Long Story Short

Adam Newman and Andy Pratt open this episode fresh from Burney's annual company conference, held this year in Nashville. After catching up on the highlights, including a full day devoted to how advisors are using AI, they turn to a pattern they see constantly in client meetings. One spouse tends to run point on household finances while the other stays in the background, and Andy shares how he handles that dynamic in his own marriag...

A client sent in a question this week that turned into the entire episode. The US national debt just crossed $40 trillion, and everyone wants to know if that number is as scary as it sounds. Adam Newman and Andy Pratt pull the emotional reaction apart from the numbers, starting with a simple but important distinction, a government does not run its finances as a household does.

They trace two moments in history when the country worke...

Adam Newman and Andy Pratt kick off by ribbing each other about sports betting apps, then move into a bigger topic, the growing number of young investors who treat sports betting and prediction markets as part of their financial plan. A recent survey found that a large share of Gen Z investors see this kind of risk-taking as a way to catch up financially, and Adam and Andy talk through why that instinct makes sense even when the ma...

Andy and Adam kick off this episode talking about the SpaceX IPO, and the idea that every investor is bound to make a few mistakes along the way. Adam notes that almost every long-time client has a story about an early misstep, and that lessons learned when the dollar amounts are small are the cheapest ones to learn. 

That sets up Andy's focus for the episode, one of his strongest takes yet, that being overly focused on dividen...

A two-year-old hedge fund called Situational Awareness went from a $45 billion valuation to $10 billion in about a week, and Adam and Andy unpack how. The fund's 27-year-old founder, Leopold Aschenbrenner, made his name writing a manifesto on AI disruption, then bet on it with 300 to 400% leverage. A minor pullback was all it took to force a liquidation.

Andy talks through how concentrated, leveraged bets can look brilliant right up...

Adam and Andy check back in on SpaceX three weeks after its public debut, and the short version is that the stock has already dropped below its opening price. They use it as a reminder of what tends to happen with mega IPOs once the hype wears off, including a story about an advisor's husband who bought in during the frenzy and sold at a loss before the ride was even over.

The conversation then turns to retirement, and a surprising ...

Andy and Adam recap Burney's Q2 2026 Economic & Market Review webinar and analyze moves that came out of nowhere in the best possible way:

• Q1 brought an oil price spike and a geopolitical shock. Burney's client letter called for patience anyway.

• That patience paid off. Q2 turned into the best quarter for equities since 2020.

• US stocks jumped about 15.5%. Emerging markets led the pack at 24%. International developed markets ros...

Adam Newman sits down with Derek Church, President and Chief Operating Officer of Pendleton Square Trust, to talk through a decision most families put off until it's too late, who should serve as trustee. Derek walks through the three traditional trustee options, why so many people default to naming a family member without fully weighing what the role requires, and what changes when an independent trust company like Pendleton Squar...

Episode 54 covers three planning and investing topics. Andy opens with a client scenario involving a 401k loaded with highly appreciated company stock, which leads Adam into a deep walkthrough of net unrealized appreciation (NUA), a niche but potentially powerful tax strategy for people leaving a company with significant employer stock in their plan.

From there, a listener question about the kiddie tax kicks off a second planning co...

Adam and Andy are back together this week after last episode's guest interview, and they cover a lot of ground. The conversation starts with a Barron's article featuring Adam's take on a trend he's seeing more often. Clients are showing up to planning meetings having already run their own numbers through AI. Adam explains why he sees it as an opening for better conversations, and where AI tools tend to fall short once judgment and ...

Estate planning is one of those topics most people know they should address but keep putting off. In this episode, Adam sits down with Trent Linville, founder and lead attorney at Linville Estate Law in Franklin, Tennessee, to clear up the confusion and lay out exactly what every family needs to have in place. Trent's path to estate law started with a personal experience that most people can relate to, and that story shapes the way...

The SpaceX IPO landed more or less exactly where history would predict. Adam and Andy open with a quick look at the initial pop, why it's par for the course, and what the oversubscription might mean for the Anthropic and OpenAI filings still on the horizon.

From there, the episode shifts to a conversation centered on Adam's latest Nashville Business Journal article on retirement readiness. Most people approach retirement with a numb...

To mark episode 50, Andy recaps a recent lunch with Professor Jeremy Siegel, the Wharton finance professor and author of Stocks for the Long Run, and walks Adam through the highlights live on air.

Siegel's argument that Meta now qualifies as a classic value stock opened the conversation. The metaverse write-off left the market skeptical of Meta's big spending calls, and heavy AI capital expenditure has only deepened that discount, e...

The headlines around SpaceX's IPO filing are hard to ignore. Andy and Adam open this episode’s discussion with a look at surprisingly consistent data showing that every one of the ten largest IPOs in U.S. history posted a negative return in its first year, with an average decline of around 27%. That track record raises some questions about the timing of buying into that much hype at that valuation.

From there, they shift to so...

Andy is recording from a hotel room in Seattle, attending the Basis Northwest Conference, a two-day deep dive into esoteric tax strategies run by Brent Sullivan of Tax Alpha Insider. The episode opens with a walkthrough of what tax-centric wealth management looks like in practice, including asset location, direct indexing, tax-loss harvesting, and the 351 ETF conversion on the investment side, and Roth conversions, charitable givin...

Despite months of pessimistic headlines, a thread from Ryan Detrick at the Carson Group shows American consumers in solid shape. Credit card delinquencies are back to pre-COVID levels, foreclosures and bankruptcies are flat, and home equity has climbed alongside equity markets. Andy adds the Costco recession indicator to the mix, which flags a shift from steaks to canned tuna as a warning sign. Adam's take is that maybe people just...

Adam opens with a pop quiz on how many trillion-dollar market cap companies exist in the US right now. The answer is ten, led by NVIDIA at $4.8 trillion. 

He traces prior melt-up periods from the Roaring Twenties through the Nifty Fifty, the Japanese market in the '80s, and the Nasdaq bubble of the '90s to put the Nasdaq 100's 643% climb over the past decade in context. Andy adds the labor market data. Payrolls grew above expec...

Health insurance has long been treated as non-negotiable, but Adam and Andy are getting more questions than ever from clients wondering whether it's worth the cost. A Bloomberg article on healthy workers dropping employer coverage to save over $1,000 a month captured something they've both been noticing in client conversations for years, and the two walk through why opting out, whether through self-pay, religious health pools, or e...

A Goldman Sachs research report from October 2025 found that 40% of households earning over $500,000 a year report living paycheck to paycheck. Adam and Andy dig into that number, what it tells us about how people relate to money as their income climbs, and why the gap between being rich and being wealthy matters more than most people realize.

The conversation moves into earnings season, where 139 S&P 500 companies have already...