The Truth About Wall Street: Protecting Your Financial Future

In this episode, I break down the investment philosophy we stand behind—why stock picking doesn’t work, why market timing is a lie, and what actually builds wealth.

I’ll also unpack a big tax update for retirees and share why this show has a new name (Talking Money, Clearly) and an even louder purpose moving forward.

👉 Subscribe for clear, practical advice on investing, retirement, tax planning, and building lasting wealth.

https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/tax-deduction-change-for-those-over-65

Chapters🕓
00:00 - Why I’m Fired Up About Investing
00:27 - Mark Matson: The Loudest Voice of Reason
00:59 - Why Stock Picking Is Basically Gambling
01:58 - You Can’t Time the Market (No Matter What They Say)
03:09 - What Real Portfolios Look Like
03:23 - My Role Isn’t to Sell You Stuff
04:30 - Why Even the GOATs Have Coaches
05:52 - Say Hello to Talking Money, Clearly
06:15 - The Big Idea Guiding This Show
07:25 - What Happened to Wealth Wise Women?
07:39 - Let’s Start Calling Out the B.S.
09:37 - Retirees: This Tax Change Is Huge
10:56 - Roth Conversions Just Got a Boost
11:33 - What’s Coming Next (Plus a Bark from Tank)

 #financialfreedom #wallstreet #moneymindset

Transcript

>> Wes Cuprill: 0:00

Couple of weeks ago, I was at a training at Matson Money. They are the portfolio builder for the majority of our clients. And I left the training reminded why we subscribe to the investment philosophy that we do at Money and Clarity. And I also left with a renewed purpose and energy to want to tell as many people as I can about this philosophy and really be as loud of a champion and defender of it as possible. Now, this philosophy is the same philosophy shared by Matson Money. In fact, Mark Matson, who started matst Some Money, is probably the loudest champion and defender of this particular investment philosophy. If you don't know who Mark is or if you haven't seen any of his material, I highly encourage you to look him up, especially some of his TV appearances. It really is great television. And overall Mark is just a great voice of reason in a very loud, crowded room of Wall street voices that frankly aren't good for the average investor. But in an attempt to summarize this Investment philosophy as success_inctly as possible, at least for the purposes of this episode, I've boiled it down to a few main points. The first of which is this. Stock picking does not work. If stock picking did work, then all of us would invest in the same single stock every year. That would promise us the highest return. But obviously that's not how things work. I mean, just the sheer number of mutual funds and index funds that exist show that nobody can accurately predict the stock that is going to achieve the highest returns in any particular year. I mean, if you subscribe to stock picking, then I'd encourage you to just go down to the casino and pick a random number on the roulette table because the overall outcome or the odds are pretty much the same. And at least with the roulette table, you're going to get an immediate payout instead of having to wait to see how the returns play out. Second point, market timing is impossible. I can tell you with a very high degree of certainty that the S&P 500 is going to reach 7,000. But here's the thing. I can't tell you when that's going to happen. And no one else can either. Anybody who can tell you that they can accurately time the market either has illegal inside information, which, yes, that does exist on occasion. And in a later episode I'll talk about Congress's inside trading abilities. But the vast majority of people who claim that they can accurately time the M market are frankly just liars. And any published predictions out there are just. They're just guesses and they're usually made by people with a vested interest in the prediction that they're making. For instance, when a talking head goes on CNBC and says that Bitcoin is going to achieve a new high, I can guarantee you that that particular person is heavily invested in Bitcoin. So by being on the news and making a prediction, they're really just trying to encourage other people to go out and buy Bitcoin and drive the price up. In the end, they don't actually know where Bitcoin is going to go or where the stock market is going to go. Market timing is impossible. Third point. The best portfolios are globally diversified across thousands of holdings and they are held for the long term and they are regularly rebalanced. I'll dive into this particular point again in a later episode. And then the last point is this. My role as an advisor isn't to subscribe to you or prescribe to you a particular financial product, like an annuity, or build for you a particular portfolio. You don't need me for that. I mean, that's the great thing about the democratization of investing. Because of technology, you no longer need an advisor or a broker dealer to go out and buy financial securities. That's fantastic. If you just want to go buy a product, go online and do it. If you want to invest in a mutual fund, go open an account with Vanguard and go do it instead. My value as an advisor is to be absolutely relentless in my communication, my education and my coaching to help each and every client we work with stay committed to their plan and stay out of their own way. Let's be honest, humans, as much as we like to think we are logical and rational at all times, we aren't. And because we are emotional beings, emotion often gets in our way and it causes us to make less than optimal decisions. And this is especially true with money. So really my job is to help people over the long term manage their emotions, be as rational as possible when it comes to investing, but also build a plan that is customd to them in their situation and then help them stay committed to that plan through constant education and constant coaching. I like to use an athletics analogy for this. You don't necessarily need a coach for athletics. It's like you don't need a coach when it comes to investing. You certainly can go out and do it yourself. But why do you think the best athletes in the world all have coaches? Michael Phelipps had a coach. Tiger woods had a coach. I mean, there are very few examples at elite levels of Sports where the individuals have a very small coaching contingent or they have no coach at all. The vast majority of the highest performing athletes all have coaches not just for their particular sport, but mental coaches, therapists, they have nutritionists, they have teams built around them to help them achieve optimal performance. That is going to be the approach that I am going to take with money and clarity moving forward to become the coach to help you achieve your financial goals and build your American dream. And so this show is just one way that I'm aiming to fulfill that last point. The show has a new name, Talking Money. Clearly. I decided to start recording from home as I felt the setting would better fit the tone of the show moving forward. Plus, can't quite see him right now. He's on the couch. But shooting from home means the tank, the French. He will be able to make some guest appearances in future episodes. So this show will be a constant source of education, inspiration and coaching for all listeners. But I'm also going to operate it under the following thesis. And that thesis is this Wall street and the vast majority of its practitioners. So a lot of the other financial advisors out there do not have your best interests in mind. They have their own best interests in mind. Yours may be secondary to those interests. And then on top of that, the investing beliefs, practices and philosophies of Wall street and its practitioners not only don't work, but they are harmful to you and your retirement. I'm going to be loud about this moving forward. That's when I'm talking about the tone of the show being a little bit different moving forward. I'm going to be a very loud champion of coaching people on the right philosophies and practices to use when investing. And I'm going to be very loud encounter to many of the harmful practices that are out there. So the show is going to change a little bit, but the core tenets are remaining the same. This is going to be a very inspirational source of education and coaching. Wealth Wise Women isn't gone. Instead, what I'm going to do do is make it a segment in the overall show. So every now and then I'll post an episode in the Wealth Wise Women vein where I'll discuss a topic from the lens of how it affects women in particular. I also am going to add another segment that goes back to the thesis that I'm going to operate under. I'm gonna counter and track predictions that I see and I'm gonna start keeping score. You know the predictions I'm talking about. Let's Say you go to Yahoo. Finance or if you subscribe to any of those newsletters that you get in your email, all the predictions of you bitcoin'going to this or the stock market's doing this. Get ready. There's a crash coming around the corner. The housing market is in crisis or is about to be in crisis. I'm gonna start picking a, few of these predictions every now and then. First I'mnna dive into the history of the writer who put out the prediction or the talking head who put it out and just see what their overall success is, if you will. And then we're gonna track that prediction because what I want to start showing is a history that says, you know, you might as well just flip a coin. I mean, there was one study that I saw that followed a lot of the talking heads, like Jim Crramer is perfect example. Jim Crramer is right less than 50% of the time. He is incorrect more than if you were to just flip a coin. Literally flipping a coin when it comes to market predictions is more accurate than Jim Cramer getting on CNBC and screaming at the top of his lungs with his sleeves rolled up. And so as long as talking heads are legally allowed to make these predictions on TV and publish these books, another great talking head who I'll talk a lot about is Harry Dent. Just go look him up and the books that he's published over the years and all of the predictions that he's made, I think he's been wrong every single time. I'm going to keep talking about them because as long as they're able to put out the junk that they are, it doesn't matter how small of a voice I am, I do not care. I am going to be the person who says something about it, because at the end of the day I know I'm right and that's it. And these predictions that these talking heads are putting out there are harmful to people. And these people should be ashamed of the advice that they are putting out there for people on what to do with their money. Now, before I leave you, I do want to give you a little bit of a, discussion around something to provide you more clarity about a, particular topic that is currently relevant. About a month ago, a month and a half ago, the one big beautiful bill was signed into law. There's a lot of different things in that legislation. One big thing though, that is very impactful for retirees is the senior deduction. So before the one big beautiful bill, you had your standard deduction and Then you also had a senior, an extra senior deduction. And the one big beautiful bill increased both of those. So standard deduction. Now, for a married couples, 31,500 do. And then for seniors, the enhanced deduction was 3,200 for a married couple. Well, for the next, I think it's four years, 2025 through 2028. There is also an additional senior deduction in the form of$6,000 per individual. So for a married couple, both of you, over 65, you get an additional $12,000. Now, there's gonna be a Kiplinger link in the episode description that you can click on and read more about it. But essentially what it's saying is this. If you are both over 65 and married for the next four years, your standard deduction will be $46,700. That is a huge amount of tax savings. That comes with a lot of implications, probably a lot of questions too. So if you have questions about how it affects you in particular, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Book a time on my calendar, Just go to visit with MC Do. Com Do. Off the top of my head, one of the biggest ways that this will impact retirees or if you're approaching retirement but you're over 65 Roth conversions, you now have a larger chunk of change to work with if you want to employ a Roth conversion, especially over the next several years. So I did just wanna give you a little bit of clarity around that. Like I said, if you wanna learn more, click the Kiplinger link in the episode description or book some time with me. All right. All that being said, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you're excited for what's to come because I know I certainly am. I have a lot of great things to talk about. I'm really excited about what I am going to discuss. And frankly, I do like being a little controversial. Not necessarily controversial, but I like to go out and I apologize if you're hearing the barking in the background. I guess that's going to be a casualty of recording at home. You've got to thank the Frenchie who's protecting the neighborhood as we speak. But I look forward to being hopefully a voice of reason in this very loud, crowded environment full of Wall street talking heads who not only don't have your best interests in mind, but a lot of things that they believe in practice are not good for people. They hurt people, they destroy wealth. And in whatever form I can be, I plan on being a voice against that. So stay tuned. I'll see y'all next week. Thanks, and take care.