The Get Ready Money Podcast
The Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Steuer features insightful conversations with thought leaders who are transforming how we think about money.
Each episode provides actionable tips and meaningful insights to help you ask the right questions, improve your financial conversations, and take control of your financial future. Whether you’re a financial professional or simply looking to strengthen your financial foundation, this podcast will leave you empowered and prepared.
“The litmus test for a terrific podcast has to be that you found yourself wishing you were ‘in the room’ for the conversation you're listening to, so you could participate. I had that feeling when Tony Steuer, CLU, LA, CPFFE and Bobbi Rebell Kaufman, CFP® were discussing the importance of understanding who you are taking financial advice from, and how much further in life just a little more intention can get you. Worth a listen!” – Karen Holland
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The Get Ready Money Podcast
Discover Asset Revesting: A Game-Changing Strategy!
On this episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Chris Vermeulen, founder and Chief Investment Officer of The Technical Traders about changing the way we think about money and asset revesting.
In this episode we discussed:
- Success is about bringing in experiences from different areas.
- The importance of having a plan, systems, processes and checklist.
- The power of starting early, saving at least a little and doing so consistently.
- Why you need to diversify asset classes.
- The stock market is a long game.
- Defining technical trading.
- The more you know, the more successful you will be.
Chris Vermeulen is a financial expert who challenges conventional investing wisdom and believes that investors should only own rising assets. With over 25 years of experience, Chris shares an alternative investment style called Asset Revesting that allows investors to achieve higher returns, lower drawdowns, and profit from bear markets.
Chris founded TheTechnicalTraders.com, a platform that provides investors with Asset Revesting signals and education on using technical analysis and position and risk management. He is also the author of the books “Technical Trading Mastery” and “Asset Revesting,” his newest book, which explores this innovative investment method.
Chris’ investment philosophy is grounded in the belief that diversification and the buy- and-hold strategy can be dangerous for mature investors. Instead, he advocates for only owning assets that are rising in value, selling those that are in decline, and using technical analysis to identify and confirm these trends and price action. This approach helps investors achieve above-average returns while minimizing risk.
Connect with Chris Vermeulen:
Website: https://thetechnicaltraders.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruschelle-khanna-lifestyle-for-legacy/
YouTube Channel:
The Technical Traders: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheTechnicalTraders
Books:Asset Revesting: How To Exclusively Hold Assets Rising in Value, Profit During Bear Markets and Continue Building Wealth in Retirement by Chris Vermeulen and Ashley Mulock (Amazon) https://amzn.to/3BeHH5G
Technical Trading Mastery, Second Edition: 7 Steps To Win With Logic by Chris Vermeulen (Amazon) https://amzn.to/47BfhPq
Mentioned this episode:
Bloomberg Five Things To Start Your Day: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters
The Get Ready Money Podcast and its guests do not provide investment advice. All content is for educational purposes. Guest opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Get Ready Money Podcast and Tony Steuer.
Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work, Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Christopher Millen, which I probably just messed up his last name. Chris is an author as well as the founder and chief investment officer of the Technical Traders. In this episode, we'll be discussing Chris's insights on how we change the way we think about money and asset revesting. Chris, welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast.
Speaker 3:Hey, thanks for having me, tony, pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great to have you. Thanks for joining us. So you know, let's jump in and tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so my dad's dutch, my mom's english live in canada, though and um, I got involved in the stock market more or less in in grade. What was? I was 16 years old, in high school, in a finance class. Uh, my parents were entrepreneurs, so I've always been an entrepreneur. I started many different little businesses through high school and beyond that, but, uh, got hooked on the stock market with the stock market challenge, where our classroom competed against other finance classes across Ontario, which was the province I'm in, and we made like $180,000 or something with play money in a semester and I was like that's what I want to do. I want to just throw darts at a newspaper and make a whack of money. So that's what kind of got me hooked. And it wasn't long after that my dad got this booklet from Larry Williams, which he's a top commodities trader, futures commodity trader trade, pork bellies and index futures and all that stuff, and it got me really intrigued to how much money you can make a lot more than the stock market and so it really sparked my interest at a young age and I asked my dad if I could get into trading and investing or trading back then, and he he's like he laughed at me because futures is so extreme, like you mean you need to be very, very risk tolerant and have a lot of money and all that stuff. So anyways, long story short, I ended up going off to college in Toronto.
Speaker 3:I was born and raised out in the country, never had TV, so I was always building, hunting, always into activities, you name it. I was always outside. And so when I got to Toronto I got hooked on TV because I had cable in my room and I watched CNBC and I watched Speed Vision. Those were the two shows that I loved back then and finally turned. What was I? I was 17 or 18. I got my dad to co-sign an account for me to trade with uh, what? It was e-trade. Back then. That was my first first account and I started trading and I don't remember palm pilot, those little phones with the pencil oh yeah, I put all my money.
Speaker 3:I saved up two thousand dollars from this lawn care service that I had run for a couple of summers. I put two grand into my savings. Put it all into palm pilot went on holidays to Florida for a couple of summers. I put two grand into my savings, put it all into Palm Pilot went on holidays to Florida for a couple of weeks, came back and my $2,000 account was $8,000. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm amazing, this is my sport. And so that's how I kind of got totally hooked on it. I eventually blew up three accounts, gave up on trading for quite a while I've been bankrupt and gave up on trading. For quite a while I've been bankrupt. And now I'm gone through the whole cycle to the bottom and back and fast forward.
Speaker 3:I've done a lot of different types of trading, from penny stocks to small caps, to fundamentals, to options, to Forex, to futures. I used to run day trading futures chat rooms. I've done all kinds of different stuff and I've come full circle to okay, how do I make the most money with the fewest trades and the lowest risk and be able to manage my wealth like a large sum of money very easily with low volatility and I've come full circle to ETFs. I've been trading them really since 2001,. The same strategy, just keep improving and involving on it, which you and I'll touch on today, which I see the markets very differently than the investment world. I call it asset revesting. It's a different category, different style of investing that has a lot of benefits to it and that's where I focus now is just pure ETF trading. The indexes, exchange traded funds is what it stands for and it's just trades, just like a stock. You just buy or sell, depending if you think that asset is going up or down. It's just trades, just like a stock.
Speaker 2:You just buy or sell, depending if you think that asset is going up or down. That's awesome, and I appreciate you defining the terms, because I think that's something that even sometimes people in the industry struggle with is you know some of the different terms you know, unless it's a specialty area. I want to go back to one thing you said, because I think this is really important. You talked about how your interest in finance developed when you were in high school. Do you feel, then, that financial literacy in school is really important?
Speaker 3:I think it's super important. Do I actually think we learn anything in school about it?
Speaker 3:No, Unless you take finance class or something, but still it's not anything that I believe is actually useful for anybody to make any money. I mean, I went to school for business, to college for business. I honestly don't think I learned anything. I met my wife there in residence. I've met my business partner who's my roommate. So there's no doubt college university is amazing from that regard. But back then finance was I don't know. I just I don't think I use anything from finance or the marketing classes back then. Back then it's like put a big billboard up on the side of a highway and just in time delivery. It's like all this stuff that you know. To me it's kind of useless, but I met the key people. It was about networking, right.
Speaker 2:Definitely. Well, you know I was a finance major. Also, I picked up a couple of things. I had a really good investing teacher, so you know we went deep on Benjamin Graham, burke, mckeel, you know. So we learned a lot of you know more general concepts. But yeah, we did the Harvard banking model, so we were all running a bank in college, which is you know reality, because you know we stepped all into, you know executive roles at major banks, so banks, so we're ready to roll with that. But yeah, I think realistic financial education is super important. But it is important because it did get you interested. So that's interesting for people to note. Is that exposing people to something? I think maybe that's the important way to look at it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you need to get exposed to a lot of stuff. I love learning. I mean, I'm always learning. I won't go on my incline trainer unless I have a YouTube video or a course or something for like that hour. Right, I'll just buy a course just so I have like eight hours of something to watch and learn. I learned all about electronics a couple of weeks ago. I mean, like anyway, I just love learning and you never know.
Speaker 3:Like I do random. I think this is great for everyone, even your listeners. Is this what I love? To just throw on TED Talks, like you throw the app on or throw it up on YouTube and just pick a random one. Don't go cherry picking. You'll be amazed at like you're like. A lot of times I'm like, ooh, this title, this looks like it's going to be a crappy talk. And by the end of the talk cause I just forced myself to listen to it I'm like I always learn something so new, totally different perspective. But if, if you hand select stuff you want to learn, sometimes you're actually filtering out stuff that you probably actually should know or you might find really interesting. So I do the shotgun approach.
Speaker 3:I love to listen to motivational stuff and TED Talks and just learn random stuff, because success in the world and business and finance is all about bringing experiences from other areas and being like oh, I know this over here and we do it this way, and then over here they do it this way. Yeah, so I think success is created from bringing in experiences from different areas. So you might be in one industry how they do stuff in one area to the other, you bring them together. You end up with this very creative, unique view of something that, like, if you're in finance, you're probably hard coded to know all the basic stuff, but when somebody comes from another area, they're like well, this is how we do stuff over here, and if you applied it to your industry, you're gonna have a totally new set of data or a new way to look at it. And so that's what I do. I'm an inventor, I'm big into real estate, I love to build and create stuff, and a lot of that brings over. How can I get creative? How can I rebuild an industry or something? And that's what I work on. And so I think it's really important to do a lot of different stuff and you need to learn finance a bunch of different stuff in finance.
Speaker 3:Learn just about basic savings and compound interest and how, like $5 or $3 a day or $6 a day in a Starbucks is like $25,000 down the line that you're just throwing out the window and you make your own coffee right, or $50,000 or000, depending on how far you want to go. So there's so much power in saving just a little bit and being consistent. And if people could learn to save at a young age or just consistently, it makes such a huge difference. If you start in your twenties or thirties I mean I was really big into you, big into whole life insurance plan. I started it forever ago. You put money into it and you end up with this massive nest egg at the end that you can pull and use and you don't have to pay taxes on it. When you die, the insurance pays for the taxes and the money can move on to your kids. It's amazing.
Speaker 3:And if you start really young and you're forced to pay this every month or every year, it just becomes something you have to do and it's like a forced savings plan. There's all kinds of unique ways to do it. So I think it's super important. People have multiple ways of saving, not just a savings account or an investment account, but real estate and insurance plans, and so I think personal finance is so important, but most people don't catch onto it until they're in their forties and they're like, holy crap, I just missed out on, you know, 20 years of compounding which compound. You don't need a lot of money If you have time, you just let it compounds. People don't realize that throw your 50 bucks away a month when you're in your twenties and it'll add up after time Like yeah, that's great advice and maybe that gets back to you.
Speaker 2:Know what we were talking about earlier. It's financial, literacy and high schools. Maybe that's the best gift parents can give is start. You know, when the babies are born, put $50 a month aside.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think there's. I think it's important to have multiple different ways of saving. So, like I have a life insurance plans, you have real estate, you have an investment accounts I mean lots of different ways that you can save money.
Speaker 3:Physical metals I really like physical metals because once you buy them they're kind of hard to sell. Like you end up with all these metals and so you're stuck with them, which is good. You don't really make a lot of money on metals unless they go up, but over time they should go up. But I think it's important for people to realize there's a lot of different ways to save money and I'm a big fan of investing in ways that it's hard to get money back out. So if you buy a property, you're kind of stuck in it. If you buy precious metals, you've got this chunk of metal. It's not easy to just say I'm just going to spend this money and go on a trip.
Speaker 3:Life insurance plan you're stuck in it with a contract. You have to keep paying into it. So sometimes you got to paint yourself into a corner and force yourself to have to keep paying. And I mean I think one of the great books a long time ago is. I've read a lot of different ones, but the wealthy neighbor, millionaire next door, richest man in Babylon like you really need to like save a small, just a small percentage consistently as soon as you possibly can and you end up becoming super wealthy and have a great retirement life. But if you don't start to your 30, 40s, I mean it's too bad because you don't need to save much. If you're young and people don't get that, they think it's not enough to even save and so they put it off and they realize, oh crap, you know, 20 years of doing this tiny little amount, I'd be set to buy my first house or, you know, have quite a bit of capital.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's so important. Well, you said so many things there that I think are amazing takeaways, but I think automate your savings, as you're talking about Go, you know, do it on a regular basis. Whether it's for savings and I think that's possibly, you know, depends on your personality. If you need that discipline, that can be a super helpful strategy. I think, on compound interest, that that's such an important concept and so, for viewers and listeners, I'll link to the episode that I did all about compound interest, because I think when you bring that up, is that something that is so important. You can't start too early, but if you haven't started, start today.
Speaker 3:It's never too early to start. You got to start sometime, so starting like today is good.
Speaker 2:Exactly. So tell us a little bit about what you're working on. What is Technical Traders?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so Technical Traders is long story short. Short is there's usually two styles of trading or investing. You either generally go on fundamentals, so you're looking for companies that have growth quarter after quarter or year after year. You invest in them because you believe in them and they're showing signs of growth. I've done that and I've lost my shirt on it, because I bought very strong companies during the tech bubble and, even though companies are growing by leaps and bounds, their share price still got cut in half and then would get cut in half again. You're like how did I lose so much? So I don't do fundamental, which brings us to technical traders.
Speaker 3:So I'm a technical trader, meaning I look at the charts, I look at money flows, I look at where is money flowing between different assets. There's risk on assets which are like stocks, and then there's risk off assets or defensive assets like gold or utility stocks or blue chips, and so money is always sloshing around from one asset class to another. It could be a currency, it could be bonds, it could even be precious metals, and so what I do is I look at all the market, find out where the money is flowing and then go okay, based on where the majority of big volume is flowing, it's telling me okay, is there a big move in the market? So the best way to look at it is if you think of the stock market like the ocean when the tide goes up, it lets all boats. When it goes down, all the boats go down with it. The stock market is the same. And so think of yourself as a surfer. You know, walking down the beach in Florida or somewhere on the ocean, there's surfers out sitting out there past the break, chatting, relaxing. What are they doing? They're waiting for that set of waves to roll through so they can hop on that clean set. Well, the stock market is the same Every year.
Speaker 3:There's five to 12 ways that roll through the stock market and through bonds, and so what we do is we more or less wait in a cash position, just earning daily interest and monthly dividend until a wave comes, and then we hop on that wave. And the nice thing about hopping on a strong wave is we see it coming, we know it's strong, but we also know when it's starting to weaken. So we can start to trim profits, lock in gains, move our protective stop up in case it rolls over. At least we'll close it out for still a gain and we get off that wave. And so I really just sit on the sidelines waiting for these waves to roll through the market.
Speaker 3:And I focus on maybe four asset classes which are rather along the stock market indexes with an ETF, or we're along the US treasury bonds, or we're along the US dollar currency, or we're in a cash position, and each one of those in that order. As we move down that list, the volatility, the amount that those things move on a daily basis decreases, so it means there's less risk, and so, as the stock market gets more wild and falls out of favor, we'll look to go to bonds or currency and we're going to things that move slower and slower, while the markets are getting wilder and more out of control. So we know when to step back, when to get out, and we know when to step in and ride that wave, and that's what I do. We have these five to 12 trades a year and you can put all your money in one asset class.
Speaker 3:And this is one thing, tony, that most people don't fully grasp is a lot of people own a whole bunch of different sectors, a ton of different stocks, and they're like I'm diversified. I am good If the tide goes down. The stock market goes down. In a bear market, they're almost all going down. Some might not go down as fast as others, but they're all going to get hit. And so people think they're diversified, with all kinds of stocks and sectors, but they're all the exact same trade. The stock market stocks are one asset class. I don't care if you own one ETF of the entire index or you own 150 different stocks. It's the same trade. And because you own a bunch of individual ones, they're actually much more volatile. So you're actually holding a whole bunch of super volatile assets in there that are all going to go down together. And so that's the biggest takeaway is, people don't realize having a bunch of stocks is not diversification. It means you're loaded up on a bunch of very volatile stuff all in the same asset class and when that asset goes down, you're getting hammered, and that's the reality of it.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, the buy and hold strategy is all about that. Just put your money in, own some bonds, owns a bunch of stocks and ride the tide, ride the waves, and it's very painful and you will never see somebody with the buy and hold strategy retire in their twenties or thirties, because they need 30 to 40 or 50 years of time of compounding, because you end up with a really poor return. With the buy and hold, you have some things that are making good money but other things that are going to be losing a bunch of money because you're diversified and so you end up with a net really poor average return. And then, of course, after the tech bubble, I mean, the stock market was 13 to 16 years before it recovered. That is, you just wasted 13 to 16 years with no return, lost your money twice, half of it twice, and so you go through all these. You just waste so much time.
Speaker 3:And so the strategy I have is we're either earning daily interest and growing, or we're in an asset that is rising, and that's the whole. Key is we don't have the drawdown, we don't have the wasted time, we don't have the volatility of big bear markets. We can profit when the markets go down. It's actually some of the most profitable time, because the stock market falls seven times faster than it rises. So there's a lot of opportunity and it's just a matter of navigating it in a very low, easy strategy. That's what I focus on.
Speaker 2:Well, so let's go a little bit deeper on that, because you know that's not the usual advice that you hear from people is, I think, probably what's key for people to understand here is that you need some knowledge when you do this and you need to have a plan right. You can't just decide to not buy and hold.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, you do. You totally need a plan. So I got my pods license when I was 16 years old and I learned at a very young age you need a checklist, you have to run through that checklist or you're going to go down in a burning ball of fire. So I have always carried that over. I'm also very logical. I'm not an engineer, but I'm a quasi engineer. I love to build a machine and make parts and stuff like that, invent stuff. But I'm a quasi engineer. I love to build a machine and make parts and stuff like that, invent stuff. So I'm very systemized, very logical, and so I brought that over into my trading. As soon as I got hooked into it, I was like how do I find trades? And then you start documenting and so you create these SOPs, standard operating procedures to search for trades, identify them, figure out how to manage and trade each of those positions.
Speaker 3:Because every asset is really its own kind of animal. It has its own lifestyle. Everything moves differently volatility-wise, how quick it moves, all kinds of different things. So you really do need to put systems in place and strategize and have a full-on set of rules to follow. If you don't, you're just pure trading, discretionary on emotions and if the Fed speaks, you get all worked up.
Speaker 3:All this stuff and news is really just noise. It can move the market temporarily and great stuff, but the reality is, if you understand the underlying trend is the tide going up, then you know you naturally want to be long and then you just have to wait for the proper asset or whatever it is you're looking for for that wave to roll in and hop on it. Don't get caught up in daily noise. I mean the trades we have I would say they're more so positions for our portfolio. They last like 40 days to, like you know, four or five months. So it really is, you know, really just depends on the market conditions, but it's not about trading. The last thing I want to do is trade. The fewer we trade per year the better, because active traders almost always lose money in the long run. It is a very tough game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'm glad you added that in, because I think that's really important for people is because you hear that it's like, well, I have a friend who day traded and they were successful. But it's like, well, you know, I have a friend who day traded and they're successful, but it's not really you know success for the long run.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a job and it's hard well, and I think that's the important thing for people to take away here is that you know if you're going to do these things and not buy and hold is that you do need to have a plan.
Speaker 3:You can't just wing it and yeah and Tony, that's like what I provide, right? So I actually provide, through my book and through my services, a newsletter where people can actually copy. They see my analysis. I put out Mondays and Wednesdays. They see what the markets are doing from a technical standpoint. I draw on the charts, I make it very high level and people can just ride my coattails. So the trades that I offer are what I'm doing in my own personal account and then everybody just kind of copies what I do.
Speaker 3:So I mean to learn the markets takes at least at least 10 years, and then it's never stopped learning after that. Like, the markets are always evolving. So people who think they can just buy a course and become a day trader or swing trader they have no idea what they're walking into. It's going to be 15 years later and they're going to still be scratching their head going why is my account the same size? Or why did I blow up three times and I have to keep reloading it? It's not like that. Either you have to commit your whole life to the markets to do very well, which I've been doing for over 25 years, or you have to follow someone. So people just don't want to do that, though they want to learn it on their own. They want to be like their own. I mean, the markets bring in a lot of entrepreneurs, very successful people, savvy, smart professionals.
Speaker 3:Problem with that is us, as entrepreneurs like to make stuff happen. We're not. We don't just sit around and wait. And so people go out and they're like I got to find trades. I got to find trades. I got to be active, I got to make stuff happen. I'm going to make money. But the reality is, once you go full circle in the market and realize you're not in control, you have to sit there and float and wait for those waves to come to you, not go out hunting for them, Cause if you're looking for them, you're going to find them, but they're not actually going to be really good setups. It's just you're getting desperate enough and you've, you know, broken down your, your uh, psyche enough to be like this one looks good enough, let's, I'll take this one. But that's not the case. You don't want to do that, but that's what everybody does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I, I think you know I love the surfing analogy. Uh, you know, because I think that's it is. You have to let it come to you. Is is you can't force it, and I think that's one thing. And you know something that I've talked to my son about? You know he's 19 years old, so we're you know he's still learning about money, is you know? I tell him, like, you know, there's people like you who've been doing this their whole life. You know who are. You know that's that's who he's competing against within the market. You know people have access to resources, to knowledge, to experience, and you know it's hard to you know, do that? Even people who are professionals struggle to beat the market. I mean, when you look at fund managers, you know most of them don't even beat the market.
Speaker 2:Uh, fund active fund managers. So that's awesome. So just real quick, have a couple of get ready questions. I want to run by you, but I want to make sure we talk about your book. What is asset revesting?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so asset revesting is? There's the buy and hold strategy, which is one most people do. Then there's active trading, which is the other half of people do, or maybe you do both. Both of those have huge flaws 97% of active traders over a 300-day window lose money. The buy and hold investor will never retire early and they have to go through serious pain over and over again for decades.
Speaker 3:What asset revesting is is just kind of one step before the buy and hold, which is we're taking our money, we're reinvesting it into one asset class at a time. So we're in the stock market. When it's going up, when it shows signs that it's lost momentum, we sell our ETF, get out of stocks altogether, and then we'll move into bonds or we'll move into the US dollar index. Now they're all. They have no correlation, so they can all go in their own direction, and so that's what we do.
Speaker 3:Is we just reinvest our capital into a different asset class, something that does meet our wave criteria, that is, in a strong uptrend, and we hop on and we ride that until something higher up on our list that's more volatile on our hierarchy, like bonds or the index, give us another signal. Then we want to move into those because we do want to be in the more volatile ones to make more potential money down the road. So we're always trying to be in the top asset class, most volatile, but as things get wilder we're always stepping away from the markets and relaxing while everyone else is, for some reason, goes the opposite direction. They pile in, they buy leveraged ETFs and options and they think they're going to make a fortune. It's kind of the wrong thing that people kind of get attracted to that side, but it's actually the most dangerous way to go about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's awesome. Thanks for explaining it and there will be links in the show notes to Chris's book so you can check it out. In the show notes to Chris's book, so you can check it out. I think you know. Again, to stress, you know things that you've said is that you have to follow somebody who's knowledgeable in this area. You have to do research. You can't just wing it. People who are listening and they're taking away one or two bits. Make sure you're listening to. You know all of what Chris is talking about and you know to put it in perspective. So, chris, you know all of what Chris is talking about and you know to put it in perspective. So, chris, you know, just real quick, is you know, have a couple of get ready questions that I call them is what basic money concept do you wish people knew?
Speaker 3:The money concept. The reality is there is no quick, easy money like big money. People always think the stock market is like, oh, I can make a ton of money, make 30 or 50 or 100 percent or um. The reality is it doesn't matter what investment you get into is, generally, unless you're going to like bitcoin, but that's a whole different breed of people, um, and expectations. The reality is, if you have, if you have uh, wealth, you have a sizable amount of money and you put it to work. It takes time, uh, time kind of. Uh, you're not. You know you're not going to have these massive, crazy gains unless you start a business and then build it to sell and all that stuff there's. There is big gains in entrepreneurship, for sure, um, but the stock market is a long-term game. You don't go in there for a couple of years and say I'm going to hammer it out, make a ton of money. It's like, no, you're going to get in there, you're going to have a strategy and you're going to work that strategy for a long time until you hit the level of finance you want and then keep on going after that, probably, anyway.
Speaker 3:But I think people just need to know you need to start early. Start early. It doesn't matter what you do. Try to start investing early. And it doesn't matter how small it is 25 bucks a month, like it's anything. Get into that routine and try to find a way to lock yourself into it. And when it comes to investing, I think it's important to understand if you're in a bull market or bear market. Is the tide going up or down? If it's going down, step aside. It's better to sit in cash, collect interest for a year while the market falls. You can reinvest it later. That's like the most simple, basic way to navigate the markets. Or you can take advantage a little more actively where we're constantly in an ETF going up. Yeah, I think maybe that's probably about it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's super helpful and I think that's really good. You know, and that reinforces what you were talking about earlier is these aren't short-term things, these are long-term strategies that take time. There's no, you know I've heard this said many times, I'm sure you've heard it there's no magic in the market. You know it takes work. So what basic money we have to. Just went over that, I apologize. What money myth are you trying to break?
Speaker 3:Well, I think the biggest thing is the financial markets have been built and designed. Financial advisors are all trained to do the same thing Put funnel everybody, herd them together to do a buy and hold, some type of diversification. And the whole reason I wrote this book and why I'm trying to share this even more now than ever in the past year is simply because the stock market has a way of applying the most pain to the largest group of market participants at the worst possible time, and I believe we're in that time right now. We have the most retirees, the most people close to retirement, and the worst thing that could happen is they lose 50% of their money in another major meltdown and financial reset. So I believe something like that is potentially coming and that's why I want to let people know like you know, all these things are starting to really bubble up to the surface that things are starting to break down. The Fed sees it coming. That's why they're already doing a huge quarter or a 50 basis point cut. I mean it looks pretty bleak when you dive into the details and what's going on in the economy and the markets. It's looking pretty bad.
Speaker 3:So the myth I'm trying to break is the buy and hold and even those all-in-one ETFs, where you buy one ETF and it's like already got the bonds, it's got your small caps, your mid caps, your large caps, it has all that stuff in it. Some of them even have Bitcoin now. I believe those are like the retirement ticking time bomb. You're literally holding onto something that is going to get absolutely annihilated and when it's all said and done, you're going to be scratching your head going like why? How did I just lose half of my wealth in a year and a half? Took me 60 years to get here and where was the protection? Where was my financial advisor?
Speaker 3:So advisors I'm not trying to bash them. They are taught to do it this way. Every ETF and system is designed this way and they don't want to go outside of that realm because if they do something unique to try and make money and it backfires on them a bit, they can get sued. So if they all do the same thing and everybody loses money at the same time, the advisors can't really get sued because they're doing what the norm is. So the myth is like the buy and hold and holding all this stuff to me is super dangerous. It's not the right place. Everybody says for some reason it's the way to go, it's the easy way, but it is, to me, is the biggest myth out there.
Speaker 2:It's one of the most dangerous things for anybody 45 plus okay, well, you know, let me ask you, you know, the obvious question here is so for the average person, who doesn't have time, you know, to follow somebody like you is, is is there an easy strategy that people can do, or is there no easy strategy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean there is. So I mean somebody, if they already trade, they can copy my trades, put them in themselves. But I also provide auto trading at no extra cost. So somebody can just move money over to a brokerage account and it'll automatically execute. It's your own self-directed account. I don't manage money, but the trades are automatically executed for them. So you don't have to do anything. You can let you set it up, you set it and forget it and with whatever portion of capital you have there, it's just. It's just kind of being more or less managed trades executed for you, copying, shadowing, exactly what I do. So you don't have to learn stuff or do anything if you don't want to.
Speaker 2:Well, you know. So let's go a little bit deeper on that, because a lot of people are in 401ks, where there isn't that choice. You know they're presented with. You know 10, 20 mutual funds and now the big movement is you know the, like you said, the, what age targeted funds. You know what? What do those people do?
Speaker 3:I mean you can move money out of out of those and have them in a self-directed account. There's ways that the broker sets that up so it stays in that. So it's totally possible. You can also all of those funds, because we're trading the four main asset classes. Those funds that people have access to are still going to cover the same things that we do. So if we trade the SP500, which is the SP500 index, there will be an SP500 index mutual fund or fund within their basket that they trade. So it's super easy to find one that mimics and execute it yourself. Or again, you can roll those accounts, those registered accounts, over into another registered brokerage account and then they can also be executed for you trading the same ETFs that I trade. So there are ways to do it. Obviously there's some paperwork involved, but that's what they do all the time.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, that's good. And again, just for people watching and listening, because we are getting a little bit into investment advice. This is not actually investment advice. This is for educational purposes, to give you ideas on the different things that you can do. So, you know, I appreciate you sharing that, chris, because I think the important takeaway for people really is that you have to pay attention to this stuff, that setting it and forgetting it is really not a great strategy with any part of your financial life, but especially with your investments. So appreciate you sharing that. So you know, let's go back in time a little bit. What advice would you give your younger self, knowing what you know now?
Speaker 3:Well, if I was to go all the way back, I definitely get more heavy into real estate. I like multi-family real estate. I own self-storage facility. Um, when it comes to investing, I I wish I would have just invested in at a young age, not knowing, because you don't really know much back then, although we always think we do.
Speaker 3:Um, investing just in the indexes, buy like an index ETF and just let it mature. Buy and hold until you have money to hire someone to help you navigate the markets better and you potentially save up there and use it for your first house or buy homes earlier. It would really be just to get involved in some type of investment that naturally goes up in value when you're young. The bear markets don't. They're not quite as bad simply because you do have some time. Once you start to have some wealth, that's when you really need to make sure you navigate them the best, which is usually in your later years, when you can't afford to go through those. So really I would just say, start investing into the stock market or into real estate, or ideally both, as a way to do it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome and I think you've said that quite a few times, so I hope people are taking away that message. Get started early. You know the best, you know, but the best day is money.
Speaker 3:So if you can do it, you know, 20 years sooner, that's. That's huge. People don't realize the benefit of that. It's crazy. 20 years sooner, that's huge. People don't realize the benefit of that.
Speaker 2:It's crazy, yeah and I hear that from so many guests just over and over, and I hope viewers and listeners have picked up on that same message is time in the market is really one of the best things, and it's time for any of these plans. So, chris, what is your favorite money resource? You know, if you had to pick one, whether it's a podcast, book, newsletter, app or website.
Speaker 3:Oh, you know this is going to sound pretty cheesy. I'm not big into following the news, but I follow. I think it's Bloomberg. It's like five things you must know for the day. It's like a free newsletter. I get it every morning at like six o'clock it pops into my inbox and it's just like bullet points, a very short paragraph on like five little things. And that is my update Recaps quickly what happened yesterday or what's going to happen today. And that is my touch on the market, because I don't follow the news. I've never been big into TV because I grew up without it and I find news is always after the fact and you never. It's generally never positive. I don't like negative stuff. So I mean, if I had to pick a tidbit, it would probably just be that, just because it keeps me in the loop around the whole world of big things moving. So I can actually talk to people and be like hey, did you hear about this? Or if they say it, I'll be like oh yeah, I heard about it?
Speaker 2:I was going to say I get it as well, and you know, I was just reading it this morning. You know the one thing it doesn't have is sports section, but nothing is perfect. So for me, so you know, to close out, what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money.
Speaker 3:Number one tip? I think the number one tip would be like I see this with my kids I've got a 12 and a 14 year old and I see it with a few other people that they come into a little bit of money and then they suddenly want to just go spend it on something for short-term gain satisfaction, right. And my son, my daughter's amazing. She saves money like there's no tomorrow. My son the second he cuts the lawn, he's got the money. He's off on the scooter to the convenience store, blow his head off with sugar, right. It's like it's totally opposite.
Speaker 3:So I would say, um, if you could just focus on on like saving, putting it away. So forget the short-term game. Forget about going to have a really sweet chocolate bar for a movie or something, or going to do something and say I'm going to put that in savings. I'm going to save that and accumulate until what I want to buy is something that has value, will hold some value, not something that's just going to be like vaporized and the money's gone and the chocolate's gone or the whatever you're going to do is done. So I'm all about saving. And then, whenever I buy, I don't buy much, but when I do, it's usually something really good, it's an asset, it's something that improves lifestyle or business. So try to try to just save your money for, like, something that actually is kind of physical or adds as an asset of some sort. Education is you can never go wrong learning, I love learning. You can always spend it on that. The more you know generally, the more money you make down the road anyway.
Speaker 2:So yeah, Well, I love that and because I think so often people just spend money and then they wonder why they're not hitting their goals. So I think that's that's. Great advice is to think about where you're spending, and I've had other guests who talk about mindful spending, which is the same principle. You know, maybe wait a day, but I know I've bought things. You know, spur of the moment it's hard not to. So, Chris, where can people learn more about you? I mean, we have your URL in the background. Where can they pick up a copy of Asset Revesting?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the book is pretty much any Amazon or different bookstores. My YouTube channel if you type in the Technical Trader, technical Traders will pop up there. You'll see some of my morning updates of how I walk through the markets and it's very high level. It's very, very insightful, very educational and it'll keep you keep your pulse on the markets. And, of course, my website, the technical traderscom, and there's a free newsletter there so they can follow stuff and just have it delivered to their inbox like the Bloomberg email every morning. Just stay in tune.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome. And for everybody watching and listening as always, there will be links to Chris's website and Chris's book in the show notes so you can easily check out those resources. So, chris, thank you very much for joining us today on the Get Ready Money podcast.
Speaker 3:Hey, thanks for having me, Tony Pleasure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a great conversation and, as always, thank you everyone for tuning in to this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. If you learned something today to change the way you think about money, please share with a friend and be sure to subscribe Until next time. Let's change the way we think about money.
