The Rational Reminder Podcast

You can't get anything good out of life without taking a risk, and this holds true in the world of investing too. Depending on the situation, people are willing to either pay more for high-risk or risk-free, and matters become more complex because the term 'risk-free' means a different thing to everybody. Today's guest is economist Allison Schrager, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, author...

Let's say you make a choice that had you chosen differently, things would ostensibly have turned out more favourably. Later on, a similar situation comes up and you make the choice you think you should have made previously in the hope that the result you wanted before will come true this time around. This is called counterfactual thinking and it forms the main topic of our discussion in today's ep...

The financial advice industry has always been a place of change, and yet certain old practices hang around for decades. Our guest today, Dennis Moseley-Williams, is all about moving things forward for the good of the client and the advisor. The basis of his understanding is the characterization of the economy as one fundamentally built around experiences. Applying this lens to the financial sector...

On today's episode of The Rational Reminder, we once again cover a host of topics. We begin with Cameron sharing his thoughts on a book he recently finished, The Ride of a Lifetime , and some of the lessons he took away from it. We then tackle three listener questions, where we cover Mawer and index funds hypothetically driving prices. Then, in the portfolio portion of the show, we turn our attent...

The last ten years have seen so much said and done in the cryptocurrency space, and yet the future of bitcoin is still somewhat unclear. For Michael Sonnenshein however, bitcoin and the crypto market still offer the freedom and possibilities that have long been espoused as their greatest values. He joins us today to talk about his role at Grayscale Investments, how Grayscale fits into the larger D...

Welcome to this week's episode of the Rational Reminder! Today, we get stuck into a commonly asked about investment topic – socially responsible or sustainable investing. The show kicks off with Cameron sharing some fantastic insights he gained from a book he recently finished, The Undoing Project. We then delve into the CalPERS story that was in the spotlight at the end of 2019. After that, we mo...

On today's show, we are joined by Kim Melanson who is a local lawyer in Ottawa. The bulk of the conversation is spent on the particulars of drafting a will and the considerations that have to go into this process. Kim also reminds just how important it is to have an up to date will, something many of us have heard but many of us do not act on! She talks about good times to update your documents an...

For our very first episode of 2020, we kick things off with some quick updates before sharing Cameron's ten best financial planning strategies for the new year. After laying out some statistics about the great asset class returns that 2019 saw, we get into the wonderful listener questions we have been receiving over the break. Our first topic is about buying versus leasing cars, and Ben shares his...

Today on the show we welcome the Head of Investment Solutions at Dimensional Fund Advisors, Marlena Lee. Marlena has a Ph. D. from the University of Chicago where she served as the TA to Eugene F. Fama. She has been at Dimensional for 11 years where a big part of her role is communicating what their research team is doing for the advisors and clients who are using their products. In this fascinati...

As we see 2019 out and enter a new decade, we thought it only fitting to do a round-up of some of our shows this year. While we had 26 guests throughout the year, we chose 14 that best captured the sensible investing and education-focused spirit of our show. Some of the guests we have included on this special episode include Rob Carrick, from The Global Mail and leading authority on Canadian perso...

On today's episode, we are joined by Mark Goodfield of The Blunt Bean Counter blog to talk about estate planning and wills. Mark is a partner at BDO Canada, a national accounting firm and has created a wealth of content on investing, tax and the relationship between the two. He provides full-service wealth management, but does not advise on nor manage investments. Estate planning is a difficult ta...

Welcome to another episode of the Rational Reminder Podcast. We kick off the show today with some great listener feedback before diving into the content of a new podcast by Dr. Laurie Santos called The Happiness Lab. In a recent episode of her show, she gets into the idea of human adaptability to fortuitous or catastrophic events. Our capacity to regulate back to a default state has big implicatio...

On today's episode, we have Dr. Daniel Crosby joining us for an insightful discussion about the psychology behind investing behaviour. Dr. Crosby is a behavioural finance expert and asset manager who applies his study of market psychology to help people better understand the financial decisions they make and to shed some new light on our ability to be rational. We talk about the inevitability of o...

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Rational Reminder Podcast. We are proud to say that last week's show received our highest amount of downloads yet, with 10 000 in its first week, so a big thank you to our listeners for that. We begin our discussion this week with some takeaways from the  Playing With FIRE  documentary about doing affordable things that feel good as a way of cutting...

In today's episode, we are joined by an exciting guest, The Loonie Doctor, of  The Loonie Doctor  blog to talk about his work not only on physician finance but also on holistic wealth. A physician by training, The Loonie Doctor has scaled back his practice to put more work into the blog and financial education. He masterfully balances precise technical advice on topics like tax alongside 'softer'...

Today on The Rational Reminder Podcast, we talk about the relationship between asset allocation and outcome, the ins and outs of reverse mortgages, and finally, life insurance (or lack thereof) in Canada. However, we begin by sharing some interesting points covered in a recent Barry Ritholtz interview with Eugene Fama and David Booth for his Masters in Business show. We talk about how Booth starte...

Today we welcome Dave Nadig onto the show, who joins us off the back of a brilliant presentation he gave at the Wealth Stack conference last month in Scottsdale. Dave is the founder of  etf.com  and has had key positions at FactSet, Barclays Global Investors, and Cerulli previously. Today Dave sits down to talk about the difference between ETFs and mutual funds, EFT product saturation, the coming...

On today's episode, we cover a variety of topics, such as some tips for DIY investors, highlights from a conference Cameron recently attended, home country investment bias and whether it's possible to have too much money in your RRSP. We begin first by talking about what DIY investors can do to ensure that they are investing to the best of their abilities. As people who work in investment daily, w...

Today we are joined by Wesley Gray who is the CEO of Alpha Architect, a firm in the US that specializes in concentrated factor strategies. Having completed his MBA and PhD at the University of Chicago – the Harvard of the finance world – Wes is an authoritative voice when it comes to quantitative research and factor investing. Incredibly, he took a 4-year break during his PhD, joined the marines a...

Welcome back to the podcast everybody, we have another great round-up episode for you where we field questions that you sent in and cover a bunch of things we think you need to hear! We discuss how you should weight your stocks and bonds ratio and times that you could think about changing it, we also talk about index funds, Michael Burry and why his reputation is a bit overstated. Then we get into...

From a trader on Wall Street to a financial advisor with her own firm, our guest today, Jill Schlesinger, has accumulated a lifetime of knowledge in the investing and financial world. Today she is a household name and well-known media personality, appearing on a variety of CBS shows and hosting her own podcast called Jill on Money .  But she is far more than an investment expert: she also has a to...

Welcome back to Rational Reminder Podcast! We kick off today's episode with a discussion about the gap between investor performance and fund performance, the potential reasons why asset allocation funds produced a positive gap and the role that timing and volatility play in a negative behaviour gap. IPOs have been in the media a great deal lately – and not for particularly positive reasons and we...

Our guest today on the Rational Reminder Podcast is Dr. Wendall Mascarenhas. Wendall is a listener, DIY investor a medical professional. He actually reached out to us on Twitter and suggested this episode, a listener-centric discussion as well as one comparing the different approaches to evidence from the medical and the financial communities. We thought this was a great idea and the perspective t...

Michael Burry says we should get out of indexing. Jim Cramer says it's time to jump in. These are interesting times in the world of investing! On today's episode, we discuss Burry's recent claims about passive investing and advise on a plan of action should he turn out to be right. Benjamin recently posted a new video on dividends, and we have a conversation about the responses the video triggered...

We have a really special episode in store today as we welcome Tim Nash, the Sustainable Economist! Tim shares a vast amount of knowledge and ideas with us on how investors wishing to put their money where their heart is can go about investing more ethically and sustainably. We hear about Tim's journey into investing and economics and how he wound up doing the work he currently does, helping invest...