Benjamin Felix

When it comes to your financial life, you can have endless conversations about asset allocation but we often neglect the impact of communication and asking difficult questions. Today we speak with Chief Financial Commentator and awarded media personality, Pattie Lovett-Reid.

The hype to invest in high-cap tech companies is deafening. In this episode, we share what you need to know before buying FANG company stocks. Although FANG is the popular term, our analysis includes Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Tesla, and Microsoft — so it’s closer to the less slick-sounding FAAATM.

Michael weighs in on three approaches to variable spending, why people can do what they love and still retire well, and his research on the ‘rising equity glidepath’. He also speaks about why it’s normal to start saving after you hit forty, and why withdrawal policy statements can help you have a better idea of when your portfolio is in the red.

With the gold price reaching record highs, we revisit the contentious issue of whether you should add gold to your portfolio. Before mining that topic, we talk about Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber and Am I Being Too Subtle? — our book recommendations of the week. We then touch on key news stories including how the recent Apple stock split has affected its position in the Dow index.

If asset prices reflect expectations about the future, the market rising should be viewed with optimism, but there might be less optimism, and there may even be pessimism, about a market that is being artificially propped up by a central bank. What if the central bank can’t print any more money and stock prices drop? And how can all of this money printing be good for the country’s currency?

Often called a ‘once in one hundred years event’, the COVID-19 pandemic is having a profound impact on the economy. Today’s guest is Craig Alexander, Deloitte’s Chief Economist, who brings his 29 years of experience analyzing the economy to answer our questions about the marketplace.

Quantitative easing is a monetary policy whereby a central bank buys government bonds or other financial assets in order to inject money into the economy to expand economic activity. But what exactly does that mean?

In keeping with our recent tide of incredible guests, today’s one is no exception. Dr. William Bernstein, a financial theorist, advisor, and neurologist, joins us to share some of his incredible insights. As the author of several seminal books such as The Intelligent Asset Allocator and The Four Pillars of Investing, Dr. Bernstein has made his mark applying his medical evidence-based approach to investing.

As the expression goes, another day, another dollar. Today’s episode is a roundup of news and analysis with deeper dives into behavioural and risk-based market explanations, active management, and endowment investing models.

We kick things off with Jim hearing his perspectives on what makes this recession unprecedented before he argues that a traditional approach to macroeconomic policy won’t be enough to augment more than a crippled and unstable recovery. This situation might hold a silver lining though and Jim sketches out the opportunity it provides for rethinking employment ethics.