March 20, 2025 • 18 mins
Join host Tiffany Grant in this informative episode of "Money Talk With Tiff" as she sits down with Thomas Blattenberger. Together, they delve into the science behind building a robust investment portfolio. While the mindset behind investing is a frequent topic, Thomas brings a fresh perspective by focusing on the scientific principles that should guide investment decisions.
Thomas explains the concept of an investment portfolio and highlights the importance of distinguishing between scientifically backed investments like stocks and bonds versus speculative ventures like crypto. They discuss the efficient market hypothesis, emphasizing the market's inherent efficiency driven by collective buying and selling actions. Thomas also shares insights into how supply and demand influence pricing and how a disciplined approach to investing can prevent financial losses.
Takeaways
- An investment portfolio is your money at work, but it can also lead to losses, so understanding the balance is key.
- Investing isn't just about the latest trends like crypto; we focus on stocks and bonds with proven data and theories.
- The efficient market hypothesis suggests that markets are generally efficient, meaning predicting future prices is a risky gamble.
- Knowing the science behind investing, like efficient market hypothesis and modern portfolio theory, helps in making informed decisions.
- Psychology plays a huge role in investing; without discipline, even the best portfolio can be ruined by 'shiny object syndrome'.
- Always ask your financial advisor about the scientific principles behind your investments to avoid blindly trusting their advice.
Resources Mentioned
Connect with Tiffany
Follow Tiffany on all social media platforms @moneytalkwitht for more insights and episodes. Visit MoneyTalkWithT.com to explore past episodes and gather more financial wisdom.
Tune in every Thursday for new episodes of "Money Talk with Tiff," where you can continue to learn about making sound financial decisions. Don't miss out on the guidance to spend wisely by spending less than you make!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You know what it is? That'sright. It's time to talk money with
your money nerd and financialcoach. Now tighten those purse strings
and open those ears. It's theMoney Talk with Tiff podcast.
Hey, everyone. I am so excitedbecause I have Thomas Blattenberger
on the line, and he's here totalk to us about the science behind
(00:21):
a good investment portfolio.So. Hey, Thomas, how are you?
Hey, Tiff. Thanks for having me.
Yes, thank you for coming on.And before we hit record, we had
a quick conversation and wetalked about how, you know, we always
talk about the mindset behindinvesting and all of that, but we
never talk about what goesinto making an investment portfolio.
(00:42):
So that's what we're here for today.
Yeah, I love it. It's thefirst person that's actually asked
me about it. Let's do it.
Right. So let's jump right in.So, first and foremost, let's start
with what is an investment portfolio?
The investment portfolio issomething that your money is put
to work in that has thepotential of loss. That's the easiest
(01:07):
definition. So, like, if Ihave my money in the bank in a cd,
it's not technically aninvestment portfolio because I'm
just making what the bank canpay off of my principal. But there's
no real chance for additionalgains, additional revenue, additional
growth. Also no chance forloss, though. So in this case, we're
(01:28):
talking about veryparticularly when we talk about the
science of investing, we'retalking about stocks and bond portfolios.
There isn't enough data onsome of the newer flashy stuff like,
you know, crypto and NFTs andcommodity, some of the commodity
(01:49):
marketplaces and some of thedifferent kind of credit swaps and
things that they're doing,there's not enough data out there
to validate that it's active,actually scientifically derived or
has what's called a riskpremium in it. For the most part,
they're just speculativegambles. And that's not scientific.
Right, right. So we know thatwe're talking about stocks and bonds.
I'm glad we laid thatgroundwork. So just in case people
(02:11):
are here, crypto Bros. And allof that. This is not. Not for them.
No, I'm just kidding. But.
Well, it's. See, it couldstill be for crypto Bros. Because
the most important thing todistinguish. Right. Like, the most
important thing for anybodyout there to start to look at is
to notice what's not science.And if you ask people what, you know,
(02:35):
most people have heard of somekind of investment Crypto or individual
stock like Tesla or somethinglike that. And when you ask people,
hey, why are you investing inthat? Usually what you'll get is
a really good story, somethingthat's compelling as a story, but
not scientific evidence.
Right.
Like if I, you know, whetherit's Bitcoin or let's use Tesla so
(02:57):
I don't piss off the cryptobros. Right. Let's say, why are you
investing in Tesla? Oh, I'minvesting in Tesla because Elon's
a visionary and he's going totake us to Mars. And look at all
these successful businesses.He's already, you know, generated,
created. Look at, he's got Xnow and he's got space X and he's
got, you know, there's just,then Tesla and there's just all these
(03:18):
different, like he's really onthe cutting edge of things and, and
I see it going up from here.All right, cool. Well, that's already
all in the price. All thatstuff that's already happened is
already factored into thecurrent price. That's why it's trading
at what it's trading at. Thathas no bearing on what the future
value of it will be. So it'sjust a speculative guess based on
a story. And for most people,if they start to look at why they
(03:41):
own what they own, it'sgenerally going to be a really good
story and not real science.
Yeah. And you know, even thatwe're saying the science of investing,
you know, usually we get socaught up on the emotional side.
I know I've talked about thata ton on the podcast. But even talking
about the science, I don'tthink gets enough play. So let's
hop into the science. What'sone thing that people should know
(04:05):
as they're constructing their portfolios?
So real, real quick with whatyou said about the psychology piece
of it, why that psychologypiece is so important is because
without that, you won't staydisciplined to a scientific portfolio.
You'll get the. Ooh, squirrel.Right. The shiny object syndrome.
And if you don't know how tomaster your own mind, then the best
(04:27):
portfolio on the planet willdo nothing for you because you'll
find a way to blow it up.That's the first thing.
No, that's real.
The second piece. Okay, sosome aspect of science, there's a
multitude of Nobel Prizewinning investing principles that
we use and that we teachpeople and they're not secret. So
(04:48):
I'll tell you, there's threein particular that we use when we
construct a portfolio. There'ssomething called efficient market
hypothesis. There's anotherone called the three factor model.
And then there's one calledmodern portfolio theory. And then
all of this is just based offof economic truths, economic science
that we can see based on humaninteractions. Right? So let's take
(05:12):
the first one, the efficientmarket hypothesis of all of them
from a. The other ones areincredibly technical, really difficult
like to understand and to, andto research. But the first one's
pretty simple conceptually ofdo we believe that markets, right,
people buying and selling inaggregate, because that's all a market
(05:34):
is. So if we're looking at thestock market, the stock market is
the buying and selling actionsin aggregate of all the people who
are owning and selling theseownership shares in companies, right?
So the main question is, do webelieve that people buying and selling
and interacting togethercreates an efficient pricing model?
(05:56):
And for the most part, theanswer to that is evident that of
course it does. If we look atany area of, you know, if we take
it away from the stock marketfor a second, we just look at like,
you know, big screen TVs.What's happened over time with big
screen TVs, they've gottenbigger, better technology, lower
price. Therefore, the pricingmodel of all these people buying
(06:18):
and selling in aggregateincreases competition, increases
innovation, increases validityof these products. It's no different
than how it works in the stockmarket. So if I believe, here's the
fun place of this and thepoint of the efficient market hypothesis.
If I believe that markets areefficient, it means that there's
(06:41):
no way for me as an individualto presuppose or to guess or predict
consistently what the buyingand selling decisions of all the
other people involved aregoing to be that's going to impact
the price. In other words,it's a fool's game to try to predict
the future when you'reinvesting your money. But almost
(07:02):
everybody invests their moneybased off of either your own or your
money manager's prediction ofthe future. And so just off of that
basis, it's, it's a flawedsystem to begin with, right?
And it reminds me of likesupply and demand, right? So if a
lot of people are buyingsomething, of course the price is
(07:22):
going to go up. If they'redumping it, then of course it's to
go down and the market justkeeps everything efficient because
people aren't going to buy itif it's cost more than what they
think it's worth. Does thatsound right? Okay, yeah.
No, it's a perfectly, it's aperfectly laid out this is why I
started with this one, right?Because it's the most like you can
(07:43):
just go, oh yeah, that. Basedon the laws of supply and demand.
That makes complete sense,right? Why does take a Louis Vuitton,
right, which is a high end,you just go buy a random bag or you
can buy a Louis Vuitton. Well,why is it that they've been consistently
having the ability to keeptheir price points the way that they
are? Well, it's becauseobviously supply and demand have
(08:05):
been built into that pricepoint, otherwise they would have
gone out of business, right?So you can look at that and go, well,
why are people doing that?That's way too expensive for a bag.
Well, clearly a bunch ofpeople disagree with you. And that's
the, that's the biggestproblem with investing also is not
realizing that our point ofview is our point of view. The, the,
the market's going to dictatewhat, what actually happens.
(08:28):
Right. And so we might havepeople wondering since you said that,
so who controls the market?Like how does the market get to where
it is?
That's a, so it's a goodquestion. So in the simplest way
to answer that is it's thepeople buying and selling are ultimately
(08:50):
the ones who control themarketplace. And what I mean by that
is like let's take real estatefor example. Actually, no, let's
use Louis Vuitton. LouisVuitton was a great example. So if
everybody who was buying LouisVuitton bags stopped buying them,
what happens to Louis Vuitton?
It goes down in price.
(09:12):
Well, eventually the companywould go out of business, right?
And go out of business.
Unless, unless they innovatedor created something new that people
wanted to buy. So that'swhat's again really interesting in
the capitalist system is the,the, the way the laws of supply and
demand work are if you're, ifyou and other people are willing
to use your resources forsomething, then that thing generally
(09:37):
will keep existing. And sosame thing with the stock market
here is it's a function of allthese people buying and selling ownership
in companies. It's theaggregate total of all these people
that control the markets. Soperfect example, you can see this,
right? Like 2008, a bunch ofpeople got panicked and they sold.
(10:01):
They went to cash. They'relike, I don't want to be in the stock
market anymore, it's tooscary. I don't know what the future
looks like. And a bunch ofpeople sold out. What happened? Well,
subsequently prices droppedsignificantly on all these companies
right where they're some ofthem 40, 50, 60% loss of value of
(10:21):
the stock given the sellingactions of a bunch of people at once.
That's another reason whymindset becomes really powerful.
Because the more disciplinedthe investor base is, this is a long
shot. Human nature willprobably never allow this one to
happen. But the moredisciplined people are like imagine
(10:42):
you had 300 million people inAmerica disciplined in how they were
managing their investing andmanaging their stock portfolios.
We wouldn't have those kind ofcrashes. That's how efficient markets
are.
Gotcha. So really they selfgovern themselves. As long as people
don't act out of the ordinary.
It sounds like, well, here'show efficient and effective they
(11:06):
are. They self govern evenwhen people act out of the ordinary.
Because you know, when someonepanics, that's actually when someone
panics, that's not out of theordinary. That's a perfect, really
rational survival instinct fora human. So it even works, even works
effectively in that capacity.Right. So, so bringing it back to
(11:28):
a science piece here, right.Is the how would someone use what
I just said? Because that'sultimately, I think, what's most
valuable. Great. We justtalked about markets being efficient.
Sure. Let's say I believethat. Well, great. What does that
do for me? It's to startlooking at are you basing your investments
or your future desiredinvestments based off of the truth
(11:51):
that markets are efficient orare you trying to predict the future
based on a story which isultimately saying that you have better
information than other people?Right. If I think, if I own Tesla,
because I think that thefuture is going to be better for
Tesla, that's a gamble thatrequires that the majority of other
(12:11):
people buying and sellingagree with me. That's a flawed strategy
right off the bat. You mightget lucky, but that's really no different
than going to Vegas andplaying on the craps table.
Right, right. That is so true.So as a professional, like if we
have people listening andthey're like, okay, I get it, I need
to incorporate science. Like,where did I even start with that.
(12:37):
Man? Good question. Well, soagain the, the first piece is being
aware that it exists becauseif you're, most people aren't even
aware it exists. And sothey're just kind of blindly following.
They're either ostriching,they're not, they're not participating
at all, or they're blindlytrusting whoever is telling them
(12:58):
what they should do. Right.They'll watch the news, watch Jim
Cramer, or talk to theirfinancial advisor and their financial
adviser will say, I, you know,this is a tough election season.
I, you know, I think it mightbe prudent if we move to cash and
they go, okay, sure. Because Idon't know any better. Right. If
that's what you're telling meto do, let's do that. So the most
(13:18):
important thing that they cando is realize that there is a science.
And if you are working withsomeone, question them about it.
You know, hey, I learned thatthere's actually an economic science
of how you invest money. Whatkind of scientific principles do
we use in our portfoliomanagement? How. How did you, what
(13:40):
science did you use todetermine how my investments are
set up? What, what principlesdid you apply to decide what I own?
And that, that will be veryquickly evident if they know that
there's science or not.Because someone who designed it scientifically
(14:01):
won't stutter, won't have adifficulty answering that question.
Someone who just sold aproduct is going to have a heck of
a time trying to answer that question.
Very, very true, very true. Soin a nutshell, y'all make sure if
you do have someone helpingyou, that you're able to ask these
questions and get legitanswers as to why they're investing
(14:24):
in whatever it is that they'reinvesting in.
Well, and there's, and there'sone other really important key to
this, given what you said,that most of the time you're having
conversations aboutpsychology. It's like if they go
hand in hand, if I have theright mindset in my life, I discover
how to go from scarcity toabundance and I have power in my
(14:47):
life, and then I put myresources to play in a Bernie Madoff
scheme and I lose it all.Well, let's say I still had the abundance
mindset. Well, but now I havea diminished capacity to make a difference
in life, in my own and others,as a function of not understanding
(15:07):
that what Bernie was doing wasa gamble and it was an actual fraud.
Whereas if there was somelevel of understanding that there's
a science to this, peoplecould have caught that in advance
and not done that with their money.
Absolutely, absolutely. Well,Thomas, we are at time and I know
we have so much more to cover.We only hit on one science.
(15:32):
Hey, listen, Tiff, if, if youwant to have me back for like a series,
I won't say no.
Right. Three part series onthe science. But, but thank you so
much for coming on. And ifpeople were interested in learning
more about you or more aboutthe science of investing, how could
they find you?
Oh, that's a great question.If they want to know more about me.
(15:55):
I'm like a really personabledude. I don't know if you've noticed
that they can just follow meor find me on any of the social medias.
I mean, the nice part abouthaving the name Blattenberger is
that it's not hard to find me.And then as far as learning more
about the science, we actuallyhave a two day course designed to
(16:18):
help people discover theirpurpose around money and align that
purpose with this science sothat they can basically never be
duped again. They can meetwith any financial advisor and be
able to understand what'sbeing said to them and not, you know,
just have to blindly followand hope it works out. And we have
(16:40):
a link for that. And that linkis Paradigm Shift P A R A D I G M
shift dot A as in Alpha D asin delta X as an X ray leader.com
so paradigmshift.adxleader.comand I have a whole section on that
(17:01):
website about the AmericanDream experience, which is our two
day event. And if someone'sinterested in actually really diving
in, they can sign up, they cansay, yes, I want to attend and it'll
prompt a conversation.
Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, thankyou so much, Thomas. And I'll make
sure I have all of those linksin the show notes including Thomas's
last last name spelling, sothat way you can follow me on social.
(17:24):
But thank you so much againfor coming on the show and we appreciate
you helping us out.
Thanks for having me. This hasbeen fun.
All right, bye.
Thank you for listening,joining and being a part of the Money
Talk with Tip podcast thisweek. You can check Tip out every
Thursday for a new Money Talkpodcast. But if you just can't wait
until next week, you canlisten to previous podcast episodes@moneytalkwithtee.com
(17:50):
or follow TIFF on all socialmedia platforms at Money Talk with
T. Until next time. Spend wiseby spending less than you make. A
word to the money wise isalways sufficient.
You know what it is? That'sright. It's time to talk money with
your money nerd and financialcoach. Now tighten those purse strings
and open those ears. It's theMoney Talk with Tiff podcast.
Hey, everyone. I am so excitedbecause I have Thomas Blattenberger
on the line, and he's here totalk to us about the science behind
(00:21):
a good investment portfolio.So. Hey, Thomas, how are you?
Hey, Tiff. Thanks for having me.
Yes, thank you for coming on.And before we hit record, we had
a quick conversation and wetalked about how, you know, we always
talk about the mindset behindinvesting and all of that, but we
never talk about what goesinto making an investment portfolio.
(00:42):
So that's what we're here for today.
Yeah, I love it. It's thefirst person that's actually asked
me about it. Let's do it.
Right. So let's jump right in.So, first and foremost, let's start
with what is an investment portfolio?
The investment portfolio issomething that your money is put
to work in that has thepotential of loss. That's the easiest
(01:07):
definition. So, like, if Ihave my money in the bank in a cd,
it's not technically aninvestment portfolio because I'm
just making what the bank canpay off of my principal. But there's
no real chance for additionalgains, additional revenue, additional
growth. Also no chance forloss, though. So in this case, we're
(01:28):
talking about veryparticularly when we talk about the
science of investing, we'retalking about stocks and bond portfolios.
There isn't enough data onsome of the newer flashy stuff like,
you know, crypto and NFTs andcommodity, some of the commodity
(01:49):
marketplaces and some of thedifferent kind of credit swaps and
things that they're doing,there's not enough data out there
to validate that it's active,actually scientifically derived or
has what's called a riskpremium in it. For the most part,
they're just speculativegambles. And that's not scientific.
Right, right. So we know thatwe're talking about stocks and bonds.
I'm glad we laid thatgroundwork. So just in case people
(02:11):
are here, crypto Bros. And allof that. This is not. Not for them.
No, I'm just kidding. But.
Well, it's. See, it couldstill be for crypto Bros. Because
the most important thing todistinguish. Right. Like, the most
important thing for anybodyout there to start to look at is
to notice what's not science.And if you ask people what, you know,
(02:35):
most people have heard of somekind of investment Crypto or individual
stock like Tesla or somethinglike that. And when you ask people,
hey, why are you investing inthat? Usually what you'll get is
a really good story, somethingthat's compelling as a story, but
not scientific evidence.
Right.
Like if I, you know, whetherit's Bitcoin or let's use Tesla so
(02:57):
I don't piss off the cryptobros. Right. Let's say, why are you
investing in Tesla? Oh, I'minvesting in Tesla because Elon's
a visionary and he's going totake us to Mars. And look at all
these successful businesses.He's already, you know, generated,
created. Look at, he's got Xnow and he's got space X and he's
got, you know, there's just,then Tesla and there's just all these
(03:18):
different, like he's really onthe cutting edge of things and, and
I see it going up from here.All right, cool. Well, that's already
all in the price. All thatstuff that's already happened is
already factored into thecurrent price. That's why it's trading
at what it's trading at. Thathas no bearing on what the future
value of it will be. So it'sjust a speculative guess based on
a story. And for most people,if they start to look at why they
(03:41):
own what they own, it'sgenerally going to be a really good
story and not real science.
Yeah. And you know, even thatwe're saying the science of investing,
you know, usually we get socaught up on the emotional side.
I know I've talked about thata ton on the podcast. But even talking
about the science, I don'tthink gets enough play. So let's
hop into the science. What'sone thing that people should know
(04:05):
as they're constructing their portfolios?
So real, real quick with whatyou said about the psychology piece
of it, why that psychologypiece is so important is because
without that, you won't staydisciplined to a scientific portfolio.
You'll get the. Ooh, squirrel.Right. The shiny object syndrome.
And if you don't know how tomaster your own mind, then the best
(04:27):
portfolio on the planet willdo nothing for you because you'll
find a way to blow it up.That's the first thing.
No, that's real.
The second piece. Okay, sosome aspect of science, there's a
multitude of Nobel Prizewinning investing principles that
we use and that we teachpeople and they're not secret. So
(04:48):
I'll tell you, there's threein particular that we use when we
construct a portfolio. There'ssomething called efficient market
hypothesis. There's anotherone called the three factor model.
And then there's one calledmodern portfolio theory. And then
all of this is just based offof economic truths, economic science
that we can see based on humaninteractions. Right? So let's take
(05:12):
the first one, the efficientmarket hypothesis of all of them
from a. The other ones areincredibly technical, really difficult
like to understand and to, andto research. But the first one's
pretty simple conceptually ofdo we believe that markets, right,
people buying and selling inaggregate, because that's all a market
(05:34):
is. So if we're looking at thestock market, the stock market is
the buying and selling actionsin aggregate of all the people who
are owning and selling theseownership shares in companies, right?
So the main question is, do webelieve that people buying and selling
and interacting togethercreates an efficient pricing model?
(05:56):
And for the most part, theanswer to that is evident that of
course it does. If we look atany area of, you know, if we take
it away from the stock marketfor a second, we just look at like,
you know, big screen TVs.What's happened over time with big
screen TVs, they've gottenbigger, better technology, lower
price. Therefore, the pricingmodel of all these people buying
(06:18):
and selling in aggregateincreases competition, increases
innovation, increases validityof these products. It's no different
than how it works in the stockmarket. So if I believe, here's the
fun place of this and thepoint of the efficient market hypothesis.
If I believe that markets areefficient, it means that there's
(06:41):
no way for me as an individualto presuppose or to guess or predict
consistently what the buyingand selling decisions of all the
other people involved aregoing to be that's going to impact
the price. In other words,it's a fool's game to try to predict
the future when you'reinvesting your money. But almost
(07:02):
everybody invests their moneybased off of either your own or your
money manager's prediction ofthe future. And so just off of that
basis, it's, it's a flawedsystem to begin with, right?
And it reminds me of likesupply and demand, right? So if a
lot of people are buyingsomething, of course the price is
(07:22):
going to go up. If they'redumping it, then of course it's to
go down and the market justkeeps everything efficient because
people aren't going to buy itif it's cost more than what they
think it's worth. Does thatsound right? Okay, yeah.
No, it's a perfectly, it's aperfectly laid out this is why I
started with this one, right?Because it's the most like you can
(07:43):
just go, oh yeah, that. Basedon the laws of supply and demand.
That makes complete sense,right? Why does take a Louis Vuitton,
right, which is a high end,you just go buy a random bag or you
can buy a Louis Vuitton. Well,why is it that they've been consistently
having the ability to keeptheir price points the way that they
are? Well, it's becauseobviously supply and demand have
(08:05):
been built into that pricepoint, otherwise they would have
gone out of business, right?So you can look at that and go, well,
why are people doing that?That's way too expensive for a bag.
Well, clearly a bunch ofpeople disagree with you. And that's
the, that's the biggestproblem with investing also is not
realizing that our point ofview is our point of view. The, the,
the market's going to dictatewhat, what actually happens.
(08:28):
Right. And so we might havepeople wondering since you said that,
so who controls the market?Like how does the market get to where
it is?
That's a, so it's a goodquestion. So in the simplest way
to answer that is it's thepeople buying and selling are ultimately
(08:50):
the ones who control themarketplace. And what I mean by that
is like let's take real estatefor example. Actually, no, let's
use Louis Vuitton. LouisVuitton was a great example. So if
everybody who was buying LouisVuitton bags stopped buying them,
what happens to Louis Vuitton?
It goes down in price.
(09:12):
Well, eventually the companywould go out of business, right?
And go out of business.
Unless, unless they innovatedor created something new that people
wanted to buy. So that'swhat's again really interesting in
the capitalist system is the,the, the way the laws of supply and
demand work are if you're, ifyou and other people are willing
to use your resources forsomething, then that thing generally
(09:37):
will keep existing. And sosame thing with the stock market
here is it's a function of allthese people buying and selling ownership
in companies. It's theaggregate total of all these people
that control the markets. Soperfect example, you can see this,
right? Like 2008, a bunch ofpeople got panicked and they sold.
(10:01):
They went to cash. They'relike, I don't want to be in the stock
market anymore, it's tooscary. I don't know what the future
looks like. And a bunch ofpeople sold out. What happened? Well,
subsequently prices droppedsignificantly on all these companies
right where they're some ofthem 40, 50, 60% loss of value of
(10:21):
the stock given the sellingactions of a bunch of people at once.
That's another reason whymindset becomes really powerful.
Because the more disciplinedthe investor base is, this is a long
shot. Human nature willprobably never allow this one to
happen. But the moredisciplined people are like imagine
(10:42):
you had 300 million people inAmerica disciplined in how they were
managing their investing andmanaging their stock portfolios.
We wouldn't have those kind ofcrashes. That's how efficient markets
are.
Gotcha. So really they selfgovern themselves. As long as people
don't act out of the ordinary.
It sounds like, well, here'show efficient and effective they
(11:06):
are. They self govern evenwhen people act out of the ordinary.
Because you know, when someonepanics, that's actually when someone
panics, that's not out of theordinary. That's a perfect, really
rational survival instinct fora human. So it even works, even works
effectively in that capacity.Right. So, so bringing it back to
(11:28):
a science piece here, right.Is the how would someone use what
I just said? Because that'sultimately, I think, what's most
valuable. Great. We justtalked about markets being efficient.
Sure. Let's say I believethat. Well, great. What does that
do for me? It's to startlooking at are you basing your investments
or your future desiredinvestments based off of the truth
(11:51):
that markets are efficient orare you trying to predict the future
based on a story which isultimately saying that you have better
information than other people?Right. If I think, if I own Tesla,
because I think that thefuture is going to be better for
Tesla, that's a gamble thatrequires that the majority of other
(12:11):
people buying and sellingagree with me. That's a flawed strategy
right off the bat. You mightget lucky, but that's really no different
than going to Vegas andplaying on the craps table.
Right, right. That is so true.So as a professional, like if we
have people listening andthey're like, okay, I get it, I need
to incorporate science. Like,where did I even start with that.
(12:37):
Man? Good question. Well, soagain the, the first piece is being
aware that it exists becauseif you're, most people aren't even
aware it exists. And sothey're just kind of blindly following.
They're either ostriching,they're not, they're not participating
at all, or they're blindlytrusting whoever is telling them
(12:58):
what they should do. Right.They'll watch the news, watch Jim
Cramer, or talk to theirfinancial advisor and their financial
adviser will say, I, you know,this is a tough election season.
I, you know, I think it mightbe prudent if we move to cash and
they go, okay, sure. Because Idon't know any better. Right. If
that's what you're telling meto do, let's do that. So the most
(13:18):
important thing that they cando is realize that there is a science.
And if you are working withsomeone, question them about it.
You know, hey, I learned thatthere's actually an economic science
of how you invest money. Whatkind of scientific principles do
we use in our portfoliomanagement? How. How did you, what
(13:40):
science did you use todetermine how my investments are
set up? What, what principlesdid you apply to decide what I own?
And that, that will be veryquickly evident if they know that
there's science or not.Because someone who designed it scientifically
(14:01):
won't stutter, won't have adifficulty answering that question.
Someone who just sold aproduct is going to have a heck of
a time trying to answer that question.
Very, very true, very true. Soin a nutshell, y'all make sure if
you do have someone helpingyou, that you're able to ask these
questions and get legitanswers as to why they're investing
(14:24):
in whatever it is that they'reinvesting in.
Well, and there's, and there'sone other really important key to
this, given what you said,that most of the time you're having
conversations aboutpsychology. It's like if they go
hand in hand, if I have theright mindset in my life, I discover
how to go from scarcity toabundance and I have power in my
(14:47):
life, and then I put myresources to play in a Bernie Madoff
scheme and I lose it all.Well, let's say I still had the abundance
mindset. Well, but now I havea diminished capacity to make a difference
in life, in my own and others,as a function of not understanding
(15:07):
that what Bernie was doing wasa gamble and it was an actual fraud.
Whereas if there was somelevel of understanding that there's
a science to this, peoplecould have caught that in advance
and not done that with their money.
Absolutely, absolutely. Well,Thomas, we are at time and I know
we have so much more to cover.We only hit on one science.
(15:32):
Hey, listen, Tiff, if, if youwant to have me back for like a series,
I won't say no.
Right. Three part series onthe science. But, but thank you so
much for coming on. And ifpeople were interested in learning
more about you or more aboutthe science of investing, how could
they find you?
Oh, that's a great question.If they want to know more about me.
(15:55):
I'm like a really personabledude. I don't know if you've noticed
that they can just follow meor find me on any of the social medias.
I mean, the nice part abouthaving the name Blattenberger is
that it's not hard to find me.And then as far as learning more
about the science, we actuallyhave a two day course designed to
(16:18):
help people discover theirpurpose around money and align that
purpose with this science sothat they can basically never be
duped again. They can meetwith any financial advisor and be
able to understand what'sbeing said to them and not, you know,
just have to blindly followand hope it works out. And we have
(16:40):
a link for that. And that linkis Paradigm Shift P A R A D I G M
shift dot A as in Alpha D asin delta X as an X ray leader.com
so paradigmshift.adxleader.comand I have a whole section on that
(17:01):
website about the AmericanDream experience, which is our two
day event. And if someone'sinterested in actually really diving
in, they can sign up, they cansay, yes, I want to attend and it'll
prompt a conversation.
Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, thankyou so much, Thomas. And I'll make
sure I have all of those linksin the show notes including Thomas's
last last name spelling, sothat way you can follow me on social.
(17:24):
But thank you so much againfor coming on the show and we appreciate
you helping us out.
Thanks for having me. This hasbeen fun.
All right, bye.
Thank you for listening,joining and being a part of the Money
Talk with Tip podcast thisweek. You can check Tip out every
Thursday for a new Money Talkpodcast. But if you just can't wait
until next week, you canlisten to previous podcast episodes@moneytalkwithtee.com
(17:50):
or follow TIFF on all socialmedia platforms at Money Talk with
T. Until next time. Spend wiseby spending less than you make. A
word to the money wise isalways sufficient.
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