The Godfather’s Lesson for Investors

LISTEN and SUBSCRIBE on:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watchdog-on-wall-street-with-chris-markowski/id570687608 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PtgPvJvqc2gkpGIkNMR5i 

WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:

https://www.youtube.com/@WatchdogOnWallstreet/featured  

Remember Johnny Fontaine from The Godfather—whining to Don Corleone until he got smacked and told to “act like a man”? That’s exactly how too many investors behave today.
In this episode of Watchdog on Wall Street:

• Why greed and fear are the real traps—not “bad luck”
• How meme stocks, private equity scams, and “disruptor” fads lure investors to ruin
• The Wall Street trick: pushing your “get rich quick” button
• Why the only real wealth strategy is time, work, and discipline
• If there’s no effort in the plan, it’s a fugazi—plain and simple

Stop whining. Take responsibility. Build the right way.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Johnny Fontayne investment. Now, if you're not familiar with Johnny
Fontayne first Godfather movie singer god son to Don Corleoni,
you're not familiar with this, you didn't see Godfather one,
Stop right now, stop exactly what you're doing and go
watch the damn movie. And by the way, shame on you,

(00:39):
Shame on you. You haven't seen it anyway. Seen in
Godfather one, Johnny Fontaine upset, you know, his career is
not being advanced producer in Hollywood's holding back. He goes
sees his godfather, Vito Corleoni, and he whinds, well, I
don't know what to do, Godfather, I don't know what
to do. And Vito Corleon gets up, grabs him, smacks

(01:03):
him across the face and says, you canna act like
a man.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
He's like, what are you? You go out to Hollywood
and now you have come back, and you know it
goes on anyway, yeah, we have to deal with a
lot of that whying at Markowski Investments. We do, we do.
You know people, people will come in, you know, losing

(01:28):
a fortune on whatever, ridiculous idea, dumb idea, trying to
get rich quick nonsense. And what do you want me
to do? You want me to hold your hand? We'll
tell you all. That's too bad, that's all you know. No,
we're going to fix the problem. But you got a
man up. You did it. Okay. You're the one that

(01:53):
was greedy. Okay again, greed and fear always set the trap.
You're the one who's greedy. You you're the one that decided, Hey,
you know what, I'm not gonna pay attention to the
risk in this at all. I am going to ignore
all the risk factors in my portfolio because I want
to be rich quickly. How'd that work out for you? Again,

(02:16):
I'm giving you my Vito Corloni's smack up side the
head right now. Listen, we'll build your portfolio back up.
It's gonna take time. You screwed it up. You're the
one that's got to go all in on memestocks or
disrupt their companies or whatever crap. Private equity company that
somebody puts you into. Don't blame the advisor, Okay, he's

(02:42):
just doing what he's told. Blame yourself. Okay. This is
one of the things if you want to be successful
in life, you gotta take ownership of everything. I say
this again and again and again. You did it. It's funny,
and I wrote about this in the past. These investment
con guys out there, they actually say this, they said,

(03:04):
they will tell you, you know, we we would be
out of business. We would be out of business if
people weren't greedy. Again, that's what they teach people when
they start on Wall Street. How to press people's greed buttons. Okay,

(03:26):
paint them a picture of all the riches that they're
going to have. So I was reading it the other night,
and I'm gonna misquote it, God forgive me. It was
some proverbs from crying out loud, the importance of gaining
wealth little by little over time, rather than all at once.

(03:47):
And it means a myriad of different things. But listen, okay,
if it was so easy to get rich quick, wouldn't
everyone do it? But what do we say say here
on the program? Every single week, every single week, everything
in life that has meaning, value, and worth involves work,

(04:07):
time and effort. Say it again and again ten times over. Okay,
if something is missing from that equation, work, If there's
no work, time and effort in your success, guess what. Okay,
I'll quote another Mafia movie. It's a bloody fugazy watch
dog on Wall Street dot Com