Mark Matson

We tend to dump more money in those things.

And then we have fear and anger, sadness, grief when we lose money, and it causes us to be extremely imprudent with our assets.

And your own human behavior, even if I gave you the perfect model and said, just do this for 30 years and rebalance, I've never seen anyone be able to do it, pull it off over the last 30 years.

So your own brain is, I think, your own worst enemy.

Well, that's a great, what a great question.

So I think the world would be a much better place if people could admit when they're wrong.

especially politicians, that'd be helpful.

In 1991, when I started the company, I was 27 years old, and I thought, maybe a bit naively, is that this academic methodology of investing, efficient market theory, factor model, and modern portfolio theory, that it was so obvious and so clear that this is the way the world had to function and work, that people would stop gambling with their money, they'd stop speculating, they'd prudently invest, they would be disciplined,

and nothing has been further from the truth.

Not only do I not see investors doing it, I don't see advisors doing it either.

It's easy to say diversify and rebalance.

However, when markets run way up, advisors tend to double down on the asset categories that are high.

For example, right now, most portfolios are overweighted to large US tech companies.

They're not rebalancing, they're chasing more of what's high.

So this idea of stock picking, market timing, track record investing being destructive and getting away from it,

It's been the exact opposite.

There's more stock picking, more market timing, because now we're bombarded 24-7 with the internet, with 24-7 news programs we didn't used to have back then in 1991.

And now you have more exotic news

destructive investments than you did in 1991.

Now we have 1500 ETFs, 99% of them no one should actually own because they're just gambling.