Bonds

• The good news on bonds. (morningstar.com)
• The case for muni bonds. (ritholtz.com)

Strategy

• Diversification means more than asset classes. (awealthofcommonsense.com)
• Investors just don't have a good track record with thematic ETFs. (morningstar.com)
• Jeff Malec talks with Ian Cassel, author of "Stock Picker: How to develop the mindset, temperament, and strategy to outperform Wall Street." (rcmalternatives.com)

AI

• Proving a return on AI is challenging for companies. (apollo.com)
• AI doesn't need to reach superintelligence to cause harm. (calnewport.com)
• Just how good are open-source models? (ft.com)
• Agents use a lot more tokens than humans. (tomtunguz.com)
• AI hates CAPTCHA as well. (semafor.com)

Apple

• Apple ($AAPL) still knows how to put on an event. (spyglass.org)
• How the iPhone Duo came to be. (tomsguide.com)
• Do you really want your Apple Watch listening to you? (sixcolors.com)

Stay in touch

• Work in wealth management? Sign up for our exclusive Talking Wealth newsletter. (talkingwealthpod.com)
• Don't miss a thing! Sign up for our daily e-mail newsletter. (abnormalreturns.com)

Economy

• How inflation has raised the price level - prices that consumers actually pay. (nytimes.com)
• Rising oil prices are going to feed into higher inflation down the line. (bonddad.blogspot.com)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

• What you missed in our Thursday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Longform links: actual writing. (abnormalreturns.com)

Mixed media

• Why 'Coyote vs. Acme' is one of 'the best films about civil litigation ever made.' (prospectmagazine.co.uk)
• Movie-going is becoming a premium experience. (nytimes.com)
• Do moviegoers prefer happy endings? (stephenfollows.com)

​• 25 Years After the Sept. 11 Attacks, Lower Manhattan Is Thriving: The neighborhood’s population has roughly tripled, dozens of office buildings became apartments, and financial services no longer dominates downtown employment. (Wall Street Journal) see also How a Restaurant at the Top of the World Trade Center Changed New York: Windows on the World, over 100 stories up the North Tower, was a culinary juggernaut. (Wall Street Journal)

• What is driving the global rise in long-term interest rates? Rising bond yields are likely down to stronger investment demand, more supply of long-duration debt and less absorption by yield-insensitive investors. ​Gene Frieda’s Bruegel analysis — stronger investment demand, more supply of long-duration debt, and less absorption by yield-insensitive investors. (Bruegel)

​• The Dramatic Story of the Pentagon on 9/11: From the co-author of Firefight, the definitive account of what happened at America’s military headquarters. The momentous terror attacks 25 years ago almost put the Pentagon out of commission. These are the people who kept the military’s nerve center open for business.  (The Pinpoint Press) see also After 9/11, Documents Suggest, New Yorkers Were Misled About Air Quality: The Mamdani administration releases more than 170,000 pages on the air around the World Trade Center site — the mayor says city leaders “lied” about it being safe. (New York Times)

​• Franklin Templeton Turns the Tide as Western Asset Crisis Recedes: Asset manager moves past painful chapter to extend franchise in public and private markets and reach $1.8tn in assets. Harriet Clarfelt on the abrupt denouement — Ken Leech pleaded guilty to obstructing the cherry-picking investigation, after well over $150 billion in redemptions from Western Asset. (Financial Times).

• A Personal Recollection From a Day of Horror: A first person accont of that dreadful day. (The Big Picture) see also Postscript: The follow up, a few weeks later. (The Big Picture)

​• 14 Reasons Robotics Is Hard: AI progress is racing along, but nearly all of it lives inside a computer — a skeptical tour of the parallel race to build broadly capable humanoid robots. (Second Thoughts)

• The Staggering Financial Cost of 9/11: Quantifying in dollar terms the toll taken by a horrific event and its many consequences. (City Journal) see also Trump’s 9/11 Fantasies: Trump has made similar claims in interviews for decades, claiming to have sent 100 or more construction workers to Ground Zero. Trump has claimed he “helped“ clear rubble and “spent a lot of time down there.” There is no evidence any of this is true. Judd Legum on the president marking the anniversary by describing his own role in heroic terms. (Popular Information)

​• The Metta of Mister Rogers: Twenty-five years after his last episode aired, Gayathri Narayanan on Fred Rogers’ enduring practice of loving-kindness and seeing the good in others. (Lion’s Roar)

​• A Long War Will Permanently Damage Oil Demand: Tim McDonnell on the structural shift underway as the conflict grinds on. In other words, rather than being Big Oil’s biggest booster, Trump could be dragging forward the moment of peak consumption. (Semafor) see also Trump Is Preparing for a Long War: The military is doing long-term planning for its force in the Persian Gulf, risking further strain on the Navy. Nancy A. Youssef on the military’s long-term plansand the further strain on the Navy. (The Atlantic).

​• Jimmy Kimmel’s Interview With James Talarico Heading to YouTube to Avoid FCC Hassle: The Texas Senate candidate’s sit-down gets pulled from the ABC broadcast and streamed instead. (Hollywood Reporter)

Video of the day: NFTs Are Still a Thing, Apparently

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Seth Bernstein, CEO of AllianceBernstein and Head of Asset Management of Equitable Holdings, the 69% owner AB. The firm manages $905.5B. Previously, he spent 32 years at JPMorgan Chase, where he eventually became the Global Head of Managed Solutions & Strategy at JPAM, responsible for all discretionary assets for Private Banking clients, and Global Head of Fixed Income & Currency. He eventually became CFO of JPM’s Investment Management & Private Banking division.

How much of August’s payroll strength was seasonal?

Source: US Economist BofA

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

The post 10 September 11th Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Also in industry news this week:

• An examination of Form ADV filings finds that firms that disclosed AI use actually saw higher staff headcount growth, indicating that for a subset of firms AI adoption is intended to complement, rather than supplant, human team members
• While the SEC under chair Paul Atkins appears to be less interested in pursuing broad enforcement actions related to advisory firms' use of off-channel communications with prospects and clients than in years past, an attorney and former SEC official suggests that implementing and enforcing policies toward electronic communications (and their storage) could help firms avoid client harm (which could make them subject to an enforcement action) or, in the case of broker-dealers, continued FINRA scrutiny of communication failures (even if no client harm has occurred)

From there, we have several articles on retirement planning:

• An analysis of Social Security claims data and self-reported health amongst retirees finds that those who are in poorer health tend to claim Social Security earlier (in many cases, correctly identifying a shorter expected lifespan)
• While wealthier individuals often are able to delay claiming Social Security benefits (to receive their maximum monthly benefit), those who are particularly wealthy might choose to claim earlier to fund insurance policies that could, amongst other purposes, help heirs pay for estate taxes owed
• How the ability to claim six months of retroactive Social Security benefits after reaching Full Retirement Age can both be an opportunity (by giving a client more confidence in delaying benefits) and a potential trap (by having a permanently lower monthly benefit if retroactive lump-sum benefits are taken)

We also have a number of articles on client communication:

• How financial advisors can support clients in riding the 'waves' of emotion (both positive and negative) that can arise during meetings
• A step-by-step framework for working with a client who has recently experienced the loss of a spouse to both give them space to grieve and to prepare them to make key planning decisions
• Strategies for advisors when working with a client experiencing "ambiguous loss", such as a loved one suffering from dementia

We wrap up with three final articles, all about the tradeoffs of being a 'maximizer':

• How certain tax planning strategies could lead to a lower lifetime tax bill but also less enjoyment of one's wealth
• Why much of one's health and financial success is determined by getting the 'big things' right and how trying to optimize for the rest could lead to greater stress
• The value of jumping off the "hedonic treadmill" and taking a step back to recognize when key goals have already been met

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Read More...

Books

• An excerpt from “The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There” by Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick. (wsj.com)
• Paul Ollinger talks with Jack Raines, author of "Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your 20s." (youtube.com)
• Amy Arnott and Chrisinte Benz talk with Jean Chatzky, author of a new book "The Forever Paycheck: The New Retirement Strategy to Spend More, Worry Less, and Never Run Out of Money." (morningstar.com)

Aging

• When you quit your job for retirement, you lose a lot of social connection. (tonyisola.com)
• Is there a way to bridge aging in home to a CCRC? (nytimes.com)
• Five thoughts on getting older. (theretirementmanifesto.com)

Wealth

• Some reflections on American net worth. (betonit.ai)
• How rich is too rich? (gettheleverage.com)
• Don't let someone else define success for you. (meaningfulmoney.life)

Money stress

• Money stress never really goes away, it shifts. (earnandinvest.com)
• Staying on alert for financial fraud can be stressful. (humbledollar.com)
• You'll never solve all your problems. (ryanholiday.net)

Taxes

• Where the expanded SALT deduction is paying off. (bloomberg.com)
• A portfolio filled with low-basis stock could prevent people from spending. (ofdollarsanddata.com)

Personal finance

• When should you hire a financial advisor? (kindnessfp.com)
• Housing affordability won't change overnight. (awealthofcommonsense.com)
• Our financial lives can live at two different speeds, depending on circumstances. (josephmoorebooks.com)
• The worst estate planning mistake you can make is not planning at all. (morningstar.com)
• Keeping up with premium credit card benefits is a full-time job. (wsj.com)
• Don't let work ruin your personal life. It's not worth it. (humbledollar.com)
• Why financial stability is sexy. (yourbrainonmoney.substack.com)

Markets

• How is it that dividend stocks outperforming YTD? (morningstar.com)
• Investors need a little more humility. (awealthofcommonsense.com)

Finance

• Robinhood ($HOOD) is expanding its prediction markets offerings. (axios.com)
• How Greece is wooing hedge funds to relocate there. (ft.com)

AI

• Some AI researchers are freaking out about AGI. (futurism.com)
• It doesn't look like the government will step in any time soon. (axios.com)
• Apple ($AAPL) devices will become consumer AI devices. (spyglass.org)

Stay in touch

• Don't miss a thing! Sign up for our daily e-mail newsletter. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Work in wealth management? Sign up for our exclusive Talking Wealth newsletter. (talkingwealthpod.com)

Russia

• Russia continues to probe Europe with drones. (wsj.com)
• The Russian military is dependent on Chinese support. (politico.eu)

Economy

• Heating oil prices are back near their highs. (axios.com)
• The U.S. lost a great opportunity to term out its debt. (ritholtz.com)
• Why a trade war with Canada is an own goal. (newsletter.platypuseconomics.com)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

• Personal finance links: taking a walk. (abnormalreturns.com)
• What you missed in our Tuesday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Research links: a meaningful shift. (abnormalreturns.com)

Mixed media

• The game in Melbourne is the farthest away game in NFL history. (thespade.substack.com)
• The 49ers and Rams are taking diametrically opposed positions on sleep. (frontofficesports.com)
• Sleep researchers are licking their chops. (sports.yahoo.com)

Books

• A look at "Data Empire: The Power of Information to Organize, Control, and Dominate" by Roopika Risam. (lareviewofbooks.org)
• A Q&A with Francis Fukuyama author of “In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir.” (reuters.com)
• An excerpt from "The Last Free Women: A Daring Escape From Afghanistan & Coming to America" by Rebecca Blumenstein and Dianna Kapp. (vanityfair.com)
• An excerpt from "Sugar Coated: Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America's Favorite Breakfast Food" by Mario Nestlend Lisa Sutherland (theatlantic.com)
• An excerpt from "Is This It: The Never-Ending Rise and Fall of the Strokes (and Rock ’n’ Roll), by Steven Hyden. (theringer.com)

Bonds

• The world's governments are paying dramatically more in interest. (giftarticle.ft.com)
• Derek Thompson talks with Liaquat Ahamed author of "1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World." (youtube.com)
• An excerpt from “A Fabulous Debt: The Epic Story of How Bonds Built the Modern World” by Robin Wigglesworth. (giftarticle.ft.com)
• Mary Childs talks bonds with Ed Al-Hussainy, portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle. (open.spotify.com)

Finance

• Hedge funds used to be a cottage industry. Now the largest hedge funds rival the big banks. (finance.yahoo.com)
• A profile of Hudson River Trading co-founder Jason Carroll. (bloomberg.com)

Longreads

• Kyle Harrison, "Longevity is almost like a mindset. The minute a dynasty starts treating its age as evidence, the age starts working against it." (investing101.substack.com)
• NIMBYism is wrapped up with worries about design and aesthetics. (worksinprogress.co)
• Why Albanians turned against a luxury resort backed by Jared Kusher and Ivanka Trump. (slate.com)
• Looked at over the very long run, democracy is still in ascendance. (ourworldindata.org)
• How seaweed become a hot commodity. (nytimes.com)
• AI could help us talk with animals. Should we? (bloomberg.com)
• On the downsides of meditation. (theatlantic.com)

Markets

• The 10-year Treasury is approaching 5%. (econbrowser.com)
• The S&P 500's 50-day moving average has now been above its 200-day moving average for 300 trading days. (stockmarketmedia.com)

Finance

• Franklin Templeton ($BEN) has seen inflows the past few quarters. (ft.com)
• Nasdaq invested $100 million in the parent of crypto exchange Kraken to bring tokenized stocks to market in 2027. (cnbc.com)

Foldable phones

• The iPhone Duo is NOT an iPad. (sixcolors.com)
• Why foldable phones are so expensive. (nytimes.com)

Stay in touch

• Work in wealth management? Sign up for our exclusive Talking Wealth newsletter. (talkingwealthpod.com)
• Don't miss a thing! Sign up for our daily e-mail newsletter. (abnormalreturns.com)

Renewable energy

• Fervo's ($FRVO) first project is on track to send power to the grid. (cnbc.com)
• Westinghouse Electric is gearing up for an IPO. (wsj.com)
• The US built more grid batteries last quarter than ever before. (canarymedia.com)

Oil

• Elevated oil prices are accelerating permanent demand destruction. (semafor.com)
• Diesel prices are headed even higher. (econbrowser.com)

Economy

• Still no pickup in weekly initial jobless claims. (bonddad.blogspot.com)
• Why women are overwhelmingly filling new jobs. (newsletter.mikekonczal.com)
• How AI is affecting the real economy. (thetranscript.substack.com)

Earlier on Abnorma Returns

• Longform links: actual writing. (abnormalreturns.com)
• What you missed in our Wednesday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Personal finance links: taking a walk. (abnormalreturns.com)

Mixed media

• September is the start of the sports year in earnest. (neilpaine.substack.com)
• Why this NFL season is different for sports betting companies. (barrons.com)
• How many major professional sports teams can the U.S. support? (petcashpost.com)

I’m not a Shark Tank viewer. But I was intrigued by something Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, said in this podcast (via a post by Nick Magiulli).

O’Leary discusses various aspects of his career, including ideal investments and what many entrepreneurs should strive for in their personal accounts. Specifically, he thinks all entrepreneurs should aim for a liquid $5,000,000 Treasury portfolio.

It’s not that this is terrible advice — it is; I get to why below. Rather, it’s that it’s so specific to O’Leary’s personal circumstances. I suspect — and I’m just speculating — that over the course of his investment career, opportunities have come and gone where the liquidity to write a big check wasn’t there at that moment, and that left its mark.

Perhaps he is projecting somewhat; maybe I am, too. How often does the real world interfere with our liquidity at the worst possible time? A down payment for a house, tuition for college, paying for a wedding — there are a million times when anyone who is not a gazillionaire will encounter demands on their capital. But that doesn’t mean any young entrepreneur should be striving to amass a $5M Treasury portfolio.

The reason why has been shaped by the probabilities of startup success and what happens to entrepreneurs over time. My experiences in multiple start-ups — as a founder and an investor — range from Crash & Burn to almost there to very successful.

In each case, there is a family to consider. The simple math is that for any young entrepreneur starting out, trying to build a company – and not knowing what the end result looks like many years down the road – a $5m treasury portfolio is just silly advice.

Why?

Start-up founders and entrepreneurs should pour all their time, effort, and money into their venture. You likely won’t have spare cash for a Treasury portfolio, much less retirement accounts. Once you get past an A and/or maybe a B round, you can start thinking about de-risking. But until then, it is not a radical concept for entrepreneurs to bet everything on the company – most of you are not buying a house, investing in equities, or buying bonds.1

Founders are all in, no hedges.

Land an A-round and a real salary? Great! Start putting some of your newfound cash flow aside as a good savings habit in an all-equity 401(k). It is a hedge against your start-up failing to beat the odds and eventually finding an exit.

~~~

Beyond the long odds that all start-ups and entrepreneurs face, another challenge is that you don’t know how its all gonna end. Every start-up I have been associated with sounded great!  Nobody puts time, energy, or money into things they think will fail. One of the risks of entrepreneurship is that you don’t know what the future looks like, including how successful your firm will be. This is true as a founder or an investor.

You might launch a firm that never finds an exit; you might not be flush with sudden wealth. What happens is that eventually, you pivot to a job with a salary, 401K, health care, etc. O’Leary’s advice to sit in bonds for your 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s is especially terrible because he is anticipating an event that is statistically highly improbable.

What anyone with a little scratch should do is put that money into the stock market over those 30 years, building a substantial pile of capital and, at the very least, a comfortable retirement. Because, realistically, you cannot plan for investment liquidity when you have no idea what your real-life needs will be. Whatever you do with your spare capital must anticipate a range of possible outcomes, not merely the best-case scenario.

On the other hand, if you’ve already had that exit and you’ve been successful, well, then you have a pile of capital and a lot of complications. And that is great. In those circumstances, you have many options. To be blunt, Treasuries are NOT my first choice of fixed-income paper today.

For someone who has had that exit and liquidity event, there is a long list of things to do; generating taxable Treasury Bond income is not one of them.

Instead, that person should be discussing with their advisors and tax team how to minimize their capital gains taxes while creating a regular flow of tax-free income.

~~~

O’Leary is 72 years old and is worth north of $100 million. For someone at that stage of their career – really anyone in their 50s, 60s, or 70s – who’s accumulated some capital, enjoyed an exit, and knows exactly what their wealth looks like — that person has very different needs than a young entrepreneur. They likely have complicated trusts and/or estate plans, the usual family issues, complexity, ex-spouses and adult children, capital gains, the headache of K1s, and numerous tax & estate concerns.

I believe the best bet for those circumstances is tax-free municipal bonds. I’m a big fan of Canopy, which is Eric Golden’s version of direct indexing for municipal bonds (I’ll discuss that more in the future); you can personalize your Muni SMA to generate a maximum after-tax yield based on your specific income tax bracket and your state and federal tax rates. It also has the benefit of enabling tax-loss harvesting to offset capital gains realized elsewhere.

But Treasuries for a young entrepreneur who doesn’t know what the future holds? Pass. Or someone who has enjoyed a successful exit and is liquid for 9 or 10 figures? Hard pass. There are simply many better options available for the best use of your capital…

July 2026
Momey Market (Schwab SNAXX) 7-Day Yield 3.63%
T-Bills 4.08% Yield
Munis: 3.58% Yield;  Tax Equivalent Yield 6.38%

September 2026
Momey Market (Schwab SNAXX) 7-Day Yield 3.68%
T-Bills 4.18%
Munis: 4.07% Yield;  Tax Equivalent Yield 7.28%

See also:
Is $5M in Treasury Bills Enough to Be Set for Life?
Nick Maggiulli
Of Dollars and Data, June 30, 2026

Kevin O’Leary’s Shocking Prediction For The Stock Market, Housing Prices, & 2026 Economy,
The Iced Coffee Hour, March 29, 2026

Previously:
The Evolution of Alpha (April 3, 2026)

NOTE: This is the first in a regular series of posts focusing on the Evolution of Alpha.

__________

1. Unless your significant other has a stable, reliable income…

The post T-Bills and Chill? Try Munis & Chill Instead appeared first on The Big Picture.

At The Money: Considering a Career Change? How About FINFLUENCER? With Tyler Gardner (September 9, 2026)

Ever think of a career change? Have you thought about becoming a “finfluencer” on TikTok, Insta, or YouTube? It could be both interesting AND lucrative.

Full transcript below.

~~~

About this week’s guest:

Tyler Gardner is a former financial adviser and portfolio manager who pivoted to a financial-media business, reaching more than six million followers.  His book “Real Wealth: Make Money Work for You” arrives Dec 1, 2026

For more info, see:

Professional/Personal website

YouTube

LinkedIn

Newsletter

~~~

Find all of the previous At the Money episodes here, and in the MiB feed on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, and Bloomberg. And find the entire musical playlist of all the songs I have used on At the Money on Spotify

TRANSCRIPT: At the Money Becoming a Financial Influencer, with Tyler Gardner
Host: Barry Ritholtz  |  Bloomberg Audio Studios

BARRY RITHOLTZ: Ever think of becoming an influencer, shifting your career to TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube? It could be both interesting and lucrative. To help us unpack this and what it might mean for your career, let’s bring in Tyler Gardner. He taught economics, eventually becoming a financial advisor and portfolio manager, but then he pivoted to a financial media business, eventually reaching more than 6 million followers. His book, Real Wealth: Make Money Work For You, arrives December 1st, 2026.

So, Tyler, let’s start in the beginning of your career. What pulled you out of education and into finance?

TYLER GARDNER: Oh, I think the easiest way to sum it up is I’ve never been pulled out of education. There was a point — I remember the meeting specifically — it was with our faculty at a school in Connecticut where we had a representative from TIAA-CREF who came to talk about retirement funds. And not one colleague of mine could understand what this person was talking about when they were saying expense ratios or target date funds. And I left saying, there’s a big problem if 110 truly educated adults in this world cannot understand a basic concept of expense ratio.

And so I wanted to add education to the financial component. And I realized at some point along the educational career in high school, I liked talking to my colleagues a little more about money than I liked talking about semicolons in class to 15-year-olds. I didn’t try to eliminate it. I just started to have this vision that becoming a financial advisor or portfolio manager would be education for finance. And I’d get to go teach these things and learn these things. So that was the initial inspiration for the pivot.

BARRY RITHOLTZ: You know, some people would say the complexity and impenetrable jargon is a feature, not a bug, because hey, if you don’t understand what financial people are saying — or for that matter, contractors or doctors or lawyers, what have you — well then you have to pay them for their expertise. But let’s leave that cynicism aside. You eventually become both a financial advisor and a portfolio manager. What surprised you about how wealth management actually operated as an industry?

TYLER GARDNER: Phenomenal question, because that’s all it was. It was a big surprise. I worked with great people, I’ll start with this. It was a small RIA in Vermont. And the reason I was drawn to that specific RIA is that unlike some of the bigger corporate wealth management firms, they really struck me as valuing education. So again, I got brought into this world thinking — I had this real ideal vision that I’d move back to Vermont, I’d get to educate people in my own hometown when I came back. And the biggest surprise was that the majority of people who wanted us to manage their wealth didn’t want to be educated on managing their wealth. They wanted us to manage their wealth.

And there was a great irony in the fact that so many people, particularly high net worth individuals, wanted to give the assets and say, “Don’t call me. I’ll call you. We’re all set. I’m paying for the convenience.” Right. And that surprised me. I was really looking forward to a scenario in which I had a daily class with people or a daily coffee where people would flock to wanting to learn more about index funds and low-cost investing. It didn’t quite work like that.

BARRY RITHOLTZ: So how did the social media experiment begin? You’re a natural teacher. What led you to say, well, if my clients aren’t asking me to educate them, I’m just gonna educate everybody else? How did that really start?

TYLER GARDNER: Yeah, well, I think, again, to give credit to the initial RIA for which I worked, they noticed very quickly just what you just said — they noticed and were drawn to the fact that I loved to educate. And so they brought their marketing team in and we started doing some short-form videos. They, as a firm, said, look, this is a really powerful way to reach an abundance of people beyond a very small state in New England, and we want to get the message out. So we started doing videos, we just weren’t positioning them correctly.

And when I say correctly, I mean, I think we were putting the majority of them on our firm’s website and maybe every now and then putting some on LinkedIn. And they just weren’t going anywhere. There was no real reach or power. And so when I first really saw the power of TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, I go, this is the disconnect. But they knew early on that education combined with the considerable reach of these platforms was very powerful. We just never could hone it as well as I know we all wanted to.

BARRY RITHOLTZ: There are lots and lots of stories of people putting stuff on LinkedIn and Facebook and TikTok and YouTube, and, you know, it doesn’t really generate a response. Doesn’t get a whole lot of follows, a whole lot of likes. At what point was there a specific video or a post that persuaded you, hey, there might be a real audience here?

TYLER GARDNER: Yeah, the number one reason. So I came home after doing — we had probably done 10 videos as a firm. And I came home and my wife was actually scrolling TikTok and she said, you gotta look at this person. They’re talking about a Roth IRA and it’s really funny. And I looked at the video and it was funny, it was engaging, and the person didn’t know what a Roth IRA was. So I look at this, I said, hon, this isn’t actually how a Roth IRA works. And so I started going down the rabbit hole, because there had been 2 million views on this video, and it was complete misinformation. So when I delved a little bit more into the rabbit hole, I found there were a lot of people on these platforms who were very engaging and could speak very confidently and articulately, and they were just flat out wrong.

And then the people who were really accurate and data-driven and who had done all the work, or who had actually been PMs or financial advisors for 20 years, some of them didn’t quite know how to engage. So I looked at it and said, just from a business standpoint, there’s a real gap in social media of someone who actually can educate in a simple way. Somebody who’s used to taking very complex ideas and trying to make them digestible in 30 seconds or less, and is able to also actually bring data points in. And so I almost took it as a big challenge initially of, how can we do this? And I look at it as an art form of how can you package something that most of the world doesn’t want to think about on a daily basis — finance, investing — and make it something fun. So was there a specific video early? No, it was more the gap in the marketplace that made me want to pursue it.

BARRY RITHOLTZ: You know, everybody I’ve dealt with over the years who is both at a regulated shop — be it SEC or FINRA or state regs — and is a creator, blogger, videographer, podcaster, whatever, runs into some issues with their firm. Way back when, some of the big wirehouses, when Twitter first came out, would give their advisors a list of approved tweets, like, here, choose from this menu. You know, that’s gonna get no pickup at all.

I got really lucky. My general counsel back in ’02, ’03 — before that, nobody knew. Nobody understood, nobody cared. I was on GeoCities and then TypePad, and nobody said a word, ’cause what the hell is social media? What the hell is blogging? But I was lucky to have a general counsel who said, listen, about all these posts you’re doing, you could talk about the market, the economy, sectors, whatever you want. You cannot say buy Microsoft. You cannot say sell Dell. No buys or sells and you’re good. I learned that was really lucky. What was your experience like with legal and compliance?

TYLER GARDNER: I won’t say it was quite as loose, and I envy what you just said, because man, do I want to come work for that firm. And I might’ve stuck around a lot longer had we appreciated — or had counsel appreciated — the flexibility of what we might be able to do. But even before I answer that question, just to be fair, I remember when I was studying for both the Series 65 and the CFA, they would always have a section — and this was probably six years back, seven years back — on social media, and exactly what you’re saying: what is the regulation behind social media right now? The punchline every time was, we don’t know yet. We don’t know what this is. We don’t know what to regulate. We’re gonna have to come up with these rules on the fly. Is this person a registered advisor? Is this person a representative? Are they a solicitor? And so the initial draw to produce it obviously was the power that it had. The initial challenge was both on a state level and on a federal level.

We as a small RIA wanted to be very, very careful about what we said and how we said it. And even though, yes, at the end of the day it was probably just a, hey, don’t recommend buying or selling individual securities, we took it so far on the prudent level of just saying, look, let’s make this very, very educational. Don’t ever name specific funds. Don’t ever name specific drawdown rates, because you never wanted to conflate any of this with potential advice. And so I think that the real future for anybody in this space — and again, this is wide open; I mean, there’s only a handful of us who have actually made it to a big platform here — the future is basically anyone who is able to say, I know what to say within limits, I know this is not against regulations, and I’m gonna market myself and how I think. There’s still so much room there to grow.

BARRY RITHOLTZ: No doubt about it. So you began your career as a teacher. I’m curious, what did you learn in the classroom that ultimately made you a better communicator of complex finance ideas?

TYLER GARDNER: Sure. Nobody wanted to be in the classroom. Inherently, I’ll start with that. Other than a handful of students, the beauty of starting, I think, any career as a teacher is that you’re fighting — I won’t say a losing battle — but you’re fighting against a group of people who collectively want their attention to be elsewhere. Which is actually very different, obviously, from social media, because people self-select to go onto social media and to be in a place. And if they’re watching, they want to.

But initially the challenge was, how can I get a room of 18-year-old students who would literally rather be doing anything other than sitting in this chair on this May day in gorgeous rural Connecticut — how can I get them to engage with an essay by Virginia Woolf? And again, it always was a game to me, it always was a challenge and an art of, what can I say and how can I say it? Not just to capture their attention, but to get them to feel like they have some sort of stake in what this is. And that was where it was: once you were implicated — if I could communicate to someone, you are implicated in this class, you have a stake here — then I would find obviously more ownership going forward. But as far as communication goes, it was again just a matter of we had a very scarce resource, which was time, and how do I get as much into this time as possible?

BARRY RITHOLTZ: At what point did you find posting financial content morphed from a side hustle to, hey, this could actually be a real career?

TYLER GARDNER: Yeah, I mean, I’d say the easiest way to say it is when I started making enough money for it to be a real career and when I could actually pay the bills. But when I first pivoted, I left my W-2 job and I took a leap of faith two years ago. And the reason I took a leap of faith is that at that point I had opened up an educational one-on-one coaching option. You could come talk to me for an hour about how to invest, types of investments — never advice, all obviously education, always as general as possible.

What stuck out to me is I couldn’t open up enough slots to fill the immediate demand, and I couldn’t raise my prices high enough, quickly enough to kill that initial demand or to temper it, if you will. So instantly you see, oh my gosh, there is a massive amount of people here who want this type of information and they’re willing to pay a lot of money for it. They’re willing to be present with it. I got out of the consulting part very quickly because, again, back to the regulatory component, I didn’t love it — it seemed like way too much of a gray area. And no matter how many contracts somebody signed saying this isn’t advice, I’m not your advisor, I did not feel comfortable having someone ever leave a conversation thinking that they might be getting advice from somebody. But that was exactly the time when I said, look, this platform — wherever we go and whatever we sell — this platform has so much power now that I’m comfortable leaving the hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year W-2 to really see what we can do with this.

BARRY RITHOLTZ: So you left not one but two very stable, relatively safe, pretty comfortable jobs to sort of jump into something that is risky, and there was no guarantee that it was gonna work. What did your friends, family, colleagues think, and what was your own biggest fear?

TYLER GARDNER: I think now — now that I’ve allowed myself to believe that the endeavor is quasi-successful — now I’ve actually gotten the truth from people about how they felt two years ago when I first made this pivot. And almost everybody thought it wasn’t gonna work, that this was a fad, that the attention economy is so cyclical that you might be the Internet’s favorite person for a week and then fail miserably. And that was obviously the challenge, was trying to think about sustainability and consistency.

But early on they made fun of it. And I think every single person who either considers themself an influencer, or somebody else considers them an influencer, you have to go through what we all call the cringe phase, where you are producing terrible content because you’re just not good yet. Just like anything else, you’ve gotta learn how to do it through trial by error. And most people don’t want to go through that phase. Your friends all make fun of you and they laugh, and it’s very easy in that moment to say, I want to quit. And then all of a sudden things start to shift when you start getting some of the deals. But those don’t come for six months to a year of daily torture and ridicule from the friends, the family. And it’s not that they doubt you as a person, they just kind of doubt that this is a thing that a lot of people are capable of — that if you really just sit down and say, look, we can make this happen — because it doesn’t happen to everybody, you know?

BARRY RITHOLTZ: Yeah, it’s fascinating. Doug DeMuro of Cars and Bids and his own YouTube channel — I think his YouTube channel is six or 7 million subscribers. He’s talked about the first few years of doing video, he had very little pickup, and he was also writing a column and occasionally doing a video review on a column. And one day a reader wrote in and said, Doug, the video reviews are the most interesting part. I don’t wanna read the column. Why don’t you do more of that? And an entire business was born.

Did you have a moment like that where it became clear, oh, if I emphasize this, this will work out? Or was it really just a grind to build those numbers up to a quarter million, half million? At what point is it clear this is a viable, sustainable business? Is it a million subscribers, a half a million subscribers? Where do you hit that number?

TYLER GARDNER: Yeah, I mean, well, just like money — and I think you and anyone listening will understand this as well as anyone — your follower count very quickly becomes identical to your bank account. It’s never enough, Barry. You think you want to hit a million and that will somehow give you that little endorphin hit and you’ll be satisfied. That’s not enough. Once you’re at one, you wanna be at 10. Once you’re at 10, you wanna be better than that competitor who you have always been going after. So as far as, is it enough, what was the moment? There’s never a moment.

And the algorithms now too, just to get a little technical about it — ultimately, on most of these channels, it doesn’t actually matter how many followers you have anymore as far as the reach potential. This is where I’d like to inspire anyone to try it. You can create a TikTok account tomorrow. Your video has an equal chance to go viral as mine. And as you mentioned, I have millions of followers across these platforms, but it’s the best immediate feedback system in the entire world. It beats every type of job I’ve ever had. If you produce crap, you don’t get reach. It’s not a matter of millions of followers. It’s if you don’t make something entertaining and of value and engaging for those 60 seconds — if you don’t earn someone’s 30 to 60 seconds — it doesn’t go anywhere. So it’s kind of a self-selecting process, again, of you’re either good or you’re not. But the people with millions of followers obviously have in some way honed the skill. You don’t get to that level without honing the skill to begin with.

BARRY RITHOLTZ: So let’s talk about that algorithm for a moment. What attracted me to your videos was you weren’t doing anything clickbaity or sexy or outrageous to garner clicks. In fact, you’re very much a salmon swimming upstream against the tide of that sort of stuff. How do you preserve accuracy and nuance when all of these platforms reward speed, oversimplification, outrage? Hey, if you could make somebody furious and angry by manipulating their emotions, you’re much more likely to go viral than by saying, and here’s how you do a Roth IRA conversion correctly. Correct?

TYLER GARDNER: I mean, first of all, you just summed it up flawlessly, absolutely flawlessly. And anyone who’s been doing this for a little while who claims they don’t know that is lying. If I go on and I make a video that just pokes at people a little bit, or nudges people or alienates something, you’re gonna get more attention. Or if you say something that you know is a little bit less than nuanced and is lacking a little information, you know what you’re doing. How I look at it — and I would say how I justify some of the videos in which I know dang well I don’t do due diligence and go down as far as I could on the complexity of this — A, again, it’s a limited resource of 30 to 60 seconds. B, my goal at this point is all social media — from TikTok, Facebook, YouTube Shorts — that’s all top of funnel for me. So even if someone thinks I’m a complete ding-dong who doesn’t do due diligence on TikTok, my goal is to get them to read my newsletter. On the newsletter, I don’t cut corners, because now I’ve got someone who has self-selected into a system where they’re willing to read that nuance and they want that.

So you invite that. That to me is where I try to build more credibility. Same with the podcast, right? So both of those longer form — I just want to get the attention on the short form to get them to a place where I say, look, now can you trust that I didn’t really think that Social Security was something you should decide in 30 seconds after listening to me talk about it and poke you, like everyone should take it at 62. I do want to go through this. But again, if you try to provide nuance in the short form, you’re not going anywhere. So it’s almost like a line I heard in Yellowstone the other day, where they’re talking about politics, and the game of politics before you get the position is you kind of have to poke and alienate and unfortunately be — maybe, I won’t say a lesser version of your moral self than you want to be, but there are corners you have to cut to get the attention that the video will attract, to get where people want to go. Once they’re there, then I think you have the responsibility to say, look, now that I earned a little bit of your attention, trust me, I’ll reward you with real information and not clickbait nonsense.

BARRY RITHOLTZ: What I’m hearing is that you have to adapt your message to each format and make it fit into that in order to work your way down the funnel. So let’s talk about that funnel. You start with short-form videos, eventually a newsletter, a podcast, and now a forthcoming book. Was that a very purposeful, conscious set of decisions to keep the focus on the in-depth education? Or did it just evolve organically?

TYLER GARDNER: It evolves. I’d be creating a narrative where none exists if I pretended that any of this was according to some grand master plan. I heard a great line years back: your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s. And where this has gone — if you had asked me two years ago, I was creating monthly reflections on where I wanted the business to go. And for one year I would look at my notes and it said, don’t ever do a newsletter, because a newsletter is stupid and it’s a joke. And then I remember reading something from Tim Ferriss where he said, you’re a joke if you don’t do a newsletter, because it’s the only place where you gather the asset of the email address and they can’t take it away from you.

And so when TikTok went through its little temporary 24-hour ban — it actually really shut down in the US for one day, there was no TikTok — instantaneously I went from having built two years of this slightly credible platform that had good reach to nothing, and I had no control. They just shut down the system. And I said, look, if I don’t diversify these digital assets, I’m being just as much of an idiot as I say people are with money when they don’t diversify their assets in an account, in an IRA or a 401(k).

BARRY RITHOLTZ: You have to own your own content. You have to own your own platform. You have to use these other platforms to drive the traffic to something that can’t be taken away. I mean, years ago I was on Six Apart’s platform, Movable Type, and eventually, years after I moved to WordPress, they shut it down. We’ve seen GeoCities shut down. We’ve seen all sorts of changes to different algorithms. If you’re ultimately not driving people to something that you own, that’s it. You are at the mercy of these giant technology corporations, and they could care less about you.

You know, I saw a video of yours recently where you discuss the concept of using your time, and wealth is really about how much time you have to yourself, but you make the case that it’s really knowing what to do with your time that is the big value. And I want to add something to the concept of building your own business, which is agency: the ability to control what you do, how you do it, who you do it with, and how you spend your time and when you do different things. Talk a little bit about how this pivot to social media and content creation has really given you much more agency over your time and your work.

TYLER GARDNER: Sure. I think just building on exactly what you just said, I don’t believe that humans hate work. I don’t buy it. I don’t think I ever will. I think humans don’t like being told what to do and working with people they don’t respect. The second you can get out of that and have your own agency or your own authorship or autonomy — call it whatever you will — instantaneously you now have the capacity to go work with other people that you say, ooh, I really do respect this person, or I’m really drawn to this person’s energy. And then your energy goes up. And again, this is entrepreneurship 101: once you have control over your time, you say, wait a minute, I do wanna be engaged in these projects. And you hear over and over again the people that exit businesses at, let’s say, 35 or 40, and they come into the windfall of a couple tens of million bucks. They don’t go sit on a beach for the next 40 years. Within one year they’re looking for another project. Everybody I know goes through a nice honeymoon where they think they made it, and then they’re looking for another project.

So for me, when I switched to this, the heaven on earth that I created was, again, just being able to wake up and say, if I wanna work on a great podcast script today, I can do that for 10 hours. If I wanna go film 20 videos today, I can do that. And our minds, as we all know — some days we’re on and some days we’re not on. And so when we have our own agency, when I think I’m really on and the energy’s good and I’ve had good positive interactions, I can go out — and I do go out into the woods, and that’s when I film my videos. But just like everybody else, I have very crappy days. And if you’re the W-2 employee, unfortunately, you have a crappy day, you’re still showing up for that same type of work. If you have your own agency, I can say this is a down day. I’m not putting myself out there today. I’m gonna write some more today or think about a chapter today. So really, it’s the greatest gift I’ve ever had — the agency to choose when I work and with what energy.

BARRY RITHOLTZ: Huh, really fascinating. Last question. So someone who’s considering a career change — they wanna become a creator, an influencer, they wanna move from something safe to something risky. What sort of advice do you have for those people?

TYLER GARDNER: Sure. And I think — I know you know this because I’ve read a piece where you talk about this — but a lot of people don’t, in my mind, think about risk in the way that they say they think about risk. So you just set up the polar concept that if I go to a job like this, it’s more risky than if I don’t. Whereas I always try to push people just a little bit to say, look, the biggest risk is you sit in the current job you have for 20 years as a safe W-2 employee. And that’s fine, I get it. You got the bills to pay, but your upside is so capped, you have no idea. And I would just say that the two things I value most in life at this point — obviously the clichéd one is owning my time. But because I own my time, I have the ability to focus on a daily basis on anything I want to focus on. And so the risk to me is that you get your one life taken away for 20 to 30 years and you are not focusing on a daily basis on the things you want to focus on.

And just with the entrepreneurial spirit, I would tell anyone who wants it, the concept of risk is way more applicable in my mind to losing out on what you could have done than if you go try something. And if it doesn’t work out after a year, after two years, after a real effort — what I don’t think enough people understand — you can go back. I trust that you can go back to whatever you were currently hired for. Maybe not at that company, but I trust that you can find another stable type of position where you say, I’m back in W-2 land. But you’d never know unless you went out there. And now the upside is insane. As you know, once you start your own business, I’m blown away with where the upside goes — not just on a monetary level, but also just with time and decisions, and the fact that I get to make these decisions now.

So I’d tell everybody, you gotta try it for at least six months. You gotta get through that initial phase where everybody wants to quit and everybody does quit. Everybody I know who wants to start social media and says, ooh, I could do this too — it’s just like the New Year’s resolution of going to the gym in January. You quit within two weeks because you didn’t immediately get a million followers. And I’ll just say this has been a trek for four years now to get to this point. So none of this is easy, none of this is overnight. Any story about viral sensations and someone just blows up — that’s not how it works. You grind and you grind every day and you learn and you get there, but it has been worth every second. And I would tell anybody, with the power of these platforms and the fact that it’s free — it’s a hundred percent free to market yourself and your brand however you want — if you’re not trying this with your business, you’re missing out on an incredible opportunity that might not be there in 10 years.

BARRY RITHOLTZ: Really fascinating. So to wrap up: if you are in a job where perhaps you’re not being challenged, or you are a little bored, or lack the sort of agency and enthusiasm that you’d like to have, and you are creative and a good communicator and have the ability to educate or inform or entertain people, consider adding social media influencer to part of your repertoire. Who knows, it might become a new career.

I’m Barry Ritholtz. This is Bloomberg’s At the Money.

~~~

Find our entire music playlist for At the Money on Spotify.

The post At The Money: Becoming a “FinFluencer” appeared first on The Big Picture.

When a client asks their advisor to place an investment trade or execute another planning action, it typically comes as a result of a consultation with the advisor (and often reflects the advisor's recommended course of action). However, sometimes a client might request that the advisor take an action the advisor believes isn't in the client's best interests (e.g., moving their entire portfolio to cash amidst a market downturn). Which can create a delicate situation, not only with regard to the client's financial wellbeing and compliance issues, but also for the future of the advisor-client relationship.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC's) 2019 interpretation of the standard of conduct for investment advisers under the Advisers Act highlights that investment advisers and clients have a principal-agent relationship, under which an agent (in this case the advisor) has a duty to follow the lawful instructions of the principal (here, their client). Similarly, CFP Board's definition of a fiduciary, a CFP professional has a duty to follow instructions (along with a duties of care and loyalty), which includes complying with all reasonable and lawful directions of their client.

Amidst this backdrop, an advisor considering a client request that they believe isn't in the client's best interest is required to follow through on it as long as they determine that the client is able to make decisions for themselves (e.g., isn't showing signs of mental incapacity) and the request is lawful (e.g., they have the authority to make trades on the account in question).

That said, advisors can still first offer their recommendation, based on their professional judgment, that the client not follow through with their request, and perhaps pause before making a rash and impactful decision (fulfilling the advisor's duty of care), as well as confirm that the client is making a direct request and isn't merely expressing frustration (which could avoid a costly misunderstanding). Also, documenting the conversation and the final decision made can create a record describing both the client's request and the advisor's response to help mitigate against misunderstandings down the line (and could include an "Against Advisor's Advice" letter signed by the client acknowledging they directed their advisor to implement an action that the advisor did not recommend or outright recommended against).

While stopping at this point would fulfill the advisor's duty to follow the client's instructions, this scenario also raises the question of whether the advisor wants to continue their relationship with the client. For instance, a client instruction to move their entire portfolio to cash could call for a reassessment of the client's risk tolerance and investment policy statement. Going a step further, an advisor who fields regular trading requests from clients (against the advisor's advice) might prefer to change the scope of their engagement with the client to be planning only. And if an advisor feels their relationship with their client has become particularly misaligned, they might choose to terminate the engagement altogether.

Ultimately, the key point is that a situation where a client makes a request against their advisor's recommendation presents two questions: whether the advisor must comply with the instruction and whether the advisor wants to continue the relationship under its current terms. By separating these questions, advisors can make decisions regarding the request in line with relevant compliance requirements and whether the relationship with the client is likely to be productive going forward.

And if you want to go deeper on this topic, hear directly from the author on the Financial Advisor Technician podcast.

Read More...

The post Building For The Long-Term Together: Our Path to $100 Billion appeared first on Wealthfront Blog.

Quant stuff

• A roundup of recent academic research including 'Is Sector Rotation Causal? A Geometric Test of the Growth-to-Defensive Lead-Lag.' (alphainacademia.com)
• How to do sensitivity testing of a quant model. (rpc.cfainstitute.org)
• A roundup of recent academic research including 'Momentum Strategies in ETFs under Simple Operational Rules: Economic Value and Conditional Predictability.' (alphainacademia.com)

Research

• What daily stock market returns can tell us about the economy. (alphaarchitect.com)
• On the influence of being in a large firm on manager alpha. (klementoninvesting.substack.com)
• Why managers can do better than off-the-shelf academic factors. (aqr.com)
• Mauboussin and Callahan on the shift from public to private markets over time. (morganstanley.com)
• In theory, democratizing private investments won't help individual investors all that much. (papers.ssrn.com)
• Can tax-aware long-short strategies handle withdrawals? (papers.ssrn.com)
• An explanation for 'the savings glut of the rich': increased income volatility. (papers.ssrn.com)

Bonds

• Now would be the wrong time to panic about your bond allocation. (whitecoatinvestor.com)
• Trailing real bond returns have rarely been so poor. (mrzepczynski.blogspot.com)
• The Treasury failed to term out debt during ZIRP. (ritholtz.com)

Markets

• It's time to come to terms with market concentration. (awealthofcommonsense.com)
• Earnings revisions have been positive for 21 straight weeks. (fa-mag.com)

Finance

• Anthropic and OpenAI are seeking investment grade credit ratings, post-IPO. (ft.com)
• Robinhood ($HOOD) is an underwriter for the Oura Health IPO. (wsj.com)
• A $6.2 billion 'seed round' is an oxymoron. (anildash.com)
• Reputations matter on Wall Street. (ft.com)

ETFs

• How TIPS ladder ETFs work. (obliviousinvestor.com)
• Who really owns a white-label ETF? (etfcentral.com)
• Lessons learned from all the ETFs that iShares has closed. (mutualfundobserver.com)

AI

• Corporate America is turning to open source AI models. (nytimes.com)
• AI companies are releasing new models at a rapid clip. (cnbc.com)
• Are we sleepwalking into an AI apocalypse? (theargumentmag.com)

Stay in touch

• Don't miss a thing! Sign up for our daily e-mail newsletter. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Work in wealth management? Sign up for our exclusive Talking Wealth newsletter. (talkingwealthpod.com)

Global

• Canada's retaliatory tariffs are now in effect. (bnnbloomberg.ca)
• Japan is now taking its own defense seriously. (theatlantic.com)
• Patrick O'Shaughnessy talks with Walter Russell Mead about the new global order. (youtube.com)
• If Taiwan can't trust the U.S., is a deal with China inevitable? (theatlantic.com)
• The UN voted to adopt a resolution for the world to formally phase out the traditional Mercator map of the globe. (theguardian.com)

Jobs

• AI's effect on the jobs market is rolling out more slowly than expected. (newyorker.com)
• A jobs gap is growing between college grads and high school grads. (wsj.com)
• Women accounted for 98% of the 162,000 jobs the US added in August. (semafor.com)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

• Research links: a meaningful shift. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Adviser links: managing client transitions. (abnormalreturns.com)
• What you missed in our Sunday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Top clicks last week on Abnormal Returns. (abnormalreturns.com)

Mixed media

• Why athletes are drinking cherry juice. (nytimes.com)
• There's never been more choices in pillows. (fastcompany.com)
• Your kitchen sponge is disgusting. (msn.com)

From 2008 through 2022, the 10-year Treasury yield was never above 3.25%; it spent nearly all of 2019–21 under 2%, while the 30-year bottomed at ~1% in March 2020.

What an amazing opportunity to refinance debt at ultra-low rates!

But not every institutional debtor is that savvy. Torsten Slok reminds us how much savvier Corporate America was than the US Government, including Congress, the Treasury Department, and even many “think” tanks.

As Slok observes:

“Corporate net interest payments have fallen to 0.4% of GDP because firms locked in record-low fixed rates during the pandemic. The US government did not extend the maturity of its debt outstanding when interest rates were close to zero and now pays 3.6% of GDP in net interest (chart below).”

This has been one of my biggest pet peeves for the past few decades. 

When presented with a once-in-a-generation opportunity, there was an array of truly ignorant, foolish, or just outright false reasons not to make the carrying costs of long-term debt much cheaper. Treasury nominally lengthened the term of its debt, post-GFC and post-COVID. But it ignored the opportunity to issue 30-, 50-, or 100-year debt. That kind of long-term fixed-rate funding at historic lows only comes along once or twice in a generation.

Treasury did make some minor extensions of duration: The weighted average maturity (WAM) went from ~48 months in 2008 to ~64 months in 2012; by 2019, it was ~70 months — the longest duration since 2001. But issuing truly long-term debt, such as the 30-year or, heaven forbid, the 50/100 year — was off the table.

Why?

Some of the excuses were laughable then, but these three are downright silly now:

– “We do not time the market”
(Geithner, Yellen, Ramanathan, GAO, Office of Debt Management)

– “There isn’t enough demand”
(Mnuchin, Yellen, Lew, Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee)

– “Rates will stay low”
(Summers, Blanchard, Furman and Mnuchin)

It was apparent then to anyone who looked closely; today, it’s an utterly obvious missed opportunity.

Again, this is not hindsight  bias. As the list below, starting in 2013, shows, this was an obvious opportunity –one that was blown by all the usual fools.

Refinancing America’s Debt:
Fix infrastructure on the cheap while you still can (July 12, 2013)

Do We Need a 50-Year Bond? (May 12, 2014)

The Bonds That Can Cure America’s Ills (March 19, 2015)

Time for a 50-Year U.S. Treasury Bond (May 19, 2016)

Cost of Financing US Deficits Falls (December 18, 2020)

The Greatest Missed Opportunity of Our Lifetimes (October 23, 2023)

A Historic Missed Opportunity (June 3, 2025)

What’s Upsetting the Bond Market? (August 25, 2026)

Sources:
A Missed Opportunity: The Treasury Did Not Term Out Its Debt When Interest Rates Were Near Zero
Torsten Slok
Apollo, September 07, 2026

The Federal Government’s Debt Is Growing Faster Than the Economy. What Does that Mean for You?
GAO, June 11, 2026.

The post Corporate vs Treasury Debt Duration appeared first on The Big Picture.

My guest on today's podcast is Jenna Biancavilla. Jenna is the founder of Pearl Capital Management, an RIA based in Phoenix, Arizona, that oversees approximately $275 million in assets under management for 110 client households.

What's unique about Jenna, though, is how she leverages a ‘scorecard’ that tracks key weekly and quarterly metrics that help keep her on track to achieve company goals, which range from new client growth to days taken off by team members.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Jenna’s scorecard starts with metrics that measure engagement with clients (for example, how many client touchpoints an advisor had) and work done to attract new clients (such as meetings with key centers of influence), how Jenna also includes metrics targeted at employee retention (including tracking the number of days team members took off where they weren’t contacted by someone at the firm), and how Jenna tracks other metrics quarterly, including the close ratio on prospects, total AUM, AUM per household, and revenue per household.

We also talk about how implementing practices of the Entrepreneurial Operating System relatively early on has helped Jenna and her team better address business issues that pop up during the week (and run more efficient meetings in the process), how Jenna and her team set and prioritize quarterly "rocks", which typically represent projects that will help the firm grow into the future but might otherwise have been ignored amidst day-to-day responsibilities at the firm, and how Jenna incorporates team member input and the firm’s meeting calendar when setting scorecard targets and rocks to ensure that they are actually achievable.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Jenna shares why she is willing to share planning insights during prospect meetings (rather than waiting for them to become a client), how Jenna’s fee structure has changed over time (including how she found offering a flat-fee model didn’t work well for her firm), and how Jenna has saved time and reduced her stress during her career by recognizing that not every prospective client she meets is the ‘right’ client for her.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about effectively identifying and tracking key firm metrics, using a structured system to organize major firm projects, or how to incorporate team members into the goal-setting process, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Jenna Biancavilla.

Read More...

Markets

• Utility stocks have rolled over. (bloomberg.com)
• Why diesel prices are so high. (mrzepczynski.blogspot.com)

Prediction markets

• Crypto traders have shifted attention to prediction markets. (wsj.com)
• Lebron James is now a Polymarket endorser. (frontofficesports.com)

Law and order

• The IRS cut audit personnel. Guess what happened next? (npr.org)
• The FBI has lowered its standards for new agents. (futurism.com)
• Florida has accelerated the pace of executions. (axios.com)

Economics

• All economies are mixed. The only question is what mix. (unherd.com)
• Why the definition of a small business matters. (boondoggle.substack.com)
• On the relationship between reading and the prospects for liberal democracy. (theargumentmag.com)

Stay in touch

• Don't miss a thing! Sign up for our daily e-mail newsletter. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Work in wealth management? Sign up for our exclusive Talking Wealth newsletter. (talkingwealthpod.com)

Economy

• The risks for higher inflation are out there. (apollo.com)
• Wage increases are decelerating. (washingtonpost.com)
• The economic schedule for the coming week. (economicweekly.substack.com)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

• Top clicks this week on Abnormal Returns. (abnormalreturns.com)
• What you missed in our Saturday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
• On the high cost of adulting in America today. (abnormalreturns.com)

Mixed media

• The number of people 65 and older now outnumber children ages 5 and younger worldwide for the first time ever. (axios.com)
• It's now more clear what is going on at the Census Bureau. (npr.org)
• Just how big is the 'sandwich generation' in America? (pewresearch.org)