The Biggest Risk in Investing? It’s You!

I was recently in our Charlotte, North Carolina office where we were hosting a conference for financial advisors, and I had the privilege of interviewing Cameron Passmore of PWL Capital. Cameron and his business partner, Ben Felix, started the "Rational Reminder," which is an outstanding podcast touching on all things investing and money related. So I think you're really gonna enjoy this episode. Thanks for listening in. Welcome to "The Informed Investor" where we break down the latest financial headlines, bringing in research and insights to help you separate the news from the noise. The Top Takeaways from the best financial podcast out there. That's our topic on "The Informed Investor," a show brought to you by Dimensional Fund Advisors who's bringing financial science to investing. Now you'll notice our background here. We are not in our normal studio. We are in our Charlotte, North Carolina office where we were hosting an event for financial advisors and we are incredibly fortunate to have one of them join us on the show today, so, Cameron, it's a great pleasure to introduce you. I'll give you the proper introduction. Cameron Passmore with PWL Capital, a OneDigital company. Welcome. Well done. Thank you. Well done. It's great to be here. And I'm sure the audience will notice a little bit of a Canadian something something there. You're coming down from Ottawa. I'm here from Ottawa, Canada. You'll hear the odd 'ey dropped in my comments, I'm sure, so, I am Canadian, but proud to be here and happy to be here. Yeah, well listen, we've had a long, long history working together here and so we'll bring some of that into play here. 23 years. 23 years. Yep. And, you know, one of the things too, it might be helpful, why don't you just give us a little bit of a background on your firm, PWL- Sure. And then I want to get into the "Rational Reminder" show. So we just celebrated our 30th anniversary last month. Founded on the simple principles of integrating financial planning and investment management in one service, one cohesive service. Canada is really dominated by the banking system, so we are an independent alternative for Canadians, and our basic belief system is that markets work and financial planning matters, so we have a team of almost 130 people now that deliver that to around 3,000 families in Canada. We have an incredible team that's been together for quite a while. We're growing nicely. We think we have an alternative that Canadians, frankly, Canadians deserve. This belief that markets work, that indexing or some version of indexing, capturing what the markets have to offer, it matters, and when you are dominated by the bank and insurance parts of the industry, right, and Canadians have a particular affection for their banks, then a lot of people don't even know there are alternatives outside of the banks, and for the banking system to embrace some version of capturing market returns, it's not good for business because it's cheaper and doesn't have the kind of margin that banks are used to. That's my thesis anyway, so we're trying to present an alternative to people in Canada, and that message is getting through, and as you mentioned, we started the "Rational Reminder" podcast eight years ago. Right. So that's our vehicle for getting this message out to people. All right, well one of the things we like to do here, Cameron, I'm gonna read a couple headlines, kind of part of this show, and I'm gonna use that to bring back "The Rational Reminder-" Sure And I wanna get into the history of that here, so- Great. Here are a few headlines for us to start out here. Complexity often signals fear. Why boring investment strategies work. Simplicity is best for saving for retirement. The truth about money, meaning, and happiness. Love it. That one gets pretty deep here as well, but let me mention those to bring back the "Rational Reminder," which, that goes back to my opening comments of this show, key takeaways from the best financial podcast out there. Give us a little bit of background when you started it and really the global reach you have now with the show. And those are great headlines. I'm impressed actually, because that's not the common message that you do hear in the media, but simplicity is a thing of beauty. So to answer your question, we started it eight years ago. Ben and I would listen to other financial podcasts and they often have, frankly, two people just talking, and we're like, "We're two people. We can get some microphone and we can talk," and we just started doing it. We had no idea what we were doing. I had no clue, and we just kind of got into a rhythm of just talking about stuff, and then Ben's a engineering background- Ben Felix. Yeah. Ben Felix. Ben Felix. Your partner. And incredible communicator, researcher, thinker, but he has this ability to take something very complicated, which is often, research is hard, academic papers are hard, and bring it down to understandable concepts to help people make sensible financial decisions, right? Yeah. That's what the podcast is all about, sensible investing and financial decision making, which are super important and often underappreciated, so he found his ability to do this and communicate it. So we would have a mix of him doing this research and then we would talk this, I'd become kind of his, I'm the normal person on the podcast, some people would say, and so that, kind of, that combination worked, and then we decided to bring in guests, you know, in probably episode, I don't know, 30 or 40 or 50 or so, and we go into this cadence of one week it's us, one week it's a guest, and that bounced back and forth. We've had incredible guests on the podcast where it's become, I'm biased of course, but it's become one of the best, I think, sources of interviews with incredible academics around sensible investing and financial decision making. People like, you know, Eugene Fama, Ken French and Bob Merton, and the list goes on and on and on. We've had hundreds of guests on. Well, one, congratulations on the 400th episode too, right, up to that point now, and you've had leading academics, you've had central bankers on the show, like some of the leading minds out there, Annie Duke- Annie Duke. The professional- Just incredible. Poker player, like just really interesting people, and I think your show, it's one of the largest financial podcasts out there, isn't it? Well, I'm sure there's some that are much larger, but, we do what we- It has a heck of a reach. It's got a heck of a reach. It is pretty well respected. It's interesting in the academic community, we're really helping a lot of academics get their research out. So Ben's developed quite a relationship with a lot of academics that actually refer different academics with new papers to him, so he kind of gets an advanced look at some of amazing research, like the work that's going on in universities around this subject is truly incredible, and to have someone bring it like this in an understandable fashion and ask great questions of these people, it truly is a treat. It is nerdy. There's no doubt, it's nerdy, but this stuff matters and it's worth it to be a little bit nerdy. Do a little bit of homework on this kinda stuff, so if you can invest an hour, hour and a half every week. Yeah, that's a lot, and some it, it's challenging to get through. Yeah. I will give you that, but check in, there's some very good episodes that are in pretty straightforward, understandable English. I think about, you know, you're bringing the truth about investing really, with the work there, and I think it's really cool comment you made there about Ben, about the credibility he has now with some of these leading academics, you know, to even be seen as almost proofing, if you will, some of these papers in early review of them. And now he's been invited to some of their academic sessions, so he travels to a number of cities to participate with them, which is, it's pretty cool actually. You probably didn't envision that. You have no idea, right? Eight years ago. It's like, so much of life is all about unintended consequences. You really can't predict the future, right? Yeah. That's a good part. Which is another tenet of good, because you can't predict, you don't know whether winners and losers, because so much of what's around us is adaptive, right? I mean we adapted. We adapted to the content. We adapted to, you know, feedback from listeners. We have a thriving "Rational Reminder" community board. People who go and post all kinds of comments. We have, you know, tens of thousands of participants every month in this community board. Well, out of that comes ideas for future episodes. All right, so I've got a quick story and then I'm gonna put you on the spot- Sure. And I've gotta quiz you with something here. Sure. So I was going down to Sydney, Australia for business probably about two years ago- Beautiful city. And I was, it's a gorgeous city. You gotta get it on the list for somebody that hasn't been. And I was in the international lounge and I was just talking to somebody and he was going back to Switzerland, he was Swiss, he was over in the US for business, and he asked where I worked and I mentioned Dimensional Fund Advisors. He's like, "Oh, I know Dimensional." He goes, "I listen to the 'Rational Reminder' podcast-" Wow. That's crazy. "And I've heard about your firm." Yeah. Yeah, that happens- It's amazing. That happens fairly often. I've been stopped in Costco before and my "Rational Reminder" hoodie on or something, and a friend of mine met someone at a, I guess, a bar in Minneapolis actually, and they were exchanging favorite podcasts. This guy, this was his favorite podcast. Listened to 6,600 hours of it last year on Spotify, so my friend says, "I get that. This is Cameron. He's a friend of mine," so it was kind of- You're a celebrity. It's- I love it. All right, here's the quiz I have for you. Okay. You ready? The first episode of the "Rational Reminder" was August 3rd, 2018. I know. Do you remember the name of that first one? The Price of Investing, Cost of Indexing. It was Cheapest Advice Probably isn't the Best. Yeah, okay. That's not bad. So that's pretty good for 400 episodes in. And get this, people still go back and listen to the first one. The numbers of old episodes are listened to every month, so people discover it and then go back. So you still get a pretty- Kinda like the "Breaking Bad" syndrome. Pretty regular... Yeah. Like you binge it. Now, you gotta binge 400 now, so, but it's still listened to. Yeah. That's awesome. As bad as it was. All right, well, I'll tell you what, 400 episodes in. Yep. You've been involved in many of those. Let's get into the favorites, some of the key takeaways you've had, I guess, in your experience in doing those episodes. Yeah. Wow. So if you boil down everything over all these episodes, there's certain themes that just keep coming through, right? And one of them is the biggest risk is you, how you behave, and look at this past year. With all the stuff going on in the world, there's ample opportunity to make different decisions than simply buy, hold and rebalance, right? But that's always been the case. There's always news happening, right? Yeah. So you are the biggest risk, and there's all kinds of fascinating interviews with academics about how people make decisions, how they make poor decisions, how they take recent information to make decisions, right? Risk that's in front of you appears to be riskier 'cause it's more present. But there's all kinds of risk out there, and when this adaptive system sort of predict what risk will matter to cause what behavior, tough to do, really tough to do. And another point that I always take away, it comes back conversation after conversation. Markets work. Mm-hmm. Markets are incredible adaptive system, and with technology now, the number of participants around the world with endless resources to squeeze out any advantage they can to think that someone at home can systematically beat the overall market, it's a pretty tall order, but what's frustrating is that so many people come to our industry looking for people like us to do that. That is the perceived value proposition so often. Well, I'm gonna go back to your markets work comment, and just for the audience, you know, I'll give you my definition, my version of what you mean by markets work, which is, you know, all known information out there, it's reflected in the price of that stock or bond immediately, right? So whatever you're worried about, kind of getting back to the behavioral side of things- Doesn't mean it's right. Doesn't mean it's right, but it's reflected very quick and it's forward-looking. So the market's trying to put some sort of a impact into the future based on what they're hearing today, so the reason I think that's important is you go back to the behavioral side and say, "Hey, I'm worried about X, Y, Z," and there's no shortage of things, right, to be worried about globally, but that's already in the price of that stock or bond. Whatever you're excited about is in the price of that stock or bond, so yeah, what's the best alternative then? You know, just sort of stick to your plan around that. And you don't need to beat the market. You don't. Build appropriate plan, understand how much risk you wanna take on, figure out how you even define risk, which is another interesting whole conversation. Yeah, yeah. What is risk to you, right? Yep. Somewhat subjective, but the market has done an incredible job of delivering great returns, and you can capture market returns for hardly any cost. You can get market returns now for less than what mutual funds in Canada when I started in the industry 30 years ago, would charge for marketing services. Right. Like, it's incredible what you can get now for a handful of basis points. You can get a globally-diversified portfolio for a dozen, a few dozen basis points. Okay. It's truly an amazing time to be an investor, and it's incredibly simple to implement, right? Yeah. Yeah. The solutions are, it doesn't have to be complicated. Our industry often makes it complicated to justify the fees that people are charging. Well, yeah, it goes back to that headline there, simplicity versus complexity, and again, if it sounds complicated, you can throw the fees in there- Right. About that, and- But there's demand for simplicity now. There's so much going on in this world. There's so much noise, and I believe AI is just accelerating the noise about our industry. There's so much stuff coming outta people that just this sensible approach that markets work is just calms everything down, right? Go down, understand it, tick. Done. Let me get onto the rest of the things in my life, because it's a permanent philosophy. It's not this constant hunting for what's going to be the best thing. That, it just goes away. Hey, when somebody comes in and says, let's go back to this idea of what's marketed versus what's really needed, and you're kinda talking about complexity and people like to market complexity, because then they get have typically high-fee products, but how do you handle a client that comes in and says, "Hey, I really wanna get X, Y, Z shiny object. I'm reading about this, or I'm hearing from my buddy about this." How do you have that conversation? We're not very, tolerant's not the right word, but like "What makes you think you have a higher expected return? What makes you think that your research is gonna be of value?" Now, if you wanna have fun picking something on the side for a small part of your portfolio, because sure, it is fun. Gambling is fun too, right? If you can win, right? Doesn't mean it's rational, and if you- I normally don't win, but I'd still have fun. No, the house always wins. Of course the house always wins. So it's just, if it becomes too big a part or too risky as part of reaching their plan, that's where, you know, you're not following our advice, therefore we're not your advisor, right? You can choose not to follow our advice, but you gotta go somewhere else to do that, 'cause like, if you're not following my advice, why would you even stay with our firm? It doesn't make any sense. But there's so many people, our experience now, there's so many people looking for leadership in this field because there is so much noise, and if you can get peace in your life in one area, like your financial decision making and sensible investing, and go in, "This makes sense. I can hear the conviction of what you guys say and what you believe," and that framework, that belief system emanates through the entire team, because this becomes an incredible rallying point for the whole firm, right? This megaphone that, largely banned, but we've been able to put out to the world, it just becomes this rallying tribal belief system. People wanna be part of a tribe, right? And it attracts talent. It attracts more people that believe this. We're working really hard to get this message out into the world because it matters. This stuff matters. It does matter. Right? Yep. If you can save on fees, you get a better portfolio, better experience, calm the voices in your head, calm the stress. If you can reduce one more stress in your life, how is that not a victory? We always talk about, you know, all of that increases your odds of success over time, and it becomes so material for a family. If you think, okay, you stay in the market, let's just call it your capturing lease market rate of returns, and the compounding of that over decades is massive. Time. For these families. Time. We can't afford to miss out on that. Time. And you think of the progress that has happened, that will happen over our kids' and our grandkids' lifetimes, just capture that. Capturing that is hard. Most people don't even capture that, right? Yeah. Either due to bad investments or bad behavior. Yeah, and most people have had probably a frustrating investment experience, right? I think that's probably why when they come to you and you're like, "Okay, that story resonates because it makes sense now why I perhaps failed in some of these other areas." It's really hard to convince people. They have to be open-minded because it is counter-culture. None of us think we're average. Very few of us wanna be average, so why would you wanna capture the average return? It just sounds so average. Right? You're not average in your job. You're not average in the rest of your parts of your world, but this is where by being average, you end up having a great outcome. Yeah. Being average makes you one of the better performers over time. Okay, so that was one key takeaway. A couple others jump out to you over time? I mean, the evidence of active management, I think is absolutely devastating, but again, people gotta be willing to hear that. Either market's gonna teach you that or you can listen to us or not. Us not just being us, but there's a whole movement out there with many firms and many people about that, so to me that's just- And we're 60 years in on that research and it hasn't changed. Come on, like, but- But that one, I feel like has in a way. There's many people, look, you and I meet people in this industry that aren't even aware of this evidence. This goes back to the 50s and the CHRIS database and all these incredible academics going back to Samuelson all the way through all these unbelievable academics. So many people aren't even aware of this. How can you be a financial professional and not even be aware of it or just dismiss it? Like it's nutty to me. Well, I think it goes back to the conviction that you were just talking about, where a client comes in and says, "Well, I want something different." You're like, "Okay, but you won't get it here because we're not changing our stripes." I think there's a lot of professionals out there, advisors, they feel like they have to try to justify their value by trying to find a great asset manager or the ability to try to get in and outta markets or something like that, even if there's no evidence. They just don't have the confidence to say, "I can't do it." When you dealing with the academics, the more you learn about this, there are ways to have a higher expected return than the market. And this gets wonky a little more complicated, and some would argue it's active management, but there are sensible reasons why certain parts of the market have higher expected returns. And the academics can debate why. Like why do value stocks over time show higher expected returns than growth stocks? Why do high-quality stocks do... And why... And all these, you know- Like high profitability versus low profit. Profitability. Right? Some of those- So it gets a little bit wonky, but there to have better returns. People should be aware of these factors and have the ability to get that kind of exposure in the portfolios based on their preferences and their tastes and their time horizon. Would you call that systematic investing? I call it systematic investing. I understand how it can be labeled as active. These labels get thrown around, active versus passive, but the reality is, index funds, they were never created to be investible solutions. Yeah. Exactly right. Yep. They're incredible. They're incredible, this revolution towards index funds is incredible, but they weren't meant to be investible, so there was inherent problems with investing in an index fund, right? So if you could do a little bit better than that, why would you not wanna it better? Why would you not wanna have better implementation? But again, you have to have the curiosity and the drive to learn about this, but so many people aren't interested. So many advisors aren't interested, because they're looking for the sexy idea of the data to promote to their clients. Well, and to go back to that point, indexing was created to evaluate asset managers. Correct. Not- You can see how once we got computers, okay, well now we can assess whether these managers are adding value, and in most cases they were underperforming a simple index and, sort of, that led to the rise of indexing as a solution, but it's not the best way to make money. And if they are market-beating systematically over time, you probably can't get access. Yeah, yeah. Right. There are names that you and I could rattle off right now. We would love to be invested in. You and I, maybe you can't, I can't get in. So great. What good is that information, right? Yeah. If you can't get into them? You mentioned some of these episodes go deep, but I've heard you say that you've always been impressed with how much an investor can absorb when you talk to 'em about some of these things, these ideas, and the ideas around systematic investing, differences in returns and things like that, so- Because it's incredible, it's incredible to have confidence. Like the confidence you get from this stuff. Now granted, we're arguably, you know, junkies on this stuff. We love this stuff clearly, right? But it does come through with clients over time. You have that same match just time after time after time, and the team rallies around this, the content rallies around this. It just becomes this flywheel of interest and excitement around making a difference. This is really important stuff and it matters, so you're bringing the power of all this work that academics have done into portfolios that are well implemented, well delivered, cheaply, they're very efficient from a tax perspective, right? Clean. Just the noise goes down. You get to focus on the most important thing, which is the plan. If you don't have a good plan, it doesn't matter what investments you choose. Like what's the point? Maybe expand on that a little bit. As you think through, you say you gotta have a good plan. Like what are the components of a good plan? Like what has to be there for an investor? Well, it all starts with understanding what are your goals? Right? So many people just jump into the portfolio. "Wanna talk about what's in my portfolio," right? And I'm talking the industry at large. Let's go back to what's important to you. Right? Like what are your dreams? What are your hopes? What's your tolerance for risk? What are your goals for your children, right? For donating money. Where do you wanna have an impact in your life? What makes you happy? Ben wrote a paper called "Finding and Funding a Good Life." That's one of our most downloaded pieces. It's incredible just to learn about what makes you happy, and there's evidence around this, you know, to go to places of awe. That's why people like, you know, skiing on big mountains or being near the ocean, there's this sense of awe. Well, sense of awe makes people happy. All right, let's go into that a little bit more. This idea of sort of the happiness. What drives it? Is it money? Does joy come from other areas? You just alluded to nature, which I think there's a lot of research around just being outdoors drives chemical reactions and happiness and things like that, but I know you guys have done several shows around that. I think for me it's been one of my biggest takeaways from this show. Yeah. It's important, I think, for listeners to understand. Expand on it a little bit more. Dive into sort of the money versus the happiness and the paper that you're talking about with Ben. Yeah, so you dove into it, so you're gonna put me on the spot here if I can remember all the parts of the acronym. So it'd be good to look it up, but the whole PERMA research, right? So there's things like relationship and having goals in your life, and having purpose and meaning, and all these things, that really drives happiness, but if you can get to the financial plan, have that foundation, that peace of mind, I think that also gives some satisfaction. Yeah. Yeah, confidence probably, about financially you'll be okay, so that kind of frees your mind up probably, to focus on some of these other things that bring you joy in life. Exactly. You know, and I, you know, Brad Steinman, obviously, you worked very closely with him. Yeah. He's my colleague at Dimensional. Runs our Canadian business where he's done some excellent presentations around happiness, and he talks about that of, hey, you go buy a new car and it's great for a couple months. You know, it smells good, looks good, but- But we adapt. But then it fades away, you know, versus some of these other things that are where the research shows happiness comes from, relationships, the outdoors. And it's kind of the trend lines, what makes you satisfied, right? Fulfilled is the trend lines. Happiness, I think are more specific events, whereas satisfiers are more like the flow of your life and where you're going in your life. So if you're around places of awe, you've got good relationships, you've got fulfilling work, you have purpose and meaning, those things is what brings long-term joy and satisfaction. Yeah. And for some people, I mean, it varies. You probably see that among your client base. Totally varies. For some it's maybe there is a certain level of wealth. For some it's, "I live out in the wooded area." For some it's, "I do have a challenging job 'cause that's what drives me and brings me happy," right? All of those can be success. One other thing you mentioned that I wanted to follow up on, you talked about risk. Risk probably means very different things to different people- Yeah. So I'd love to get your thoughts around this idea of risk and maybe some different examples how you talk about risk with clients. So I think the most common definition of risk is the chance of losing either all of your money or some of your money, right? Whereas I think risk is really the chance of not being able to fulfill your future consumption desires. Right, it's really that long-term perspective is what I think people have to look at, because we live in a world of inflation and if you're not taking on, I believe, the risk of participating in capital markets with a higher expected return sensibly, I'm not saying shoot for defense, but sensibly get what the markets have to offer, that will help you have a long-term successful investment experience. Inflation's real. Very. If you can get one, two, three, 4% higher expected returns over a long period of time, depending on your asset allocation and whatnot, that is very meaningful, but also in that are costs. Costs is like inflation too and a lot of people have no idea what they're spending on investment costs. What are your investment fees? How much is your manager taking? What are the trading fees? What's the tax drag on your portfolio? These are all very important numbers as well. That's how I frame risk. The chance of not meeting your future consumption desires. So a lot of people in the industry talk about risk is the volatility of of price, but I don't think investors really... The downside, right? The pain of losing money's more than- Yeah. The joy of making an equivalent amount of money, but a metric like standard deviation of 14.2 versus 13.7. Okay, what do I make of that? You have no idea what that means. Yeah. And the problem with risk when your portfolio goes down, it's not so much that your portfolio's down, it's the story in the news when the portfolio was down that's scary, right? Like, you know, when COVID hit, March 13th to 26th, 2020, portfolios were down a third on the equity side roughly. Yeah. Go back to the great financial crisis which both you and I lived through. That was very scary times. I mean capitalism was being questioned whether it would survive or not. Pretty scary stuff, right? Yeah. But look at what's happened since and the most unbelievable bull market we've ever seen, I think, since 2009. It's been unbelievable. But to stay invested through those periods takes discipline and, you know, belief. You had to believe in this, right? A commitment to capitalism. Commitment to capitalism. Right? Yeah. Patience and make sure, this is something I always remember, Ken French, when he was on episode 100, he said, there's nothing wrong, my take. My take of what he said, there's nothing wrong with understanding more about yourself going through a crisis, and if you realize you don't like to live through 35% downturns, that's your taste. You can dial your portfolio after the fact to make sure you don't go through that again, by adding in more bonds and other types of investments. That's something about you, and if you know that about you, that's fine. We're not here to talk you into more equities. So I thought that was an interesting take, thinking about volatility going through periods like that. One of my favorite Ken French's themes too, is, hey, don't evaluate the decisions you made by the outcome. Yeah. Because that's uncertain. What you wanna do is evaluate the decisions you made based on the information you had at that time, right. I think that's always a good reminder for folks around that one. You mentioned inflation, which is real. I think probably a lot of folks have been feeling that for the last several years. Go back to then, the way the industry talks about the way you protect against inflation, like gold for example, and up in Canada, I mean, you guys are blessed with a lot of natural resources. The mining, gold, oil, things like that. You probably get a lot of questions up in Canada about where does that fit in my portfolio? How do you think about something like gold? Well, it always comes up after gold has done well. After the fact. Yeah. Right? After the fact, right? And we have a lot of gold-producing companies in the index in Canada, so clients get some exposure there, but so would any client that's invested globally will have some exposure to gold in the portfolio. Over long periods of time, I think it's an okay hedge against gold, but it's not a producing asset as Warren Buffett says, right? Yeah. It just sits there. It's kinda like crypto, right? People believe that it's gonna be a safe harbor of capital, but I don't know. There's no earning stream, there's no there cash earnings, you know, it's just you hope some people pay you more for it down the road. And I come back to markets work. You got hundreds of thousands of people every day trading stocks with all the information in the world and all the technology in the world, and fighting for what they think is fair. Let it do the work for you. It is doing the work for you already. Participate in that. Right. And there's smart people on both sides of those trades with endless resources on both sides of those trades. Just let it do what it does. Yes, it'll reprice things, it'll have different perceptions of risks which will cause prices to go up and down and expect returns to go up and down. Yes, absolutely, but over the long period of time, if it matches your horizon and your goals, I'm not saying go to the market with money you might need in a year to buy your house or your kids' education. I would never say that. Of course not, but your serious long-term capital, it's a different story. Yeah. When you think about all those episodes, are there some personalities that really jump out to you, or some favorite shows that really jump out? Not necessarily key takeaways, but, man, that was a fun one. Like we talked about Annie Duke. Like that would've been a fascinating one, right? Annie Duke was fascinating. We just had Hendrik Bessembinder on for the second time. Yeah. I think it's just coming out around now. Incredible conversation with like an icon, right? His work is super interesting too. Super interesting! Around sort of looking at stock returns historically and the contributions of a smaller number of names. It's fascinating. And people are stunned. Yeah. Like there's a handful of names that deliver basically all the returns, and as an industry, I think it's like four or 5% deliver the vast majority of all returns over long periods of time. Yeah. But our industry look at that and say, "I can find those." I'd come out and say, "Are you kidding me? Just give me all of them, 'cause I don't know where those few are, right?" Buy the whole haystack. But different people take it for the argument that they want. Well, yeah, that's the, puts the odds in your favor, the stuff that you described, the approach you just described. I see a little list there. Anything else on your list that we haven't touched on here? Like some of your big takeaways? I mean, I wrote down here simplicity is beautiful. I just think it's a thing of beauty when you've got all this work that goes on from the university academic level that goes into tools that you can implement inside your portfolio from all kinds of different great companies in this industry. Take all of this body of work, all these people doing research, all the people looking to implement great portfolios, and all the people competing for share prices every day in the stock market, you can now buy a single ticker tool- Yeah. And get all of that for a handful of basis points. If that doesn't your mind, honestly, you're not paying attention. It is truly remarkable, and you could do it on your own as a DIY investor. If you can, and save all the fees you'd pay firms like us, you should, right? We think we can add all kinds of value in other ways, 'cause the average person, not interested, doesn't wanna do it, doesn't know how to do it, might misbehave, can certainly value, I would argue, some solid financial planning from trusted, credible people. So that's one thing I wrote down- Hey, one comment I was gonna make on simplicity. It doesn't mean it's not sophisticated, right, it is- Oh, it's the opposite- Incredibly sophisticated. I'm saying it's a solution. That one line, that one symbol, you can get the power of all I talked about in one symbol now. I can go buy one fund, one ETF. It's incredibly low cost, it's incredibly well managed, it's globally diversified, it's tax efficient, and that's all I have to do. It's place a trade and I'm good. You have a belief system. That's my last point. Like to have a belief system is what matters, and that's really what I think we deliver to people, 'cause a ton of people consume our content that aren't our clients, obviously. Like it's a fraction. I would argue probably most clients probably don't listen, 'cause they've already solved this problem, right? But you give this belief system to people, 'cause I hear it all the time from people, like it's just, it helps them make better decisions. And if you can make better decisions, that will reduce your stress, you'll have a better life. Like it seems like a pretty sensible logic trail to me. All right, so a couple things I've heard throughout this, it matters, it's about making better decisions, the markets work, the pricing mechanism is there, which allows you to be less stressed when it comes to your money. Obviously having a plan in place is a necessity for people. If you can do it on your own, great. If you can't, for all the reasons that you kinda mentioned, go get some professional advice, and I go back to the thing you've reiterated a few times here, because it matters. It absolutely matters for these families. It matters! And I can tell your passion and I can tell that's what the "Rational Reminder's" been all about, so I appreciate the energy you guys have put into that because it is making a difference on investors around the world. We love it. Thanks for your leadership on this as well. Yep, and so that's what we're trying to do here on "The Informed Investor" as well, just bring some education out there to investments and markets, so people can make better decisions. Last thing I'll say, because I've seen you at work, and I say you, meaning I'm talking about your firm- Yep. And everyone, part of that is it's just incredible to see the impact you guys have had there with your clients but also in Canada, and it's just been a joy working with PWL all these years. So thanks for being on the show and thanks for being a good friend and all the work you do. Great. Thanks, Mark. All Right. Thanks, Cameron, and thanks to all of you for joining here today. Be sure to go check out the "Rational Reminder." It is a excellent, excellent use of time. Take care, everybody. Have a fantastic rest of the day.