The Rational Reminder Podcast

In this Ask Me Anything episode, Ben Felix, Ben Wilson, and Louai Bibi tackle a wide-ranging collection of listener questions spanning investing, retirement, family finance, and financial planning. Along the way, they combine academic research, practical experience, and thoughtful discussion to separate evidence-based decisions from intuition.

The conversation explores everything from teaching children he...

In this episode, we are joined by Jean-Pierre Aubry, Associate Director of Retirement Plans and Finance at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, for a research-driven conversation about retirement investing, financial advice, pension fund management, and inflation. Drawing from years of empirical research, Jean-Pierre shares insights into how households actually invest, how financial advisors shape port...

In this AMA episode, Ben Felix, Dan Bortolotti, and Ben Wilson tackle a wide range of practical investing questions submitted by listeners. They begin by discussing one of the most common investing mistakes—market timing—and explain why getting back into the market is often harder than getting out. From there, they explore the evidence behind lump sum investing versus dollar-cost averaging, why high valuati...

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Paul Kaplan, economist, CFA charterholder, former Director of Research at Morningstar Canada, and co-author of Lifetime Financial Advice, for a fascinating exploration of life cycle finance. Drawing on decades of research in economics, portfolio construction, and asset allocation, Paul explains how financial planning should be grounded in optimizing lifetime consumption rather than...

In this AMA episode, Benjamin Felix, Dan Bortolotti, and Ben Wilson tackle a wide range of listener questions covering portfolio construction, diversification, active management, pensions, fiduciary duty, and short-term investing decisions. They examine whether breaking apart all-in-one ETFs is worth the complexity, why global diversification remains the default despite long stretches of underperformance, and how inves...

In this episode, we are joined by Shannon Lee Simmons—Certified Financial Planner, Chartered Investment Manager, bestselling author, and founder of the New School of Finance—for a wide-ranging conversation about the emotional side of money. Drawing on more than two decades of working directly with Canadians, Shannon explains why financial stress has become so pervasive, how social comparison shapes spending...

In this episode, Ben Felix and Ben Wilson tackle a wide range of listener questions covering portfolio construction, home-country bias, currency exposure, ETF selection, retirement decumulation, leasing versus buying a car, discounted cash flow valuations, and the real work of portfolio management. Along the way, they revisit the Rational Reminder model portfolios, discuss how new products like CAGE have changed the DI...

In this episode, we are joined by Morley Conn, Director of Sales and Strategy, ETF Services at Scotia Global Banking and Markets, for a deep dive into the mechanics of the ETF ecosystem. With more than 30 years of experience across equities, foreign exchange, and money markets, Morley pulls back the curtain on the creation and redemption process, ETF liquidity, block trading, market making, and the often-overlooked inf...

In this episode, we are joined by Ben Carlson, Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholtz Wealth Management and author of Risk & Reward, for a wide-ranging conversation about market history, investor psychology, and the realities of long-term investing. Ben brings his trademark blend of data-driven thinking and plainspoken storytelling to topics like market crashes, inflation, diversification, and why i...

In this episode, Ben Felix and Braden Warwick unpack the surprisingly complex world of expected return modeling and why it matters so much for retirement projections, portfolio construction, and financial advice. They explain how PWL Capital currently estimates expected returns across asset classes, why traditional Monte Carlo methods relying on Gaussian distributions may miss important market behaviors, and how new re...

In this episode, we are joined by Shelly Antoniewicz, Chief Economist at the Investment Company Institute (ICI), for a data-rich exploration of the modern fund industry. Shelly walks us through the staggering scale of global regulated funds, how ETFs and mutual funds shape capital allocation, and why the rise of indexing may not be as disruptive as critics fear.

We discuss the growth of ETFs versus mutual ...

In this episode, we are joined by Jeff Hooke, former investment banking, private equity, and private debt executive turned academic critic of alternative investments, for a rigorous and provocative examination of private equity, private credit, and institutional investing. Jeff draws on decades of experience in finance and years of academic research to challenge many of the assumptions driving institutional and retail ...

In this episode, we are joined by Elroy Dimson, Professor of Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School and co-creator of the Dimson-Marsh-Staunton (DMS) dataset, for a sweeping and deeply insightful conversation on financial history, market behavior, and the evolution of global investing. Elroy walks us through the origins of the groundbreaking Triumph of the Optimists, the challenges of assembling over 100 years of g...

In this episode, we are joined by Michael Kothakota for a deeply technical and thought-provoking conversation on interdependent integrative financial planning theory. Drawing from his background in academic research and real-world advisory practice, Michael introduces a mathematical framework designed to capture the full complexity of financial planning—where decisions across domains like taxes, investments, and ...

In this episode, the Rational Reminder team unpacks the mechanics and implications of mega IPOs like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic potentially entering public indices. They explore how index funds handle IPO inclusion, why newly public stocks tend to underperform, and how structural features of indexing can lead to systematically buying high and selling low. The conversation dives into academic research on IPO returns,...

What if the decades-long debate between active and passive investing wasn't really a debate—but a data problem?

In this episode, Ben Felix and Cameron Passmore are joined by Tim Edwards, Managing Director and Global Head of Index Investment Strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices, for a deep dive into the SPIVA Scorecard—the industry's most enduring and data-driven comparison of active versus pas...

What if the way we think about investing—and expected returns—was fundamentally incomplete?

In this episode, Ben Felix and Dan Bortolotti take a deep dive into one of the most influential papers in financial economics: Fama and French (1993). With nearly 15,000 citations, this research reshaped how we understand asset pricing by showing that market beta alone isn't enough to explain returns. In...

What if your biggest investment risk isn't the stock market—but your own income?

In this episode, we are joined by Patrick Adams, a PhD candidate at MIT, for a fascinating deep dive into how income risk, spending commitments, and liquidity constraints reshape what "optimal" investing actually looks like. Drawing on large-scale administrative tax data, Patrick challenges the conventional wisdom that y...

In this episode, we unpack the growing tension in private markets—private equity, private credit, and private real estate—and examine whether their long-standing appeal holds up under scrutiny. With increasing pressure to bring these investments to retail investors, the discussion explores how illiquidity, valuation opacity, and complex fee structures may be masking risks rather than reducing them. We break...