Ep 182: It's Time to Analyze Your Investing Strategy - More Knowledge, More Wealth

  📍 Good day. This is Gabriel Shane, certified financial planner and your host of More Knowledge, more Wealth here on every weekend, talking about all important topics of personal finance. My goal is to give you the knowledge you need to increase your wealth Now to the listener, you can always reach out to myself or any one of our colleagues here at Falcon Wealth Planning.

Our phone number is (855) 963-2526. That's 8 5 5 96. Like the bird, or feel free to visit our website@falconwealthplanning.com. That's falcon wp.com for short. You can always also email us any questions that you have that we can play on the radio. It's radio falcon wp.com. That's. Radio Falcon wp.com. You can ask a question and we can answer that on air folks.

Now I'm the president of Falcon Wealth Planning. We are a fee only non-commissioned true fiduciary 100% of the time. Why? Because we are an independent registered investment advisory firm. Folks, we have no broker dealer affiliation, which means we don't have to sell you anything. We're not limited to what we can offer you.

We can offer you the world of investments along with financial advice, which is what our core competency is, folks. We can answer the questions that's been burning down on se uh, social Security on mortgages, on car loans, on purchases, on businesses, on where you are today. Investments, insurances, estate planning folks, taxes, you name it.

Anything that involves a dollar sign we can help. And we are offering a free financial assessment where we can offer one to two meetings, one to two hours of our time. Folks at. Cost. Folks, we got offices all over. We service eight states. Feel free to give us a call. We can help relate this show to your specific situation, folks.

Our phone number is (855) 963-2526. That's 8 5 5 96 Falcon. Like the bird. We'll be happy to answer the questions that you may have because right now you're probably not feeling warm and fuzzy here With all that's going on in the financial markets, especially in the banking world, it's very similar to an episode I had a few weeks back where I was discussing how there is tightening that's happening right now and how currently that the banking system, the way it's set up is banks can leverage up to 10 times their deposits, and that's why I made a comment.

Everybody all at once wanted to say, gimme my money. The banks wouldn't have enough money to give you, and I don't care if it's the biggest bank in the nation, which is JP Morgan Chase, they wouldn't have enough. Now, I'm not trying to tell you hurry up and run and get your money. You can't live literally only using cash.

I mean, how are you gonna make your mortgage payment? A lot of these places aren't here direct. You actually have to pay them via your bank account via a check, so on and so forth. Folks, the world is. On that, and we are currently seeing scares that are happening. So I've been into great detail of this. And so what are we seeing?

We're seeing the market volatility. We're seeing market issues. The stock market has retreated a bit now, last week shockingly, and last week, just depending on when you're listening to this, we'll call it March 13th. Uh, to March 18th, the market actually. up last week. It's crazy to think. And so with all that, you have to understand the why's behind it, and you have to also think about how is investing long-term gonna make sense for you?

Like, what do you do? Some people I've had that I've heard that spoke to us saying, well, I, they went in all cash with all the turmoil right now. Well, remember the issue is, oh, by the way, the cash, if you think about it, is this whole F D I C protection for banks, fail, invest. Our investments. You own the stock, the certificates, maybe not per se, but it's being recorded.

There's journal entries, electronic journal entries of you owning that stock. So even if your brokerage company were to go outta business, right? If your E-trade account went out of business, if your interactive brokers went out of business, if your Charles Schwab, fidelity, TD Ameritrade, Morgan Stanley, Edward Jones, ub.

All went outta business. It just looked okay because your investments are still intact. It's not like those went to zero. That's not what happened at all, actually. So my point is, is how does this make sense for you long term to sell today? I can argue that you should buy today. Why markets are on sale.

The question is, what do you buy? Are you gonna buy First Republic? That's not so good. That thing is down like 90% and for obvious reasons, cuz they also made poor choices based on our fed chair's comments and based on current issues that are happening right now with the stock. So do you go by that?

Absolutely not because that's too risky. I'm not trying to say that can't be a good investment at your money could potentially go to zero. They just got billed out by $30 billion. They're a top 15 bank in regards to assets that they hold. . So we're talking about strictly the long-term investment plays not to get quick, rich.

What happens if you get quick, rich, you can lose it all. My focus and my comments to you is stay diversified and one of the biggest diversified plays is, as you've heard many people say before, including myself, is the s and p 500. Yet again, the only problem with the s and p 500, it's only large US companies.

That's number one. Number two, it's market cap weighted. Now, what the heck does that? Well, that means it's just the largest. It's like it's, imagine all the millionaires and billionaires in America. If you just take the top a hundred billionaires, it's almost more than all 80. The other 80% combined. Right.

Imagine if our votes were based on that. The more money you have, the more you get your way. Now I know what you're about to say. That's how it is already, because those people donate money to the, to the future presidents and then they eventually get their way that way. But you get what I'm saying is just from a strategic and logical point of view, that's not how it is.

If that's what happens behind it, closed doors, we can't prove that. But from a point of investments, that's how the s and p five. Works. Apple has the largest rep, uh, representation in the overall stock market with, by the way, folks, if you're just joining us, you're listening to Gabriel Shaheen, certified financial Planner and your host of More Knowledge, more Wealth here on every weekend, talking about all important topics of personal finance.

And today I was going over the simple topics right now of. Investing, and we talk about the s and p 500, but because they're market cap weighted, you look at just the top five holdings of the 500 holdings, right? S and p 500, largest 500 companies, just the top five holdings, which is Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, which they now call Alphabet and Facebook, just those represen.

20% of the overall market. Crazy, right? So think about that. The five companies, 1% of the s and p 500, right? Five out of the 500 represent over 20% of the overall market. Now here's a crazy fact. The next 45 companies, Right. Only these 30% of the market. What does that mean? If you add the top 50 companies represents half of the overall stock market.

Now, the top hundred of the 500 represents 60% and the top 500 companies of the s and b 500 represents 77% of the market. How diversified is that? You're just in the largest companies of America, which, oh by the way, have lost the most over the. 2022 and the past 15 months, how much diversification do you have now?

You're looking at international from October of last year, 2022 to now, which is roughly mid to late March. It is up, right? It is up. So it's the best performing indices. So from a globally diversified portfolio, my point is you need diversification. And what a lot of people don't understand is, number one, what to invest in.

How to invest in it. Quite frankly, once you buy it, what do you do after you purchase it? There's truly no strategy. People always know when to buy, but they never know when to sell. That's the issue with investing folks. It's the misunderstanding of what you should do and when. And the idea is to own everything, not just large US companies, but medium companies, small companies, international, developed markets, emerging markets, and on all those US and international, they still have.

Medium and small cap companies. They call it mid-cap as well. , and oh by the way, those also have subcategories of growth and value. Folks, I'm not, I'm not trying to confuse you here, but to think that you have a basket of 20 to 50 stocks and even a hundred and you think you're diversified is absolutely incorrect.

To think you have a four or five, six mutual funds that you got on Barons or clippings as one of the. Or Morningstar, one of the top mutual funds is just inaccurate to say that, number one, it's based on old news, so you're buying it after it's already done. Great. What are the odds they get it right. Again, A lot of the data suggests and shows that they don't consistently get it right.

Okay, so that's on the first part. Now, on the second part, the second part is, is you can't just. to choose those funds because you're just buying it and riding the wave. There is no strategy of adding more and exiting as you continue to add money into it or need to take profits off the table. You need to have some diversification and some strategy of making sure you're reducing your risk, and I just don't see it.

I see people reinvesting their dividends and they think that's en enough. Well, there's certain asset classes that pay higher dividends, so you could be just getting more and more conservative or more and more aggressive and things change. 11 months ago was completely different bond market. It's the same thing with 11 years ago.

What have you really done to your portfolio? From what I've noticed is people don't do much. They buy and hold, and that may have made sense 20 or 30 years ago, but it doesn't make sense today. You have some of the best companies that are in turmoil because of high interest rates. These could be the tech companies.

These could be financial companies. . My point is, is this is the perfect time to get an analysis of your current situation. What you think is great today, may not be great tomorrow. And what was great yesterday may not be great today. And quite frankly, what you were told may be yesterday saying was bad, may be good today.

This is the time to get that second opinion folks, and we can help with that. Folks, we are offering a free financial assessment really to help relate this show to your situation where we could tell you where you're. What you should be doing and making sure to avoid some of the common mistakes that we've seen people like you make consistently.

Folks, give us a call. We would love to help. We help all over the country. It doesn't matter where you are. Our phone number is (855) 963-2526. That's 8 5 5 96. like the bird. We'll be able to answer the questions that you may be having that may be burning you inside of what's going on in this market right now.

What happened with Silicon Valley Bank? Could it happen to me? My money's tied up in A, B, C, or X, Y, Z. What should you be doing? We are able to help folks. Just give us a call. That's what we're here for, let alone the investment side of things. Our phone number is (855) 963-2526. That's eight five. 96 Falcon like the bird.

Folks, we're gonna go on a quick break here, but we'll be right back after a few words. 📍

Welcome back folks. This is Gabriel Shaheen, certified financial planner and your host of More Knowledge, more Wealth here on every weekend, talking about all important topics of personal finance. And today we're just talking about just in general, just the markets and how people are not making changes to the portfolio based on what's currently happening.

Folks, we are in a rising interest environment, which means for you conservative people, you lost money, arguably more money than the stock market in the past 12 months, and you have to. What have you done to change that? Or are you consistently and just hoping that it's gonna come back up cuz of a reversion to a mean, it doesn't work like that always.

And over time, are you living off this money? What are you currently analyzing as alternatives? Because here's the thing, the stock market just does not, and bond market's the same way, by the way, does not like uncertainty. And right now there's still uncertainty in inflation, in rising interest rates in the financial and banking system.

In our government folks, right now is the perfect time to reanalyze what you're doing because you have to understand that volatility is your friend. And the people who get scared when volatility happens are the ones with no strategy. And quite frankly, that doesn't really even matter to us. We prefer people to have no strategy on that because it helps our clients get higher.

when you freak out, we need you to drive the price lower. Why? Cuz it's a better sale for our clients. Cuz when you sell, there has to be a buyer on the other end. Think about it. When you lose money, somebody else is making money always and forever. Now, there's some that make it on the short term and some that make it on the long term, but what you are doing is guaranteeing your losses.

And let's say you are living off of the money. Well that's great, but there are strategies to do that. When you are rebalancing your portfolio, what are you selling to live off of? Are you selling the things that lost? Quite frankly, you should be selling the things that made money, which organically rebalances your portfolio.

Let that fester there for a little bit. You are able to sell what did not lose as much, which naturally brings down the allocation to the allocation that you want. Most people don't do that, which is a shot in the foot. What do people say? Sell high, not sell low. Well, if you're selling your losers, you literally guaranteed that loss.

I'd rather have you sell what you made money on to get the money that you need on a monthly basis, quarterly basis or annual basis, whatever that may be. But if you go on a system and hit rebalance, it doesn't always work out that way. . So you have to be careful. Be careful of a lot of things that's out there, folks, not only of how you're invested in what's going on in the market, but predators that are out there trying to take advantage of you.

Now, there are straight fraud predators. People call you and saying the IRS is after you, or that your kid needs help in a out of country, a location. Whatever the case may be. There are true predators that just want to take advantage of you pretending their Social Security Administration trying to hack your computer with ransomware, there is now more than ever, it's no longer worrying about robbers coming in with guns to your house, but people hacking your email where you accidentally give them banking information and they're sending themselves money.

This is the sad truth of where our world is going and you. Careful of that. So there are true predators out there that are trying to take advantage of you to, for you to give 'em your social and date of birth and all that, and they can run credit apps and so on over you. So I get it. That's one side of it.

Remember, the other side are true predators in the financial markets. These are people trying to sell you heavily commission-based products and, and services that you don't need. Not only do you not want it because in an ask for it, but you're trying to sell this to based on. Promises folks, and you're wondering why your advisor has been there less than five years at their current location, which you can look 'em up by the way, on the FINRA broker check is because by the time their clients need their money, by the time.

they expire by the time that you were promised a certain thing, and it wasn't that by that time they're gone and you've gotta deal with whoever's there to pick up the shambles. This is a sad industry, folks, and it is something as simple as, oh, you don't pay me. The insurance company pays me as they're trying to sell you junk that you don't need.

Now I understand there could be a solution for you if you need it. Probably asked for it if there was an estate planning reason, but I've seen people who got life insurance on their kids, like it's kind of sad if you think about it. The only benefit that has is if they die and who the hell wants their kids to die and collect insurance policy.

Quite frankly, that should be illegal. I'm shocked that underwriters are still proving that. It makes zero sense, folks, because when you're putting your money in an insurance product, you're just overpaying the policy and being happy with the modest returns that it's providing. It's sad that you're being sold as this is an event, uh, an investment for you and your kids when that's just an absolute lie.

It's not, you're pulling out 50% of what you put into it as a loan, and then the leftover money is paying the interest payments. Oh, by the. That assumption was at four to 5%. Right now, those interest rates are eight to 10%, and your crediting is only getting at four. The policy's going upside down. Now you're probably not borrowing on it right now because you're still being tricked that you're investing for those on the podcast that are seeing this on YouTube.

These are air quotes going up and investing. These aren't investment. As I've talked about previous shows, insurance is not an investment. It's for protection. Don't be taken advantage of by these financial predators. There's a reason the S e c FINRA state regulators says beware. There's a lot of these types of products that are often misrepresented.

Now, the way when I hear somebody says, misrepresented, that's a nice word for lie. people are lying of how they actually work. Folks, I'm just trying to protect you because we are here trying to unwind some of these that people come to us. You know how people find out about a fee advisor is being taken advantage of by a commission based advisor.

That's how they know what a fee own the advisor is. That's when they start Googling. That is how can I find an advisor that doesn't take advantage? It's sad, folks. Here's the thing. Not all commission-based advisors are bad. There's some honest ones out there. Not all fee-based advisors that are bad, but the potential is there and the probability is infinite times higher on the commission-based side than anything else.

In addition to the fee based, at the end of the day, they could still get paid commission. Hell, they can take off that hat and say, we could do what's in your best interest and then go sell you a commission based product without telling you they just changed their hats. How's that? I don't know. Write your local congressman on that one.

You get what I'm saying. But a fee only advisor is the only one 100% of the time that is legally obligated, legally liable to do what's in your best interest. Always. , the firm is built this way. This is why we're offering a free financial assessment, folks to help relate this show to your specific situation.

If you guys sold one of these products, it's fine. You still might have options and assets available where you can get out of it and stop the bleeding on these policies. Sooner better than later. Our phone, eight five five nine six three twenty. 26. That's 8 5 5 96 Falcon like the Bird, or visit our website@falconwealthplanning.com.

That's falcon wp.com for short. By the way, folks, if you're just joining us here, listening to Gabriel Shaheen, certified Financial Planner and your host of More Knowledge, more Wealth here on. Every weekend talking about all important topics of personal finance. Today, I'm just trying to protect you of what's out there, folks, you wanna be in control, and the problem is when you buy some of these products that are sold to you, you lose control.

And you know, you lose that protection. The ironic part is they're selling you insurance that was supposed to be protection. And the funny thing is, is the only person that protects is the insurance company. They know you're not gonna die if they knew you were gonna die. They're not gonna give you the policy for a few hundred a month.

It won't even be a few thousand a month. They will just unins ensure you. They'll say, I'm sorry, we won't write the policy. The problem is there's still some healthy people who die, whether it's through accidents, sickness, cancers, so on and so forth. People do die, which is why the insurance company has to hedge your bets with something called an annuity.

Now the annuity protects them, right? Cause they're paying the recipient of the annuity on a a monthly or annual basis. Now with an annuity, as we've discussed in previous shows, they want you to die as fast as possible cuz then the insurance company keeps all the. , you get what I'm saying? They keep the money and then the monthly payments stop versus on the life insurance side where they're receiving money every month or every year for the payments on these life insurance policies.

And they never want them to die because if they do, they have to pay out them out. This is why it's so important to talk to an un. Person, an unbiased individual that makes sure that you are not being taken advantages of and sold, and the person selling you is probably your best friend, is probably somebody that you've now grown to have a relationship with.

Why? Well, quite frankly, you're funding their lifestyle. I'd be your best friend too if you're buying me a C class Mercedes every, every year, depending on how much you're spending with them. Unfortunately, we see this all too far too often, and people get emotional. Heck, they call these affinity crimes.

When you know somebody, whether at your local religious organization or at the softball league or at the country club, and they're taking advantage of you because you know them and trust them blindly, it's important to get that second opinion. Folks, that unbiased second opinion where we can help relate this show to your specific situation.

Our phone number is (855) 963-2526. That's 8 5 5 96 f. like the bird where we can help answer the questions that you may have to make sure that your current financial portfolio is not poor, that is not able to sustain your lifestyle, that's not able to make sure that you have a happy retirement that makes sure that it is a liquid.

Not heavily high in costs, making sure it's able to support you for everything that you need out of this life, which is making sure you have that consistent monthly check and making sure you understand how your investments, your overall portfolio. Is able to be constructed where you don't have to worry about the crazy ups and downs in the stock market where you could take advantage of it.

I like it when markets are down cuz you get to buy on sale. The reason other people freak out is cuz they don't know what to sell. Well, here at Falcon Wealth we do. Why? Cuz it's globally diversified. There's never something that's just all down at the exact same amount. It's truly difficult. I'll go as far as saying impossible, there's always something, for the most part that's up when something's.

or if something's down, maybe not down as much. And with that is the contra of that, which is if it goes up, not everything is up. Even in 2021 where everything was up, there's always something that's down. And maybe if nothing was down, something's not up as much. This is how you know you have a proper portfolio in place, folks, and if you need help with this, give us a call.

We would love to help put this together for you and let you know where you at and what you and how you should be set up. Our phone number is eight five five and 9 6 3 25 26. That's 8 5 5 96 Falcon. Like the bird. By the way, folks, this was a fast fasts show. That's all we got for you this weekend. Feel free to reach out to any one of our colleagues, myself or through the radio@radiofalconwp.com.

You can send in your question and we can answer it online. Folks, we'll keep you confidential. We'll probably just list your first name, but our phone number is (855) 963-2526. That's 8 5 5 96. Like the bird where we can help answer the questions that you have and point you in the right direction as we are offering a free financial assessment that gives you one to two meetings, one to two hours of our time at no cost.

Folks, please give us a call. Feel free. We would love to help relate this show to your situation. Answer the questions that you have. We'll have a personal, confidential conversation where we can help. We want you to enjoy your weekend. Folks. Have a fantastic week and God.