Winning the Lottery

I remember that day like it was yesterday. So it was a summer day, I was getting ready for work. And my wife calls out down the hall, "We got four out of five lottery numbers." And I thought, "Okay, great. "But, I don't know what that means." Then a few moments passed and she comes running down the hall and she says, "We got five of the numbers. "Five of five." We matched them up. Turns out, that was worth a hundred thousand dollars. You don't recognize greed until after the fact. And that's exactly what happened. I had my mind set on being a what we call the stockbroker back then. I started in 1995 and it was the beginning of a bull market. Everybody was charging commissions and I got a seat inside what we call the bullpen back in the day. This is a windowless room with about 10 to 15 people just like me who had no clients. Our job was to find clients and so the way to do that was to cold call. You gotta remember, this time, it was frenetic. Stocks were going up 20, 30, $40 a day. People were quitting their day jobs to become day traders. Every single day, they would bring the head of a different product group and they would convince us that this is what we should put our clients in. So life was good. We're in our late 20s. We have some money in our pocket and we actually did what we thought was responsible. Instead of buy something new, something fun, something shiny, we said we're gonna invest the money. Now, at the time, this is the dot-com era where everything that had any good technology was going through the roof. So we had owned a little bit of a stock that done well, and we decided to double down. I said we put all of our winnings into this stock. Turns out this stock was the highest percentage increase in tech stock of that entire era. And I kept thinking, "Oh, if it only goes up more, "I can do this." "And if it goes up more, I can do that." Here I am, a young person having more money than I thought I'd ever have at that age, we put money in this stock, the market was rolling, things were good. This particular bull market came to an end when the dot-com bubble burst. Along with it, my high-flying stock. We experienced a nosedive that I didn't even really consider. So we watched our account just continually drop until it was worth nothing. I had a pit in my stomach. All the euphoria I felt on the upside, the magnitude of the sinking feeling on the downside was much, much worse. I felt like a failure. It was a tough time that I own, 'cause personally we lost in that stock but also, our clients were suffering. When the stock market went down, what I saw was the world-class money managers that we have hired, their performance was really poor. Add on to that, the fact that they were charging really high fees, it was a really tough time for the clients. So I started searching out some answers. And that's the first time I've heard about Dimensional. And I truly started to understand what it was like to be a true wealth manager and a fiduciary for your clients. I have to be convicted in what I'm doing. And I fully believe what Dimensional does is the right approach. It's based on sound academic evidence. We're not selling and pushing products. We're looking to do what's right for long-term investors. And we're helping great advisors grow their business. And I have some context, some life experiences that I can share with them. I understand the seat they're sitting in. I understand greed, I understand fear. I truly understand diversification. I understand how important it is to have a philosophy that you believe in, that you can stick with. I just really enjoy the opportunity to come alongside this great financial advisory community that we work with and help to deliver great investment experiences to their clients.