Latest / Financial Survival Network / Investing in Tomorrow: Unconventional Paths to Profitability - John Grace #6123
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: So yeah, the institutions and Dowmans foundations have been in
- 0:04Speaker 1: this space of alternative investments for the last thirty forty
- 0:08Speaker 1: in some cases fifty years. Some of those positions are
- 0:11Speaker 1: now becoming available to retail investors. In fact, let's talk
- 0:16Speaker 1: about one for a minute. One that I like a lot,
- 0:18Speaker 1: and that would be one that holds both student housing. Right,
- 0:22Speaker 1: you are.
- 0:23Speaker 2: Listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, where you get
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- 0:31Speaker 2: in today's trying times. You need the Financial Survival Network
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- 0:46Speaker 3: Ever, and welcome. You are listening to and watching the
- 0:53Speaker 3: Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Letz. Well Wall
- 0:57Speaker 3: Street is crumbling before your very Is is it time
- 1:01Speaker 3: to take the quick exit out. I'm talking about jumping
- 1:05Speaker 3: out the window and letting the rest work itself out?
- 1:09Speaker 3: Or is there hope do we hold on? Is it
- 1:12Speaker 3: going to be just a dip and a brief crash,
- 1:16Speaker 3: which is what we've experienced so many times in the past,
- 1:21Speaker 3: For the last forty years, just about since nineteen eighty seven,
- 1:26Speaker 3: so I take it back thirty seven years. John Brace
- 1:30Speaker 3: is with us now. John, always great to have you
- 1:32Speaker 3: on your take on the current crash. Is it tran
- 1:37Speaker 3: I'll use fed speak. Is it transitive or is it
- 1:43Speaker 3: is it a trend?
- 1:45Speaker 1: Well, I mean, no one can see the future, right,
- 1:48Speaker 1: and I think the best way to put it is
- 1:51Speaker 1: preparation trump prediction, all right, So let go of trying
- 1:56Speaker 1: to predict what's going to happen when and see what
- 1:59Speaker 1: you can to be ready. And you know what, Carrie,
- 2:01Speaker 1: we should really learn from the animals. Notice what the
- 2:05Speaker 1: animals don't do when there's a flood or a hurricane.
- 2:08Speaker 1: They don't say, hey, Carrie, I'm going to ride this
- 2:10Speaker 1: one out. They go and they don't look at the
- 2:12Speaker 1: prettiest or the best dress or the one with the
- 2:14Speaker 1: biggest house. They look to the smartest animals and they
- 2:17Speaker 1: go to higher ground. So my point is, don't drown,
- 2:20Speaker 1: turn around, turn your assets around, and figure out what
- 2:23Speaker 1: your exit strategy is, because who knows that this is
- 2:26Speaker 1: just the beginning, If it's just going to blow over.
- 2:28Speaker 1: Everybody wants to be optimistic and say, well, we just
- 2:31Speaker 1: know this will blow over, keep buying the dips. But
- 2:33Speaker 1: you know sometimes things turn awry very quickly, and now
- 2:37Speaker 1: it's how low can we go? So to our way
- 2:40Speaker 1: of thinking, rather than try and predict what might happen,
- 2:43Speaker 1: because you could just be right or wrong either way
- 2:45Speaker 1: you cut it, how do you prepare so that you
- 2:47Speaker 1: can survive and thrive no matter what happens, whether it's
- 2:51Speaker 1: in Washington, DC or the economy around the world. And
- 2:54Speaker 1: the one two punch that we advocate Carrie is active
- 2:58Speaker 1: management number one and diversification number two. So active management
- 3:04Speaker 1: simply looks like most by comparison, Most investment accounts, mutual funds,
- 3:09Speaker 1: exchange traded funds keep the portfolio five percent cash, ninety
- 3:14Speaker 1: five percent invested. So in a two thousand and nine
- 3:17Speaker 1: or twenty twenty three that was terrific, but twenty eight
- 3:21Speaker 1: into twenty two, twenty twenty two not so much. Hid
- 3:25Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight markets off thirty seven many
- 3:28Speaker 1: of the passive all stock portfolios were all over forty
- 3:32Speaker 1: percent in that calendar year, and then here comes twenty
- 3:35Speaker 1: twenty two mark is off twenty to thirty percent. So
- 3:40Speaker 1: that's what the that's what the indexes did for those
- 3:43Speaker 1: who had their portfolios strategically set up so that we
- 3:48Speaker 1: limit the losses, as opposed to insult you by saying, Jerry,
- 3:52Speaker 1: you have to live with the losses. No, let's not
- 3:55Speaker 1: stay static. Five percent cash, ninety five percent invested. In fact,
- 3:59Speaker 1: let's see what we need to do on a daily
- 4:02Speaker 1: basis to answer this question, is a risk on or
- 4:05Speaker 1: risk off?
- 4:06Speaker 3: In eight?
- 4:06Speaker 1: Systematically throughout two thousand and eight, you wanted to take
- 4:10Speaker 1: shares off the table off the Titanic. And what I
- 4:14Speaker 1: mean is you didn't move from this stock to that stock,
- 4:17Speaker 1: or this bond to that bought. That's kind of like
- 4:19Speaker 1: rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic the state ship
- 4:23Speaker 1: sank or we don't want that to happen. So let's
- 4:26Speaker 1: move out of risk assets and into cash risk off.
- 4:29Speaker 1: And in some cases clients started eight five percent cash,
- 4:33Speaker 1: but into the end of two thousand and eight fifty percent,
- 4:36Speaker 1: seventy percent, sometimes one hundred percent cash. That by that
- 4:40Speaker 1: way of working, we can see the evidence that these
- 4:43Speaker 1: folks who went that route were off no more than
- 4:47Speaker 1: actually less than twenty percent. In two thousand and eight, again,
- 4:49Speaker 1: the market thirty seven, the index funds over forty, so
- 4:53Speaker 1: you know, and it took a year or two to
- 4:55Speaker 1: get back to even, whereas the passive accounts took four
- 4:58Speaker 1: to five years to get back to eat it. So
- 5:01Speaker 1: we're going to suggest that we do what we can
- 5:03Speaker 1: to live at the losses again through active management. And
- 5:06Speaker 1: number two is greater diversification. And let me ask you this, Kerrie,
- 5:11Speaker 1: in terms of greater diversification, to kind of get some
- 5:13Speaker 1: sense of what that looks like. If you're looking at
- 5:16Speaker 1: the Yale endowment forty point seven billion dollars, if I'm
- 5:20Speaker 1: not mistaken, what do you imagine? You don't need to know,
- 5:24Speaker 1: because again it's I think it's a good conversation. Hat
- 5:27Speaker 1: Yale might have as a percentage in US stocks, I
- 5:32Speaker 1: would say two thirds two thirds? Okay, yeah, I think
- 5:37Speaker 1: see the securities industry has encouraged all of this, no
- 5:40Speaker 1: matter what we're trying to do. To think in terms
- 5:43Speaker 1: of making big bets forty percent bonds, sixty percent stocks
- 5:48Speaker 1: to hear it stocks, those are big bets. What blows
- 5:52Speaker 1: my mind every time I look and they Yale does
- 5:55Speaker 1: a report ball once a year. They're and they're pretty uh.
- 5:58Speaker 1: They describe a lot about what they used to do
- 6:01Speaker 1: in the eighties and how they're not doing that anymore.
- 6:03Speaker 1: In the eighties, it was a portfolio that was there
- 6:05Speaker 1: like seventy five percent US stocks, bawns and cash. Today
- 6:10Speaker 1: it's less than ten percent US stocks here.
- 6:13Speaker 3: A year ago.
- 6:14Speaker 1: Yeah, what I was looking for the details, all I
- 6:17Speaker 1: could find was three percent of forty point seven billion
- 6:21Speaker 1: dollars in US stocks. I mean that's like nothing, right,
- 6:25Speaker 1: I mean forty billion, that's a whole lot, but it's
- 6:28Speaker 1: not thirty percent. It's not forty percent. Okay, So we
- 6:32Speaker 1: can't do what the major endowments do, but we can
- 6:36Speaker 1: learn from the best in the brightest, and I think
- 6:38Speaker 1: one of the things we can learn is that we
- 6:40Speaker 1: have more legs under our portfolio stool. That makes for
- 6:44Speaker 1: a firmer sit for your life savings. As opposed to
- 6:47Speaker 1: being on two legs, which can wobble and break. You
- 6:50Speaker 1: got four or five legs under that portfolio, and now
- 6:53Speaker 1: you're probably in a position where you might yield a bit,
- 6:56Speaker 1: but you won't break. And that's what we want, right,
- 6:58Speaker 1: We want to bounce, not break. So again, yeah, it's
- 7:01Speaker 1: active management and greater diversification outside of traditional asset classes
- 7:06Speaker 1: that we think are the answered no matter how this
- 7:09Speaker 1: market turns.
- 7:10Speaker 3: Okay, So where is Yale putting their money if it's
- 7:14Speaker 3: not in the stock market. Well, let's see. It's like LASSI.
- 7:20Speaker 1: Look, it's about four percent to bonds, about ten percent
- 7:25Speaker 1: to cash. They like alternative investments like credit programs and
- 7:31Speaker 1: real estate investment trust. They are pretty well diversified. So
- 7:36Speaker 1: it's and I'm not saying this is not a template.
- 7:40Speaker 1: You see what I'm saying. I mean, in other words,
- 7:41Speaker 1: we're not Some people say, oh, is this what you
- 7:43Speaker 1: do with their clients. No, we can't. We're retail investors.
- 7:47Speaker 1: We don't have the kind of capability that they have,
- 7:50Speaker 1: and they think of their funds as perpetual. We don't, right,
- 7:54Speaker 1: So they they're they're doing a lot with the money.
- 7:57Speaker 1: We can't do exactly what they can do. What I'm
- 8:00Speaker 1: saying is the majority of us get overly comfortable. We
- 8:04Speaker 1: become smugly complacent. Really in this favorite stock that you like,
- 8:08Speaker 1: the bond that you like, too much cash. You're sixty
- 8:12Speaker 1: percent of your portfolios in real estate. So what I'm
- 8:15Speaker 1: saying is there's no there's no bible, there's no right way,
- 8:20Speaker 1: there's no wrong way. The question is what's your way
- 8:22Speaker 1: and figure out how to know what you own and
- 8:25Speaker 1: also make sure that you have some defensive strategies in
- 8:29Speaker 1: your portfolio. Every team has offense and defense. The Olympics
- 8:32Speaker 1: are going on, they've got to have both, whatever the
- 8:35Speaker 1: game they're playing. So as investors, most of us are
- 8:38Speaker 1: very authensive looking for all those gains. What do we
- 8:41Speaker 1: have in our bag of tricks, if you will, that
- 8:44Speaker 1: will keep our losses limited so that we don't need
- 8:47Speaker 1: a hell Mary pass just to get back in the game.
- 8:50Speaker 3: Yeah, well, at times like these, you got to be
- 8:52Speaker 3: more concerned about return of capital or return of investment
- 8:58Speaker 3: than rather than turn on investment. Right.
- 9:01Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. And you know, if we can
- 9:04Speaker 1: learn from some history, Carrie, we can look at two examples,
- 9:07Speaker 1: one being the US after the Great Depression and the
- 9:10Speaker 1: other one being Japan. Right, many of us know with
- 9:14Speaker 1: the Great Depression, Well, first we started the twenties right
- 9:16Speaker 1: as the rowing twenties and then ended with a Great Depression.
- 9:19Speaker 1: That's quite a decade, right, Many people do know that
- 9:24Speaker 1: stocks were off about eighty eighty five percent of the
- 9:27Speaker 1: Great Depression. What many people don't know is that it
- 9:31Speaker 1: took twenty twenty five years to get back to even
- 9:33Speaker 1: assuming this is foy it in. Yeah, you stayed in
- 9:36Speaker 1: one hundred percent. You did not sell a share, You
- 9:39Speaker 1: didn't need any money for twenty twenty five years. Now,
- 9:41Speaker 1: what do you even know if doesn't need any money
- 9:43Speaker 1: for twenty twenty five years. And then New York real
- 9:45Speaker 1: estate about a year later, the capital of capitalism, right,
- 9:49Speaker 1: New York City dropped seventy percent, and the realtors, oh,
- 9:52Speaker 1: it always comes back, Yes, it did. That only took
- 9:56Speaker 1: forty years, that's right, four decades. So stocks took twenty
- 10:01Speaker 1: twenty five, New York real estate took forty and the
- 10:05Speaker 1: average age of death at the time, if we were adults,
- 10:07Speaker 1: was fifty seven. Yeah, you see what's happening here. Neither
- 10:12Speaker 1: the stocks nor you're a real estate in New York
- 10:14Speaker 1: got back to EVA while you were still here, So
- 10:17Speaker 1: that means you died with regret. And guess what the
- 10:20Speaker 1: same thing is happening with Japan. There's the NIK two
- 10:24Speaker 1: two five twelve, twenty ninety nine. PETE dropped eighty percent
- 10:28Speaker 1: in about twenty two months or so.
- 10:31Speaker 3: A year later.
- 10:32Speaker 1: Japanese real estate sound familiar. Yeah, dropped seventy percent, okay,
- 10:36Speaker 1: and I love to ask which one's back to even
- 10:40Speaker 1: for a long time the question. The answer was neither.
- 10:43Speaker 1: From what I can tell, it looks like both the
- 10:45Speaker 1: nie K in Japan and the residential real estate market
- 10:50Speaker 1: has finally recovered. But let's see, you placed that bet
- 10:56Speaker 1: thirty five years ago. Are those bets right? And you
- 10:59Speaker 1: took it for five years? Yeah, just to get back
- 11:02Speaker 1: to where you were. So you were thirty five, then forty, right,
- 11:06Speaker 1: and now you're seventy seventy five. I mean really, I
- 11:11Speaker 1: And that's my point. You know it may not come
- 11:13Speaker 1: back fast enough, so let's take the time to figure
- 11:17Speaker 1: out how to limit our losses.
- 11:19Speaker 3: Yeah. Hey, well you know, risk management as an individual
- 11:24Speaker 3: investor is really your most important job, and it's something
- 11:28Speaker 3: that most of you out there know the least about. Right,
- 11:32Speaker 3: this is true.
- 11:33Speaker 1: Yeah, we get I like to say, Carrie, we get
- 11:35Speaker 1: high on the hopium right wherever I throw the darts,
- 11:38Speaker 1: as long as it goes up in value, then see
- 11:40Speaker 1: how smart I was?
- 11:41Speaker 3: Any questions might have been better with the darts this
- 11:45Speaker 3: time around. Uh So, non traditional investments you think are
- 11:53Speaker 3: going to be the place to be for the foreseeable future.
- 11:57Speaker 3: I do.
- 11:57Speaker 1: I actually believe that's investors salvation. And the interesting thing
- 12:02Speaker 1: is for retail investors that sounds new. You might be
- 12:07Speaker 1: kind of like, you have a thirty year old car.
- 12:09Speaker 1: It doesn't have electric windows. Now you can't buy a
- 12:12Speaker 1: car without electric windows, right, automatic soap wipers, right, just
- 12:15Speaker 1: work for you? Like sure?
- 12:17Speaker 3: So yeah.
- 12:18Speaker 1: The institutions and Dowmus foundations have been in this space
- 12:22Speaker 1: of alternative investments for the last thirty forty in some
- 12:25Speaker 1: cases fifty years. Some of those positions are now becoming
- 12:29Speaker 1: available to retail investors. In fact, let's talk about one
- 12:34Speaker 1: for a minute. One that I like a lot, and
- 12:35Speaker 1: that would be one that holds both student housing right
- 12:39Speaker 1: with clients. He's a rocket scientist, she's a broker. They
- 12:43Speaker 1: own property near USC. They tell me that USC has
- 12:47Speaker 1: eight thousand rental units with a waiting list of forty
- 12:51Speaker 1: thousand people.
- 12:52Speaker 3: Wow.
- 12:53Speaker 1: Yeah, so many people were paying money every month to
- 12:57Speaker 1: keep their kids room during COVID when the kid was
- 13:00Speaker 1: at home. So I liken this kind of investment as
- 13:04Speaker 1: a cash cow. And a lot of the schools are
- 13:06Speaker 1: moving out of the owning and the management of residential properties.
- 13:11Speaker 1: Transferring that responsibility to companies. So now you have the
- 13:14Speaker 1: company that does the work as opposed to the school
- 13:16Speaker 1: that gets to blame. So yeah, I do like that space.
- 13:20Speaker 1: The other piece of the puzzle I like a lot
- 13:23Speaker 1: is data center infrastructure. That's the three hundred thousand square
- 13:27Speaker 1: foot buildings, and I'm not even sure they have the
- 13:30Speaker 1: bathroom because you know, everything's electronic and you have all
- 13:33Speaker 1: of this technology has to work twenty four seven, three
- 13:37Speaker 1: sixty five with three or four systems back up without water,
- 13:40Speaker 1: by the way, outside of California, that are just going
- 13:43Speaker 1: to keep chugging a log. So again, to me, this
- 13:45Speaker 1: looks like something that will hold up no matter what
- 13:48Speaker 1: happens in DC, what happens with the economy both here
- 13:51Speaker 1: and around the world.
- 13:53Speaker 3: I like it. I like it. Hey, so what about AI?
- 13:56Speaker 3: Now we talked about data centers. Is there another way
- 14:00Speaker 3: to play AI? It might be even more advantageous.
- 14:04Speaker 1: Well, you know, the only way you're going to know
- 14:06Speaker 1: it was more advantageous is when after the fact, right,
- 14:10Speaker 1: So I can't I don't foresee that. I don't foresee
- 14:13Speaker 1: what might be more advantageous. I would say, if you're
- 14:16Speaker 1: you know, in a stock for example, that's probably more exciting.
- 14:21Speaker 1: And if you like assitement, then any one of your
- 14:25Speaker 1: stocks that feature work and intelligences is going to be
- 14:30Speaker 1: you know, well, we watch. We watched those stocks, just
- 14:34Speaker 1: like we watched the tech stocks back in two thousand,
- 14:38Speaker 1: all right, they were the ones that ran off to
- 14:41Speaker 1: the moon and had separation. In other words, it was
- 14:44Speaker 1: you know ten that time, is about seven stocks this time.
- 14:49Speaker 1: But what you're looking for, or what we should be seeing,
- 14:53Speaker 1: is breadth. That's with a D right where you've got
- 14:56Speaker 1: whatever the index is five hundred stocks with S and
- 14:58Speaker 1: P the dolls thirty. But the top seven you don't
- 15:03Speaker 1: like the top seven separating from the rest of the
- 15:06Speaker 1: of the of the prop We want tom We want
- 15:08Speaker 1: all the stocks to go up at the same time.
- 15:11Speaker 1: That's a lot of volume, that's a lot of breadth.
- 15:13Speaker 1: But when we see this separation happening, it's not uncommon
- 15:17Speaker 1: for those those stocks that ran off to the moon
- 15:21Speaker 1: turn around and now all of a sudden it looks
- 15:24Speaker 1: like widely eat coyote and the road rudder. How low
- 15:27Speaker 1: can we go? So that's why, you know, we're always
- 15:30Speaker 1: anxious for people to see what kind of volatility can
- 15:34Speaker 1: you accept because sometimes people love all of the upside volatility,
- 15:38Speaker 1: but they don't like it when it moves against them.
- 15:41Speaker 1: And I think we can agree savvy investors hate losses
- 15:44Speaker 1: more than they love gains, so they're more interested in
- 15:46Speaker 1: limiting their losses and that's what vote.
- 15:49Speaker 3: So what kind of time frame should you be looking
- 15:52Speaker 3: at investing now? You know, because long term, you know,
- 15:56Speaker 3: sounds dangerous, right, well.
- 15:58Speaker 1: I mean, you know, some of these things are always
- 16:02Speaker 1: what's the definition of long term? And the way we
- 16:04Speaker 1: look at it is long term is lifetime. And if
- 16:08Speaker 1: you're sixty five, we believe we plan as though we
- 16:13Speaker 1: expect to live through age one hundred. So we want
- 16:16Speaker 1: to see what needs to happen so that you know,
- 16:19Speaker 1: there's a significant other both a couple that both parties
- 16:24Speaker 1: can get to one hundred, and both of them can
- 16:27Speaker 1: see the kind of income that they need. That's the question.
- 16:30Speaker 1: How can we make sure this income is very consistent
- 16:33Speaker 1: and with traditional retirement accounts, we have to recognize that
- 16:38Speaker 1: the withdrawals must be taken and the withdrawals must increase
- 16:42Speaker 1: thanks to the infrom of revenue service every year for
- 16:45Speaker 1: the rest of your life, So you know, it might
- 16:47Speaker 1: be three four percent when you're in your seventies. Stick
- 16:50Speaker 1: around to your nineties, it might be north of eight percent.
- 16:52Speaker 1: And every year that withdrawal rate just creeps up a
- 16:55Speaker 1: little bit and there's no way you can you can
- 16:58Speaker 1: stop it from a traditional retirement account. So it makes
- 17:01Speaker 1: sense to look at how can I build a portfolio
- 17:05Speaker 1: differently than when I was younger. You know there were
- 17:07Speaker 1: two fifty percent losses on the same decade. Well, if
- 17:10Speaker 1: you were making contributions, that was a wonderful thing, but
- 17:12Speaker 1: if you were taking withdrawals, that was a terrible thing.
- 17:17Speaker 3: So it all depends on where you are.
- 17:19Speaker 1: What you're trying to get accomplished, really irrespective of age.
- 17:23Speaker 1: But we want to make sure people figure out what
- 17:25Speaker 1: it is they're trying to do and maybe design their
- 17:29Speaker 1: portfolios so that the portfolio actually performs within their limitations.
- 17:34Speaker 1: You know, if the market's off twenty or thirty in
- 17:36Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, and you said you could live with
- 17:39Speaker 1: a twelve percent loss, but your account was down ten percent, Okay,
- 17:44Speaker 1: what do they say, right?
- 17:45Speaker 3: If you buy you some of the ditch, stop digging? Yeah?
- 17:48Speaker 1: Ten you didn't go to your limited twelve I would
- 17:52Speaker 1: say that's good. And you didn't get to twenty or
- 17:55Speaker 1: thirty on a million bucks, that's what two three hundred
- 17:58Speaker 1: thousand dollars just like that. You didn't want to go there,
- 18:01Speaker 1: and you didn't, And if the money had been where
- 18:03Speaker 1: it was before, you would have gone to being off
- 18:05Speaker 1: twenty or thirty percent.
- 18:07Speaker 3: All right, Well, it sounds like interesting times are ahead. John, Hey,
- 18:11Speaker 3: tell us how do we find you? How do we
- 18:13Speaker 3: connect with you on the web?
- 18:15Speaker 1: Yes, well we're at Westlake Financial Advisors or YB poor
- 18:20Speaker 1: either way, we'll connect to our site. Our phone numbers
- 18:22Speaker 1: eight oh five, four ninety five, two zero seven seven.
- 18:25Speaker 1: And love talking with folks about what it is they're
- 18:28Speaker 1: afraid of and what they'd like to prepare so that,
- 18:31Speaker 1: as I say, we can, we can avoid running out
- 18:34Speaker 1: of money before we run out of time.
- 18:35Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the important thing. Everyone's a great fear. Hey,
- 18:39Speaker 3: got a question for John and myself? Shoot me an
- 18:41Speaker 3: email kl at Kerrie LEDs dot com. We'll get you
- 18:45Speaker 3: an answer quick. You'll find a link to john site
- 18:47Speaker 3: in the show notes of this interview on Financial Survival
- 18:50Speaker 3: Network dot com. We just asked when you're there, please
- 18:53Speaker 3: sign up for a free newsletter John always a pleasure.
- 18:55Speaker 3: Thanks for coming by my pleasure carry see you next time.
- 18:59Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. Carry Lets this financial survival Network your
- 19:03Speaker 2: solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to
- 19:07Speaker 2: Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,