russian citizens on dealing with uncertaintyWhat will be ...
02.23.2022 What Investment Style Fits Your Personality? How to decide the investing scale and timeframe that works best for your temperament. Topics covered include:How stocks perform in the days and weeks following catastrophic eventsWhat are some potential financial impacts of Russia's invasion into UkraineHow complex systems operate ...
02.16.2022 Five Financial Lessons From Middlemarch Key takeaways from one of the greatest personal finance novels of all time. Topics covered include:Why it is easier to keep doing the same old thingWhy partners should discuss their financesWhy debt can be suffocatingWhy leverage can be dangerousOne of ...
02.09.2022 Lifecycle Investing, Risk Parity Portfolios, and Why Stocks Are Riskier in the Long Run How lifecycle investing and risk parity portfolios can assist you in having sufficient assets to retire. What are the two types of time diversification and why is one flawed? Topics covered include:What is settled work and what are some examplesHow ...
02.02.2022 Are Stablecoins Safe? Should You Own Them? How stablecoins are similar and different from other monetary assets. What are stablecoin risks. Why central bank digital currencies are one of the biggest threats to stablecoins. Topics covered include:Why the Federal Reserve and other central banks are exploring issuing ...
01.26.2022 When Should You Sell An Investment? We explore four reasons to sell an asset with a focus on the Ark Innovation ETF, Bitcoin, and equity REITs. We also put the current stock market sell-off into historical perspective. Topics covered include:What are lousy reasons to sell an ...
01.19.2022 Find Your Retirement Investing and Living Style What are the pros and cons of the four approaches to managing retirement savings. How to implement a bucketing or time segmentation retirement investing approach. Topics covered include:Why it takes time to find a retirement pattern that fitsHow retirement investing ...
01.12.2022 Should You Invest In Small and Mid Cap Stocks? Is Now the Time? Small and mid-cap stocks have underperformed large-cap stocks for over a decade. Is now the time to increase your allocation? Topics covered include:How big are small and mid-cap stocksHow have small and mid-cap stocks performed relative to large-cap stocksHow have ...
12.15.2021 Year-End 2021 Listener Q&A Episode We answer listener questions in our final episode of 2021. Topics covered include:Estimating financial market returns in the next thirty yearsInvesting in artWhether stocks will no longer existHow to start investingFidelity's new Bitcoin ETFHow mutual funds are pricedHow to teach ...
12.08.2021 How To Invest in Web3, DAOs and the Metaverse What is Web 3.0 and how will it transform the world? How you can invest your time and money in decentralized autonomous organizations and other Web3 projects. Topics covered include:What are Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0 and how ...
12.01.2021 What Investment Strategies Do Best During High Inflation Periods? How different asset classes and investment strategies have performed during periods of unexpectedly high inflation. While trend and momentum strategies have performed the best, what are some of the challenges with implementing those strategies. Topics covered include:What has led to ...
11.17.2021 Is There a Global Energy Crisis? With oil, natural gas, coal, and gasoline at the highest prices in eight years, we consider if there is an energy crisis due to an over-reliance on renewable energy sources. Topics covered include:How high have prices risen for oil, gasoline, ...
11.10.2021 Why Some Asset Bubbles Don't Burst What conditions need to be in place for an asset bubble to continue and how that applies to stocks, cryptocurrency, and houses. Topics covered include:How to determine if there is an asset bubbleWhat are microbubbles and anti-bubblesHow the cannabis stock ...
11.03.2021 Should You Hedge Your International Stock Exposure From Currency Fluctuations? How to decide whether it is worth it to hedge currency exposure when investing outside of your home country. Topics covered include:How currency exchange rates impact investment returnsWhat factors impact currency exchange ratesWhat are carry trades and how do they ...
10.27.2021 Why Most Cities Thrive and What We Can Learn From Them How New York City and other metropolises will overcome the pandemic economic shock. Why do some cities thrive while others devolve into chaos? How we can develop the resiliency of thriving cities. Topics covered include:How New York and other cities ...
10.20.2021 Should You Invest in a Bitcoin ETF? Why the new U.S.-based Bitcoin ETFs are a bad idea and will underperform Bitcoin. Topics covered include:What fund and ETF options are available for investing in BitcoinWhy the U.S. has only authorized Bitcoin ETFs that invest in Bitcoin futures even ...
10.13.2021 Are Timeshares a Scam? How to Buy and Sell a Timeshare Vacation Rental How the economics of timeshare vacation rentals work, and why they can be a great fit for some individuals. Topics covered include:When were the first timeshares introducedWhat are the different timeshare ownership modelsWhy timeshares don't appreciate but fall in price ...
09.29.2021 Will the U.S. Default? Debt Ceilings, Government Shutdowns, and the National Debt Why the U.S. is closing in on both a debt default and a government shutdown. Topics covered include:How a government shutdown differs from a debt ceiling crisisWhy hasn't Congress passed legislation to fund the government and raise the debt limitHow ...
09.22.2021 Why Are There So Many Shortages? What is causing the shortage of goods and workers? What should we do about it? Topics covered include:How a tree pandemic killed billions of American Chestnut treesHow a massive increase in demand has crippled the global supply, leading to an ...
09.15.2021 Should You Stop Investing in China? - Evergrande, VIEs and other Chinese Risks A regulatory crackdown and ideological campaign by the Chinese government has upended the Chinese stock market, which comprises close to 40% of emerging market indices. We evaluate what is going on and what investors should do. Topics covered include:How has ...
09.08.2021 Is a Housing Crash Coming? What are the demand and supply drivers of home prices? What is the current status of those drivers and do they suggest a housing price crash is imminent, particularly given mortgage forbearance programs are ending? Topics covered include:How much have ...

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