WEBVTT
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The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
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those of W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates.
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We make no recommendations or endorsement for radio show programs, services,
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Radio It's employees or affiliates. Any questions or common should
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be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing
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This is Beyond Confidence with your host w park. Do
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you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you
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want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional,
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and financial goals? Well? Coming up on dvparks Beyond Confidence,
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you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers
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who have stepped into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and
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are living the life they want. You will learn how
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relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals.
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Moving your career business forward does not have to happen
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at the expense of your personal or family life or
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vice versa. Learn more at WWWA. You don't divpark dot
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com and you can connect with div at contact ant
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divpark dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's
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your host, div Park.
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Good morning listeners, so thrilled to be here with you.
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And today I've got a fascinating story about kindness. Veronica
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of one of our audiences and out that she had
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been helping out homeless people and she was born out
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and then she was sitting down with one of her
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friends and they told her that you're extending kindness to
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all these people, how about yourself? And then she said
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that that she decided to take a break and from
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all her kindness activities and be kind to herself. And
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it's such an important concept, and actually I learned from her.
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So usually I don't know about you, but I see
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myself as the last person that I pay attention to.
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It it's always about clients, it's always about the people.
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So this weekend I gave myself for those of self kindness.
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And I gotta tell you it's nice because when you're
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kind to yourself, you have more energy and you can
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give more kindness and energy to others. So it's something
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for you to ponder over. And for those of you
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who have got our books, either one of them or
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any of our fourteen fifteen books that we have written.
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The Entrepreneur's Gotten or expert to influencer. It's going to
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give you the life you deserve and position yourself for
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the meaningful impact that you deserve to deliver. Because as
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human beings, it's our responsibility not only to live happy
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lives for ourselves, but to deliver impact as well. So
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it's important that we help others as we help ourselves.
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So get our books if you have none, and I
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want to thank you each and every one of you
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who have got our books. So let's welcome our guest.
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Welcome Michael, thanks for having me.
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Absolutely so, we always begin with the childhood, and that's
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all of us begin our lives. So do you recall
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a moment or a person that even stands out for
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you today who had left a positive mark on you
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and your childhood?
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Oh, certainly there's two people really to my grandparents, my
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grandpa and grandma. They were huge influences in my life
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early on. I think they taught me my first lessons
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about money management. For instance, my grandmother, when I was
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really little, we played this game every time.
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We go to lunch.
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It seemed she'd tell me to have this, saying, I
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want to increase my vocabulary so that I may speak
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more intelligently. I was saying this was like five or
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six years old, seven years old, and then over the
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years she would teach me new terms, you know, to
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increase my vocabulary, and a lot of them were financial related.
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So looking back, I learned how to talk about the
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very basic nature of stocks and bonds when I was
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seven or eight years old, and those planted the seeds
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that made me a money manager later on in life,
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because I was never intimidated about financial finance or any
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of those issues. And then my grandfather too, He taught
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me a lot of financial lessons later in my life.
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For instance, when it was time to get my first car,
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you know, he didn't want me to take out a
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loan and pay interest, so he gave me the loan
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interest free, so I paid him back. He helped me
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with college, and he was just a very disciplined man
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who lived a life that I wanted to embody in
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my own ways as I grew older, because I felt
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like he did it right. He had a lot of
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friends and was always just He just seemed to have
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a very good sense of who he was and who
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he wanted to be, and he lived that in his
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financial life and his personal life. So I still think
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of about.
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Them a lot.
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I wrote about them in my book, and I think
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they're an inspiration to even this day.
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When they're not here anymore.
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That is fantastic. And so many nuclear families, as they're happening,
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what happens is that we lose touch with our families,
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and so many times people move away. But it's important
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to remember that how important that family is. Because your
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story is so powerful. Your grandparents decided the course of
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your career and your life. And as you said that,
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by the time you were just seventy eight years old,
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you're so comfortable with it. So tell me as you
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grew up, did you have any other interest or was
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finances your interest from the beginning?
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Yeah, So when I was around seven or eight, I
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also became interested in something called baseball cards. This was
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back in the nineteen eighties I grew up in and
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back then baseball cards were very popular and I discoveraged
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they were awesome, and I think I looked at them
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like stocks early on, because there's this thing called the
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Beckett Price Guide that would come in the mail every month,
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every day of the month when my Beckett Price Guy
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would arrive, because it would tell you, like all the
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prices of the cards, and there were little arrows up
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and down if they went up or down in value
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from the previous month. So I was just fascinated by that,
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and I think combining my grandparents' inspiration with that hobby
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that really like planted the seeds even further for me
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to become an investor later.
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In my life.
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Fast forward to college when I was in between my
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junior and senior year. I was actually a government major
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at Georgetown University. I thought maybe I'd want to be
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a lawyer or work on Capitol Hill or something like that.
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But then I got this internship opportunity of venture capital
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firm in Boston, and that summer changed my life because
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I kind of rediscovered what I really liked about investing
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in baseball cards. I just realized you could do it
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in terms of companies, and so I became really fascinated
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at that point with investing and decided to pursue that
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for my career.
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And Synvia going to tackle You're going to get into
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the financials and we will be tackling for entrepreneurs, for
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professionals and anyone, because usually most people are doing some
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form of a job or something. So, as you continued,
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where did your career take you?
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Sure?
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So I graduated just as the tech bubble was blowing
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up in two thousand and one, so it was really
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hard to find the kind of job I wanted. The
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venture capital firm that I had worked at previously wasn't hiring.
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Most of the major banks, and good jobs on Wall
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Street were hard to find because there were a lot
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of hiring freezes. So I had to a kind of
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bob and we First I worked at a bank for
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a little while, and then I got, as the market
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got a little better, an opportunity to go to Fisher Investments.
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They're the biggest registered investment advisory firm in the US.
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And I got to work for Ken Fisher, who's a
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billionaire founder under a brilliant market mind, also a wonderful person.
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And that's where like I really kind of learned my
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craft in a professional sense. I was an equity analyst
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there and I had a good run. Later on, I
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left because I always kind of wanted to be an entrepreneur.
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I think.
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So let's kind of touch upon when you mentioned that
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you were equity analyst, So can you share with our
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audience what does an equity.
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Analyst Sure, So you're basically a research analyst and you're
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assigned to certain companies, usually within a specific coverage area.
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So I had three different sectors that I covered, So
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my job was to become an expert on what makes
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those sectors go up and down in terms of the
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business cycle and then the investment cycles that follow that.
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And so I covered you know, about around fifty stocks
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or so at a given point in time, and my
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job was to make buying cell recommendations. I didn't get
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the final say, the portfolio managers did, but I was
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a support person for those decision makers. And I also
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got to travel around the country, which was really neat
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because I got to do investment roundtable meetings when I
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was an analyst, so I had some client interaction and
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that was really key for me actually looking back, because
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at the time I was doing that, two thousand and
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eight came along, of course, the great financial crisis that
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most people remember if they were an adult through that period,
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and so you know, going to do those meetings around
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the country and that turbulent market climate. It kind of
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just reinforced a lesson I started to learn at the
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front edge of my career, which you know when the
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tech bubble burst is when I was just getting into finance,
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and then a few years in I had the Great
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Financial Crisis to deal with, and interacting with the clients
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and seeing how stressful that was for them because almost
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everything struggled that year unless you were one hundred percent
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in cash. I had a lot of empathy for the clients,
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and it kind of reinforced in my own mind that
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if the there's one thing I want to be good
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at as an equity manager, it's doing well in bear markets.
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That just seems like crunch time in the market. It's
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like almost like in basketball. A lot of times the
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games decided in the fourth quarter. That's when the clutch
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players show up and Kobe Bryan or Michael Jordan would
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take over the game. Well, I think in a lot
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of the investors I admire that they tend to do
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best in the bear markets, and that's part of the
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reason they have such good long term track records. Anybody
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can be a genius in a bull market. If you
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take a bunch of risk and get a little lucky.
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He can do wonderfully well, better than some professionals, Better
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than Warren Buffett in a bull.
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Market, probably a lot of people could do.
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But in the bear markets is we're Warren Buffett's of
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the world.
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Excel.
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That's where he's generated the most of alflaur outperformance through
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his career. And because I had seen the tech bubble
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and then the Great Financial Crisis, and I really grew
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up in a lost decade for stocks. I mean I
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entered the industry at the end of an epic two
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decade bull market and then the stockst and't go anywhere
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from two thousand to two thousand and ten or so,
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and so you know it kind of it created my philosophy,
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which is risk managements to number one priority.
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Hmmm.
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That's that's very powerful. So like everyone else, like yeah,
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and good losses and all of those times. Now going
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back to there may be a lot of people in
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our audience who may not know the bull markets and
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bear markets. Can you expand on that?
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Sure?
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I think the most important thing to realize about the
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stock market is it goes up most of the time,
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and the longer you invest, the better the chance that
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you'll come out in a positive return. But but bear
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markets are usually defined as a drop in the market averages,
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So something like the S and P five hundred of
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the NASDAK of twenty percent or more. If that happens
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in a day or two and it snaps right back,
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most people wouldn't say it's a bear market. A bear
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market's usually a decline of twenty percent or more. That's
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kind of longer lasting and more difficult to work through. So,
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you know, some people debate was twenty twenty two a
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bear market or not? Well, the market went down over
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twenty percent. I kind of think it was, but it
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was a short term one. So bear markets can vary
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in length. They can last years or even a decade plus,
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like two twenty thirteen or so. And then a bull
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market is just when the market's going up, which it
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does most of the time.
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So you mentioned that you had worked with Camfisher himself,
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if I got the name correct, tell us what did
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you learn from him and what would some of the