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Where to Invest $100,000 Right Now · Merryn Talks Money

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. Welcome to Merin Talks
0:18
Speaker 1: Your Money, the Personal Finance edition of Merin Talks Money.
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Speaker 1: In these bonus podcasts, we talk about the best strategies
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Speaker 1: for making the most of your money. I'm Merin Sunset
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Speaker 1: Web and this week we are tackling what sounds like
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Speaker 1: a very simple question, if you had one hundred thousand
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Speaker 1: dollars right now, where would you invest it? Now we
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Speaker 1: know that at the moment, at least the majority of
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Speaker 1: our audience are in the UK, so that's you know,
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Speaker 1: roughly eighty thousand pounds if we want to be specific.
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Speaker 2: But it's the same kind of thing.
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Speaker 1: So the point anyway, is not the currency. The point
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Speaker 1: here is to think about where you would put the money.
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Speaker 1: So what we've done is we've got on the Bloomberg
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Speaker 1: Personal Finance and Wealth reporter Susanne Willie, who joins us
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Speaker 1: from New York.
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Speaker 2: Thank you, Susan.
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Speaker 3: My pleasure.
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Speaker 1: And what you do fairly regularly is you look at
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Speaker 1: particular amounts of money ten thousand dollars, one hundred thousand dollars,
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Speaker 1: a million dollars, and you go out and you ask
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Speaker 1: experts what they would do with the money. Is that right?
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Speaker 2: Is that how it works?
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Speaker 3: That's how it works? You know, I was looking and
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Speaker 3: this series actually started in twenty sixteen, which means I've
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Speaker 3: been written a shocking number of these things. But you know,
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Speaker 3: we're trying to get people to tell us where now
1:27
Speaker 3: do they see a compelling sector or a strategy that
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Speaker 3: you know one of the dynamics behind the strategy make
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Speaker 3: it particularly interesting right now? And how people can you know,
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Speaker 3: can move into that strategy if they want to.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so your latest one is on one hundred thousand dollars,
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Speaker 1: and can I let's ask before we go into looking
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Speaker 1: at what these money managers said, how do you choose them?
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Speaker 3: A chunk of them are people that I already know
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Speaker 3: and respect. If we're going to allow this person to
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Speaker 3: share their views, I want to know that they're legitimate,
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Speaker 3: they've been in the market for a while, that they're
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Speaker 3: not completely talking their own game. So a lot of
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Speaker 3: these are people I know. There are people that we
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Speaker 3: speak to at Bloomberg or Markets team or Cross Assets team,
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Speaker 3: so they're people with good experience. But I try to
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Speaker 3: get a broad range, so I don't just get like strategists.
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Speaker 3: Chief of investment officers. Sometimes I get portfolio managers, so
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Speaker 3: sometimes I'll get somebody who is at a family office,
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Speaker 3: so different little spots in the wealth management world. I
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Speaker 3: try to have a mix of people to get a
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Speaker 3: wide range of views.
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Speaker 1: Okay, and here's the key question that I know a
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Speaker 1: lot of people are now thinking.
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Speaker 2: Max.
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Speaker 1: We've got quite a big professional audience on this podcast.
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Speaker 1: Although it is by the way aimed the ordinary investor.
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Speaker 1: I know a lot of pros listen to it. Do
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Speaker 1: you take suggestions? If they will email in going geez,
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Speaker 1: I can do better than that.
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Speaker 3: Yes, I do. I'm always open to finding new people
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Speaker 3: that where to invest ten thousand. We have the same
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Speaker 3: people pretty much every time, three out of four, but
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Speaker 3: the other ones one hundred thousand, the one million. My
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Speaker 3: colleague Charlie Wells in London does a great one on
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Speaker 3: word invest in real estate. I am always looking for
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Speaker 3: new people because I don't want to just present the
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Speaker 3: same people. So there's always a mix of new people.
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Speaker 3: And I'm very open to getting pictures. Although Amaron, I
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Speaker 3: may really regret saying that, Well.
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Speaker 1: You won't regret it because what's going to happen. Is
3:19
Speaker 1: it going to come into our email. Excellent, I'm going
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Speaker 1: to regret it, and they're going to come to us
3:24
Speaker 1: and I'm going.
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Speaker 2: To filter them for you.
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Speaker 4: That is fabulous, So then they'll be never filtered by
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Speaker 4: me and you so hear that, everybody. If you want
3:31
Speaker 4: to do this, you've got to be brave because I'm
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Speaker 4: filtering you, and then Susanna is filtering you. So you know,
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Speaker 4: have something you stant to say before you even touched
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Speaker 4: on to the people who do have useful things to
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Speaker 4: say and have already got your trust. When I was
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Speaker 4: looking through your most recent article, which by the way,
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Speaker 4: we'll put the link to that in the show notes
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Speaker 4: for subscribers, what struck me. There's a lot of home
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Speaker 4: buyers here, a lot of the people you talk to
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Speaker 4: a still very heavily invested in the US and in
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Speaker 4: US large cap stocks.
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Speaker 3: It's really true. I was a bit surprised by some
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Speaker 3: of that. I talked to Shaneade Colton Grant, who is
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Speaker 3: with BNY Mellon, and she was very big on US
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Speaker 3: large caps and was saying that people who are concerned
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Speaker 3: about tech valuations are thinking back to the dot com bubble,
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Speaker 3: but the sector looks different today because of the cash
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Speaker 3: flow that the Mag seven are throwing off. I guess
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Speaker 3: I had expected a little more more valuation concern. I'd
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Speaker 3: had a different take from Shanead's back in late December
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Speaker 3: when we did the Word to Invest one million story
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Speaker 3: and Jack Ablin, who's the chief investment officer of Cressa Capital,
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Speaker 3: his big picture take was that he thought the SMP
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Speaker 3: was overvalued by twenty five percent and noted that can't
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Speaker 3: be made up by earnings a loan. But he also
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Speaker 3: noted something that is very true obviously, which is that
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Speaker 3: expensive Marcus can stay expensive. He just wouldn't. He just
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Speaker 3: was saying he wouldn't have put new money into the
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Speaker 3: Mag seven because he actually probably, like your guests the
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Speaker 3: other week, Jeremy Grantham, thinks we could see every play
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Speaker 3: of two thousand and that all we need is some
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Speaker 3: sort of catalyst and we could be down a very
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Speaker 3: unhappy path.
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Speaker 1: Then already, if you decided to stay only in US
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Speaker 1: lunch cap this year, you're already seeing fairly hefty relative
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Speaker 1: informance right now, as you got my Bloomberg up in
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Speaker 1: front of me, and the S and B five hundred
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Speaker 1: and at one point two four percent as we speak
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Speaker 1: eurostocs thirteen point five percent, even the foot two one
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Speaker 1: hundred up nearly nine percent, and the Dack's up well
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Speaker 1: over sixteen percent.
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Speaker 2: So this year, if you'd.
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Speaker 1: Stuck with US large gap so far, I mean, it's
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Speaker 1: can turn around any second, we know markets, right, but
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Speaker 1: so far that home bias isn't looking great for American investors.
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Speaker 3: It's true, and I personally kind of welcome this to
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Speaker 3: some degree because I'm a big believer in diversification, and
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Speaker 3: one aspect of diversification that hasn't paid off for so
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Speaker 3: long that people have moved away from is diversifying internationally.
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Speaker 3: And I think a lot of people, to some asset
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Speaker 3: managers and their clients want to move away from asset
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Speaker 3: perstation their home biases getting even stronger. And I'm a
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Speaker 3: big believer in international diversification and that's where the value
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Speaker 3: is now.
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Speaker 2: And of course she could still be right.
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Speaker 1: I mean, she says, doesn't she when you talk to her,
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Speaker 1: that this is the year that AI needs to prove
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Speaker 1: itself and if it really does prove itself, and it
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Speaker 1: is the case as everyone felt pret deeps that the
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Speaker 1: US is the center of the most exciting bits of
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Speaker 1: AI tech. Then these valuations that we're so worried about
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Speaker 1: you and I may mean nothing.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, she's not going like raw ra. She has a
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Speaker 3: smart take on it. You know, she definitely wants to
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Speaker 3: see the results that were all watching for. In this
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Speaker 3: most recent one, there was someone who did like small caps,
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Speaker 3: which is another sort of interesting one to me because
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Speaker 3: I'm personally a little like Leary of small caps. I
6:53
Speaker 3: know that they'll benefit from lower interest rates because most
6:56
Speaker 3: of their debt is floating rate debt, But I just
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Speaker 3: wonder where do tariffs come in with small caps?
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Speaker 2: Yeah?
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Speaker 1: Look, tariffs are there are a moving, a moving nightmare,
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Speaker 1: aren't they know? We're never really got We still don't
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Speaker 1: really know very much about what's actually going to happen,
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Speaker 1: so it's difficult to invest anywhere where you might feel
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Speaker 1: those intense tariff risk.
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Speaker 2: So true, and then of course you talk about small caps.
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Speaker 1: He only talks about US small caps And we have
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Speaker 1: a rewarding in the UK out in the last couple
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Speaker 1: of days from Aberdeen suggesting that UK small cabs are
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Speaker 1: basically the most unloved cheapest asset class pretty much globally.
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Speaker 2: No one mentions those.
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Speaker 3: No, No, there was somebody in recent times who recommended
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Speaker 3: like thirty percent in the UK. So there have been okay,
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Speaker 3: you know, like glimmers of diversification.
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Speaker 2: Okay.
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Speaker 1: And then so we're moving on to Jerry from Brazilian
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Speaker 1: who suggested we go abroad for value, right, So that's
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Speaker 1: that's interesting. And then he also when he says go aboard,
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Speaker 1: he was talking about not just Europe, briddles as your
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Speaker 1: markets and age Agia specific so anything not US, right.
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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I mean there have been people who've talked
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Speaker 3: a lot about value in looking at areas that have
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Speaker 3: been underappreciated and are obviously you know, it's not hard
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Speaker 3: to be cheaper than the US market today, many markets
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Speaker 3: are significantly cheaper. So this is the idea to sort of,
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Speaker 3: he said, think differently, embrace diversification, and look at growth
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Speaker 3: areas and under explored parts of the market. I don't
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Speaker 3: know if you'd call it Europe, em and Asia Pacific
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Speaker 3: completely under explored.
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Speaker 2: But but maybe under explored for mainstream American investors. I
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Speaker 2: guess perhaps.
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Speaker 1: And then I'll just go back to Michael of Levity
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Speaker 1: Financial Group. He was the one he said small cap
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Speaker 1: stocks in the US. But interestingly he very much recommended
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Speaker 1: actively managed small cap funds overpassive. From our side, we
8:52
Speaker 1: always think of the US market as somewhere where everyone
8:54
Speaker 1: always goes passive overactive, because there's such a huge and
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Speaker 1: well researched market, and even at small cap level, almost
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Speaker 1: people went passive.
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Speaker 2: But he's very clear on active, right.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, he was very clear and active. He thinks there's
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Speaker 3: more maybe due diligence that sort of needs to be
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Speaker 3: baked into it. There are obviously small cap ETFs to
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Speaker 3: focus on more quality, I believe, but yeah, there was
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Speaker 3: not a focus on international in the small cap space
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Speaker 3: for Michael, that's for sure.
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Speaker 1: And then the other thing that struck me as interesting
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Speaker 1: from the first three people who spoke to is they
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Speaker 1: all suggested some kind of private part of the portfolio.
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Speaker 1: So even with one hundred thousand dollars, which doesn't seem
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Speaker 1: like that huge a portfolio, is still suggesting that there's
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Speaker 1: something private. So oncegested fifteen percent between private equity and
9:42
Speaker 1: bench capital, five percent and private credit, and I think
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Speaker 1: was it.
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Speaker 2: Michael also suggested private.
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Speaker 3: Credit, right, yeah, private credit is pretty pretty hot. I mean,
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Speaker 3: this is not meant to be like your one hundred
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Speaker 3: thousand portfolio.
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Speaker 1: At all.
9:55
Speaker 3: It's sort of like, if you got one hundred thousand
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Speaker 3: portfolio today in addition to what you have, how would
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Speaker 3: you sort of dole it out? But yeah, I mean
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Speaker 3: there is so much talk or I don't know if
10:06
Speaker 3: you call it hype about private market investments. There's this
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Speaker 3: talk about trying to get in the US, trying to
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Speaker 3: get private market investments into our workplace retirement plans such
10:15
Speaker 3: as our four oh one k's. It's interesting. We've even
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Speaker 3: seen recently some attempts to launch ETFs. Not attempts they
10:22
Speaker 3: have launched ETFs focus on private credit. It's a tricky area.
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Speaker 3: They're going to be large, smaller companies, and it's sort
10:29
Speaker 3: of hard to see the vetting that is being done
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Speaker 3: behind the scenes to get into these investments. So I
10:37
Speaker 3: love the idea of having non correlated assets, but you
10:43
Speaker 3: have to weigh that against the risks known and unknown
10:47
Speaker 3: that are in some of these pockets of the market.
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Speaker 3: I don't want to be too negative. I'm just sort
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Speaker 3: of saying that you really have to be cognizant of
10:54
Speaker 3: what you're getting into.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's also a little argument about the extent
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Speaker 1: to which that non correlation exists. But the podcast all
11:00
Speaker 1: together about another time. Now your fourth person, John from
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Speaker 1: twin Focus. He was very much safety theme, which brings
11:08
Speaker 1: us back to taros and the threat of tarots, which
11:10
Speaker 1: we briefly mentioned earlier. Very hard to see where that's
11:12
Speaker 1: going to go, but if you want to play, it's safe.
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Speaker 2: He was very much about treasuries, right, He was very.
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Speaker 3: Much about treasury. As we were talking when treasuries were
11:22
Speaker 3: I don't know, around four point five percent the tenure.
11:25
Speaker 3: They have obviously gone down since then, but at his
11:27
Speaker 3: point when we came out was that you get the treasure,
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Speaker 3: you get the safety, but that also you might be
11:32
Speaker 3: able to get appreciation, which probably has worked out if
11:36
Speaker 3: you bought it right when he put this right when
11:38
Speaker 3: we put this story out, and.
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Speaker 1: Maybe if we asked him again today right now, he
11:42
Speaker 1: might say something a little different.
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Speaker 3: I wonder. And he also talked a little bit about gold,
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Speaker 3: which I know you are, Oh we like gold, Yeah,
11:50
Speaker 3: a fair enough.
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Speaker 1: You know. He made me happy in all sorts of
11:54
Speaker 1: ways because the way he talked about taking profits out
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Speaker 1: of his the growth part of his portfolio and moving
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Speaker 1: it towards value and midcaps as a potential reversion to
12:02
Speaker 1: the means strategy. I'm very big on reversion to the
12:04
Speaker 1: means that that really resonated with me. And then of
12:06
Speaker 1: course he talks about gold. When he talks about gold,
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Speaker 1: he talks about owning a combination of billion coins and
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Speaker 1: a gold ETF, so making of about three to five
12:15
Speaker 1: percent of the portfolio.
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Speaker 2: I thought that was interesting.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what he generally. They have very ultra high
12:21
Speaker 3: networth clients. He's with twin Focus, and that's something that
12:25
Speaker 3: they generally advise for their clients. He basically feels gold
12:29
Speaker 3: has a place a permanent place in portfolios.
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Speaker 1: Interestingly, he doesn't seem to think that crypto has a
12:34
Speaker 1: place a permanent place in portfolios. So, you know, looking
12:38
Speaker 1: through this, I wonder none of these people mentioned in
12:41
Speaker 1: crypto at all. I wonder if they would with Trump's
12:44
Speaker 1: talk about crypto over the weekend. But have any of
12:47
Speaker 1: the people you've interviewed previously, perhaps the people what you've
12:49
Speaker 1: asked when you're looking at million dollar portfolios, have they
12:52
Speaker 1: mentioned crypto?
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Speaker 3: Yes, they have mentioned crypto. They've mentioned you know, bitcoin
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Speaker 3: in particular, since that's sort of where it's at with
13:02
Speaker 3: the you know, the crypto, the ETF focused on crypto
13:08
Speaker 3: that the I shares etf taking in so much money
13:11
Speaker 3: this year, although some of it has flowed out recently obviously.
13:15
Speaker 3: But people have also talked about bitcoin in terms of
13:18
Speaker 3: a correlated asset. But that's not really true because you know,
13:28
Speaker 3: if you look at bitcoin and how it responds when
13:31
Speaker 3: the market is a risk off, it's not pretty right, No,
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Speaker 3: it's not.
13:36
Speaker 2: And we talked about this last week.
13:38
Speaker 1: We went three podcasts last week and in one of them,
13:41
Speaker 1: John and I talked about people who had a lot
13:43
Speaker 1: of bitcoin and I suddenly found they'd lost rather a
13:45
Speaker 1: lot of value very quickly. And at the same time,
13:48
Speaker 1: we were talking about where you might buy a Golden
13:50
Speaker 1: visa if you wanted to move to a new country,
13:53
Speaker 1: and one of the things that we ended up talking
13:55
Speaker 1: about was how be a really great idea to move
13:58
Speaker 1: to Greece. Oh, now, I look at the final question
14:03
Speaker 1: that you ask all your participants. You say to them,
14:06
Speaker 1: what's their alternative investment idea that isn't necessarily in an
14:10
Speaker 1: asset class at all? And I see that one of
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Speaker 1: them said he's buying a small place in the southern
14:14
Speaker 1: part of Greece.
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Speaker 2: Yes he is.
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Speaker 3: John Panta Kidtis of Twin Focus, who was born in Greece,
14:21
Speaker 3: and he travels back there quite often, and he and
14:23
Speaker 3: his wife for buying a place on what they call
14:26
Speaker 3: the Athens Riviera, and he is very bullish and buying
14:31
Speaker 3: real estate in Athens. He was just saying, if you
14:35
Speaker 3: have one hundred thousand, putting that toward a home in
14:37
Speaker 3: some high end neighborhood in Greece could be a big investment.
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Speaker 1: When I read that, I slightly misunderstood because I read
14:42
Speaker 1: it very quickly, and I thought, wow, you can buy
14:44
Speaker 1: a nine thousand Greece for one hundred thousand dollars. And
14:46
Speaker 1: so then I went on to have a quick look
14:48
Speaker 1: on some of the real estate sides and found that
14:50
Speaker 1: when he says put one hundred thousand dollars towards a
14:52
Speaker 1: home and some high end neighbors in Greece, he means
14:54
Speaker 1: put one hundred thousand dollars towards a home in a
14:56
Speaker 1: high end neighborhood in Greece as a five percent deposit.
15:00
Speaker 2: Yes, that is cheap.
15:02
Speaker 3: No, No, he said, it's He said, you know their
15:05
Speaker 3: prices are skyrocketing, and that you know it's all foreigners buying. Yeah,
15:09
Speaker 3: but he's very bullish.
15:10
Speaker 1: Was that your favorite of the alternates recommended in that article,
15:14
Speaker 1: because there was another good stuff too, Yeah.
15:17
Speaker 3: And this particular one it was I liked the idea
15:20
Speaker 3: of buying recreational land where you could sort of create
15:24
Speaker 3: your own little compound and you have your hiking trails.
15:27
Speaker 3: And if you're in the US, people love pickleball. Here
15:30
Speaker 3: you could put a pick a ball cord on. But
15:32
Speaker 3: I loved Greece because I love travel, and I have
15:35
Speaker 3: a secret fantasy of getting some lovely stone home in Tuscany.
15:40
Speaker 3: So I'm always interested in the overseas real estate dreams
15:44
Speaker 3: of some of these people.
15:46
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you one more question that which
15:49
Speaker 1: isn't even about this newsletter, this piece you wrote about
15:51
Speaker 1: these four investors. Over the last six months or so,
15:55
Speaker 1: has there been someone who's offered you an investment that
15:58
Speaker 1: is outside the main dream that really resonated with you
16:01
Speaker 1: and thought, yet, that is interesting, it's different. And if
16:05
Speaker 1: I had one hundred thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars
16:07
Speaker 1: or a million dollars right now, that's what I would buy.
16:09
Speaker 3: I've had some interesting, sort of niche ones, none like
16:13
Speaker 3: the one that your guest the other week, Dan Rusmussen,
16:16
Speaker 3: I think had which was I think Polish stocks. But
16:19
Speaker 3: I have had someone recommend Korean banks, which I thought
16:23
Speaker 3: was interesting. I'm a boring investor, Maren. I personally just
16:28
Speaker 3: go for index funds and try to keep it pretty simple.
16:32
Speaker 3: So while I'm intrigued by a lot of these ideas,
16:35
Speaker 3: personally I keep it pretty simple.
16:37
Speaker 2: Say you're not coming in with me on a house
16:39
Speaker 2: in Greece.
16:39
Speaker 3: I didn't say I wouldn't go for real estate and Greece.
16:42
Speaker 2: Oh okay, fine, all right, well we'll talk about I'll
16:44
Speaker 2: join you.
16:45
Speaker 3: I'll join you in sort of like the hard assets.
16:48
Speaker 3: You know, we can go and we can buy some gold, yeah,
16:51
Speaker 3: some bullion. I can buy some coins and because I'll
16:54
Speaker 3: have pickle ball in grease and you know, in the spring.
16:56
Speaker 1: So anyway, all right now, I don't think that you
16:59
Speaker 1: can my Greek house with an ETF. But if you're
17:03
Speaker 1: listening and that you click on the link in the
17:05
Speaker 1: show notes, you will find ETF recommendations for pretty much
17:09
Speaker 1: all the things we've talked about today, and you can
17:11
Speaker 1: see how you can get exposure to the asset classes that.
17:14
Speaker 2: We are finding interesting.
17:20
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this week's Marin Talks to Your Money.
17:22
Speaker 1: If you like a show, rate review, and subscribe where
17:24
Speaker 1: ever you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to follow
17:27
Speaker 1: me and John on x or Twitter at marinasw and
17:30
Speaker 1: John Underscore Stepic Seisani on Twitter.
17:32
Speaker 2: Got a big yes, I am what's your hand on?
17:34
Speaker 3: I am at wealth Watch?
17:36
Speaker 2: Okay, brilliant, Thank you.
17:37
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Samasadi, Production support and sound
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Speaker 1: designed by Moses and Questions and comments on this show
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Speaker 1: and all our shows always welcome, as are your pictures
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Speaker 1: to be in Susan's articles. Our show email is merin
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