Gen Z's investment revolution

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You're listening to Mobile Money by Moomoo Demystifying Markets One Episode at a Time.

This content is strictly for educational entertainment purposes only and should not be interpreted as a recommendation or investment guidance. Keep in mind that this information is not personalized and should not be the sole basis for your investment decisions, as there may be additional factors to consider. Hi, welcome to Mobile Money by Moomoo. I'm your host, Justin Zacks, vice President of Strategy at Moomoo Technologies.

I've spent my entire career in and around financial markets. It's something I have a real passion for. This is a show that helps investors gain a better understanding of markets and their money. Today we have guest Russell Faigan Russell, a strategic influencer at Moomoo and the partnership manager, as well as a content creator with a genuine interest in stocks and financial markets.

This content is both educational and entertaining and deeply rooted in the current market news cycle, which helps his audience better understand their finances. Russell has been featured on the Trevor Noah Show, New Americans and on Daily Mail. Russell, welcome to the podcast. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Well, thank you for having me. Nice to be here.

So, yeah, my name is Russ Fagan. I am not only the strategic influencer business development manager at Moomoo, but I am also a content creator myself and have been creating content since September 2020. And yeah, I'm just really happy to be here. Thanks for having me. thanks. Thanks for coming on. Tell me a little bit about your background and how how you got started.

Yeah, sure. So I graduated from Drexel University in summer of 2022, where I graduated with a degree in finance and business analytics. During my time at Drexel, I actually did something called Co-op, which is three different six month internships to really allow me to test the industries as well as the major that I'm looking to get a degree in.

Throughout my time there, I worked for a social fintech company by the name of Wall Financial, where I started off as a senior analyst but eventually moved to marketing director, which was the first time that I really intertwined the finance side of my brain in the marketing side of my brain. This led me to my second co-op at Sport Trade, which is a sports betting and sports betting stock exchange, each eventually leading me to my job at Finery, which then led me to this job here at Moomoo.

So really the key takeaways is that I started creating content in September of 2020 for this company, Wall Financial, which led me to my long journey as a financial content creator, which eventually brought me here to work with you. that's great. Why don't you tell me a little bit about how investing plays into all of those that that journey?

Yeah, well, investing is at the root of my interests here. So as far as content creation goes, that is entirely what my content is about. So the way that I would give my elevator pitch is that I take market news, public equity news such as M&A, IPO earnings analysis, or just any big moving macroeconomic information. And I try to break it down into digestible and consumable content for the masses.

So and explain why it's relevant to them as well as why it's relevant to a specific stock industry or an entire sector. Now, that passion led me to my major. It led me to want to stay and work in this industry as I transitioned to marketing. And I'd say that I use it in my day to day still, as I as I kind of track the markets and, you know, still invest personally and, you know, try to keep my audience informed as well.

Was there a certain moment or event that really got you interested in investing in the markets when you were when you when you were young? Yeah, actually. So maybe this is just the time that I was born, but the first time I really became obsessed with the stock market was when I watched The Wolf of Wall Street. I think I was about 13 or 14 years old when it came out, and I became obsessed with the idea of pink slips.

And I actually remember reaching out to my dad and being like, Dad, we have to we're going to make so much money off of this. You know, they did it in the movie, so can't we? And he tried to walk me through the motions of getting it like a fidelity account. This was obviously in the ages before Robin Hood, so we didn't make it too far into the process.

It's a bit complex and it was gruesome back then. However, I would say that my my passion really reignited in 2019. I just I went on Birthright with a really good friend of mine who basically took his bar mitzvah money and invested it all on it and grew his portfolio to something like $60,000. By the time I want to say we were 19-20 at the time.

So just seeing how strategic he was with his money inspired me. And then at that point I was at the age and especially at the point in my college career where I was starting to be surrounded by people talking about the stock market. So I kind of got in right before the pandemic started learning about it. And luckily, you know, kind of got all of my mistakes of the classic mistakes that investors make.

I got them out of the way and what was a very volatile time. So definitely not the end of the world as far as making mistakes goes. I was able to learn rather quickly and maybe we'll get into it. But some of the mistakes made me a lot of money. It's just it was just my ignorance wasn't always right.

Yeah. So. So is your what you consider your investing philosophy? Is it more Wolf of Wall Street or more Warren Buffett, like your friend? definitely more Warren Buffett. Now, for the record, I was I want to say 13. I'm now 25, so it's changed a little bit. I mean, I'm still young. I still have a bit of an aggressive approach.

I think you don't need to entirely invest into index funds. At my age, it's good to have proportions. Make sure that, you know, I would say so. To answer your question, I have a very long term fundamental perspective for me, I'm looking at ten ks, I'm looking at earnings analysis on a quarterly basis, obviously looking at their financial statements on ratio analysis.

Now, obviously, I'm looking at day to day news and more of the quality of it as well. But like I mentioned, I'm still a bit risky. I'm not under the notion that I should be investing in the international ETFs and the S&P 500 only. I think that there's a good opportunity to try and be a little bit risky investing in a single stock that you have high conviction in as well, especially at the age that I am in, how much time I plan to stay in the market?

Yeah, age 25 puts you right in that gen-z category, broadly defined as people born between the mid to late nineties to the early 20 tens. And so you must be very in tune with this generation's investing ethos and habits. You know, is Gen Z really interested in investing? That's I would say that we are far more interested in investing, especially in investing on our own than past generations.

Now I do have a theory that it's kind of goes in waves, that every generation eventually gets burnt by one recession or another, which leads to the majority of a generation stepping away from investing. However, I think this generation is different because of the resources we have at our fingertips. No longer do we need to rely on those that have a special skill set like financial advisors or CFAs.

So what types of stocks and sectors is Gen Z interested in? Definitely tech. I would say high risk, high reward. The next to this. The next that, the next Amazon, the next Apple, the next Uber. I'd say that there's a general consensus to get into that style of investing whether and even options trading. I would say it's very ignorant it's impulsive.

A lot of people will get burnt. There's a lot of learning lessons to be had by my generation, but again, as long as long as people like me are continuing to educate on the idea of separating your emotions from your investments and the goal of long term investing as a whole and the benefits, it's okay to make those mistakes as long as you can learn from them, get back up and slowly, you know, become that fundamental investor that I found myself becoming near this age.

Yeah, I saw a new report. It shows over half of Gen Z Americans hold investments of some kind. In the vast majority of these investors started putting their money to work before they even turned 21. What do you think's driving that real interest? I mean, you did talk a little bit about just the accessibility of so many of these tools and trading platforms.

Anything else do you feel other than movies, driving, driving this? Well, let's let's use two examples. First, let's talk about Moomoo as an example. Right? That's a broker dealer. So in the past, what during the Wolf of Wall Street era, I had to create an online account. I had a pay per trade. It was confusing and complex. Now, on an app like Moomoo, not only do I have the ability to trade for free at my fingertips, but there's a lot more to it because all platforms allow you to do that rationally.

Moomoo lets you learn it, lets you grow as an investor. There's a community that allows me to communicate with like minded individuals and there's tons of tools like fundamental analysis tools. There's even a ton of technical analysis tools, and not only just tools that let you perform the analysis, but tools that actually give you an overarching perspective. For example, there's like a indicator signal on Moomoo where I don't have to do the technical analysis because I don't love it.

I'm not a TA However, I am interested in looking at if based off of TA if we're looking at a bullish or bearish consensus and we have that on Moomoo it takes all of the time and it measures how many of the TAs are indicating a bullish sentiment and how much of the technical analysis is indicating a bear sentiment.

And it lets you look at almost like a like a knob, like a meter. So that is one really, really resourceful tool, just that being the financial tech platforms such as Moomoo that are now available for free. And the second I will humbly say is myself that being content creators, right? The reason why content creators are so famous, the reason why they grow, following the reason why they're able to make a living off of this is because they are teaching the masses what the educational system did not, which is great because it's actually spreading the wealth across our economy in a way that it didn't used to.

But unfortunately it's off of the back of a lack of education in what is supposed to be our traditional method of learning. So I think a huge resources, the accessibility to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and just those everyday people like myself who can break down what are typically complex subjects and ensure that everyone is learning about them rather than just those that had the opportunity to go to the best colleges in the country.

Yeah, having that education at your fingertips and that confidence is so important for young and beginning traders in Gen-Z, they're making changes to their portfolios in response to things like inflation and interest rates at a much higher rate than their peers are. How do you see their investing styles differing from older investors? Yeah, it's just much more active.

Obviously previous generations set it and forget it right time in the market beats timing the market. These are the common phrases and that's why they also will say those that have died have a better performing portfolio than those that are still alive and trading. I think I'm not entirely sure why are my generation is so interested in being more active.

I don't know if it's because it's at our fingertips. I don't know if it's because it feels more like gambling. God forbid. But I will say that our age allows us to take bigger risks. You know, I could lose everything, start investing tomorrow and still be ahead of your generation, more than likely. So I think we're hyper aware of that.

We understand that time is on our side and we're willing to take a little bit more risk knowing that it might not only pay off, but it kind of keeps us entertained, keeps us retained as investors, right. Or demographic of a very short time attention span. And by having a more active portfolio gives us something to look at every day.

It's almost like Instagram when you get a notification or you get a new like it's like, my stock's up 5%, let me check it. It's little blast of dopamine. So part of it is mental manipulation, but part of it is really just what we want. I think as a generation, what we're looking for in and through an investing strategy that makes it makes a lot of sense.

You know, a lot of your cohorts in Gen Z are recent college graduates, and you talked a little bit about how you learned a lot through social media channels, but what did you learn about finance and investing in college and even in high school? Anything at all? Well, in high school, I didn't learn jack diddly squat, seriously. So I went to one of the best high schools in Pennsylvania.

I mean, my my school cost $40,000 a year to go to and high school. I learned a lot, but I did not learn about personal finance at all. There wasn't even a personal finance track, which some high schools have. So I will leave not one at face value. I learned nothing in college was not much better. So I went to a five year program where I'd say I had a really, really good education.

Again, this was a very expensive school. I did not take Finance 301 until my third year till my junior year out of five. In order to do that, I had to take business 101, business 102 accounting 115, accounting 116 just to get to the base level of finance, which by the way, taught me net present value IRR, things that rarely come into play in everyone's lives.

And let's actually take this a step further. Now. I've graduated, I have a degree in finance and business analytics, and still to this day, some of the classes that resonate with me is like risk analysis, which is a drawing options entrepreneurial finance, which is learning how to fundraise, things that are unique to a career, but nothing that spans outside of a job set, right?

Nothing that applies to everyone filling out a check, analyzing your taxes, taking in It doesn't even sound like things like fundamental or technical analysis are really taught in in a lot of these classes. No, I mean, don't get me wrong, I can't just sit here and crap on the entire education system. Of course, I learned how to calculate free cash flow.

I learned how to I learned fundamental analysis, I learned ratio analysis. I learned how to read financial statements. But I did have to have a very specific concentration in finance in order to get that, because I promise you, if you're not in finance, you don't have to learn after finance. 301 And we did not learn that in finance.

301 So in order to really learn about fundamental analysis, you really need to have a very specific concentration in finance. At my school. So, you know, my follow up question then is, is there really a lack of financial education in the formal educational system? And if so, what can younger people do to supplement their knowledge? Yeah, there's definitely a lack, and I think that unfortunately is by design.

That might be a little controversial, but it does seem that the education system is not really built to teach you how to do everything else. Our economy might not succeed. We need people to help that have specific concentrations and taxes and financial analysis and all kinds of other stuff that, you know, they don't want us to necessarily be experts in.

So to get away from the controversy, how can you go above and beyond? And for the record, I actually should should say in the education system, not teaching us everything has allowed people like me to create a living off the back of that. And in doing so, you're actually spreading the economical worth across way more people rather than one massive company getting all the money.

And now large companies are able to spread their wealth to hundreds of creators other than advertising to thousands of audience members. So in a way, I think the education system for failing us because it's allowed this creator economy to thrive and the wealth to be spread. So I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me now that rolls into my.

Yeah. My next question is, you know, is Gen Z more financially savvy even given this lack of formal education than some of the previous generations had at a similar age? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, listen, it's not like we're walking our way backwards on the education. That's actually it's the other issue, right? They're saying the education system hasn't evolved in hundreds of years, so it's still the same that it was generations ago.

That's the theory. Right? So we are absolutely more financially savvy because we are the first generation that has really had the outside resources at our fingertips. I think everyone was dealt the same crappy hand over the past few hundred years. We just have the availability to go out and get more for free and sometimes without even trying to write your score on Tick Tock and someone might get you with a really good hook that keeps you there for the full minute.

And then at the end to be like, Dang, I just learned something. So we are absolutely more financially savvy. Again, I think our biggest hurdle here is that idea that the stock market gets boring when we're in a bear market and people don't understand the fundamentals of investing to the degree that, I need to take advantage of a bear market, I need to invest throughout this recession, a lot of people get burnt, lose their money, never go back.

So it's kind of escaping the the continuous repetition that seems to happen with every generation. Yeah. And on that in that regard, I have a good stat for you. Three in four of aspiring Gen Z and millennial investors say social media posts and influencers making investing look easy. That's not necessarily translating to into their own lives. Yeah. Unfortunately social media creators have a filter.

They get to choose what they post. Now think about this as a lifestyle influencer. If you if you daily vlog, you're probably only going to share the happy parts of your life. Same thing on Instagram. If you're an Instagram model, you're probably only going to post the pictures that you look pretty. And same rule applies to finance. There's nothing stopping me from posting a trade that did poorly.

I can post any trade I want so yeah, I understand the idea of making it look easy, but I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that, you know, social media is is actually taking a huge turn away from the gloss and the glam and into a more realistic space where it's more of. join my investing journey, come through the hardships with me.

Let's grow together. And as long as that continues to be our priority and no one's trying to fake it till they make it, then I don't think it needs to look easier. I think it just needs to look attainable.

Yeah, and there needs to have some more of that educational content to it. 73% of Gen-Z and 70% of millennial investors still don't know where or how to begin investing. And so my question is, is, is this all just smoke and mirrors? And what what are your tips and tricks to finding credible social media content?

First of all, it's bad content if they're telling you to do something, if their video results in you by telling you to buy or sell a stock, I don't think that's good content because that is not our place unless for some reason there is a Series seven certified CFA that is purposefully trying to give financial advice of which I have never seen.

Then I don't think that that I think that you want to stay away from anyone that is trying to claim they are a guru, that they know it all, that they can predict the future. Because the fact of the matter is, is no one can predict the stock market. But what I would say is look for those that are explaining macroeconomic terms, that are trying to break the information down, that aren't using the bells and whistles that in by what that by that I mean the infographics and the sounds and all of the stuff to grab your attention.

The ones that are just speaking to the camera that have qualifications. A lot of creators will, you know, show off that they have they're certified financial analyst, they're a certified financial planner. They're they have their series seven. I mean, even someone like you, Justin, you're highly qualified. I told you today you should be making tiktoks. It's it's taking the time looking into somebody.

I mean, anyone that is making a TikTok should have a LinkedIn and should have some work experience, at least a degree. So by all means, look me up on LinkedIn and look up every other creator just like you would look into a company before you, you know, started paying for their services or started working with them or letting them represent you.

Yeah, doing your due diligence can never hurt.

Well, put.

A buzz word. I've been hearing a lot lately in relation to investing among younger people. Is gamification. How would you define gamification?

To me, the idea of gamification is trying to turn investing into something that is a game, right? That's a really crappy, that's a really crappy definition. But gamification is a pretty self-explanatory term. It's trying to turn the stock market into gambling. It's trying to make something fun that isn't supposed to be. Investing is not fun people. It is boring, it is awful, It is slow.

The best people earn 10% a year. Do the math. Look at what 10% looks like. It's not that much money by gamifying it. It's a get rich quick scheme. this is fun. you can, you know, make money so quickly. You can. Yeah. I mean, I think the classic case of gamification in my mind is there's a certain brokerage that I used to be on that when I would try and refer a friend to it.

By referring a friend, you would get a reward and that reward would look like a golden ticket and you would scratch off that ticket. And when they would show you the stock you were in and then confetti would explode. Now, listen, I am all for trying to get your friends on platforms and trying to encourage the active investing.

But when you set a precedent that this is like a scratch off ticket and then you just earn a random stock, it sets this precedent that there's no strategy behind this. This is a game. This is a sport. This is like football. So, yeah, I mean, we're kind of all over the place on how to define gamification. Is there anything that you think I'm missing?

And no, I totally think you're right. And my next question is, is there a line in the sand when it comes to the game like features and discussion?

Again, to me, the big difference, I think it's if you want to try and speak highly of investing and say that this is worth it, it's worth your time speaking positively about it, trying to explain that there are inherent benefits. I wouldn't qualify classify that as gamification, but still encouraging the active investing gamification is when you start to promote penny stocks and talk about talk about unbelievable gains and again, try to try to make this almost like you're gambling.

See, I mean, I don't have a lot more to add to it as far as where there's a line in the sand. Encouragement is that line. If you're encouraging someone to invest for the right reasons, then I think that's where the line is. And I see that we're all starting. But is there any features? I think that's the line in the sand right there.

That feature where you're referring a friend, you're encouraging them to invest, but then the way you do it feels like you just got surprised with the scratch off ticket and everyone's celebrating. So that's where my line is because I'm not sure if I would classify that as gamification. I love the idea of encouraging investors to come in and start their journey, but also I don't want them to be under the mindset that it's a fun, entertaining, eccentric, right?

All these fun words that make investing sound like what it's not. Investing is a slow, meticulous, this boring process that takes decades. Tens of years.

Are very true. When I think of gamification and how the lines between fantasy and gaming can be blurred with reality. The 1983 cult classic WarGames movie comes into my mind. In the movie, Matthew Broderick plays a genius high school student who and Whitley unwittingly gains access to a US defense supercomputer while looking to find a computer gaming company.

A tic tac toe chess and checkers are among a list of games he finds, but they all prove too pedestrian, and then he sees the game global thermal nuclear war that catches his eye. The advanced A.I. of the supercomputer can't discern between simulation and reality, and his experiment quickly escalates into the beginning stages of World War three.

A.I. is a really hot investing sector right now. Why do you think that is, and how do you think I might change investing itself?

Great question. Artificial intelligence. I mean, people look at it as the next bubble, right? We all saw it in 1999 to 2001 when the Internet was invented. And we saw that insane bubble where stocks are gaining by 3,000% over a year to two years. And that's because it revolutionized how we work with technology on a day to day basis.

And I think for the first time since 1999, we're seeing that again, artificial intelligence does not seem to be going anywhere. It does not remind me of Nfts or crypto, which is a similar bubble we saw two years ago. This is proven to make software engineers lives more efficient from four times to eight times at this point already.

So people are excited and right now they want to put as much money as they can into it. Knowing the risk, knowing that if they get in now 10 to 20 years from now, it could be worth so much more. And just trying to get ahead of the curve because that's the whole idea. Buy it while it's low, sell it while it's high.

So that's why I think A.I. is so hot. I think it's a huge factor that is stopping us from a crippling recession that every other econ, the macroeconomic factor, would point to. There's just this bubble right now where there's so much value and no one sees it ending anytime soon. It's really keeping the market tight. Now, how might AI change investing?

That is a whole separate topic because it's you can invest into A.I. or you could technically use A.I. to help you invest in That is through Python trading, right? If you wanted to do some kind of python trading where you have an algorithm that is analyzing scenarios and investing based off of the coding that you wrote, but but you could use A.I. in the future to help you do that.

And I think Bloomberg is already coming out with that. And there are other brokerage companies that already have like an API that you can ask questions to or allow you to research much quicker, analyze stocks and analyze competitors. So whether you're having it code for you and track stocks for you or you're having it do the research for you through fundamental ways, like sifting through ten years of 10-ks and finding any trends potentially, right?

So it should definitely for those that understand the market, I think it will help them excel. And for those that don't understand the market, I think it'll expedite the learning process.

Yeah, and I think that will be really key in a lot of these uses of AI. You really have to already understand what you're doing and just kind of boost your knowledge from there. But you still have to get on board. You just can't blindly go at it.

Right?

So let's talk about risk. And there seems to be a strong appetite for riskier investments with high volatility among Gen Z like crypto options, growth stocks with no earnings or little revenue. You know, what's what's the appeal?

I fault financial influencers. So you know we're not perfect. I think that people most influencers are great at two things storytelling and marketing, right? Whether you're any kind of influencer. So people get so hung up on the idea of selling a good hook, telling a great story that they forget to actually back up their claims. So in terms of the appeal of these companies with no earnings and little revenue they're being sold to, it's very rare that somebody in this modern society is finding a stock completely on their own.

I would say that most of the time they're learning from somebody else, whether it's a YouTuber or an article on a on a website, maybe someone's talking about it in the Moomoo community and they're speaking really highly of it. They're selling it really hard, right? They're saying, you know, this is a this could be the next Amazon. And look at how low the price to earnings ratio is, because you can use ratio analysis to basically spin anything you want.

It's like, well, there is no price earnings ratio. They don't have an earnings. So point being, we are young, we are ignorant and we are impulsive. And I say that with nothing but positivity because we are very curious and we want to learn. And as long as we can continue to learn through mistake and adjust our learnings, our just our strategy based off of our learnings, and I think we will continue to succeed and be one of the highest performing generations in the entire financial history.

Now that appetite comes from that same ignorance and that same that that youth in that yeah, that lack of knowledge, so that curiosity. So I think it's just up to the financial creators to be more transparent, to be more honest and and really try and tell the full story for these stocks when they're discussing them.

I also think Gen Z has a real passion for DIY. Do it yourself in social media. Seems to be the go to for this type of information. There's all those fixer upper real estate shows that are really insanely popular and DIY has seen a comeback in the investing space after years of passive strategies taking increased share of investor dollars, What's the real appeal of active investing to Gen Z?

Well, we briefly touched on this, but again, I think it's this it's it just kind of follows in suit with our day to day lives. We're swiping, we're watching so much media on a day to day basis. Everything that we do is on a day to day basis, whether it's checking Instagram, checking our email, checking Twitter, sending Snapchats to each other, homework, school, everything is a day to day basis.

And we're young and it's all we know. Grade school. It's the majority of our lives. So why is investing any different? And until that is abundantly drilled into our head, I think it is just normal for us to be actively investing, to think that we can beat the system. I mean, I've made this mistake myself many times, whether it's through naked options or I'm just trying to buy an option that's way out of the money and see if I can make a few hundred bucks on it overnight and then sell it.

Yeah, I think a lot of times people only think about the money they put in. They don't think about what it's worth at any point in time. And no matter where you are, there you are. Meaning a stock or a security is worth what it's worth. That at that point in time and if you've made or lost money on it, it's not necessarily as important.

And I think a lot of people don't think about that enough.

And people get caught up in the numbers because they're so greedy. You look at the numbers and not the percentages. Most people would kill for a 20% return on an annual basis, and I probably had something like a 5,000% return that I could have sold at any point and been happy with. But again, I was greedy, I was ignorant, and I wasn't paying attention to what really mattered.

However, that's just my biggest regret. That's not my job. I wouldn't call that a mistake because that was me learning. I needed to do that. I needed this was, you know, the first year that I was an investor, I needed to make these mistakes. I needed to test my luck and then I came out of it a much better investor.

Now, here's a mistake that I made that I think offers a much better learning lesson, which is in April of this month, I hated where the markets were. We were up like 15% and I was furious. I was like, We do not deserve this. Rates are at all time highs, inflation is ridiculously high. Student loans are coming back.

I mean, everything thing was not in our favor, but yet the markets were pumping. So I wanted to wash my money for tax purposes. So I sold everything. I think I was probably, you know, like a $10,000 loss or something crazy. And so I was like, was fine, I'll wash it for a few years. It rolls over. And for the record, if you guys don't, if you sell your stock for a loss, you can use that as a tax write off, which we can get into later.

So that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to tax loss harvest it and then wash it, which means I wanted to. You have to wait at least a month to put your money back into that same stock. But I wasn't so interested in doing that because I had a lot of stocks like the workhorses and the Jumia's.

You know, the next this, the next that I didn't really want to be in them. I wanted to have a much safer portfolio. So I held off at some point in that process of holding off, I saw where T-bills were and I was like, Dang, five and a half percent for T-bills. That looks nice. For the record, I have a degree in finance and I did not realize that this was annualized.

So mistake number one, I saw five and a half percent over six months and I was like, This is insane. It's now been six months. I have not made five and a half percent. So that's mistake number one.

But you've made half of that. And in the interim, you've seen the market go way up, but it started to come back down. So are you is it really that worse off given given your risk adjusted?

Well, here's the file. Here's the mistake for one. Let's get into the big mistake and we'll talk nitty gritty, because the big mistake is that I was impulsive. I thought I was better than the market. I thought I was smarter than everyone else. And I wanted to make a quick decision to try and get a small outcome. However, if I had just left my money in the market for 20 years like I originally planned to in 2020, then I may be doing just fine right now.

The problem was that I thought that I could outperform the market. I thought that I was smarter and I was impatient. Even though I'd spent this whole podcast talking about how I've learned. So you will always make more mistakes investing. That's the that's my big mistake is that I just I thought I could outperform. Now, did I really do much worse now?

I'm actually considering about going back into T-bills because they're about to they're about to mature October 12th specifically, they mature. So now I have all this money and I'm saying to myself, I still really don't like where the markets are. I still think we're about to crash. So maybe I will go back into T-bills. However, if I were to do it differently, I would leverage or I would not leverage.

I apologize. I would hedge my bets. I put a hundred, take that back. I put 90% of my portfolio into T-bills and the 10% that I did not put into T-bills, I kept in my in certain stocks for loss. You know, 7% of it was in a dividend stock that I didn't see a need to sell. 3% of it was in a company that was down so horrendously that I was just praying it would come back.

So given that your money is, you know, coming due you'll have some money to invest, What's your outlook for the market for the rest of the year and what might be the biggest factors that will contribute to the stock moving the movement either up and down?

Yeah, look, I'll try to keep this short because there's a lot of macroeconomic factors, factors. But the point is, is I think they're all basically against us. Auto loans are currently higher than credit card debt, which is whole apologized. Auto loans are currently higher than student loans. Student loans are ROI, right. That's a return on investment. Auto loans on a depreciating asset is not a good look.

We're also paying student loans back. So I started paying some loans this year This this month I owe about $350 a month That normally could be a car payment, that could be car insurance, that could go towards a load of other things that I no longer have. That freedom and luxury to spend on inflation is somehow still fighting us.

Gas prices are unbelievable. I mean, the list goes on and on. So I also think real estate's going to become an issue. A lot of people in 2018 were buying commercial real estate in New York City, and those office buildings are completely empty now and they're getting up on their five year commercial lease and they're going to have to raise their rates from 3% to 9%.

And it's going to cause a lot of foreclosures. So I am so bearish on the market, I can't even begin to explain it. But I have lots of friends that feel the complete opposite and that's why I think it's really important for us as investors to weigh opinions of everyone, because nobody can predict the future. And we're all trying to work off of historic.

But the fact of the matter is, is we're in an unprecedented time. I mean, look at the look how long we've been inverted for. Look at where unemployment is. It's nothing makes sense right now. And I would actually be curious to hear if you think otherwise.

Well, my kind of counter question to that and I always want to hear, you know, I can play devil's advocate, but I'd rather you play devil's advocate. You know, you're very negative. But what could happen to see the market rally? Well, where do you see you're always talking about being hedged. What's your hedge? What where do where would it kill you if you were going to going to be either flat or short?

Where would the hedge come in? You know what, would push us higher from here.

So in order for the stock market to actually start increasing, we would need to see inflation start to come down again steadily. We would want to see unemployment actually, we might want to see unemployment shoot up for the for the short term because that would mean the Fed's doing its job. So there's actually a misconception here that by keeping unemployment low, by keeping interest or not interest, by keeping unemployment low, we're doing a good job because people have jobs in the economy.

We need to see a bit of pain, which is backwards maybe at first glance. But if we started to see some pain in the economy, I would start investing. That's just my opinion. I think that there are other opportunities that could push us straight into bullish territory. Obviously, AI would help with that interest coming back down. I mean, we need a soft landing.

I think if the Fed started cutting rates right away, we would actually probably be in a state of panic. We need to see the rates come down slowly. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's I think that I don't know, I'm kind of blinking here. To me, it seems like we need to be in almost it's the dollar is is in question as well the strength of the dollar.

And we have global war going on right now. So I don't know it's somewhat dependent on our commodities, It's somewhat dependent on our resources, the value of our dollar, the shortage of things like chips in technology. I'd say we're in a very complicated macroeconomic climate and it's hard to factor in exactly what would turn us from bearish to bullish.

Well, I think you've certainly give us given us a lot to think about, you know, on the macro scale. But I would also remind your earnings are coming up and, you know, stocks do move the market as well and how they do so I think we'll get the find out in the next few weeks whether the market will go up or will it go down.

And I would just argue that's almost temporary. I'd say that there's a lot of ignorant investors that see a beat versus a miss and they react a certain way. But the fact is, is Apple will beat their earnings. They're really good at beating their earnings, but it does not mean that they produced more revenue this year than last year.Just because they correctly predicted their performance does not mean their performance is succeeding it’s prior year. And I think that's something that a lot of investors need to keep an eye on.

Yeah, that's something that's always difficult the game because so many companies to beat their earnings yeah it's.

Manipulated and it's up to them. They're the ones that create the consensus and in the middle of or not the consensus, they're the ones that create future guidance. And in the middle of the quarter, they could always strike down their guidance, which would give them maybe a -5 to 10% stock day, but it would slowly grow back up as people forgot.

And then they'll beat their earnings and they'll probably grow 5 to 10% as a result. I think institutional investors think one way and then, you know, novice investors. I was going to call them recreational investors. They think another they see beat they are bullish. They don't ever look too deep into it. So I think that is that's that's another issue to consider.

While the great part about the market is both novice advanced institutional retail, everyone gets to vote with their own dollars that they put in in investing. And with that, I'd like to thank Russ for being on the show. That's all the time we have today. Russ Thank you so much. Hopefully we'll have you back on the pod again soon.

Absolutely. And if you have not downloaded the Moomoo app yet, I would highly suggest that you do not investing advice, just personal advice. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Bye bye.

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