Latest / The Finance Pastor Show / $22 trillion opportunity: why faith-based investing is having its moment
Transcript
- The Finance Pastor: Did you know that Christians control $22 trillion in the stock market, but only $170 billion aligned with Christian values? We're gonna talk about what can Christians do to put their money to work for them in causes and things that they like. Let's take a look at it during these next few minutes that we have together. I don't know if you noticed, but if you combine All the money of people who say that they're Christians, ⁓ many different denominations, it equal to about 22 trillion dollars in the stock market. If you look at your 401ks, if we combine all those, even your stock portfolios, everything that you have combined together, if the church were to pull the money together, we would control over 22 trillion dollars in the stock market. But think of this. The church has always been divided. And when we give our money to institutions, meaning like the big players, the big behemoths, when we give our money to those through 401ks or we purchase mutual funds, or instead of buying good stock or good real estate, what we start seeing is those people who control those companies determine on what investments that money goes to. You have given them power. You have offered them all the power in the world by signing that piece of paper. what we start seeing that many of these people ⁓ turn ⁓ faith-based believers. And what we start seeing is ⁓ Christians are taking full advantage of their own investment opportunities. Usually tell people that they can outperform the market. How? Consider this: ⁓ look the car you drive. Look at the products you enjoy. What's in your home? Consider this. What about if you and your spouse shopping at a specific store or you love going to specific restaurants ⁓ you buy products ⁓ you have children and they constantly buy some of the same things? ⁓ you do a reverse engineering, ⁓ out of the ten products that you love ⁓ are generally from publicly companies. ⁓ You have certain publicly traded companies that actually act as competitors but they own those brands, which is so funny and that they seem like competitors, but they're really not. That's why these off brands, many people just buy off brands because it's technically the same thing, just with a different name and a different packaging system. And which is kind of pretty interesting how The economy works out, the psychology works versus you buying a certain product at a specific price versus an off-brand, which is generally the same thing. And we start seeing that we want to look at this from a from a Christian and biblical perspective. Many of you also have gifts, meaning that you understand an industry, or maybe you just nerd out at a subject where you just where you're planted. I would look at the things that you love, and generally, there's publicly traded companies in your space. And what I want to look at is this. If you understand that Christians own control a lot of these things, what would you be doing with your money? And that's where you start looking at if you have the opportunity and if you have an orphan 401k. An orphan 401k, and again, I'm not giving you financial advice. I'm an opinionator, and this is where I talk to many people. I get asked these questions. Many of you have orphan 401ks that you're just letting sit around. You know that you can roll it over into a self-directed IRA that you can control. And now you can control that money and put into investments that align with your values. Like there's many people here that have many issues with maybe ⁓ alcohol companies or maybe ⁓ many Christians have ⁓ an issue with many ⁓ pharmaceutical companies because of their contribution to the opioid co ⁓ crisis that we've had in this nation, you can trade against companies that don't line up with your morals. There's things called shorting ⁓ in the stock market. If you play options, there's things called playing the downside where you do put options. Those are things where you can use your funds in the stock market to either promote and make more money for yourself or for your legacy, or if you want to use that as a way to fund kingdom business. Then that's a way where you can take the wealth of the wicked and and and it's stored up for the righteous. That's how I use scripture. It's not just because God is gonna give you money because you tithe. No, God gives you the ability to get wealth according to Deuteronomy twenty eight. He's given us the ability to get wealth. It's not inevitable, it's a possibility. And what we start seeing is when you start investing in companies. that have good track record. It has dividends. Competitive Advantage. And I don't even know how to spell but you guys get it. Competitive advantage. This is something that if you looking for like what does this company offer? Right now, NVIDIA is the top player in AI. Their chips are really moving the needle. So they have a competitive advantage, is that they're several generations ahead of their next competitor in line. You start seeing ⁓ SpaceX, they have a competitive advan advantage and it's in founding Elon Musk. his brain so you start seeing is Coca-Cola competitive advantage why they don't have to recreate the formula the Coca-Cola is now a cash flow company if you're a real estate investor and you think of apartment complex Mobile home parks. That's Coca-Cola right now. It's strictly cash flow and dividends. Now you could start saying, do I want to invest my money in companies like that? Dividend Kings, according to Barons, you have Home Depot, you have Coca-Cola, you have Pepsi, you have Verizon, you have a lot of great companies there. Not let to let alone you have great American companies that are huge players in the building of America. When you talk about John Deere, when you talk about Cash, Caterpillar, when you talk about Alcoa, when you call talk about many just staple companies like ⁓ just the the the GEs, your your Coca-Cola's again, your Pepsi's, these are stable companies, your Walmarts, your Costco's, these are stable companies that are always going to be producing. You start looking at ⁓ If those align, you got companies like Costco. If you're in the beauty industry, ladies, if you're listening to me, if you're in the beauty industry, you have to look at Estee Lauder, you have to look at Paul Mitchell, publicly traded, you have to look at Ulta, Sephora, those are all publicly traded companies. You start seeing that if you find yourself buying a lot of these companies over and over and over again, you should be investing in the stock. That is how Christian. Can now say, okay, if we all pool our money together, let's say with a company like Target, a lot of the foolishness would not be happening. And I'm not talking ill of any company. I'm not all about. You know, boycotting people, business is business. I mean, I think we all have the right to to open business. People have the right to go where they please. It's a free society. But also, I'm not gonna tiptoe through the tulips and pretend that, hey, we're not being taken advantage of. And that's where is Hollywood and Washington DC only respect one thing, and that's money. And I know as being a Christian is so wonderful with being pious, it's so wonderful with being meek, but that doesn't mean that you have to be weak. And I'm telling you that it's time for the Christian nation to step up. And the way you do it is by wealth. I'm not talking about wealth to buy yourself a nice fancy car. I'm talking about wealth for Kingdom Impact. Make no mistake, saints. I can't take not one dollar with me to heaven. But you know what I can't take with me? Souls. Souls. We must remember what God has called us for. This time that we on earth, it's in a blip of time. Heaven, it's for eternity. And my mentor, Dr. Horton, used to say this. I'm homesick for a place that I've never been. Heaven. And I don't know about you, but I'm homesick for a place that I've never been. But while we're here on earth, God has called you and I to occupy the land, to take dominion. And it's not about running around and just being a wacko Christian. It's about affecting your neighbor. Don't step over broken and hurting people to go help broken and hurting people. Your neighbor across the street needs Jesus too. And sometimes the only Bible that people read is you and I. And as Christian investors, I tell you this: there's very few funds that offer Christian type of investing. The challenge with a lot of these funds is that they are front loaded with fees. They're front loaded with fees, and that's the stuff that eats up at your wealth. I'm more for the proponent of playing the long game, which is no overnight money, which is working your job, tilling the land, saving your money, stop buying. Dumb stuff and putting it in good assets. Little by little, you start seeing that in year five, year ten, all those things that you put away, you start seeing the the change that it does in your bank account. There's a difference when you're saying I'm broke and you have a nice portfolio in your account. There's a difference when you're broke and you really broke. I've been both sides. So I'm all for the proponent of investing, but it's time for Christians to take control. Now, one of the things that I would say is look at stuff that you love. Like I mentioned earlier, things that you and your your your family just enjoy, and you start seeing that little by little investing for the long term, that's kingdom impact. I would avoid mutual funds. If you do mutual funds, or that's you're saying I don't know what to invest in, I would more gravitate towards an ETF, an exchange traded fund. One of my favorites, I'm not giving recommendation, but is the SPY because it has options capability which I can have insurance on my portfolio and I do love trading the QQQ. Which controls the Nasdaq one hundred and those ⁓ I'm really big on technology and you start seeing little by little you should be investing. Also look at crypto. I'm I know crypto's down. I've taken a little hammer on that one, but you can also say if you you're investing for the long term. Then this is something I would live seriously consider. Warren Buffett said something very profound: that if you're not willing to invest in something and see it go down 50% and stomach it, you should not be investing. And that's what I tell people: if you can't stomach an investment going down 50%, you should not be in it. So I hope this helps. Until next time, Christians, it's time to take your place.