The title of today’s episode is “How to Avoid Financial Advisor Fraud”. And we are going to expand that to include investment managers and hedge fund managers – basically anyone that manages other people’s money. In this episode we are going to detail some of the boxes you want to check with anyone with which you wish to invest, and discuss the red flags to look for, some obvious, some not so obvious, unless you know the business well.
Our role is to use math, our various financial planning tools and our experience to help clients put all of the pieces of the puzzle together to figure out if they can retire, and if so, what retirement looks like financially. So listeners today Jay and I are going to discuss this very important question that many of you probably have asked: How Do I Know When I Am Financially Ready to Retire?
I wanted to take the opportunity of having someone so young on this show, of such a different generation than me and most of our listeners, and get your opinion on some of the various topics that we discuss often on the show. I’m calling this episode, “The Future of Everything” and we are getting first hand knowledge of what a Gen Z individual thinks of all the recent technological and financial developments.
Today Josh is going to translate our different financial investment roller coaster approaches to how investors view the stock market. He is also going to explain a concept for those of you, that are like him and don’t care for roller coasters, especially those of you that don’t think you can stomach the extreme ups and downs of recent stock market volatility. There is a concept in the investing world called “Fear of Missing Out”, commonly known as FOMO. The Oxford dictionary defines FOMO as “anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere”, with the implication that you are missing out. The bad side of FOMO can lead to impulsive decisions by investors because they see people. Josh and Michelle will go through how to handle every financial FOMO on this week's episode.
Regular listeners know that I tend to be skeptical of a lot of things related to my own industry, financial services, including a lot financial advertisements and glossy marketing content masquerading as responsible financial advice, as Michelle knows firsthand, I get very, very irritated when I hear someone in my line of work espouse a bunch of info that is nothing more than lies. And in times of market turbulence, this type of misinformation gets shouted from the roof tops. So with that in mind, we’re going to play a little game of “Just Stop It”, kind of like true or false, except, everything Michelle is going to say is false, and I’m going to try to smack some sense into those of you listening that are considering these financial tactics.
We are recording this episode on Thursday, April 10th, less than 24 hours removed from the largest single day rise in the stock market valuation, right smack dab back into another 2-3% trading dip. The word “historical” gets way overused, but in the case, it’s not hyperbole to say that we are experiencing truly historical levels of volatility, eclipsing even the crazy ups and downs we saw at the beginning of the Covid crisis. And for a radio show based on top-of-mind topics for investors in or near retirement, or any investor of any age I would say, I think it goes without saying that tariffs and resulting stock market volatility is certainly on the minds of most of you tuning in. Last episode we discussed the reasons for this volatility, this episode we’re going to talk about what to do about it, particularly you investors that may not have the stomach for this roller coaster.