Trends From A Thirty Year Trader

Cold Open: The Trading Rule Daren Won't Explain (Yet)

[0:00] DANO WEIR: Daren just spouts these things off like when we're having lunch. We'll be having lunch on the Sonoma Square and it'll just be like sandwich. Yeah, you know, I would never do anything at 9 a. m. Because, you know, that's when all the traders on the East Coast are taking lunch. So it's false signals. And I'm like, where does this come from?

[0:25] DANO WEIR: Welcome to It's All Money. Hosts are right here in front of you. We're taking out It's All Money.

[0:34] DANO WEIR: I would never do anything at 9 a. m. Because, you know, that's when all the traders on the East Coast are taking lunch, so it's false signals. And I'm like, where does this come from? He has these bits of wisdom from 6 million years of looking at the market, and so that's what we're talking about today.

[0:55] DANO WEIR: Welcome to It's All Money. Your hosts, Dan O'Weir, Darren Blonsky, CFP. We're in the Sonoma Wealth conference room off the Sonoma Square in Sonoma.

[1:04] DANO WEIR: And we are talking about the market as an emotional construct and all of the various seasonal human quirks and tricks and things that you have seen and just noticed after. It's got to be how many years of looking at the out of the markets. How many hours have you been staring at graphs in your CFP life?

Why Market Psychology Matters More Than the Numbers

[1:28] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Literally no idea. I first started staring at the markets at age 13. So out of those hours, I have no clue.

[1:35] DANO WEIR: So big, big disclosure at the start of today's episode. This is opinion conjecture. This is what Darren has noticed. None of this is advice. None of this is. Something you should take action on. But things after years and years of looking at the markets, things that you've noticed when it comes to the markets, and you used this phrase, so I took it from you. The market is an emotional construct. What do you mean by that?

[2:06] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Well, so first of all, I think, let me just say, and let me reiterate your disclaimer, that nothing that we say today should you trade on, should you make an investment on. Talk with a licensed financial advisor before you do anything. All right, so now we've got that out of the way. Emotional contract.

[2:22] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Us finance people like to think that life is black and white and it's numbers up and down, that there's no emotion to it. But people who really understand the market know that it is emotion. It's these two emotions that are constantly going back and forth in our minds and our bodies of fear and greed.

[2:43] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And not greed in the biblical sense, like greed is evil of the devil, but greed of like, I want more.

[2:49] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And it is natural and healthy to want more for yourself and your loved ones. And fear of losing, fear of missing out, fear of, there's all these different types of fears that we have. And these two very primitive emotions are important parts of who we are as people.

[3:08] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Those emotions and the thousands of different participants in the market, including institutions, make up the market. And they're all being driven by different emotions and different. Different intentions or different goals. And so it's that construct of that accumulation of all those different aspects that make up what the market is.

[3:31] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And so when I look at the market, I look at it as trying to understand what are the human emotions here? What's happening here? What are they going through? And that creates different noticeable patterns. That's why I'm what's called a technical analyst. Some people on Wall Street... Think technical analysis is a bunch of BS, hooey, hooey science, reading the tea leaves. Other people think it's the only thing that matters.

[3:54] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: What's nice about us here at Sonoma Wealth is we have people that are more technical people and we have people that are more fundamental that look at, say, earnings and those kinds of things. But at the end of the day, it's all a guess, man. It's just a guess.

What This Episode Is Really About: Demystifying Seasonality

[4:08] DANO WEIR: So the goal of today's episode is I'm trying to, well, the goal of the show is to. Demystify a lot of, or at least provide some more insight on our take, our approach to the markets to give you a little bit more context and a little bit more to work with, rather than you just hear someone say, oh, it's the Santa rally.

[4:31] DANO WEIR: And the people who know what the Santa rally is, know what it is. And you're sitting there at your job that has nothing to do with the market. And you're like, what are they talking about? And why is my portfolio up? Right? So A few of those things is the goal of today's episode and the show in general.

[4:45] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Well, and I think also the other goal of today is to learn and understand to appreciate the market as a thing, right? I think a lot of people like, hey, I got my day job and I do the market on the side. And we've had this ballooning of retail investors coming into the markets going like, oh yeah, day trade on the side, no biggie.

[5:04] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: But almost dismissing that it's a thing. And it's a thing where the cards are stacked against you. That the more you participate in it, the more likely it is you're going to lose money and fall to the law of averages.

[5:15] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And to understand that, respect that, and approach it with humility is the first characteristic of a successful investor.

Retail vs. Institutional Investors: Who Really Moves the Market

[5:25] DANO WEIR: So to what you're talking about, we actually have seen what are called retail investors, which would be me on my own on a platform like a... Robinhood or any other competitor.

[5:39] DANO WEIR: That makes up about 22% of the market as of 2021. That's according to Bloomberg Intelligence. So flip that around. 79% of the market in that instance are what are called institutional investors, which are the big players in the market.

[5:56] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Those in those institutions are your big banks, your mutual funds.

[6:01] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Your insurance companies, the institutional investors, this is their game. Okay. So think of it this way. Institutional investors are going along trading back and forth. Then in the last 20 years, the advent of the retail investor, because it's gone up over the last few years, it used to be around 10, now it's around 20 and it's gone up.

[6:22] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And what we see is when there's a big blowout, then all the retail investors pull back and they don't want to participate anymore because they realize it's stacked against them.

[6:31] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And we'll see that after our next blowout, if we ever have one again, if the politicians let that happen, we'll see. But the point is, is that it's a game stacked against you. It's a game set up for institutions and retail investors in recent history say, hey, I want to play with the institutions.

[6:49] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: You have to fundamentally accept that that's a truth. If you don't accept that it's fundamentally an institutional game that retailers have been invited to so that their money can be taken, you're going to lose.

[7:01] DANO WEIR: So to your point, 2011, about 10% of the market, according to that same study, was retail investors. So when we're talking about your opinion of trends, we're mostly talking about institutional because 80% of the market basically is institutional investors. So month by month, if we could, you have an opinion of kind of how things tend to go. Starting in, let's say, January, what could you expect and why would you expect it?

What Is Market Seasonality, and Does the Data Back It Up?

[7:31] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So we call this seasonality, right? And so there's a seasonality to...

[7:36] DANO WEIR: You say we, is this only your opinion or are there many others?

[7:39] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: This is widely accepted. A lot of people have researched this. They've looked at it. There's a very distinct pattern that happens. Now, the thing about patterns is they're not always the same, right? They change all the time. But if we averaged out returns on a month-to-month basis, January through December, there would be a pattern. Pattern to when those returns happen.

[7:59] DANO WEIR: In common things like the S&P 500, or we're not getting super into the niche alts and stuff like that.

Systemic Risk vs. Asymmetric Risk, Explained

[8:05] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Well, so we have two Fancy words we use in this business called systemic risk and asymmetric risk. So what we're talking about... I'm lost. I know, we're out. This got way too...

[8:14] DANO WEIR: I'm bored.

[8:16] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So systemic means the entire system and asymmetric means just one individual holding. So when we're talking NVIDIA, when we're talking Apple, when we're talking Google... We're talking asymmetric risk. When we're talking systemic risk, we're saying there's a seasonality to the system or systemically speaking.

[8:35] DANO WEIR: Okay. So give me that systemic risk. Give me that your opinion of January.

The Monthly Return Chart: Why January Looks Like New Year's Resolutions

[8:39] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Okay. So we've got a chart we can look at. And the way I like to think about this, and you'll see this in the chart is when we all come off of December, there's a sense of hope in a new beginning. Emotionally that, hey, I'm going to do better this year. I've set my intentions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, fill in the blank. It's kind of like at the gym, right?

[9:03] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Like if you like to go to the gym, which I do, I love to go to the gym and I hate January at the gym. Not that I don't want other people working out, but the gym gets really full in January. And then by February, it's not full anymore because everyone's given up on their goals. And it's amazing you see in the market. And what this is showing you is the monthly returns, the S&P 500, which is the largest US based stock.

[9:26] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And the average return and what percentage of the time it's positive.

[9:32] DANO WEIR: So we're looking at, for our audio audience, we're looking at a graph on the screen here. It's monthly returns for the S&P 500 over 1988, averaged from 1988 to 2011 in January. Tell me that again. It's averaging what kind of return?

[9:48] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So the average return in January is 1.57%.

[9:52] DANO WEIR: For the S&P 500?

[9:52] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: For the S&P 500.

[9:54] DANO WEIR: Over that time frame.

[9:55] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: During this data set. Right. This is old data, but we're just showing you an example.

[9:59] DANO WEIR: Sources Bloomberg.

[10:00] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Yeah, that's right.

[10:00] DANO WEIR: Okay. So then, and then in February, so, so literally this is the gym because we've got 1.5%, 1.57% in January and the February it's half.

[10:10] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's right.

[10:11] DANO WEIR: So we've already got our, our new year's resolution has already failed.

[10:14] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's right. Exactly. And so that's what's showing emotionally. Right. And then if you think about February and this has been filmed in Northern California, where in February, it is by far the gloomiest time of year. Yes. It is cold. It is wet and is not fun. In fact, a couple of years ago, we had record-breaking rain like January 11Th through the end of February or something like that.

California Reservoirs, Sunshine, and Emotional Investing

[10:33] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: It was crazy. We filled up all our reservoirs in California in a month. That's our experience, right? So we all kind of go into winter mode, right? In February, the markets do the same because they're emotional construct, right?

[10:46] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And then as we get more hopeful, as the sun comes out, gets more bright going into spring, you can see successively the chances of returns goes up from a probability standpoint. Now, it doesn't mean that it's always going to be that way because we all know like 2020, for example, which this data set doesn't include, in March of 2020, the market absolutely got obliterated of March of 2020 during COVID. Yes. Right?

[11:10] DANO WEIR: So we see this kind of- Yet another emotional construct.

[11:15] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Right. Exactly. Right? And it gets represented in the market. It gets manifested in the market. The emotions of the collective human experience get expressed through the market. And so we see the market go up. And then we have a saying in the business that says, stocks go away in May.

The September/October Selloff, and Why It Happens Almost Every Year

[11:32] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And this idea that people kind of start selling and what do you see, June, July, August, September, the returns get abysmal.

[11:42] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Almost without fail every year, Dan, I get clients calling me in September, October saying, I want out of the market. Ah, I'm scared.

[11:51] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And the reason they do that is because they're fearful that that's going to continue. But then what happens in the end of the year, October, November, December, the market rips. Now you can say, well, why is that? What's causing that? Well, there's theories out there. And this is a theory. No one's proven it.

[12:07] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: But the theory is during June, July, and August, all the traders, remember, this is an institutional game. 80% is institution. Where are they in June, July, and August? In the Hamptons. They're on vacation, right? They are on the scene. They're not playing the markets. They're not. They're. Sitting on their hands. They don't want to trade. And we know that from volume, okay?

[12:28] DANO WEIR: Volume.

[12:31] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Meaning volume is how much trades are happening in the market. Okay. So volume goes down typically in the summer. Not every year, not every month, but typically there's less volume in the summer. And so sometimes even in August, we've seen this trend in the last couple of years, and you can see it here. It's represented on this data set. And again, this data set is from 1988 to 2011.

Trading Volume and the Slow Summer Market ('The August Float')

[12:53] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: We see this kind of movement up in August i call that the August float high right it just seems like float up there's like not a lot of volume it floats high and guess what happens after labor day all the traders come back from the Hamptons now not really the Hamptons i'm making that up as a joke but they come back from the Hamptons and they go we're not buying it might be parts of vineyard as well i mean it might be one of two total places they could be vacationing or in California Nevada could be inclined village you Right.

[13:22] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So the idea, though, is that the markets kind of float higher and then the traders come back and they go, we're not doing that. And they slam the market. Right. We're not buying at that price. And they slam the prices down.

[13:44] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: You alright there?

[13:46] DANO WEIR: The idea of them like coming in from the vineyard and just like coming coming into the floor and they're just like what have you been doing in here? In their flip flops not that that's really happening but in my mind that's what you're describing.

[13:59] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Well, it is in a way, and I'm not over-exaggerating on, metaphorically speaking, it does happen, right? The traders come back and say, look, we're not buying NVIDIA at $130. We want it at $100. And it wouldn't be in August if it was at $100.

Why the Market Often Rallies Into Year-End

[14:12] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: We'd like to buy there. So after Labor Day, what happens to the markets? Well, just like the data set, at least from 1988 to 2011, is showing the market tends to sell off. And then it ramps into the end of the year.

[14:26] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: People start freaking out September, October, and then they start selling their stocks. The retail investors get scared out. And then the institutional buyers run the market into the end of the year because guess what gets paid in December?

[14:40] DANO WEIR: Bonuses.

[14:40] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Bonus season. That's right. That's right. It might be just that simple. Don't know, but it might be just that simple because every institutional fund manager gets bonused on performance generally. They have performance incentives. So if there's this collective.

[14:55] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Emotional construct to say, hey, if this all does well into the end of the year, guess what? Actually, JP Morgan has this great chart. We didn't use it. But in every case in recent history, the market is always higher on December 31st than its worst point of the year.

[15:15] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So if you think about that, if you take any time over that 12-month period, if the market's down by 10, 12, whatever it is.

[15:23] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: If that's the lowest point of the year... In December, it will be higher than that point. The problem is you don't ever really know what the lowest point is. You can't really bet on it, but that's called seasonality, right?

[15:36] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So there's a seasonality of the market. So what can I discern from this as an investor? That one of the worst times to sell out of a portfolio is September, October, because that's right before the puke and then right before the run.

[15:51] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So we always say, look, if you're going to sell out, just wait till December.

[15:55] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Statistically you're better off we don't know it's not every year like in 2018 the market got just smacked in December right and then you've got this this year which makes this year more unique because we have a presidential election we find out who wins in November-ish time frame hopefully and then we have kind of the hangover of that effect okay now who won and what's the impact of all that.

'Sell in May' and Other Trading Sayings, Tested

[16:21] DANO WEIR: See, and that's why there's so many. So I'm new to the market. I don't know a lot. That's one of the reasons why I'm excited to host the shows that I'm learning. And I hope I'm learning alongside the audience. But I'm just seeing so many parallels between something I do know well, which is the NFL. And my thought is, if you know that this pattern exists, you could just bet on that.

[16:43] DANO WEIR: You could trade against that. You could just run the S&P at specific times knowing that, okay, well, now it's July. I'm going to do this. Now it's September. I'm going to do this, right? And the NFL is the same way. The Chiefs are probably going to win the Super Bowl. The Chiefs are in the Super Bowl. The Chiefs have been winning Super Bowls except for the one that they played against Tom Brady that they lost.

[17:02] DANO WEIR: So it's and a lot of times you would have been right. Two out of three times you would have three out of four times you would have been right about the Chiefs. But that one time you would have been wrong. And it's gotta be the same thing like this. You're just saying the same thing. 2018, it's, it's totally different. You got smacked in the fall.

[17:19] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's right. Well, and that's why we have another saying in the markets and investing is you got to survive. Right. And most of the time, the investors that, the, we, we find out when the markets go down, which emperors have no clothes.

Why Surviving Downturns Matters More Than Timing Them

[17:35] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Right. And, one of the the tenets of good investing is survive. And that's why we use diversification to help us survive, right? We spread our assets through different types of our investments through different types of assets.

[17:50] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So you have to survive those down moments and you, and it's also a function of duration, right? So if you only have one year to earn money and that year happens to be the off year where this pattern doesn't hold, you're in trouble, right? If you've got 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, The law of averages happens in your favor.

[18:11] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And so the longer period of time you have, the more likely you are to be successful if you follow simple principles of investing.

[18:19] DANO WEIR: And that's where your financial plan comes in as well, right? Which a lot of people don't have. A lot of people aren't even familiar with it. Difference between the two asset management and financial planning, but knowing where you are in your life and knowing what your window is and knowing how long I have to do this. What's my capacity for risk. These are all the things that you do with an advisor, by the way.

[18:41] DANO WEIR: But to help you know, because otherwise you're just out there just throwing darts and having no clue and just being like, I don't know. I heard somebody say this. Oh, I lost it all.

[18:51] DANO WEIR: And it's gone. So, you know, those are some of the, the.

The Role of a Financial Planner When Emotions Take Over

[18:55] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Pieces to the calculus when it comes to you know investing in the market well we're talking about the market damn we want to prepare we want to know how we're going to respond and react to every situation. Now you don't know all situations, but we do an exercise with our clients where we say, okay, if the market's down 10%, here's your portfolio, it's worth a million bucks and you lose a hundred thousand, what do you do?

[19:22] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And we try to go there before it happens emotionally with the client and talk with them. Like, how does that feel? What do you do? Do you think we're really smart? Now you think we're really dumb and you sell out and move on or do you stay in it? Because it.

[19:35] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: What we find is if you're in a portfolio that's so volatile that you can't stay in it, because it's going to happen, you're going to go down by 10%. It's just a matter of when, not if. What are you going to do? And if we can think through that process before it happens, you're more likely when it hits emotionally to withstand it.

[19:52] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And that's the key with a financial planner. The financial planner is going through a process of helping you translate and understand your emotions about the market so that you don't overreact. Because your brain from a flight... Fear kind of standpoint is wired to do what you shouldn't do.

[20:09] DANO WEIR: Emotional construct.

[20:10] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's right. It's just all emotional.

[20:11] DANO WEIR: All right. Now tell me the lunch thing again. You mentioned this previously on the show, but it really is specific to this episode.

The West Coast Trading Day and Where 'False Signals' Come From

[20:18] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So now keep in mind, so we're on the West Coast. So the New York Stock Exchange. Now, let me just put a caveat around that. The New York Stock Exchange historically is open from 6.30 in the morning on the West Coast to 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

[20:35] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Okay, those are our trading windows on the West Coast. It's different in the East Coast if you're listening somewhere else in the world. So I won't translate all the time zones. West Coast, United States, Pacific Coast time. The market opens at 6.30. It closes at 1.

[20:51] DANO WEIR: So 9.30 to 4 on the East Coast?

[20:53] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Correct.

[20:53] DANO WEIR: Okay.

[20:53] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Okay.

[20:55] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: When you think about the market, you have to think about what are the people. So remember I said it's an institutional game. It's 80% institution and 20% retail. What's 80% of the institutions doing?

[21:10] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: A lot of them, where do they sit every day in New York City? Now that's changing, okay? There are some changes to that and we'll do that in another episode called Dark Pools and there's new institutions coming around. And so we'll talk about that later.

[21:25] DANO WEIR: But Aaron wants to do an episode on Deadpool.

[21:31] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: On Deadpool, got it.

[21:32] DANO WEIR: That's what you said, right?

[21:34] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Yes, Deadpool.

[21:34] DANO WEIR: Deadpool, Darkpool, gotcha.

[21:36] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So at 9.30, the stock market opens, or 6.30 a. m. On the West Coast.

[21:43] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: At 9 o'clock on the West Coast, what are the people on the East Coast who are three hours ahead doing with their day?

[21:50] DANO WEIR: Having lunch.

[21:51] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: They're having lunch. So we have a saying, if you're a day trader, if you're trading in the markets, which is not most of our... Investors, if you're trading in the markets, don't trade anything after nine o'clock in the morning. What? Yeah, don't trade anything from 6.30 to nine.

[22:05] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: You can trade, but don't trade anything after that. And it's best at 6.30 not to trade either because the market opens and it has an initial knee-jerk reaction, an emotional outburst, and then you kind of figure out what happens. Okay, because whatever happened in the world, all the news, etc.

[22:24] DANO WEIR: You went up, it could also go down.

[22:25] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: You got it you got it could be the reaction you just don't know right it's the same reason we don't usually get involved with ipos because there's usually a wrong reaction in the first part of it right so at nine o'clock what are they doing what are you doing at 12 o'clock every day eating you're eating lunch so remember we talked about in the seasonality of markets and we talked about how during August when all these people are out and about just doing vacation and not trading and they come back and they say we're not taking that price we're slamming the market down then we're going to run it at the end of the year Same thing, but on a micro spectrum, okay?

[22:57] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: From 9 until, say, 10, 10.30 West Coast time, whether they're coming back into the office, depends how big a lunch they had, et cetera. So emotionally and psychologically, the traders are not stepping on the gas.

[23:12] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And then we get into the last hour of the trade day. That's when the real signal comes through. So you don't really know what the market's going to do from, say, 9 until, I don't even pay attention really, from 9 until 12 West Coast.

[23:24] DANO WEIR: Right.

[23:25] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: It's just noise.

[23:26] DANO WEIR: False signals.

[23:27] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: False signals, right?

[23:28] DANO WEIR: It's called.

[23:29] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: The markets, I call it false signaling. It's just, it's doing what it's doing, but it could be non-big players. That 20% in the market, retail could be going around doing stupid stuff with their money.

[23:39] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: But the institutionals haven't really kicked in until the end of the day because they got to put their positions on before the end date. Now that's somewhat changed because there's these dark pools I mentioned. But from 12 to 1, you're starting to get the real signal in the market.

[23:54] DANO WEIR: Because 12 to 1, so 3 to 4, East Coast, because the coffee has finally hit.

[24:01] DANO WEIR: Right?

[24:02] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: They've got to finish their day. Well, they've got to do that, and they've got to close out their orders for the day. They've got to close out, get ready to go for the next day. They're buttoning up and going home. It's an emotional process, right? Yeah. It's the same reason we have Tuesdays. So there's Monday and Tuesdays. We call Tuesdays Turnaround Tuesdays.

[24:20] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Very, very, very consistently, if we have a strong up day on a Monday, guess what's going to happen Tuesday? Bloop, we're going to be down. And if we have a really bad Monday, we're going to be up. And you saw this in perfect, a perfect example of it two weeks ago when we had this flash crash happening to be the week I went on vacation.

[24:38] DANO WEIR: Early August, yeah.

[24:39] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Early August, right? So the only time I go on true vacation and the market falls apart, right? Loved it. So I'm flying to destination and the market's just imploding. I'm like, well, let's see what happens on. On Tuesday. Because it's Monday. And sure enough, Tuesday it turned around. And that's what happens. That's why we don't want to overreact emotionally.

[24:58] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Because usually the first reaction is the wrong reaction. And isn't that true in relationships in life, right? The first reaction is the wrong reaction. And really one of the goals of life is to create that separation between stimulus and response. Viktor Frankl's Our Search for Happiness, right? It's like to create that separation.

[25:17] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Stimulus comes in and then I choose to respond how I respond rather than react. And it's the same is true with investing. There's no difference.

[25:25] DANO WEIR: And it's hard as an investor, and especially as someone who doesn't do this every day, when something bad is happening in your life, if your house was on fire, or if your car was broken down, you want to get in there and do something.

[25:38] DANO WEIR: I got a problem, and I'm going to get in there with my tools, and I'm going to fix it. So if something's happening with my money, I want to get in there and fix it. Call the advisor. We're going to make some moves right now. We got to get out of this ship. The ship's going down.

[25:51] DANO WEIR: But in fact, you're saying the opposite. They just... Probably the better thing to do.

The Vanguard Study on Behavioral Coaching (‘Advisor's Alpha’)

[25:55] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Well, and that's why there's a study out there called the Vanguard Alpha Study. We'll link it in the show notes. But the Vanguard Alpha Study, Vanguard, who's literally like the, you know, the The perfect example of the do-it-yourself investor's home, right? They do have advisors and whatnot too, but a lot of do-it-yourselfers go to Vanguard and tout that, right?

[26:17] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So you go to Vanguard and they do this study every year called Advisors Alpha, where they actually look at what is the benefit of having an advisor. And they generally come up with this idea that around 3% of the benefit of an advisor, that's about what you get. It's about 3% benefit from having an advisor. And... A huge portion of that benefit comes from the behavioral coaching.

[26:43] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Dan, your first reaction is to sell. You're scared. The financial media is trying to get your eyeballs, but really what they're doing is they're pushing you into a corner that you don't want to be in.

[26:56] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And so Advisor Alpha really is that behavioral coaching. So as advisors, we look at ourselves as more behavioral coaches. Than we do anything else. And we're going to provide alpha to you and just getting you to chill out when you should chill out.

[27:10] DANO WEIR: You thought that your money was numbers and accounts and hard data. But in fact, it's all in your mind. It's all an emotional construct.

[27:21] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's it. Early on, I did my master's in psychology and then I went into financial advising. People go, how does that work? And I say, well, it's all psychology.

[27:33] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: The investing piece of it is the simple part. The hard part is the psychological part.

Disclosures

[27:39] ANNOUNCER: This content was produced by Fermata Advisors, LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor.

[27:47] DANO WEIR: DBA, Sonoma Wealth Advisors.

[27:49] ANNOUNCER: The opinions expressed by Fermata Advisors, LLC on this show are their own. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable. Although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.

[28:06] ANNOUNCER: Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives.

[28:29] ANNOUNCER: And is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Viewers and listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment advisor to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.