Season 2, Episode 14: What Does an Investment Advisor Actually Do All Day??

How watching the financial news is like following a very long-running high stakes soap opera with very small, mostly inconsequential plot twists on most episodes

OK, so investment advisors are the people we go to to find out how to turn our money into more money, but how do they know??

Are they on a secret call at 5am telling them what stocks are hot? Do they spend hours on some mysterious software machine that spews out a bunch of recommendations? Do they have financial tarot cards?

On today’s episode, we find out what one financial expert does every day to make sure she knows about what markets are doing to give out advice: Women on the Verge co-host Sara Glakas!

Join us as we discover what the hell she does with her time, and be thankful that the fact that she does it means we don’t have to.

Oh! And do you have a passive income story? A success? A failure? Tell us about it in a voice memo and e-mail it to: womenonthevergepodcast@gmail.com

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 2 on our Ask Us page!

We have the social medias!! Here’s our Instagram (Thank you, Gwen!) and Facebook and LinkedIn.

This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

Transcript for Season 2, Episode 14: What Does an Investment Advisor Actually Do All Day?

Caitlin Welcome to Women on the Verge of a Financial Breakthrough, a podcast where we're figuring out finance. One dumb question at a time. I'm the dummy. Caitlin Meredith, a coach and mediator based in the Bay Area.

Sara And I'm Sara Glakas. I'm an investor advisor and founder of Black Barn Financial and the Austin Women's Investing Group, which can be found on Meetup and Facebook.

Caitlin Before we start to make a big announcement, thanks to Friend of the Pod, Gwen, we have an Instagram account. Women on the Verge podcast. We also have a Facebook page and we're on LinkedIn, so come join us and share with your friends.

Caitlin So, Sara, last week I asked you a question that I never thought I would have to ask you. What the fuck is a bank? And this week I really was like, What could it be? And I thought of a question I have always wanted to ask you and never have, because maybe it seemed like I should already know or that it's somehow like, a little hostile.

Caitlin But we know what is really setting this up.

Caitlin What do you do all day? Like, what is your job? I mean, I know you're a financial advisor. Like people come to you with their money and say, What should we do with it to make more money from the money that we have? So I get what your intentions are, and I get that you read probably some news because you always seem to know what the news is and you'll look at the ticker and you'll know some numbers. But what do you do?

Sara What do I? That does sound kind of hostile. What do you do? I mean, is how I'm perceiving this.

Caitlin It's not because I don't I look and think she doesn't get anything accomplished or why would anyone trust her anything. But literally, like. When you're a financial advisor, what are you doing? How do you get gather the expertise that allows you to guide other people's financial decisions?

Sara So, I mean, I spend a lot of time talking to clients in the office. And so, you know, just for exmple, at like an in-person meeting in my office typically goes 90 minutes, right?

Caitlin So it just seems like a long time to be talking about money.

Sara It's a long time. You know, we should have cookies on the table. We should have like a milkshake machine. Milkshake machine. I like that. So when during meetings, I'm just talking, you know, I've probably prepared between an hour or 90 minutes for the meeting. So that's lots of like get to know you time, trying to figure out what the client has, what they want, preparing for the meeting and then following up on the meeting. Because after the meeting, you know, ideally the the client say, you know, yes, we want to hire you or yes, we want to implement the recommendations that you spent all that time preparing. And so then there's an implementation period that either happens right after the meeting. Right. So maybe there are setting up new accounts, which, you know, that people in my office do. They'll do that help with the paperwork to get accounts open, to get money moved around. And while that's happening, it's my job to think about how new money that is going into accounts at this moment in time. How should it be invested? Right. Because we've talked about the difference between lump sum investing and dollar cost averaging. Right?

Caitlin Right. And lump sum is where I have $10,000. And I just say today I'm putting it in this index fund. Like, I don't want to think about it anymore. I'm just doing it. Want look at the markets where as dollar cost average nice cost dollar. Yeah. Okay. I got it right the first time is I have $10,000. I'm too freaked out by the market right now. Up, down, up, down. What if I lose everything? So I'm going to do $1,000 every Monday for ten weeks and put that in the market in the same index fund. Just spread it out over time.

Sara Yes.

Caitlin Learning hashtag lifelong learner. Okay. Please tell me how you. Okay. So the mechanics of accounts, the mechanics of explaining people how to access their own money so that it can get to you all of that. But to have any kind of educated opinion about the things that you're going to tell them about what to do with that no money. Where do you get that?

Sara Yeah. So this is kind of what almost every workday looks like for me. I get up in the morning, I check the futures markets on my phone just to see where the market is going at 630 or 730 in the morning. The the stock market doesn't open until 830, but there's something called the futures market. People overseas are awake. Right. And are able to trade futures during that time. But the cash market opens at 830, just at 838. Central York. No, it's 830 Central. It's my time.

Caitlin Okay. Got it.

Sara So while I'm getting the girls ready for school and we're all getting ready, you know, I'm kind of periodically checking what the markets are doing so I can be somewhat prepared. Usually the markets aren't doing anything out of the ordinary. You know, over the last year, though, and especially in 2022, markets were going bonkers. Like every day they would be up or down by, you know, many percentages. And so it was it was getting it was very volatile. But anyway, so I'm checking the futures market to see if I have an idea of what the day. A might look like? Is it what I expected? Is it not what I expected? Did something happen while I was sleeping? That seems very important. Like, did one country invade another country?

Caitlin I mean, if it does, if something big. Are you like girls? Here's some peanut butter.

Caitlin I've got to run to the office.

Sara Like that's really only happened. Maybe I can only think of one time where the event was so unexpected that something like that happened. It was. And it was when Trump was elected.

Caitlin I okay.

Sara Because, like, as the results were coming in, the futures markets were falling. It was unexpected and people were it was just an unexpected result. And so, you know, I'm on the phone with Amy Calista in my office, and we're agreeing to meet at the office early the next morning so that we can, you know, be ready to field phone calls and communicate with clients. And then by the time we woke up in the morning, the futures markets had actually stabilized and the market did not end up falling by very much that that next day when everybody realized what was happening.

Caitlin I'm bookmarking my question to ask you what the futures market is. I mean, I know you just gave a thumbnail, but I am I've never heard of that outside of an eighties businessman movie.

Caitlin So I'm confused, but I really.

Caitlin Want to hear more about your day. So we're going to go back to the futures market. Yeah. Okay.

Sara So now it's.

Sara 730, right? Or 8:00 and the girls are off to school. I start almost every morning watching Bloomberg. That is my financial media of choice.

Caitlin Is that a TV program? Is it?

Caitlin It's Internet.

Sara It's on all of the all of the places. So if you're like me and you have Direct TV, it's Channel 353 on DirecTV. If you have and pay for kind of the Bloomberg, I don't know, like full access, then you can watch it on your phone, which I will then watch TV on my phone while I'm getting ready for work in the morning or while I'm taking a shower. And they do a really good job. They bring on just the smartest people around the world to talk about what is happening in the economic world, the markets, the bond markets, stock market, whatever is happening. They have the smartest people talking about it in real time.

Caitlin Interesting. Is it like the c span of the financial world? Like, is it interesting for anyone outside of those that can really appreciate the granular? Oh, she's frowning, she's grimacing.

Sara Yeah, I don't know. I don't think you could just jump into it on day one.

Caitlin Okay.

Sara And because you, you probably wouldn't understand exactly where where you're starting from. I think you need to you need to build up that because you get used to the storylines. The storylines are always going, so you're following a storyline over time. This is like kind of you're jumping into the middle of a movie and you're trying to figure out like who the characters are and what the plot line is. And over time, okay, you can figure it out. And so I've been doing this long enough. I know what the plot is. I'm there trying to just get in an hour, figure out what everybody's talking about, what everybody's worried about. They're really good at bringing in guests with different opinions. And this was highly relevant during the pandemic because Bloomberg went out of its way. Jonathan Ferro is one of the hosts on the morning show. And I just love him. And he went out of his way to not let financial people talk about health stuff and not let health people talk about financial stuff. So he was trying to get people stay in your lane, people stay in your lane, and he would always call people out. Everybody was making predictions. People are always making predictions, especially during that time. He would just at the end of an interview, he'd be like, Let's be clear, no one has any idea what's going to happen. We have no idea what's going on. So anyway, so I really appreciate Bloomberg for that. I think they're just really smart. I think the hosts are charismatic and funny and cool. I like follow all of them on social media. You know, they're like making jokes about like the FTC's debacle or, you know, like the bond market. It's like if you really like bond market jokes, then you should follow all of these people on social media.

Caitlin So the Venn.

Caitlin Diagram of people I know and people that I appreciate bond jokes is one answer. You know.

Sara I just I love I love I love all of them. So that's my morning, right? So, okay, I don't the markets open at 830. I don't typically get to the office at 830, but I get there by nine or 930. And by the time I walk into the office, I know what the markets are doing. I know that my clients, if it's something major, they're going to have questions about it. So I'm ready. I know what the questions are. I know how I'm going to respond. I know what additional information I need so that I can walk. To the day. It really like all of that gathering of information is so that I am ready when someone asks me a question because.

Caitlin Okay, but they're watching Bloomberg. How do they even know to have.

Sara Yeah, I mean, it's when a financial story becomes a mainstream media news story, right? Those are the and it's typically only when things are scary. So this is not like an everyday occurrence, but if I know the plotline of the soap operas, I can trace things all the way back as far as people want to go. Okay. Which I think just is it just leads to more meaningful conversations. And it's it's less kind of hitting that fear or greed button that everybody has. It's like, Oh, well, yeah, okay, Silicon Valley Bank failed. I don't think that this is going to be like 2008, 2009 because all of these regulations have been passed since then. There are a lot of people who, you know, have a vested interest in keeping the financial system stable. The situation we're in now in now is not very similar to how things were back then for all of these reasons.

Caitlin Okay. So just like on the podcast, you put all the financial news in deep context. Yes. Okay. And so the job that's not client facing is gathering as much of that context as you can, right? Like past, present and future, Right.

Sara I mean, now that I'm describing it, I think it really is like following a soap opera for years and years and years. Right. Like any given day, the plot doesn't move that much. Right.

Caitlin But just enough to keep you.

Sara Right. And so I don't know. I used to watch it Days of Our Lives when I was a teenager. Right. And so I still remember when, like Marlena was possessed, that whole like summer that Marlena was possessed. So, like, now if I tune into Days of Our Lives, I can, you know, I recognize, like, Oh, this was so-and-so's child or, you know, so-and-so is like ex-husband, or this is the person who was murdered. I came back to life. So it's similar to that.

Caitlin We're not making the stock market relatable.

Caitlin I mean, we're on target here.

Caitlin So essentially what you do for your job is watch TV for an hour every morning.

Sara Yes. Or listen to podcasts on different financial topics. My very favorite podcast is Odd Lots. It's a Bloomberg podcast by Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway. And it's so smart and just amazing. And it's and it's always on some what I think is like an inert, entertaining sideshow of the markets. Like there is this whole episode how Tracy was trying to ship something from Hong Kong to the U.S. She was living in Hong Kong during the pandemic and she tried to ship something from Hong Kong to the U.S. but it was during the supply chain snarl crisis. And so they were trying to figure out how to explain what was going on with supply chains. Now that I'm saying it out loud, it doesn't sound that amazing and hilarious.

Caitlin Amazing. And I wonder.

Caitlin If they sponsor other.

Caitlin Podcasts.

Sara Ad lots, the ad podcast subscribe and then suggest that they sponsor Women on the Verge.

Caitlin If they happen to ask you other podcasts that they you think they should sponsor could be ours. Okay, so they humanize it. Yes. They take stories from the financial world and turn them into stories that normal people could actually understand and appreciate. Yes, I'm all for it. Yeah. Okay.

Sara I read books sometimes write like whatever the book is.

Caitlin A lot of books.

Sara I don't read as many financial books as I used to, but I have read a lot of books. I don't do that quite so much because I'm trying to read, you know, fiction.

Caitlin And she reads French literature.

Sara And sci fi.

Caitlin And sci fi.

Sara And books for 11 year olds with my daughter. So I don't read as many books. But yes, it's a lot of watching TV, listening to people speak, looking at a lot of charts. I have charts I regularly check in on, like Ed Yardeni, earnings estimates, and the Cleveland Fed does an inflation now cast where they're trying to estimate what the inflation rate is right now because it's when it's announced it's the previous months inflation numbers. The Atlanta Fed does a GDP now cast where they're trying to figure out is the economy growing or shrinking in real time? So I have I have data points that are meaningful to me that I check in regularly to try to spot if there are some sort of disconnect or change in trends. And then like watching interest rates, interest rates can tell you a lot if you kind of check in on those. Okay.

Caitlin And I feel like sometimes when we talk, you say you were on a call someone and I never know if that means you were one on one. Just you happen to be speaking on the phone with somebody or on a call means something specific in your world.

Caitlin No, on a call is just an easy way to say either. I was. On the telephone with someone or on a call like this with you, like on Zoom or RingCentral or whatever, or I use on a call to describe, like if I'm watching, you know, a one hour presentation by my favorite economist, Fritz Meyer. Like he does those monthly.

Caitlin So does he invite you? Like, are you guys chatting or he record something once a month and you can.

Sara Subscribe for him? He does it in real time, and I subscribe to him. So I subscribe to his service.

Caitlin I subscribe to you, sir. Yes.

Sara Tell me for.

Sara Answers to your ideas.

Sara And I love I love Fritz because he has the same 120 slide slide deck that he updates every month so I can go through the slides. And again, because I do this every month, I can see what's changed from the previous month and kind of spot these changes. I mean, it's I say that as though was a way to forecast the future. It's it's not right because.

Caitlin It's it's to understand the present.

Caitlin Right I mean and really what what I'm looking for are reasons people will panic right. Is really the big one. Like what is something that people will panic about and they shouldn't.

Sara Wow, That's your Whac-A-Mole, right?

Sara What are people going to panic about and what should people panic about? Like, what should I be worried about? Because sometimes they're two different things.

Caitlin Okay. Right. So do you already know within 24 hours when I'm going to call or text you to say, should I be freaked out about that? Oh, can I freak out now?

Sara Yeah, I mean, for sure. I mean, I would love, like, I, I, I at all, like, at most times I know what people are about to ask me. Right. Like it's there's.

Caitlin Just you didn't today. You didn't.

Sara Know. I didn't. You did surprise me today with this. I had no idea this conversation was coming. You got me.

Caitlin Okay, so in a webinar, you're like, slotting an hour of your day to watch that webinar? Yes, because it's has such important information for you to then, like synthesize so that tomorrow when you have to make some money decisions for your clients, you have some good ideas about the strategy you want to employ, right?

Sara And it's not knowing exactly what's going to work, but it is trying to like tip the odds in your favor that you make a little bit of extra money or avoid losing money or wait, you know, is it better to invest more right now? Or is there a pretty good chance that if we wait three or four weeks, you know, something will have changed? So it's more like a tip, the odds in your favor and less of a trying to predict the future type of thing.

Caitlin Do you talk to other financial professionals?

Sara I talk to the people in my office because the the three of us who are doing advising, you know, me and Amy and Casey have different perspectives on a lot of things. Amy is excellent at details. I mean, just like phenomenal. And she tends to be more conservative from an investing perspective than I am. So she brings the caution right all the time. Casey has a very, very long term perspective and follows the markets not nearly as closely as Amy and I do. So she often has like a different perspective on weighing the importance of one thing over the other.

Caitlin Okay.

Sara I don't get a chance to talk to many other investing professionals. They're probably doing what I'm doing right, which is like you're selecting, you know, like economists or market strategists from the big firms who are out there, just like pumping out information for all of us to use to then synthesize on behalf of our clients.

Caitlin And what conferences do you go to every year and why? Oh.

Sara Well, it's been a minute since I kind of had a full conference schedule. This year. I'm going to a cryptocurrency and blockchain conference because it's in Austin. Ric Edelman is a he's a founder of an aria, and he started a conference and like kind of an educational curriculum for advisors to be able to advise on this new world of, you know, crypto and blockchain. I will probably go to a couple of other conferences, but I'm not sure exactly what they are yet.

Caitlin And the idea of a conference for your profession, because it seems like all of the information that you guys are getting is like day to day and you need to be keeping on top of that. But at a conference, is it like how I talk to my clients in a nice way, or is it like, get out.

Caitlin Of bonds? Everyone get out of bonds? Like they still have to prepare a presentation in advance and.

Caitlin People are in their house. Be like an agenda set so it can't be breaking news kind of coverage. So. Is it in client relations? Is that what are the what do they cover that could be useful to you?

Sara Yeah, a lot of the like breaking news type conferences I don't have access to a lot of people don't have access to. If you're thinking about like luncheons where they have one of the governors from the Federal Reserve coming to be a guest speaker, it's like regular people aren't having lunch at those luncheons. Right. So those are ones that are like new and important information is being shared in real time, but not everybody gets access to it. So, I mean, at the conferences that that I do go to at that I probably will go to this year, a lot of it is building your practice, figuring out like who are the clients that you speak to and who are kind of picking up what you're putting down. Right? There's lots of ways to make money and investing, and so there's lots of different perspectives out there. You know, how do the advisors figure out which clients they can best serve? And then, you know, what are the advances in technology that's available to do it, you know, better, faster, cheaper? Kind of all of those things. So a lot of it is like the technology or the platforms that you use either to run your practice or to convey information to clients in a way that they can understand.

Caitlin What is a Bloomberg console? Do you have one and what does it do?

Sara Oh, the Bloomberg terminal terminal. This is like. But I think everyone. Everyone would want one. Everyone should want one.

Caitlin Let's take a moment of silence for the Bloomberg terminal.

Caitlin Now, the Bloomberg terminal is I mean, it's actually a computer that has access to all of the information, like all all of the financial market information that is gathered by anyone. You pay a very, very expensive subscription to get access to this Bloomberg terminal. And it's basically a computer that sits in your office and you can type in. There's all these, like special codes you have to learn to type in to get the information you want. But the amount of information is I mean, it's unexplainable. Like how much information is there for you to pull in if you think something is important, that would be the way to get the data to support whatever. I don't know, whatever like investment thesis you're working on.

Sara Do public libraries have that?

Sara They don't. I don't think public. I mean, when this was like maybe ten or 12 years ago, one of the places I worked at had a Bloomberg terminal. And I think at that time the subscription was $25,000 per year for one terminal. Okay. Right. So it's out of reach of most people, like a large investment firm might have a Bloomberg terminal and people who are trained to use it. Amy in my office can use a Bloomberg terminal, but our firm is so small that it's overkill for what we do. And so we don't have one.

Caitlin Well, then that also strikes me as one of your underlying beliefs mottos is aspirations, is analysis paralysis. Right. And getting too much information at a certain point, just make the decision. Move on. So how do you thread that needle in your own research? Like, where is this is an unanswerable question, but like that line for you between, okay, I'm good. I got like, who's having an affair with who on days.

Caitlin And.

Caitlin Versus like, I need to know where what bar did they meet at last night and who called who and what did the tech say? Like, how do you make that call for yourself about what's true when information enough has been gathered and now it's time to make a decision from it?

Sara Yeah, because I would say, like as I'm gathering all of this information and the narratives of the markets, like when it comes down to it, I very rarely make changes to people's portfolios. Right. Like if you look at like what a portfolio is either in my own portfolio or in clients portfolios. Like, you kind of go in and you're like, okay, like it's a diversified portfolio of mutual funds and ETFs and is there reason enough to change it? And the answer is almost always no. Like there is there's nothing in the short term in the markets happening that justifies a change because an analysis can be wrong or it can be right and lead to a completely opposite reaction in the market than what you think it would. Sometimes it'll be like moving from like maybe out of long term bonds into shorter term bonds for some reason or out of like right now we're kind of moving a little bit like a little bit out of domestic stocks into international stocks where we've been kind of light for a while. So kind of rebalancing that a little bit, but it's not going in and like hitting the sell button on everything for all clients. It's way more often getting a call from someone with something unexpected happening and needing to make a decision about their portfolio based on what the information they just gave you. And it's almost it's independent of the markets, right? I lost my job. I'm getting married. I got a raise. Just whatever the things that happened to peoples in people's lives, I had to retire earlier than I thought. I'm going to work a few more years, like whatever it is. That's almost always like the reason for a major shift in a portfolio. It's almost never something in the markets.

Caitlin That is fascinating. You do all of this work hoping not to need it.

Sara Yeah, it doesn't make me sound herself like I'm wasting a lot of time. I think. I mean, part now, like, like part of it is because I.

Caitlin Maybe get some hobbies. I don't know.

Sara This is why I don't read financial books anymore. I read fiction like that's where. But I do enjoy it. I like it. I use it in my livelihood. I mean, every once in a while someone can stump me on a market or economics question, but I almost always have a pretty good idea of what they're talking about. And I also can use it to people will often like ask a really sophisticated question, but then ask a follow up question that makes you realize that they don't know what they're talking about. Right. And I do that to write. Like if I'm asking questions I like I think I understand the concept, but I obviously like just having a conversation about the other day. I'm like machine learning and artificial intelligence, right? It's like, how far am I going to go with this before this person realizes I have no idea what I'm talking about? The answer is not very far right.

Caitlin I'm at summary of the headline level this. Well, let me just stop you right there. I can't make it to that.

Caitlin Like, right.

Caitlin Okay. I get like it's obviously like you chose to build a business around it. So it's interesting to you. You can compare it to a fucking soap opera like this has a life for you that's beyond just the numbers and the tedium of like gray tweets, suits and whatever like this. It has a full character story arc for you. And I like this idea that you buffer yourself with fiction and other things because seems like, as we keep saying, and Kelly wants a T-shirt that says I'm the risk is.

Caitlin If.

Caitlin All of us in our, like, delicate psychological.

Caitlin Makeup.

Caitlin Are the biggest risk for our financial building, a financial future. You having like one foot solidly planted in it and following it all, you're more insulated from following trends and from like rushing to make a new decision. A new decision. And that seems a wise too. But I wonder how you catch yourself, because you're only human too. It's that you just grew some like weathered wise and leathery skin on your brain part that deals with finances to you like, I guess just a pattern and the overall ups and downs of the stock market.

Sara I mean, I think for me, like a lot of it is I mean, it's who I choose to follow. So if I go back to Fritz Meyer and his 120 slides that he updates every month, a lot of those slides are about the long, long, long term trends in the market. Like, do you know, like it's also women's investing group. I think I've showed the slide before. That is it shows like a chart of the S&P 500 and then just little arrows pointing to different crises that have happened over time, like going back to 1957. Right. Like this is the Cuban missile crisis. Like that was a big deal. Right? And here's 911 and here's COVID, like all of those things. And it goes all the way back to 1957. So if I'm trying to explain why we're not jumping in and out of the market to a client, I'm going back and seeing those slides and seeing those long term trends and reminding myself, right, because I certainly like will have clients who ask like, well, why don't we just get out when the market is good and then jump back in after it falls? Right.

Caitlin That's my question. Right. Be brilliant.

Sara Right? That would be awesome. We should totally do that if we could. Right. But even now, like thinking about like we just ended the first quarter, like we're having this call line on March 31st, 2023, like a year ago was the invasion of Ukraine. And not that long ago we were at much lower lows on the S&P 500 and people were calling for the market to keep going lower. Right. So you're always in this environment where people are making predictions about is it going to go higher, is it going to go lower? And if you try jumping in and out, you're going to be wrong more often than you're right and you're just going to it's just you're lighting your money on fire. Whereas like we've just been hanging out here, going sideways for six or nine months now, kind of around this 4000 on the S&P 500, you know, sometimes a little higher, sometimes a little lower. But there hasn't for a long time like kind of been that precipitating crisis that would cause the world to fall apart. And people have been predicting it for a long time now for well over a year now.

Caitlin And so you are communicating about all of this with your clients when they call and ask or you get a new client and you have this new bundle of money to just to decide with them, to educate them about what you think your strategy, the best strategy would be in terms of diversifying their portfolio, then you're investing it and then you kind of check on how all those things are doing every day.

Sara Every I mean, I, I check every day, but not with an intention to make a change every day. Just again, it's part of my it's part of the habits that I've built up over over the years of the Bloomberg and the checking and the doing, a scan of people's accounts, trying to make sure that people's accounts are doing what I expect them to do on any given day. And usually it's like, okay, the stock market is up. We expect to be up if the market is down and we expect to be down, Is there some anomaly that you can see in real time and why is that happening? That's kind of what I'm spot checking pretty quickly on a day to day basis and then checking in on performance numbers monthly or quarterly again to kind of come back. Like the whole point of investing, at least at my firm, is like we're trying to grow wealth, right? We're trying.

Caitlin To not like those other firms that are trying to piss.

Caitlin It all.

Sara Over there, you know, But there's a lot of firms who are mostly concerned with preserving wealth, right? So if you already have enough money, like what are all of the things you can do to, like, not lose any of it? Right. To hold on to it really tight. It's kind of a different way to go about it. Oh. Checking in on the performance numbers. Right. Because like, in that initial 90 minute meeting, we're talking about what target rate of return we need to hit our goals. Is it 7%, 8%, 9%, whatever it is, over long periods of time, I have to check back and see like, okay, it's been three years or five years. Have we hit the 8% goal? If yes, cool. If not, why not? What changes need to be made? You know what? Expectations need to be reset. Just. Just so you don't end up going 30 years, not hitting your target right before.

Caitlin Adjusting the ratios or whatever. Okay. So you're watching soap operas at lunch and then you go back to work. And then what time do the markets close in Central Time?

Sara 3 p.m., Central 3 p.m..

Caitlin So by then, like the episode is over, you're like, left in the lurch. Well, he won't. He will they.

Caitlin Won't they. But then you have like, like the post-game. Right. Like after the big game, everyone does the analysis and you have like the, the post market commentary starts coming out after the markets. And sometimes companies report earnings after the bell right after the market. So then you can start getting a preview of what's going to happen the next day.

Sara You're like, what happened?

Caitlin You had it's a vortex is a vortex.

Sara And so 3:00 to 330 and 4:00, it's following up on client communications that came in over the day and really like starting to shut it down because the whole thing's just going to start again. You could you could go through a 24 hour cycle because then the Asian markets open and then the European markets open and then it's the U.S. again. Right. So you could go 24 hours if you wanted to. Just looking for like any piece of information that would either confirm, you know, whatever bias you have or, you know, have you change your mind. But by 4:00, I am starting to shut it down and think about going home and wrapping up whatever needs to be wrapped up. And then, you know, some of those days, like during the trading day, I'm like, I'm placing trades for clients, right? Like, okay, you know, these are the things that we're buying and actually executing the trades. And so after the market closes, just making sure everything went as planned and getting ready for the next day.

Caitlin And there's enough new information that, like I have this theory that there's not never been a single new thing said after postgame interviews on the court or the field or whatever that like pretty much copy and paste. And so but wow, there's a whole industry built around it.

Sara Yeah. Like really people really like watching it and.

Caitlin Participating in it. And I don't know enough about sport. I mean, understatement of the year, I don't know nothing about, but has anyone ever learned anything substantive after a game said by one of the people participating in the game that has led to anything changing in the universe is the same in the financial world? Like.

Sara Yeah, it's the same in the financial world. Like when the when the market is volatile, like the the news cycle tends to revolve these days around Federal Reserve meetings which are on the calendar. You know, those in advance earnings reports of important companies in the stock market and, you know those advance inflation prints. So when they announce the inflation numbers and you know, those in advance are on a calendar, so there isn't so much breaking news that could really like change kind of what someone's view of the markets might be these days. I mean, like even with the invasion of Ukraine, like that, that was like a slow motion crisis that was happening. Right. Like an earthquake doesn't really do it. Like even like a coup doesn't do it. I mean, aliens would do it. Aliens would be a big deal, right? That even.

Caitlin Like, are we officially allowed to freak out about our financial futures if they're alien.

Sara Aliens would do it. I mean, even COVID was slow motion, right? Pandemic was slow motion from the market's perspective. So there really aren't that many things that can happen overnight that would change everything. You know, 911 was a case that did do that right. But there really aren't that many things that will have a huge impact and completely change everyone's mind overnight.

Caitlin And yet, first thing you do when you wake up is look at those numbers as if there are something. Yeah, right. Is there anything else about your job that you think would surprise me or like is a fun little perk that nobody else would think of or they would or.

Sara Oh my gosh, like a fun perk. I don't know. Like, I don't think I know how to have fun anymore based on the whole conversation we just had, She makes me sound really boring.

Caitlin Fucked up fun.

Sara I know. Like, that's like the it's the joke in my like. Whenever I want. The kids are like, What are we going to do tonight? I'm like, Oh, we're going to watch Bloomberg. And they're like, No.

Sara We hate Bloomberg. Right.

Sara I think about a lot during the day, how much I'm thinking about the markets and about how apparently no one else is thinking about it at all. So I think I have a question for you, which is how often do you think about anything related to the stock market or the bond market or interest rates or even like bank collapses? Like if you go to a party, like are people chitchatting about Silicon Valley Bank or how they're for when gays are doing? Like how often do regular people think about this stuff?

Caitlin Listeners, can you call in and give your answers so Sara can hear what normal.

Sara People, how much.

Caitlin Bandwidth we give to that? I think in a breaking news thing like Silicon Valley Bank, I did go to a friend's house for dinner and my friend's husband ran payroll for his company through an app that used Silicon Valley Bank. So actually we were talking about it quite a bit because he was worried he wouldn't be able to pay his. This was before the rescue. So that case, yes, he had direct personal involvement. Since making this podcast, I'm more aware of headlines or that I'm sort of more curious about them because I think like, oh, I should like I should.

Caitlin I should pay attention to this.

Caitlin I am a podcaster.

Caitlin I mean, I'm in the financial news space.

Caitlin Or if I'm like my CPA says, you need to give another $3,000 to, you know, your 401k4 taxes or whatever. Then I text you.

Caitlin And I'm like, Can I do that?

Caitlin But on a day to day basis, knowing where the markets are. No, because you've told me I don't have to. So it's a huge relief. Like, I don't have to be. Even if I did know, I shouldn't make any new decisions based on that information. So basically, having our friendship in this podcast has had the opposite effect. I, I know that I think.

Caitlin About it less probably because I was like, helpless. There's nothing I should do. And it definitely.

Caitlin I mean, charismatic leaders will get me every time like Bernie Madoff, like those story arcs, the real soap operas in there and with you, Theranos like fraud, all of that stuff. I'm totally with you. But in terms like I know that I have to ask you what a futures market is, but like, I can't even muster the.

Caitlin Enthusiasm to be mildly curious about it because I don't care and I don't really.

Caitlin Want to know. I think we'll save it for a future episode when I have a better attitude and have had more of a milkshake. But I So talking about it with you makes it more interesting. And on the face of it, me sitting and watching Bloomberg would be like someone forcing me to watch golf analysis or something where I just want to like, hit my head against a very hard brick wall.

Sara Yeah.

Sara But I love that you love it.

Sara Yeah. One day I'll be ready to let it go. I think. I think one day I have like this. This fantasy about just, like, dressing in, like, linen robes and, like, doing some sort of, like, Buddhist retreat that turns into, like, 15 years of just like, practicing Buddhism or, like learning the meaning of life. And like, over those 15 years, like, I've just left all of my money in the investments there. And now and then I come back and it's worth like gajillion dollars and then I.

Caitlin And you buy your own island and start your own car.

Sara It's kind of sad that I would give it all away.

Sara Because I just came from the Buddhist place monastery, right? So I don't even need the wealth because now, like, I'm beyond that, right? And so then I can give it away. So this is like, that's my long term investing strategy.

Caitlin That's our next podcast.

Caitlin Stay tuned.

Caitlin Okay. Well, you've just blown all of our minds with your sharp 180 on your life's passion and future goals, but it is all based on making the decisions now that will build your financial future or I guess, other people's financial future, since you're going to give it all away and making all those decisions, getting as educated as you can now to make those investments, so then you can pursue other passions and enlightenment and linen.

Caitlin And whatever goes along with those things.

Caitlin And knowing that all of those investment portfolio index funds are there.

Caitlin Waiting for you. That's right. That's what it comes back.

Caitlin To what we want for everybody, right? That it is something that they just get to set and forget and then follow their dreams and that's their. Supporter.

Sara If you don't love the markets, then don't watch Bloomberg. It's like you don't need to.

Caitlin I don't think that's a hard sell. I don't.

Caitlin Think people are okay.

Caitlin Or check in on anything or know anything about anything.

Caitlin Okay. Well, this was fascinating. And c, it wasn't hostile. It was just curious like what is happening behind the curtain there?

Sara Oh, well, thanks for asking.

Sara Oh, you're very important to me. Thank you, Sara.

Sara I'll see you later.

Music transition by Bad Bad Hats

Caitlin Hey, before we go, thank you so much to Kelly West, who co-produced and edited this episode.

Music transition by Bad Bad Hats

Sara If your partner is making you ask for money, giving you an allowance are not letting you know about family income. This could be economic abuse.

Sara Learn more at thehotline.org, or call one 800 799 safe.

Music outro by Devmo

Devmo I know the first thing you notice is that I'm covered in gold, the flick of the wrist it could turn a hot bitch cold, to get what you want in life girl you gotta be bold. Now Imma die rich, and I know...

Sara This podcast contains general information that is not suitable for everyone. The information contained herein should not be construed as personalized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. There is no guarantee that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast will come to pass. Investing in the stock market involves gains and losses and may not be suitable for all investors. Information presented herein is subject to change without notice and should not be considered as a solicitation to buy or sell any security.