Talking Real Money - Investing Talk
Financial talk radio veteran, Don McDonald and former host of Serious Money on PBS, Tom Cock, join forces to talk about real money issues. In each episode, they solve real money problems, dole out real investing (not speculating) advice, and really explain the financial issues that effect all of us. Plus, it's actually fun! Talking Real Money is a podcast designed to provide the real help we all need to enjoy a really great future. Call in with your questions anytime at 855-935-TALK (8255).
Episodes
1967 episodes
Find the Robot
It’s Friday Q&A—with a small experiment. Don slips one AI-generated voice among the listener questions and challenges you to identify the robot, with his complete two-book library hanging in the balance.The financial questions are t...
The Casino Next Door
Robinhood says it wants to be everything to investors—but its fastest-growing attractions look a lot like a casino. Don and Tom examine prediction markets, options, crypto, payment for order flow, and the uneasy fit between fiduciary advice and...
The Market Hasn’t Sung Yet
The market’s long winning streak has investors wondering whether a crash is waiting in the wings. Don and Tom look at the S&P 500’s run, the lost decade that followed the 1990s boom, and why international diversification changed that outcom...
The Year of the Stock Picker. Again.
Wall Street has declared yet another “year of the stock picker.” Don and Tom examine Morningstar and SPIVA data showing how few active large-cap funds beat their benchmarks—and why high fees, trading costs, taxes, short horizons, and fierce com...
Yesterday’s News, Today’s Price
Rule Seven of Financial Physics says there is no new news: by the time public information reaches you, the market has already reacted.Don and Tom explain why neither headlines nor illegal insider tips offer ordinary investors a durable ...
The Jester’s Portfolio
Friday’s question pile ranges from the safest bond fund around to the harder question of what retirement is actually for. Don sorts through the choices with his usual preference for simple, sturdy answers.He weighs the TSP G Fund agains...
Smart Enough to Know Better
Being great at running a company does not make anyone a market oracle. Don and Tom unpack the money regrets of successful CEOs—and the costly confidence that often follows success.They draw the line between business skill and investment...
Who Calls the Financial Plays?
Could a nation of steadier 401(k) investors make markets calmer—or will algorithms, options, and meme-stock behavior keep the ride bumpy? Tom and Roxy weigh the forces pulling volatility in both directions.Next, an almost-80-year-old wi...
Bond. Very Long Bond.
AI’s appetite for data centers is sending tech giants to the bond market—and some of that debt will still be around in 2075. Don and Tom look at the scale of the borrowing and why a tempting yield deserves a closer look.They separate co...
Nobody Knows Nothing
Why is financial forecasting so persuasive when its track record is so poor? Don and Tom open the Book of Financial Physics to Law No. 6—“Nobody Knows Nothing”—and explain why stock pickers, market timers, and highly paid pundits cannot reliabl...
RMDs Without the Fire Sale
Required minimum distributions don’t have to trigger a fire sale. Don explains how an in-kind transfer can move an investment from an IRA to a brokerage account while preserving the holding and resetting its cost basis.Then it’s back to...
The House Takes a Cut
Wall Street can promise dazzling returns, but private equity’s fees, illiquidity, and tax drag may leave investors with far less than the headline number. Don and Tom unpack research showing how ordinary index funds and municipal bonds can deli...
The $315K Fork
Fresh from passing the CFP exam, Roxy Butner joins Tom to work through a classic retirement fork: take the richer lifetime teacher pension, or accept a $315,000 lump sum and invest it. The math matters, but so do longevity, survivor benefits, l...
Retirement Radish?
Just when you thought America had invented every possible retirement account, along comes the Radish. Don and Tom dig into the proposed employer-funded savings plan, the man who helped create the 401(k), and whether workers really need another ...
Worst Case, Ready
Financial Physics rule five asks the uncomfortable question every investor should answer: what is the worst that could happen? Don and Tom revisit leverage in 1929, the crashes of 2000, 2008, and 2020, and the practical defenses that keep a bad...
Five Questions, No Magic
Don opens with a spirited defense of AI as a creative tool—especially when it makes ideas possible that would otherwise be too expensive or time-consuming. Technology changes the jobs around us, but learning to direct it responsibly can expand ...
Chargeback to the Future
Chargebacks were built to protect consumers from stolen cards and crooked merchants. Now they’re increasingly used when a subscription surprises someone, a restaurant disappoints, or buyer’s remorse sets in. Don and Tom sort real fraud from “fr...
Three Funds, One Risk Dial
VT, DFAW, and AVGE all promise global diversification—but they take different roads to get there. Don and Tom compare cost, holdings, factor tilts, and the extra risk behind higher expected returns, then explain why the “best” one-fund solution...
Money by the Decades
From your 20s to your 60s, the priorities change—but the basic job doesn’t. Don and Tom walk through emergency savings, Roth IRAs, 401(k) matches, rebalancing, retirement planning, Social Security, Medicare, and estate planning, decade by decad...
Gravity Loses, Eventually
Rule Four of Financial Fysics says everything eventually rises—not every stock, not every year, but human productivity and global economic output over time. Don and Tom explain why buying the broad market is ownership in thousands of businesses...
Another Day of Q and A
Can 21 funds deliver useful global diversification—or mostly camouflage overlap, cost, and complexity? Don opens the Friday Q&A by giving one listener a sharper set of questions to take back to an advisor, including what each fund actually ...
The Index Ate Their Homework
Active fund managers have a new explanation for years of underperformance: index funds have made their old job harder. Don and Tom examine that award-winning excuse, revisit how indexing reshaped the business, and return to the stubborn arithme...
The Big Question Pile
Listener questions take over the studio as Don and Tom work through a very big pile without sacrificing any more forests than necessary. The quick tour runs from life insurance in retirement to the seductive yield on floating-rate bank-loan ETF...
