Your Portfolio Is a Fingerprint of Your Personality | Jim Lebenthal
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How did Jim Lebenthal define the core investing problem of panic selling vs. patience?
financial crisis hits it goes all the way down to three dollars a share i am telling you just from empirical observations it doesn't work i've seen it work once in a while which is the worst thing that can possibly happen to somebody and what that does ryan is it turns a temporary loss into a permanent loss i think the biggest investment virtue that somebody can have is patience your portfolio is a fingerprint of your personality it really is
All right, Jim, I want to start in a place that some of this is going to be my own bias of thinking, but I really want to get your kind of take on this idea and go wherever you want with it. But it's the starting spot that I wanted to begin our conversation with, which is much of the... frustration, confusion, anxiety, stress that I see maybe above the norm that we're experiencing today. So if we buy in that today, there is a at least measurable amount of additional anxiety, frustration, stress that people are feeling, maybe then what baseline would be in other times, if we can buy into that idea. I see so much of that being people not living in reality. You know what I mean? Not playing the game on the field, playing a game that they wished happened.
Like I wish that I could just find one stock or one polymarket bet or one crypto coin that's just going to change everything for me. And tomorrow I'm a millionaire. Right. And like, but it's like, that's not, we all know that's not how the world works or, you know, I wish that this, this industry was going to be the next thing and, or whatever. And, and what you wish, what you hope happens, you can't invest, you can't build wealth around hopes and dreams. Right. So like how one, do you, do you buy into and, or believe this idea of be of operating in reality and in the world that you live in and the work that you do, How do we do that? Like, where do we start? How do we know we're making decisions from ground truth versus, you know, some conceptual idea that some talking head had on X that we follow?
Yeah. What a great place to start, Ryan. Thank you. And I agree with you pretty strongly about people are living in, shall we say, alternate realities, right? I have a pretty strong viewpoint that social media is a cauldron for cooking up those alternate realities. But let's not go down that rabbit hole, at least not just yet. I think I want to start with the punchline, which is you can study what works and what doesn't work. And let me give you an example from the world of investing, which is where I live. There are many stories that you can look out again on social media and you can see these people who look like they've made it rich quick. Generally speaking, that doesn't happen. OK, making it rich quick is very much the exception.
And when it happens, it happens in the world of investing by taking on gargantuan amounts of risk. that almost randomly work out. So in terms of something that I very, very passionately believe, and this is a core truth of investing, that if somebody wants to say to answer your question, what can they do? It matters that you stay in the market. not try to time the market, not try to say, hey, I think the conflict with Iran is going to end on this date and that's when I'll get invested. But then we've got the elections coming up and I'll get out a week before that. I am telling you just from empirical observations, it doesn't work. I've seen it work once in a while, which is the worst thing that can possibly happen to somebody.
When they get market timing right once, then they think they can do it again and again. And Ryan, I have seen wealth destroyed by that. I've seen people sell at the wrong moments and then try to chase the markets up and up, inevitably getting back in right at the wrong moment. So more than anything, stay in the market. It is your time in the market that matters. The old truism, it's not timing the markets, it's time in the markets. One corollary to this, and believe me, I can go on for a while, so I want to give you a chance to interrupt me here.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How did Jim Lebenthal define the core investing problem of panic selling vs. patience?
0:00–14:26
2
Why does Jim say 'stay in the market' and how do past crises prove it?
14:26–28:14
3
What emotional triggers cause investors to sell and how should they be managed?
28:14–54:49
4
How should investors balance FOMO and speculative bets with size and diversification?
54:49–1:21:22
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