The Rational Reminder Podcast copertina

The Rational Reminder Podcast

The Rational Reminder Podcast

Di: Benjamin Felix Cameron Passmore and Dan Bortolotti
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A weekly reality check on sensible investing and financial decision-making, from three Canadians. Hosted by Benjamin Felix, Cameron Passmore, and Dan Bortolotti, Portfolio Managers at PWL Capital.2025 copyright - PWL Capital, all rights reserved Economia Finanza personale
Episodi
  • Barry Ritholtz: "90% of financial products are crap" | #421

    Barry Ritholtz: "90% of financial products are crap" | #421
    Aug 6 2026
    Barry Ritholtz returns to the Rational Reminder podcast to discuss the biggest mistakes investors make—and why avoiding them may matter more than finding the next great investment. Drawing on decades of experience in markets, wealth management, and financial media, Barry explains why forecasting consistently fails, how investors can distinguish good advice from noise, and why humility, probabilistic thinking, and disciplined behavior are among the most valuable investing skills. Throughout the conversation, Barry shares lessons from his new book, How Not to Invest, covering everything from media consumption and behavioral biases to index investing, portfolio concentration, market cycles, and choosing a financial advisor. He explains why experts are often better at providing context than making predictions, why social media amplifies poor financial advice, and how investors can build processes that help them stay disciplined through uncertainty. The discussion blends academic research, practical experience, and memorable stories into a comprehensive guide for becoming a better long-term investor. Key Points From This Episode: (0:04) Cameron and Ben welcome Barry Ritholtz back to the podcast and discuss his new book, How Not to Invest. (4:12) Why successful billionaires often make poor economic forecasters and how the halo effect leads people to overestimate expertise. (6:39) Why Wall Street professionals are generally poor at forecasting future market returns despite their domain expertise. (7:42) What experts are actually good at: providing context, historical perspective, and nuanced analysis rather than predicting the future. (8:47) Barry's checklist for identifying bad financial advice, including emotional appeals, false certainty, and conflicts of interest. (10:35) How social media algorithms reward outrage and overconfidence instead of thoughtful investing. (11:21) Why 24/7 financial news encourages unnecessary action that often hurts long-term investment returns. (12:17) Why long-term investors are often better off ignoring financial news altogether. (13:52) How short-form financial content on platforms like TikTok encourages misinformation and poor investing decisions. (15:22) Gell-Mann Amnesia and why investors should remain skeptical even of trusted news sources. (18:00) How reading books, consuming long-form content, and building a trusted information network improves decision making. (20:21) Barry's definition of investing as making probabilistic decisions with imperfect information in an unknowable world. (22:55) How successful investors focus on controlling savings, asset allocation, discipline, and behavior instead of unpredictable events. (24:52) Why recognizing the limits of your own knowledge is one of investing's greatest advantages. (26:30) How experience, losses, and continuous learning help investors become more self-aware. (27:16) Three ideas that heavily influence Barry's investment philosophy: Sturgeon's Law, George Box's models, and William Goldman's "Nobody knows anything." (30:18) Whether artificial intelligence changes Sturgeon's Law that "90% of everything is crap." (31:46) Three forms of economic innumeracy that lead investors astray: denominator blindness, survivorship bias, and misunderstanding compounding. (36:04) Why understanding secular bull and bear markets is useful psychologically—but not as a timing strategy. (39:12) Why investors should understand market cycles without attempting to trade around them. (40:44) What stock valuations can—and cannot—tell investors about future returns. (42:18) How investors should respond to wars, pandemics, and other major external events. (45:53) The biggest investing lessons from the COVID-19 market crash and why personal experience often differs from market performance. (49:04) Why index investing remains one of the most reliable approaches to long-term wealth creation. (50:44) Why every market forecast should be expressed probabilistically rather than with certainty. (52:06) The lies traders tell themselves and why disciplined risk management separates successful professionals. (56:11) What active investors need if they hope to consistently outperform. (57:24) The biggest behavioral mistakes investors make, including lack of planning, excessive concentration, and ignoring taxes. (59:43) Why concentrated stock positions become dangerous—even after creating substantial wealth. (1:02:33) How sudden wealth and large financial windfalls frequently lead to costly mistakes. (1:05:14) How to identify trustworthy financial advisors by evaluating their process, temperament, and communication. (1:07:27) Why advisors who consistently communicate their thinking help investors avoid emotional mistakes. (1:09:26) Barry's practical blueprint for becoming a better long-term investor: create a plan, invest consistently, define the purpose of money, and build around a diversified index portfolio. Links From Today's Episode: Meet ...
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    1 ora e 29 min
  • Answering Your Financial Questions | #420

    Answering Your Financial Questions | #420
    Jul 30 2026
    In this Ask Me Anything episode, Ben Felix, Ben Wilson, and Louai Bibi tackle a wide-ranging collection of listener questions spanning investing, retirement, family finance, and financial planning. Along the way, they combine academic research, practical experience, and thoughtful discussion to separate evidence-based decisions from intuition. The conversation explores everything from teaching children healthy money habits and the long-term behavioral challenges of value investing to sequence of returns risk, retirement spending strategies, and global portfolio construction. The episode concludes with an in-depth discussion of Louai Bibi's National Financial Planning Award-winning financial plan, highlighting the importance of holistic advice, evidence-based planning, and continuous improvement through client feedback. Key Points From This Episode: (00:00:00) Introduction (0:05:30) Advice for aspiring financial planners: Building skills, credentials, networks, and mentorship early in your career. (0:07:35) Why young advisors should be "a sponge" and learn from both good and bad professional experiences. (0:09:41) Ben Felix on completing the CFA, CIM, and CFP early—and why creating content accelerated his learning. (0:11:51) Why getting large numbers of client-facing "reps" can dramatically improve an advisor's ability to communicate advice. (0:15:44) Choosing the right firm, team, and mentors—and how networking helped Ben Felix ultimately join PWL. (0:18:53) Should a young physician borrow from a professional line of credit to invest? (0:24:55) Robert Merton's perspective on leverage for young investors and the risks of implementing leverage through margin borrowing. (0:28:21) Why the psychological experience of investing borrowed money can be very different from owning an unleveraged portfolio. (0:30:35) How much leverage is needed before it meaningfully changes a long-term financial plan. (0:31:36) Should investors increase their equity allocation before considering leverage? (0:33:39) Louai's experience working with physicians and why becoming debt-free can change how people feel about borrowing to invest. (0:36:00) Louai and Ben Felix share their own experiences with leverage. (0:36:59) How to teach children about money, scarcity, saving, generosity, and spending. (0:38:26) Ben Wilson's approach: Save 50%, give 10%, and let his kids decide what to do with the remaining 40%. (0:40:02) Using wealth for memorable family experiences rather than simply giving children more money. (0:42:51) Why anticipating an experience can be an important part of the enjoyment it creates. (0:43:42) Is the value premium worth the behavioral challenge of potentially enduring years of underperformance? (0:44:11) Ben Felix explains why the difficulty of sticking with value may itself contribute to the premium. (0:45:47) Can having a sufficiently large portfolio eliminate sequence-of-returns concerns? (0:49:41) Reframing "sequence of returns" as "sequence of withdrawals"—and why flexible spending matters. (0:51:21) Separating retirement expenses into fixed needs and flexible spending. (0:52:47) The purchases that have delivered the best personal ROI for Ben, Ben, and Louai. (0:53:08) Ben Felix on his indoor basketball hoop, family travel, sauna, and prepared meal delivery. (0:56:56) Ben Wilson on family vacations, skiing, cycling, and why his family chose a pool over a cottage or boat. (0:58:27) Louai on his 49-inch monitor, his dog, and investing in health and fitness. (1:00:42) How should investors geographically weight a global small-cap value portfolio? (1:05:13) Why a globally diversified portfolio that an investor can actually stick with matters more than finding a theoretically perfect country allocation. (1:07:19) What should investors approaching retirement or FIRE do about sequence-of-returns risk? (1:09:00) Research comparing declining, rising, and static equity allocations during retirement. (1:13:38) Why risk tolerance, time horizon, spending needs, and financial-plan resilience should drive retirement asset allocation. (1:15:07) The National Financial Planning Awards, the judging process, and the sponsorship conflict disclosure surrounding Louai's award. (1:18:37) Inside Louai's 47-page award-winning financial plan and the range of planning issues it addressed. (1:20:06) What Louai believes actually distinguished the submission: Not one clever strategy, but a holistic decision-making process. (1:21:39) Why Louai sought feedback from planners outside PWL and how the award process can improve the broader team. (1:23:26) Why Louai believes financial-planning knowledge and feedback should be shared rather than "gatekept." (1:23:56) How feedback from the Rational Reminder community changed Louai's thinking about investment risk. (1:24:40) Why defining risk purely as short-term volatility can overlook the bigger risk of failing to achieve financial goals. (1:27:59) How public feedback through the podcast...
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    1 ora e 36 min
  • The State of Retirement Research | #419 (Jean-Pierre Aubry)

    The State of Retirement Research | #419 (Jean-Pierre Aubry)
    Jul 23 2026
    In this episode, we are joined by Jean-Pierre Aubry, Associate Director of Retirement Plans and Finance at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, for a research-driven conversation about retirement investing, financial advice, pension fund management, and inflation. Drawing from years of empirical research, Jean-Pierre shares insights into how households actually invest, how financial advisors shape portfolio decisions, and why investors often hold asset allocations that differ from their own stated preferences. We also examine the investment strategies of public pension plans, why their increasing reliance on alternative assets has largely failed to deliver superior performance, and the institutional forces driving those decisions. Finally, Jean-Pierre explains how inflation disproportionately affects retirees, why many households overreact during inflationary periods, and why understanding retirement risks—from market volatility to sequence of returns—is critical for long-term financial security. Key Points From This Episode: (0:06) Introduction to Jean-Pierre Aubry and the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. (6:29) The Center's mission: producing objective, accessible retirement policy research. (7:03) Why investors' actual stock allocations are higher than their stated ideal allocations. (9:31) Defaults and target-date funds may explain the gap between desired and actual portfolios. (10:46) Investors tend to underestimate long-term stock returns and overestimate market risk. (11:22) Financial advisors generally encourage higher equity allocations by reducing investor pessimism. (12:06) How advisor compensation can create incentives to recommend higher stock exposure. (13:42) Research showing advisor recommendations vary more across advisors than across client profiles. (16:56) The "advisor fixed effect": advisors largely recommend portfolios consistent with their own philosophy. (18:57) Why working with an advisor often leads investors to hold more equities. (20:26) How target-date funds work and why auto-enrollment is reshaping retirement investing. (22:57) Why advisors and target-date funds are generally improving retirement security. (23:57) The evolution of public pension investing from bonds to equities and then alternative assets. (30:12) The growing influence of consultants and peer effects on public pension investment decisions. (31:14) Why pension plans with greater allocations to alternatives have generally underperformed peers. (32:23) Comparing public pension performance against a simple 60/40 index benchmark. (36:43) Whether indexing may be a better long-term solution for public pension investing. (39:35) Concerns about adding private assets to default retirement plan options. (40:15) Maintaining objectivity while researching politically sensitive retirement issues. (42:58) Why investment policy remains the "final frontier" for improving public pension systems. (46:45) Why retirees are especially vulnerable to inflation. (50:06) How inflation affects retirees differently across age and wealth levels. (51:52) Why households tend to overspend during inflationary periods. (53:38) How financial advisors adjust recommendations when inflation and interest rates rise. (54:11) Why inflation ultimately reduces retirement security for many households. (54:42) Which retirees face the greatest market risk. (55:35) Why most retirees have little understanding of sequence of returns risk. (55:56) Advisors understand sequence risk, but that knowledge doesn't appear to transfer to clients. (57:23) Why declining equity exposure over time remains the canonical life-cycle investing approach. (58:25) Jean-Pierre's definition of success: purpose, meaningful relationships, and financial security. Links From Today's Episode: Meet with PWL Capital: https://calendly.com/d/3vm-t2j-h3p Rational Reminder on iTunes — https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-rational-reminder-podcast/id1426530582. Rational Reminder on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/rationalreminder/ Rational Reminder on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/ Benjamin Felix — https://pwlcapital.com/our-team/ Benjamin on X — https://x.com/benjaminwfelix Benjamin on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminwfelix/ Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)
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    1 ora e 2 min
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