Stop Gambling Wealth | Brian Wagman | Growing Money with Sean Trace

I sat down with Brian Wagman, a public equities investor and Bentley University grad, to break down what actually builds wealth versus what just feels exciting. 

We get into why dollar cost averaging beats chasing meme stocks and crypto hype, how social media and 24/7 market news have made investing more emotional than ever, and why fear and greed are both equally dangerous depending on who you are. 

Brian shares why most people approach investing more like gambling with better vocabulary, how to size risk relative to your own financial situation, and why comparing yourself to professional investors can be a trap. 

Be honest - when it comes to your money, are you more driven by fear or by greed?

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I think it did. I think it probably had a pretty negative impact on a lot of the people in in my generation and younger, just because of the volatility. And volatility can go either way, you know? And so if the first time that you make an investment in the stock market, you're buying a memes uh a meme stock that goes up a hundred percent in a few weeks, or you buy some crypto coin that that does the same, you're gonna have the wrong impression and expectations of what investing in the stock market is all about. And similarly, if you buy, if you bought into something really risk-y risky, you know, maybe at like the the height of the uh of the crypto wave, then lost all your money or something, you're gonna have you're gonna be distrusting of the stock market and distrusting of finance in general, whereas it may have had to do more with the specifics, you know, security that you invested in, decision you made, and so forth. And so I think that just especially so much of I feel like so much of investing both in the media and in popular culture is not about this sort of disciplined long-term conservative approach. You know, it's just it's not as exciting. It doesn't make for good news. And so that's why you hear about, and that's why, you know, friends talk about how much money they've made in crypto or meme stocks or whatever it may be, because those are the things that are sort of entertaining and worth talking about. But the stock market and investing in general should not be about entertainment. It should be about, you know, financial well-being.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

All right. Welcome everybody back to the Growing Money with Sean Trace Podcast. I have an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Sure. So thanks for having me on, Sean. Uh, my name is Brian Wagman. I work in the investment space. And one thing I should say just up front is uh nothing that I say today is investment advice, and nothing that I say is representative of any of my employers or anyone else I may have been affiliated with now or in the past. But yeah, so investing's been a passion of mine since I was in high school. Uh went to Bentley University, a small undergraduate business school outside of Boston, graduated in 2018, and I've been working in the industry since then. So I work on public equities, so stocks, publicly traded companies. That's my sort of expertise and background, but uh happy to get into uh anything really in the world of investing.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

It's awesome for me because investing is it's really cool, but it's also there's so much to learn. And I think that that's one of the things that when I when I talk to people, they're like, dude, I would love to do it. But you know, Hollywood hasn't done a great job of like showing what real investing is about. You see these movies where you know you get this Wall Street type and like we were the Wolf of Wall Street with Leonardo DiCaprio and stuff like that. And they make it seem like it's just absolutely the wild west. But for the average person trying to build wealth, what matters more? Like picking great investments or just consistently investing over time.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Yeah. So I would definitely say consistency, and I would not be looking to uh the Wolf of Wall Street or anything like that for uh guiding your investments or how you think how you think about the business or how the business may be. So, really the the thing that I think is most important is uh a practice that's called dollar cost averaging. So just putting in the same amount from your savings every single month and trying to be disciplined about that. And, you know, you can consult a financial planner, uh, depending on your different risk tolerances and whatnot, you know, a uh, you know, an index like the SP or an ETF like the SP 500 SPY might be, you know, a typical decision for someone. Or maybe as you get a little older, uh a higher allocation to bonds could make sense. But really it's deciding, you know, just taking a look at your budget and figuring out how much you can afford to put aside each month and just continuing to invest that money and not worrying too much about what happens in any given quarter or year, but just really having that ability to zoom out and see what the stock market overall has done over the long term. And I think that's where their compounding is really unlocked. If people can be disciplined about that and try to remain as unemotional as possible.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Just people remaining unemotional. It's like, you see, like, and that's the beautiful part for me. It's like it sounds so easy, but like one of the hardest things that you know, I used to teach kids. And as a children's teacher, like if I sit there and I look at a bunch of kids, I'm like, all right, guys, whatever you I is gonna happen, I need to stay calm. And that's like the first sign that's they're gonna freak out. Like, like that literally is gonna be the thing that causes them to freak out. And I I like to think that as what was it? Just like a day or two ago, I was parking my bike, and I was riding a motorcycle with my family. I live in Southeast Asia part of the time and California part of the time, and I was here in Vietnam parking my motorcycle, and this parking attendant walked up next to me, and he had the deepest voice. He's like, Hey, how you doing? And I was like, nah, just like, oh my gosh, you didn't see it coming there, man. And I was like, wow, I should probably stay calm in moments like that. But you don't always do it. Like, I mean, how do you tell people or help people to stay calm when it seems I I have like hey, I gotta show you something. My workers, I love my team. I have a video production company, and for Christmas, they bought me this. It's a little house that's burning and on fire, and it says, I'm fine, everything is fine. And I was like, I love it. That's the perfect snow globe. It's so awesome. I'm fine, everything is fine. Ah, how do you stay calm when the house is on fire, man?

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Yeah, so obviously much easier said than done. And this is really one of the things that a certified financial planner can be most useful for, or some sort of a financial advisor, is it's really a lot of that job is about, you know, having building a relationship with a client where they can trust you and where you have someone to talk to when something's going on in the market that you don't understand, the value of your holdings is going down, and they can kind of walk you through, you know, why is the value changed? What should we do about this and so on? But obviously, not everyone has uh access to a financial advisor. And so I think a lot of it is about just sort of understanding your own personal financial situation and not investing any money that you're going to need in the near term in the stock market or anything that you can't afford to lose because, you know, volatility in the stock market is just part of the game. And so if you're investing money that you're gonna need six or 12 months from now, like there could be a large market drawdown and that might be, you know, cut in half by that time. And so, yeah, I would certainly be worked up if I was in that situation. So it's important to just know sort of what you can afford to invest, what you can afford to lose, and so on, and really operate within those limits. I think because you can know about all sorts of you know behavioral biases and emotional tendencies and how you tend to react to things, but just having the knowledge of it doesn't change the fact that we're still human and we're still gonna react when things happen. Right?

SPEAKER_00 7:22

I um I studied medicine for a while before I decided that it wasn't for me for some reasons. Like I just didn't like like C and Six stuff. I I am a bit squeamish, I'm a bit of germophobe. And when I was in school though, I remember one of my classmates was like, uh, you know what? No problem. I've seen it all. I can handle anything. And the first time they saw someone getting like blood drawn, nearly passed out. And so it's like, it's kind of cracking me up because I think that there's this, but you know, like you talk about risk tolerance, you kind of can work into it. Like you start small, you start just you gotta start learning. You gotta start learning what this process is. You weather little ups and downs, and you go, okay, I didn't freak out. I had a family member that when the 2008 financial crisis hit, lost a massive amount of money. But they were smart, they sat, they did nothing, they waited. And by 2019 or 20 like 15 or something, I don't know, somewhere in there, they made it all back beyond. And like it was a like it all came back, and they were in a way better position later on. But like when I asked them about how did you get through that storm, and they were like, oh man, a lot of nail biting and a lot of freaking out. But we they they had a really good planner that sat to them, sat them down and said, just breathe. Just wait. You're okay. Just stay in and things will balance out. And they were, you know, everyone needs their little Yoda that sits there and goes, hey, you know, just financially it's okay, you know, chill out. But, you know, I want to ask you a question because do you think most people actually understand the amount of risk they're taking when they invest? Or is are people on autopilot, you know?

SPEAKER_02 9:17

It's interesting because no investment is without risk. And so, you know, like if you're investing in the S P 500 or something like that, like we talked about, there are risks in terms of, you know, near-term drawdowns. And of course, you know, past results are an indication of future results. So you never truly know what's going to happen. But there's pretty, you know, substantial evidence and long-term track record and history of the market as a whole going up. And so there's kind of different risks that you can be exposing yourself to based, again, on sort of what your own situation is. But then there's also different kinds of investments, you know, meme stocks and uh trading crypto and things like that. And I think with those, people often don't understand the amount of risk that they're taking. Or I I I think the important thing with those and with just investing in individual stocks in general, like for example, like I still really like the book One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch, which is sort of about like investing in the companies that you know. And that can be one way that you can try to approach the stock market, and it works for some people. But I think the important thing is if you're gonna be doing it, like you're gonna be handling your own investments to some extent and doing anything outside of the sort of traditional like index fund approach, just pay attention to how those results, uh what kind of results you generate in that portion of your investments over time and just see if it's making making you money, see if it's compounding at the same rate as your other investments are. And importantly, if you're gonna start out with, you know, individual stocks, I definitely would not invest more than you can afford to lose. So I think there's definitely all forms of investment include some kind of risk, but I think that it's important to be aware of how that risk impacts you relative to your own personal financial situation. Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

I I think that that's the type of thing, but like I remember when I first met my wife, and she's it was way out of my league. She's still way out of my league, and you know, beautiful, famous singer in Vietnam. I had no idea. All I knew is like she sings amazingly well. She's beautiful, she's so interesting. And I took a risk, you know, and the risk was me falling on my face, looking like an idiot, but it worked out, you know, and I think nothing good will come if you don't take some type of risk, you know? But it also was I didn't, you know, do anything stupid. I didn't run into the room with a trumpet. All right, how are you doing? Yeah, I went in, I, you know, worked my game. Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Sean. Your music is so amazing, you know. Did what I was good at. And, you know, and like that, that, you know, I think like not saying that, you know, meeting your wife is the same thing, but you know, there are these things that are risk-oriented. You know, whatever you do, going to school, um, going to the gym, all of them involve risk. You know, I went and I worked out, um, I work out three days a week with my daughter. We go to boxing class and some some judo classes together. And man, I went to a judo class and I'm a black belt in Japanese-style jujitsu, which is very similar to judo. And I was like, Yeah, I know what I'm doing. Dude, I got my butt handed to me at this class. It's been a long time. Like, oh my God, I haven't trained like that since I was a kid. And I just was like, oh God, you know, there but there was risk to that. But the reward was awesome. I feel great afterwards, you know. The next day I was really sore, but I was like, wow, I'm back, and my health starts to improve, and like the next classes are easier. But you have to take a risk to get there. And I think that they, I think a lot of people are afraid of risks, but at the end of the day, if you are not getting comfortable on some level of the risk, you're not gonna have growth at some point, you know? You get stagnant.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Yeah, absolutely. It's it's interesting because it kind of ties back to, again, like kind of people's perception of risk can be sort of wrong or different because you have to keep the reward in mind as well, you know, like just consistent uh indexing and compounding through dollar cost averaging. Like, sure, there's risk in terms of, you know, what could happen in in in the near term or even, you know, certain parts of the indices can have drawdowns and permanent capital impairment. But I think that's, you know, just part of the game in terms of being able to reach your financial goals and, you know, get to the place that you want to be in life, just like the other examples you gave. I mean, it's going to require some level of risk. It's just about taking calculated risk, you know, and knowing what you're getting yourself into, knowing what the potential downsides could be and what that could what the implications of that on your life could be if if they do manifest.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Oh, that's awesome, you know. And I think that that's it.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Like, can you be aware of where you're going with it? You know, I don't want to ask you a question though, because like what's okay. Why was he hold on one second? Why was he in there? Don't let him in that room. Is he out of that room now? Okay. Sorry, my daughter just walked in.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Didn't Eilani, is someone taking your teacher down? Okay, great. Sorry about that. Being a dad, right? What's one investing mistake you see regular people make over and over?

SPEAKER_02 14:55

I think just getting into securities and investments that they don't really know a lot about. You know, they get a hot tip from a friend or something like that. And then also not knowing how to size an investment or a gamble or a speculation or whatever you want to call something like that. Um, you know, because I think it's it's important to come up with a plan. And so that's why I keep coming back to this dollar cost averaging and choosing like a specific amount of money to put in each month. That's a very kind of calculated risk, again. But if someone says, oh, you should go buy this, you know, new crypto coin or this meme stock, and I think it's gonna go up a lot, and or maybe the reason they think that is they read some article or one of their friends told them or something. But oftentimes people just they don't really know what the actual, I guess, probability distribution of the potential outcomes are, and their investment size or approach doesn't reflect that appropriately. And so I think it's just I think a lot of that has to do with getting into the gambling mentality and people just want to make a quick buck. People want people think that investing is sort of an easy way to get from here to wherever you want to go in life, and it's not necessarily always that easy. And so I think when when that greed starts to boil up in people, that's when they can start to make poor decisions that often result in permanent impairments of capital.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

I like that, you know. I I think that the uh the danger of trying to do things quickly in any avenue is a challenge, you know, because like you think about that. I see I'm back in judo with my daughter, right? Now, I would love to be going and doing all those cool moves that I see all the guys do in a black belt that I might have been able to do when I was younger. But if I do that now, after 20 years off, I will probably have a problem. And you know, like the reality is if I want to get back to where even a semblance of where I was, it's gonna take time. You know, you see people go to the gym and you don't dive into the heavyweights. You start off really light, just warming your body up and going, hey, guess what? We're back here again. And I think that that's what I think is so important is like easing into things and not going too far too fast. Because I think that like if you do anything really fast, it's it's it's it doesn't last. It's like a flash in the pan, you know? And you might get lucky, but that's just luck. And luck, you know, is something that's not a great investment strategy. I mean, it might happen and it might help you out now and then, but it's not a sound investment strategy in my mind. I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

No, and there can there can be a similar dynamic in terms of like what you mentioned with the judo thing, with people, people will often look at like what hedge funds are doing, for example. Like hedge funds are required to file what's called a 13F filing every quarter where they show what stocks they own at that time. And so people often just, you know, follow those and then buy the stocks that show up in those, not knowing that, you know, for example, the clients of that fund could have a very different risk tolerance of them, or there are certain things like international and short exposure that don't always show up on the 13Fs. And so oftentimes, you know, people are trying to emulate what the professionals are doing, what the experts are doing, where, you know, that's obviously a very different uh experience, a very different skill set. And again, you at the end of the day, no one usually truly knows other people's financial situation and goals or even the goals of that specific investment vehicle or fund. And so to just emulate the strategy without having that context can definitely be dangerous. I think that's a good point.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Like it's like a funny example. I can watch my uh my daughter and I were watching some martial arts videos online, and she's like, I want to try that. I was like, no, don't try that. That is not at your skill level. Like, you know, we see these things. I remember watching this video of these dads that were like, I don't know how old they were. I think they were 40 plus dads that thought that they were still the athletes they were when they were 25, and they were all trying to race each other, and like every single one of them pulled a hammy. Like everyone's you know, and they were just like, all of them were sitting there going, and like, if you try to do things that our professionals do, another thing, like, what was it? The one of the the runners from Jamaica, like one of the like absolutely amazing Olympic runners, there was this video online, and she signed up for the the like the parent races at her kids' high school. And it was funny because they all lined up. Um, I'm blanking on her name right now, but you can go look it up. And she destroyed the rest of the parents. Like, I guess her son ran in the race and then he didn't win. And she's like, it's time to return the family honor to oh my gosh, she destroyed all the other moms so massively. But what was really funny is like the other moms weren't slow, they were pretty quick, but they just weren't Olympic quick. And I think when you compare yourself to like, you know, these people that are absolute pros or have a much different risk tolerance than you do, it can put you into like a dangerous place if you're not ready for it, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I want to ask you this question too, because a lot of younger investors grew up during some of the meme stocks and the crypto hype. Do you think that changed how people think about investing permanently? I think it did.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

I think it probably had a pretty negative impact on a lot of the people in my generation and younger. And I think just because of the volatility, and volatility can go either way, you know? And so if the first time that you make an investment in the stock market, you're buying a memes, uh, a meme stock that goes up 100% in a few weeks, or you buy some crypto coin that that does the same, you're gonna have the wrong impression and expectations of what investing in the stock market is all about. And similarly, if you buy, if you bought into something really risk-y risky, you know, maybe at like the the height of the uh of the crypto wave, then lost all your money or something, you're gonna have you're gonna be distrusting of the stock market and distrusting of finance in general, whereas it may have had to do more with the specifics, you know, security that you invested in, decision you made, and so forth. And so I think that just especially so much of I feel like so much of investing both in the media and in popular culture is not about this sort of disciplined, long term conservative approach. You know, it's just it's not as exciting. It doesn't make for good news. And so that's why you hear about, and that's why, you know, friends talk about how much money they've made in crypto. Or meme stocks or whatever it may be, because those are the things that are sort of entertaining and worth talking about. But the stock market and investing in general should not be about entertainment. It should be about, you know, financial well-being.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

I think that one thing. It's another bad example. Um, you know, when I was earlier on, you know, when I was younger, there are things that you do for fun, and there's things that are good for you, you know, like there are those aren't always the same thing, you know. And I think that that's something that's hard for people to understand that there's stuff that's fun, and there's stuff that's like actually, you know, beneficial long-term. And like, how do you personally tell the difference between a real long-term investment and pure market height? You know, because I I see, like, you know, like for me, I was trying to uh look at what were the videos that were trending in the financial like space. Because I was like, YouTube's like, these are videos that are hot right now. And the stuff that's on there is all these people going, it's the end, dump your money into this. And I'm like, wow, wow. That's kind of like over the top. But like, how do you separate the difference between hype and like real true good investments?

SPEAKER_02 23:17

I think that's something that can be really difficult to do. And ultimately, I think that's that's why I recommend, you know, uh investing in an index fund or an ETF. And again, like there is some uh some sometimes it it can be reasonable to take the approach of investing in individual stocks as well. But again, I would be disciplined about sort of tracking that and seeing how your results go. But like if you're dealing with, let's say, an individual security, the way that securities, in theory, over the long term are are valued are based on the cash flows that that company is expected to generate in the future. And so if the current valuation of that company is not fully reflecting what you think those cash flows will be, then it would it would seem that it's undervalued and not necessarily overhyped. But the difficulty of forecasting will of the amount of cash flows that a company is going to generate over the course of the rest of its life cannot be understated. I mean, that is an extremely difficult thing to do that even professionals you know fail at on a regular basis. You know, most successful professional investors may have a hit rate that's only slightly over 50%. And so it can be really hard to correctly analyze the security and predict sort of how how that industry is going to evolve over time, how that company is going, what role they'll play within that industry. And so I think that really comes down to doing research on on the investment opportunity, but it's it's much easier said than done.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Yeah, that's really interesting, man. It is much easier said than done. And I think that's like with all of this stuff. You know, and one of the things too is like it it's it's easier said than done because like right now, everything has become super emotional because of social media. Now, I see my daughter's generation, like she's 10. Oh, I gotta try this, Dad. Why? Because it's trending, it's a hot, it's a trend right now. And I'm like, I'm super scared for this generation as they start investing in things like that, because it's like, oh yeah, we're just gonna buy this. And like, what was it? The uh the GameStop stuff. That movie fascinated me. And it was just something that was massively trending, and I just kept going with it. But it's wild. Like, but has uh do you think investing has become too emotional because of social media and like 24-7 market news?

SPEAKER_02 25:40

I it's it's a really interesting question. I actually think that it's it certainly exacerbated the issue, but I think that it's always been an issue in terms of how emotional inactivity investing can be. Because, you know, even back in, let's say, the times of the dot-com boom or the financial crisis, or or many decades ago, you know, people are always trying to drive everyone who's involved in financial media or social media or whatever it is has incentives of their own. And whether that was a newspaper a couple decades ago or television during a financial crisis, those incentives are usually to drive views. And you're not gonna get that without the the way that you drive views is by getting people to feel an emotion about something. That's what's gonna make them click. And so that's why you want to write pretty uh exciting headlines, we'll say. And the, you know, the world of social media now, just the algorithm drives things that gets clicks, which again are things that get people worked up. Same thing that you see in the world with like politics and the division that's that's being shown because of how the algorithms work and whatnot and whatnot. It's just it's feeding, it's feeding things to people that get them fired up because that's what they keep coming back to. And uh that yeah, that that's not definitely not optimal for decision making. Right?

SPEAKER_00 26:58

It's not, you know, because people can go down a path that that is maybe hard to come back from. But I want to ask you this because let's take it back a couple of steps. If someone is just getting started and investing today, where if you were just getting started today and you were starting over, where would you actually focus first?

SPEAKER_02 27:23

Yeah, I think it's just really it's really about what you want to do with it. If you're just doing this as, you know, a personal activity to uh save for retirement, then that's a much different answer than if you want to do it professionally. And so if you want to do it professionally, I think one of the most important things that you can do is get the proper training and mentorship. And really, I still I I think invest, I think about investing largely in the professional sense as like a mentorship business or an apprenticeship, excuse me. Like there's just there's so many different ways to make money investing. You know, like we've talked mostly about the stock market so far, but there are professional investors who only invest in fixed income or commodities or currencies or whatever it may be. And so there's lots of different ways to make money. And I think the most, the, the most beneficial thing you can do for your career if you're trying to get into investing is to find someone who has a proven track record of being able to outperform the market and just learn everything that you can from them. But if you're just doing this on a personal basis, trying to save for retirement, I just think it goes back to that same advice of just trying to be disciplined and really consistent about dollar cost averaging into some safe, relatively conservative investments like an index fund or something like that, and trying not to get too distracted by shiny objects. And something that can be useful is like kind of setting aside, you know, maybe you say you're gonna put X percent of your income into the index fund every month, but maybe then you'll set aside y percent. That's kind of like money that you can play with to try to learn about the stock market and because you're interested in companies and things about that, and and and things of that nature. But again, it's important to just at least be aware of how those investments are performing. And, you know, you may want to look at them and perhaps compare them to, again, the index fund, or I'd I'd I'd guess that maybe they they uh a lots of times they're probably performing more closely to the DraftKings account than uh than the Fidelity account. So it's important to uh to just pay attention to the results and act accordingly and adjust your approach accordingly over time.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

I I love that, man. I want to ask you another question too, because it got me thinking which do you think in your mind is more dangerous for investors right now?

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Fear or greed? I think it can vary by the investor.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

I think different people can be more inclined to feel uh one or the other of those more regularly and more strongly. And so I think it's kind of an issue of really just getting to know yourself over time and observing yourself go through different market cycles in different investment situations and just watching how you feel, observing how you behave, observing how you react. And so I think having too much greed can can certainly get you in trouble, but too much fear can as well. I mean, like we talked about earlier, like any anything that's you know worth doing in life requires some some level of risk. And so I think that people can, you know, definitely become overly fearful, but certainly see the other side with greed as well. And it's important to just be be aware of your own kind of natural gravitations and and tendencies. I love that, man.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

I I want to ask you too about AI, because I do not know anything about AI. I mean, besides that, it's changing a lot of things. And like, are we entering a period where traditional investing strategies might not work the same because of AI and how fast everything changes?

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Yeah, I think it's really tough to say. I mean, AI, I think it's probably the most significant technological advancement that I've seen in my lifetime. And I feel like we're sort of at a peak of change right now, just in terms of what what's happened with agents over the course of the past several months and the capabilities that you have nowadays in terms of I mean, I think it's gonna shake up the whole economy just because you can have agents do jobs that, you know, uh people graduating out of college were doing before. And so I just don't think we've faced the amount of change that we're about to face in the coming months, quarters, and years uh in in my lifetime. And so I'm very curious to see how it'll play out. I at at the end of the day, I do think that, you know, a stock, again, represents a small piece of ownership in a business. And so that ultimately comes down to what are the cash flows of that business over the long term going to be. And so that's sort of how I think about that.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

I love that, man. I I was curious too, because you know, as things continue to change, um are I have this feeling that people are gonna go back to some of the boring things too. You know, maybe some of that stuff that seemed like that seems like more traditional, it might be where people kind of find their way, you know? And what's one thing about investing that sounds boring but actually makes people wealthy over time, you know?

SPEAKER_02 32:38

Yeah. I I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but it's really the dollar cost averaging, you know, and no no one wants to hear about that because it's not fun, it's not exciting, it doesn't kind of get at that gambling mentality that I was talking about earlier, but it's really the clearest path to long-term success in terms of being able to, at some point in your life, being in a stable financial position where you can afford to retire. And I think that this is a really difficult thing for a lot of people to imagine, especially people in in my generation and younger, just it feels very difficult to for a lot of people to imagine like homeownership, for example. And so I think that's part of what makes these, you know, more gambling type investments seem attractive to people, is it feels like it gives them an opportunity to kind of escape from the rat race or something like that. And so I think that those things can be really tempting and probably are going to continue to be tempting for for a lot of people. But it's it's just the the reality of the situation is that like maybe some of those people eventually will learn their lesson from the gambling. And, you know, again, if they go through some sort of a crypto wave and lose their money or something like that, or meme stocks or or whatever it may be, you would hope that eventually sort of they they would realize, hey, this isn't working for me. What are my other options? What can I do to get to where I want to be? And lots of times that comes down to just actually sitting down and doing the math, which, you know, you can do it. It's pretty simple to do it in Excel, or I'd imagine even like ChatGPT can do it these days in terms of just like, hey, this is the amount that I earn. This is how much I have saved right now, this is how much I think I could save every month going forward, and the rough return I think I could make if I were to invest in the stock market, you know, call it, I don't know, 7, 8, 9%, something like that. And then the way that that compounds over 10, 20, 30, 40 years is just when people when people haven't ran those calculations before and then they do that, I think they end up really surprised usually at just the power of the compounding. And so I think if there's enough sort of damage from a lot of the gambling type stuff that's going on right now, then people are going to have to say, hey, this isn't working. What are my other options? And then it's just a matter of, you know, learning about sort of some of the basic concept concepts that we've talked about today. I love that, man.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Oh, I want to ask you one last question. Um, do you think a lot of people today are investing? Or do you think there's a lot of people that are just gambling with a nicer vocabulary, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

Definitely, definitely a lot of gambling going on. You know, again, it comes down to sort of what's uh how does how does the how does the purchase that you're making, the investment that you're making, uh tie into your own financial circumstances, your long-term goals, and just your your motives and understanding for making it? Like are you going, are you going into this with an understanding that, you know, because the stock market has compounded at X percent for a long time, and you know, I believe it's going to continue to do that for the foreseeable future? Or is it, you know, I think that I'm going to be able to sell this to someone else at a higher price in a few months just because it's going to get more popular, which could happen. And there are people who are able to do that sort of thing successfully. But um, it's just, I think a lot of the way, uh, a lot of a lot of times the way that people approach it these days is not rigorous in terms of the measurement, in terms of the consideration about can I really afford to lose this? And if it works out, what kind of a position will that put me in versus if it doesn't work out? And if you were to weigh those, you know, kind of pros and cons or potential outcomes of a more conservative action versus some of the stuff that you see people doing today, I think those risk profiles would just look very different. And some of them would look more like going to the casino than uh working with a CFP. I love that, man. Can I ask you, where can people go to find out more about you and what you do? Yeah, sure. So uh I'm active on LinkedIn, just uh Brian Wagman, and then on Twitter, I am uh under at stockthoughts81. And then I also have a blog that I write at thestocthoughts.com. So Twitter uh or X as it's called nowadays, it'll always be Twitter to me. Uh Twitter, LinkedIn, Substack, those are the places that I'm really active on. Yeah.