Sean Gates

At the same time, if you're investing, you have to have some measurable guide on the underlying performance of the component parts, right?

And so then benchmarks become relevant.

If you're in a target date fund in your 401k, and that target date fund is a stinker compared to all other target date funds,

That matters on a micro level, and you should be able to adjust with that informed decision.

But to your point, most people have gotten accustomed to benchmarking everything against the S&P 500.

And that gets really dangerous because people are getting over their ski tips in terms of risk taking because everyone thinks you can just put everything in the S&P 500.

Look, it's done 10% every year.

And that's not appropriate for your level of risk or your goal set, right?

And a lot of people are better off if they ride that smooth middle of the road quilt chart because they might make bad investor decisions on their wealth if they see volatility in the future.

Correct.

Yeah.

And, you know, it gets very tricky, especially if you are paying someone to manage your money.

because you can blame them for not competing against the S&P 500.

And then you get in this place where a version of rebalancing that you do is shopping money managers.

So you fire one money manager who has failed to meet their benchmark and you go put it with someone else.

And it's a version of chasing performance and you can trap yourself in that way.

I would argue that, you know, that the S&P 500

While it's done very well, if you look at this year, international stocks have crushed it and gold has crushed it.

So finally, we are starting to see where people who have just hitched their wagon to the S&P 500 are finally recognizing that other asset classes can help their portfolio.

Is this a unicorn year, an outlier for one year?