SELLEST OSAST
What does everyone need to know about investing, including the people who have no interest in it? In this episode, host Tano Santos is joined by two previous guests and longtime friends of the show: Jenny Harrington, CEO of Gilman Hill Asset Management, and Jenny Wallace, co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Summit Street Capital Management. Harrington co-edited Investment Wisdom For Our Friends And Loved Ones, a collection of 25 essays written for the friends and family who keep asking where to start, and the conversation uses the book as a map of the ground anyone should cover. The three discuss why the mechanics of investing are far easier than the psychology, Warren Buffett's test for a wounded athlete, why holding too much cash is its own form of market timing, and how to read financial news without mistaking noise for signal. Each guest also closes with the one name she is thinking about right now, and much more!
Key Topics:
- The conversation with a widowed friend that started the book (3:50)
- Recruiting 23 contributors and what each was asked to write (5:17)
- How the two Jennys met, and the Columbia AVI stock pitch (5:58)
- Financial literacy and the Council for Economic Education (8:14)
- "Know thyself" as the first step of an investing process (11:30)
- Why the mechanics of investing are easier than the psychology (12:20)
- Warren Buffett's wounded athlete, and checking the ankle (14:14)
- The base minimum needed to talk to whoever manages your money (17:24)
- Risk as the chance of permanent capital loss (23:06)
- Chana Schoenberger on investing early and investing mechanically (26:32)
- Compounding a teenager's $2,000 Roth IRA contribution (27:32)
- Nancy Mayer's 80/20 letter to her granddaughter (30:14)
- Being a sensible investor, and how much cash to hold (31:26)
- How Summit Street screens for financial characteristics (33:15)
- Where the two Jennys' approaches diverge (34:53)
- Cash, market timing and the drag of inflation (39:25)
- Reading financial news and separating noise from signal (44:06)
- Moby Dick, fixation, and Kathryn Rooney Vera's book pick (49:03)
- Jamie Franco on teams and the value of a sounding board (51:43)
- Independent judgment versus contrarianism for its own sake (56:24)
- Jenny Harrington on Alphabet's convertible preferred shares (57:48)
- Jenny Wallace on Signet Jewelers as a diamond in the rough (59:45)
- Positioning a portfolio against an AI-driven market (66:49)
- What keeps them up at night: national debt and AI disruption (71:22)
- Book and podcast recommendations (75:10)
- And much more!
Mentioned in this Episode:
Companies and Organizations
- Gilman Hill Asset Management
- Summit Street Capital Management
- Columbia Business School
- Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing
- Council for Economic Education
- Boys & Girls Clubs of America
- Neuberger Berman
- McKinsey & Company
- J.P. Morgan
- Goldman Sachs
- Morgan Stanley
- CNBC
- Alphabet
- Anthropic (Claude)
- OpenAI (ChatGPT)
- CoreWeave
- Tesla
- Signet Jewelers
- Albertsons
- The Clorox Company
- Kimberly-Clark
- Berkshire Hathaway
- Financial Times
- The Wall Street Journal
- Bloomberg
- American Banker
- Netflix
- Santa Fe Institute
Books and Recommended Reading
- Jenny Harrington & Rebecca Patterson – Investment Wisdom For Our Friends And Loved Ones
- Jenny Van Leeuwen Harrington – Dividend Investing: Dependable Income to Navigate All Market Environments
- Herman Melville – Moby-Dick
- Steven Novella – The Skeptics' Guide to the Future
- John Steinbeck – East of Eden
- Annie Proulx – The Shipping News
- Oz Pearlman – Read Your Mind
- Dr. David Sinclair – Lifespan
Investment Wisdom Contributors Mentioned
- Nana Adae
- Gina Martin Adams
- Kari Firestone
- Jamie Franco
- Catherine Keating
- Solita Marcelli
- Nancy Mayer
- Rebecca Patterson
- Kathryn Rooney Vera
- Chana Schoenberger
- Katie Stockton
- Bryn Talkington
- Liz Thomas
Thanks for Listening!
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