How do you get started with a career in finance? What about a career in financial freedom? Discussion of these questions and more in this mailbag episode of the Rule Breaker Investing podcast.
To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.
This video was recorded on September 28, 2022.
David Gardner: You want to get started with a career in financial services or investing, or financial freedom. Maybe you’re middle-aged and considering switching into our field, throwing away your collar, blue or white, in favor of a Motley cap. Well, if this is you, glad you asked because a few others did too this month, which is why here at month’s end in your Rule Breaker Investing mailbag, we’re going to speak to that, these things plus a visit from my Rule Breakers team and other sundry delights and treats only on this week’s Rule Breaker Investing.
Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing sundry delights and treats. I think I just said a little while ago. Reminds me of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Do you remember Edmond? Do you remember the white which, and do you remember the white witch offering Edmond Turkish delight? I don’t think I’ve ever had Turkish delight. I don’t think people talk about it much anymore, but I did do a little research. Apparently, it’s absolutely delicious and it’s not that easy to make. Anyway, various sundry, sometimes Turkish, delights and treats await us on this month’s podcast. This is your Rule Breaker Investing mailbag. To see where we’ve been this month, we kicked it off here in September with “Pet Peeves Volume 7.” My most self-indulgent, truly one of my favorite podcasts to do every year, but we only do it about once a year. It was this month. We followed it up with a “Review-a-Palooza” episode of two five-stock samplers, and then of course, last week was “The Market Cap Game Show” with a new rule, no spoilers, although really you should have listened to it by now.
But if you haven’t, you should go back and play. Which had an 11th stock included for the first time due to our new tiebreaker rule which we actually had remarkably to invoke. Let’s just start it this month with some of the hot takes from Twitter as I like to do, and let’s start with the “Market Cap Game Show” at @OtherMikeSteele, you wrote, “The shorter intro and faster jump into the game is a great improvement. Whoever suggested that is a genius.” It’ll be our little secret, Mike, who suggested that. Next, Gaurav Kumar @GauravKInvestor tweeted, “This was the best market cap episode to date, and yes, I have heard them all, going back to the first.” “The reference to Etsy,” Gaurav writes, “was the best part.” Ybmscr @ybmscr on Twitter, thank you for this. “The whole game,” you tweeted “is always awesome, probably because of its scarcity as you say, but there’s for sure a different level of excitement on the Final Jeopardy-style question,” also known as our tiebreaker. Ybmscr continues, “I wonder if there’s a way to always incorporate it so that we can have one even if there isn’t a tie.
It’s also the one question we’re choosing a range size is a lot more than just playing mind games.” You and I replied back-and-forth on Twitter about this, and I ended up so agreeing with you that going forward, the new format of the Market Cap Game Show, it will receive yet another tweak next time. We’re going to do what we did with the tiebreaker twice during the regular game. Kind of lifting another page from Jeopardy where you have a daily double, I will randomly be invoking that tiebreaker rule we won’t go into it. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, you have to go back and listen to last week’s podcasts. But we’re going to invoke that tiebreaker within the normal body of the show for two of the 10 stocks. Randomly chosen, I know Rick Engdahl, my talented producer, will have some new sound effect for when that happens. We’ll try not to steal too much intellectual property from the people at Jeopardy.
Anyway, I totally agree with you ybmscr, and thank you Sam Stevens for the Stephens sudden death rule, which is about to become a regular feature. Not every question, just a couple of special times during the show for future Market Cap Game Shows. A few other tweets. Reacting to my Pet Peeves episode @KerryPrep. I was talking about astrology at one point in that episode. @KerryPrep writes, “For decades when approached with wide-eyed eager anticipation of a response when asked, “What sign were you born under?” my answer is, “A stop sign” A fellow wag. Two tweets speaking to our back catalog. We certainly take some pride on this podcast as a community for the value of many of our past episodes. If we were a news podcast, I would not encourage you to go back and listen to what we were talking about last week, let alone seven years ago. But as we are not a news podcasts, we are an advice podcasts, we’re a storytelling podcast. We’re an investing podcast. I do think our back catalog is valuable and I’m glad to hear you feel the same way @Mr_JMVela7 who tweeted this month, “Thanks to an interview with @JamesClear on @RBIPodcast I read Atomic Habits. This book really is life changing. I started creating new habits where I had been struggling for years. Do yourself a favor and read this book. Thanks @DavidGFool.”
Well, thank you @Mr_JMVela7. Of course, thanks again to James Clear for appearing on the podcast a few years ago talking about his wonderful best-seller, Atomic Habits. Jason Moore, @JimminyJilickrz, you wrote @DavidGFool and @TylerReber there even better than the pitch. Now, what is Jason referring to? He’s referring to a visit from a full techie named Tyler Reber came on last month, and Tyler, in addition to answering a mailbag item on last month’s mailbag, also, I got a chance to mention and brag about his beautiful photography. I really thought of as mainly ornithological, because I see so many great pictures of birds that Tyler has taken and posts up on our corporate Slack. But really, he’s a nature photographer. So Jason Moore is reacting saying those photos are even better than I was pitching them. He said, “Awesome work, Tyler, thanks for the tip about getting down to the subject level.” For listeners who didn’t get to learn that, since we’re all photographers today with our smartphones, Tyler was coaching us whenever you’re taking a picture of nature to get right down there on the level of the creature, or seeing that you are taking a photograph of it makes it much more vivid and exciting to be right at the level of what your photographing.
Too many of us, well I’ll raise my hand anyway, too many of us tend to stand up and point down with our cameras at the things we’re taking pictures of, so that was a great photo tip from a real pro. “Jason close that tweet. The last great photo tip from Rule Breaker Investing was to make the subject off center of the shot and it improved my photos tremendously. Looking forward to giving this a go.” Well, thank you, Jason Moore. The last tweet, I’ll call up Alex Carignan @alexcarignan13. “I will never understand people’s hesitancy,’ Alex writes, ‘to invest during downturns. If anything, I’m most hesitant when the market, he writes, ‘is at all time highs? I think I owe a lot of this @DavidGFool and @RBIPodcasts.” Well, thank you very much. Alex, I can’t always describe myself as a big bottom fisher or a hero in dark times, I’ve often said I’m not trying to be a bear market hero because bear markets don’t happen that often. I’d much rather as Rule Breakers, we’re all bull market heroes because that’s when the real numbers run up.
But I will say this, maybe the most thematic phrase for this podcast in the year 2022 is, has been, maybe will continue to be, just keep swimming, and when you rock Dory’s phrase and yank it out of its original context from Finding Nemo, and you use it as an investor, it reminds us to do exactly what Alex is doing, which is to continue investing during the downturns. You’ll be amazed by the results years from now. Well, thank you for a wonderful month of tweets. We are again @RBIPodcast on Twitter. I’m @DavidGFool if you want to follow me on Twitter. But man, do I enjoy following the community of so many Fools and Rule Breakers that has assembled in and around this podcast on Twitter, so thank you each. Now for the tweets though, keep them coming. We always appreciate it @RBIPodcast, of course, our Twitter handle for this podcast, you can find them. Follow me on Twitter if you like, @DavidGFool. Rule Breaker Mailbag, Item number 1, this one is from Jeff Chrishell. Thank you, Jeff for this note. David’s based on a true story tip, that was from my Pet Peeves Volume 7 podcast earlier this month, immediately made me wonder if such a visualization is available for books.
Now I’m going to pause it there for a sec, and just mention that as I talked about movies that claim to be based on a true story, or inspired by a true story, or based on a true story in Jeff’s words. I referenced the website informationisbeautiful.net and it really is beautiful, the page I’m talking about. If you hadn’t already done this, you can just google the phrase, movie visualization based on a true story, and the top hit will take you to Information is Beautiful. You’ll find what looks to my eye, I took chemistry back in high school, but is it a spectrograph? A left to right strip of blue and red shades, and what you’re seeing on that page when it’s blue, is that time, that portion of the movie that is actually true. Looking at movies based on true stories, you can look across the full two hours of the movie as a strip of colors, and see when it’s red and it was not telling the truth, it was inventing or is outright false, or blue when it was recounting accurately the events of that story.
It’s a really…
Read More: So You Want a Career in Finance? | The Motley Fool