How I Invest My Money: Finance Experts Reveal How they Save, Spend and Invest

About this book

I ran the numbers. I’ve been appearing on financial television for nine and a half years. During those approximately 114 months, I’ve done an average of three shows each week, which works out to something like 1,368 hours of television time talking about the stock market, the bond market, the economy and investing. And in all of that time, not one person has ever asked me about what I do with my own money. Not one. I’ve commented on everything under the sun: Interest rates, valuation multiples, earnings calls, Federal Reserve policies, tax code changes, housing prices, credit spreads, innovation and technology, consumer confidence, trading strategies, small business ownership, macroeconomics, microeconomics, emerging markets, index funds, active management, shareholder activism, real estate investment trusts, volatility, private equity, venture capital, initial public offerings, oil and gas prices, technical analysis, value investing, momentum stocks, smart beta factors, socially responsible investing, social media, biotechnology and drug approvals, presidential elections, geopolitics, natural disasters, defense contractors, gold and silver, cryptocurrency, high frequency trading, Occupy Wall Street, insider trading, analyst upgrades and downgrades, sectors and industries, long-term investing, day trading, hedge funds, mutual funds, exchange traded funds, gaming companies, sports business, show business, startups, bankruptcies, mergers and acquisitions, and I even interviewed 50 Cent. And in all of that time, not once did someone say, “Tell us about how you invest your money.” It never happened. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy commenting on all of these topics, because I did. But looking back on all that time, and all those words coming out of my mouth, I’m amazed that the investing I do with my own money never actually came up! To remedy this, I wrote a post entitled “How I Invest My Own Money” at The Reformed Broker blog. It was the first time I had ever written at length about how I personally invest, and why I invest the way that I do. The post went viral across all of the social networks I shared it to. Soon after, I got to talking with my co-author and friend Brian Portnoy about the topic and together we came to the realization that we had the makings of something truly exciting on our hands. We got to thinking about the fact that very few financial professionals have ever written about their own personal finances and investments. We wondered: What if we asked some of our friends and colleagues from around the investing industry about what they do with their own money—and why? No one’s ever really done it before. Between Brian and I, we’ve read (and written about) hundreds of books on investing. To the best of our recollection, every one of those books was either advice for what other people should do, or a focus on a particular investment strategy that the author carries out professionally. Even the hallowed Market Wizards series, which we both love, was mostly about how those wizards invested other people’s money. Indeed, there is no shortage of books on how experts think you ought to invest, but very few of the authors go into detail about whether or not they even take their own advice. In the pages that follow, you will be reading about investing and money management from a very different perspective. You’ll be hearing from some of the most thoughtful and interesting professional investors we know about how they manage their own portfolios. And more important than the “how” is the “why.” During the course of my career, first as a retail broker and then as the CEO of a billion-dollar wealth management firm, I have spoken with thousands of investors, both retail and professional. In that time, I have learned that the reasons why people invest are every bit as important as the names and descriptions of the investments themselves. All of the people in this volume are well-versed in academic investing theories: modern portfolio theory, efficient markets theory, and so forth. But as you’ll see, everyone is coming from somewhere unique. Everyone has a story to tell and how we invest, save, and spend is one revealing way of telling that story.