InvestED: The Rule #1 Investing Podcast

Free time is, for many, a precious commodity that there simply never seems to be enough of. How then can those with a goal and a vision for how to achieve it budget and invest their time to pursue that goal? With the speed of technological development and the amount of resources available to anyone who wants to seriously pursue coding, the next society-changing app could always be right around the...

Until very recently, a lot of talk about artificial intelligence conjured dystopian images of Skynet, the Matrix, and HAL-9000 instead of a browser window answering homework questions or rendering bizarre reproductions of famous artwork. However, the recent releases of some powerful AI tools has reframed the popular understanding of what AI really is, and the investing world has taken note. At tim...

In 2023, it seems like every other week has seen a new AI tool pop up and have its 15 minutes of fame. From image generation to chat functions and voice replication, the public eye has never been more fully focused on artificial intelligence. Is the latest wave of machine learning composed of actual breakthroughs, or have users been fooled by elaborate systems of smoke and mirrors? Knowing the ris...

As the shock waves dissipate following the 2023 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting, they nevertheless continue to be felt as we come back for a third week of analysis on one of the investing world’s most significant yearly events. This year’s meeting took place in the midst of a tumultuous period of post-pandemic supply chain disruptions, worldwide inflation, and the looming threat of the nex...

After last week’s episode scratched the surface of the recent Berkshire shareholder meeting’s Q&A session, we’re going back to the well of investing wisdom that is Buffett & Co.  This year’s meeting brought a number of insights, both personal and business-related, from the leaders at Berkshire. What do some of the world’s most successful investors have to say about what guides their strategies in...

With the 2023 edition of the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders’ meeting in the books, it’s time to review the takeaways from the event. In an era of heightened uncertainty for markets around the world, what can we glean from the words of Buffett et al? The weekend saw over 30,000 investors descend upon Omaha to hear from the megacorp’s leadership and vie for the chance to pose a question to s...

It's time again for the "Woodstock of Capitalism," aka the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting where Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger fill in their investors on the state of the company and its future prospects. The meeting always makes waves in the investing world – whether it's two of the industry's titans sharing valuable insights and taking questions from attendees, or upwards of 40...

With financial advising services trying their best to convince you that they can set you up with the life of your dreams, how can the cold, emotionless AI bots compete with their human counterparts? The latest iterations of chat AI tools range from fun gimmicks to incredibly useful tools, but it’s important to approach them with caution. Whether it’s limited knowledge, problems interpreting data,...

Hey ChatGPT, what’s your deal and and why should investors care? The relatively young world of AI hold a huge amount of both potential, and also countless unknowns. What’s the utility of a tool with such a huge amount of information both good and bad, and how much can we trust that tool to discern the difference? As financial corporations develop their own AI tools, the ability to take advantage o...

Once in a blue moon, you might find yourself in a peculiar situation with regards to your investing journey. During the course of your research, you find a company with an eye-catching price tag and little to no fanfare. Then comes the important question: are you ahead of the curve, or is this deal too good to be true? To examine this potential investment, it’s important to be equipped with the pr...

Finding a company that can compound their investments over a long period is the white whale of the value investor. While this search is often challenging, finding these companies can lead to substantial long-term gains. With the gamification of investing in recent years, the idea of holding an investment for a lifetime is being presented as less appealing than the app-driven, short-term profit men...

What happens when banks have growth as their priority? With the current instability, what can the public vs private sector debate tell us about our financial institutions? When leadership is beholden more to shareholders than to their patrons, it can lead to wildly different outcomes regarding the security of their customers’ assets. This week, Phil and Danielle continue to analyze the recent bank...

The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank exposed some major cracks in the way that banks have been doing business, and the upheaval is sending shockwaves far beyond the tech sector. Unwise decisions from leadership compounded by market uncertainty and rising interest rates is certainly a recipe for disaster. How can we analyze these and other warning signs, like an over-reliance on a volatile te...

For those of us whose minds tend to wander, the age of limitless new opportunities at our fingertips has been both a blessing and a curse. The ability to focus that attention is an equally vital tool that is essential to good investing practice. What are the best first steps to take when we stumble across a new company while browsing the web? If investors don’t want to be outside of their element...

How often are you inspired to invest when you come across a great idea or innovation in your day-to-day life? Could that new helpful device lead you to the next great company for your portfolio? With the sheer quantity of information that’s available to investors in the digital age, being able to sort the signal from the noise is a must. This week on InvestED, Phil and Danielle discuss how viewing...

Before buying a company, Rule #1 Investors do a ton of research to ensure the company they are buying meets Charlie Munger’s 4 key principles: meaning, moat, management, and margin of safety. From blue chip companies to venture capital, the options are limitless in terms of what modern investors can do with their money. In this week’s episode, we discuss the difference between investing and specul...

William Albert Ackman is an American investor and hedge fund manager. He has a well-known 8-point investing checklist, which is straightforward and reflects the basic principles of Rule #1 Investing. That checklist includes only investing in simple and predictable businesses with a dominant market position, limited risk, a strong balance sheet, excellent management, high return on capital, free ca...

When we take risks in life, the prospect of success is always tempered by the possibility of failure. What happens to a society when some of the consequences of failure go away? Preparation and practice can help us face our fears and improve our investing process, and dealing with doubts is part and parcel of being an investor. This week on InvestED, Phil and Danielle discuss the hero’s journey an...

After a couple of decades of dominating the internet, cracks have begun to appear in the once-unquestionable superiority of Google.   With the advent of new technologies, can the tech giant adapt and compete with the products and companies currently defining the landscape of Silicon Valley? And what does a tech monopoly look like when the world of virtual connectivity begins to incorporate A.I. us...

“There’s nothing evil, per se, about selling things short. Short sellers—the situations in which there have been huge short interests very often—very often have been later revealed to be frauds or semi-frauds.” — Warren Buffett Short selling, or shorting, plays an important role in public markets as it improves prices, rational capital allocation, prevents bubbles, and shines a light on fraud. A r...

Our ability to handle expectations, both from others and ourselves, plays a huge role in our success in life. If we don’t know our tendencies when faced with those expectations, how can we be prepared to succeed? Investors often deal with an enormous amount of pressure and uncertainty, and being able to identify the source of those stressors can help set us up to prosper in the market. In this epi...

New year, same InvestED! Our hosts check in for the first show of 2023 and reflect on how disparate paths can bring people to the same world of investing. What does it look like to find success with the message you’re trying to share? There are millions of people with an idea, a passion, or a unique perspective, but managing to have it resonate with others in the attention economy is no small task...

On this milestone episode of InvestED, Phil and Danielle celebrate 400* episodes and take a look at where the market might be headed in the new year. Having spent the past two weeks going over the All Weather Portfolio, are there certain profiles of investors who would be better suited to this strategy than others? How can you use the four buckets to hedge your bets against the ups and downs of th...

As the podcast approaches episode 400, Phil and Danielle reflect on the past several years of talking investing together before returning to the previous episode’s topic of the All Weather Portfolio. What does it look like to put together a portfolio that’s prepared for any economic environment? Inflation or deflation, boom or bust, there are opportunities in every situation. This week on InvestED...

For many, investing is much more than a hobby or a profession–it’s a way of looking at the world and parsing new information. There are countless approaches to take towards investing your wealth, but for a certain segment of the population, safeguarding financial progress is a higher priority than finding the next hot stock. This week, Phil and Danielle talk through Ray Dalio’s All Weather Portfol...