Episode 127: Nicolas Bérubé:

17 Lessons for Canadian Investors

Keith: My name is Keith Matthews, and I’m joined by my co-host, Marcelo Taboada. Marcelo, how are you today?

Marcello: Keith, I’m very excited. We have a very special guest today.

Keith: Perfect. Who is our guest?

Marcello: So we have a friend of the show, Nicolas Bérubé, writer from La Presse. He’s been in the podcast a few times now and he’s got a new book. So, I reached out and said, come on in.

Keith:  He’s a fantastic writer and very articulate on the show. He’s been on, I think, the English podcast a couple of times and on the French podcast L’Investisseur Transforme a few times as well. So, he’s fabulous. I actually put Nicolas right up there with some of the best writers in North America on personal finance.

Marcello: I agree.

Keith:  And so, you know, when I think about that, I think of the Globe and Mail had Rob Carrick, the Financial Post which had Jonathan Chevreau, the Wall Street Journal had Jonathan Clements and Jason Sweig. Nicholas Bérubé is definitely a powerful writer with very meaningful ways to explain complex ideas.

Marcello: He has a remarkable skill of transforming complex information into very simple concepts. He’s helping a lot of people. And he has a column every Sunday in La Presse. He’s written three books and he’s doing a podcast now, too, to reach more of an audience. And I think it’s just great.

Keith:  So, what are the three books that he’s written? And I know that you’re focusing today’s show on his third book, but what are his first two?

Marcello: The first two are. I’m going to say it in French because they are written in French primarily. So “Les millionnaires ne sont pas ceux que vous croyez”. That’s the first one. And the second one is “De zéro à millionaire: investir en bourse sans souffrir”. And that one’s been translated into many, many languages.

Keith:  You know, the first book is Millionaires aren’t who you think they are. And it’s kind of like, to me, maybe the francophone version of the Millionaire Next Door, which was a very popular book out of the US that describes really kind of, we think millionaires have a certain profile, but the reality of it is millionaires tend to be, you know, individuals you may not feel might be the millionaires. It’s the people who are doing all the saving and being prudent and being careful and investing and investing properly. And then the second book, Zero to Millionaire. A simple, effective and stress-free way to invest in the stock market. So, it was really a focus on investing.

Marcello: Correct.

Keith:  What’s his third book now? What’s his most recent book?

Marcello: It’s called L’art de multiplier son argent: 17 leçons pour réussir en bourse —17 lessons to succeed in the stock market and the art of multiplying your money. That’s the book we discussed. It’s quite comprehensive, so what I try to do on the show—because 17 lessons can feel a bit long—is encourage people to read it, as it’s an excellent book, while also making it more digestible.

The way he structured it is through very short essays, so readers can easily skip around rather than reading it cover to cover. On the podcast, I grouped the content into five main categories.

First, we discussed the “why” behind the book—you know, he’s been writing for a long time. Then we moved into modern market myths, addressing questions like: should I invest when the market is at an all-time high? Should I be diversified beyond the U.S. market?

Next, we talked about ETFs, bonds, and the industry more broadly, where he had some interesting insights. After that, we covered the psychology of the rational mind and how behavioral biases affect investors. And finally, we explored planning concepts.

As you know, there’s a huge need in the market right now for planning. We’ve shifted from “I’ve saved all my life—how do I accumulate?” to “how do I actually live off my portfolio?” He speaks directly to that, and we see it with clients as well.

So that’s how we framed the conversation—and I think people will really enjoy listening to it.

Keith:  It’s fabulous. It’s great to see you speaking French Marcelo and I’m going to encourage you to do a Spanish podcast soon. I know you can do that. I mean, that’s your, your first language. So that’s fantastic. And one of the things I will say is if the listeners are interested, please send me an email and we will send out five copies of Nicolas’s most recent book to you if you email me at keith@tma-invest.com .

Marcello: yeah.

Keith:  And if you’re one of the first five, we’ll make sure you get a complimentary copy mailed to your home address. Marcelo, thank you so much for reaching out to Nicolas. It’s a great podcast. And to Nicolas in advance, thank you so much for being on today’s show.

Marcello: Thank you, Nicolas. Thank you so much for your time. Welcome back to the Empowered Investor. You’re a friend of the show. I think it’s your fourth or fifth time, something like that. But we’re all big fans of you. I know a lot of my friends are very excited for this episode and thank you for accepting to be back.

Nicolas:  Thank you, Marcelo. I’m happy to be here.

Marcello: Perfect. So, look, you wrote a new book. It’s out now. People can buy it. It hasn’t been translated in English yet, so we’re going to be waiting for that. But the title of the book is please help me if I’m ruining the translation, Nicolas. But it’s The Art of Multiplying Your Money. 17 Lessons to Succeed in The Stock Market.

Nicolas:  Yeah, perfect.

Marcello: So, what I’ve done is I’ve broken it down into five themes. So, there are 17 lessons. Yes. But I think the five themes I want to discuss with you today are going to cover that and it’s going to make for a great discussion. So, let’s just start with the why behind the book. You’ve spent years observing the market, talking about the markets. You do your column on a weekly basis. What made you write this book? And why 17 lessons?

Nicolas:  Yes. So last time we chatted, I talked about my previous book, which is from Zero to Millionaire. And so, this book, this previous book was kind of a crash course. Let’s say you can read that book over a weekend if you’re stuck in the snow and you can read that book and then you put it down and then, voila, you know, what is the stock market? You know, how to approach it, you know the pitfalls, you know, you know the problems with how people approach it and all that. But I realized that even if you make things simple, people still have questions.

And I was getting emails from readers, and they were telling me, oh, I read your two books, but I still have a question. So, I noticed that they were good questions. I mean, stocks were a good asset class for they have been for decades. What about the future? What is expected of stocks? What would happen if there was a war? You know, are stocks still a good investment or should we look for something safer from a volatility standpoint?

So, there were all these questions, and I couldn’t really answer them in my weekly column because I tried to approach, like, I have a very wide readership, and I don’t want to bore people with too many numbers. So, writing a book was a way to answer these questions in a fun and interesting way and to have some charts in there to, you know, to really elaborate, because the questions are great and the readers are right to ask those questions.

And there’s a lot of interesting studies being done, as you know, about these questions. But sometimes the lessons of these studies don’t really reach the broader public. So, I see myself as kind of a bridge between the academics who produce this material and the readers who might want to implement it in their portfolio.

Marcello: Well, listen, the book is excellent. I think I told you last time when we met, I read a lot of financial books. You know, it’s also my job and it’s also a personal interest. And I think you’re an excellent writer and you’re an excellent simplifier of information. So, I think in the book, what’s great is you’ve taken this huge amount of information and then funneled it into a very simple and beautiful and elegant way of packaging it together. So, if somebody grabs this book, I think they’re ready to go ahead and even start investing with confidence because you provide the steps and even some of the products to look for and the ins and outs. I also love, by the way, that you added, and I haven’t seen this in many of the books, and we’re going to talk about that later, but I love how you added, in the end, this idea of leaving off your investments and financial planning and decumulation strategies. I find that very interesting.

But we’re going to talk about that a little bit later. Okay, so in the book, you talk about the purpose of investing. So, I think I see this a lot with my clients. You know, we’re hyper focused on the investments, and we talk about investing, investing, investing, but we never stop to ask, why? What’s the purpose of investing? So why do people invest?

Nicolas:  Well, I think that’s the most basic level. They invest because they want to enjoy their life one day without having to show up at work. I mean, before people would just work until they die. And that was what it was. They were six days a week, six and a half days a week. And along the way, we realized that there’s maybe a better way. So, if you want to be able to enjoy yourself later in life, you should set some money aside and invest it. And now some people have pushed this concept even further. I mean, you have the fire community, people who want to become financially independent earlier in life. But to me, the magic of investing is mostly about having independence, not having to rely on a job to make ends meet. I mean, I love my job, I am happy where I am, but who knows, 10 years from now, will I be sick, would I have changed my mind or anything like that.

So, if you don’t invest, you kind of rely on the fact that you’re healthy, that you love your job, that your boss is hopefully a non-toxic person and that the market will support you and AI won’t eat your job. So that’s not a bet I’m willing to make. I think for most people there will be some form of hardship along the way. And I always figure out that if you have assets, if you have independence, if you can support yourself and your family without a paycheck, you are in a better position. And so that’s why I started investing when I was about 25 years of age, which is a bit old, but not too much. So basically, I think to me, yeah, investing in independence goes hand in hand. And that’s why I’m doing it. I’m not doing it to buy a nice car or anything like that.

Marcello: It comes across in your calm, by the way. But I also love the way you advocate, and you champion this idea that hey, you don’t need expensive stuff, you don’t need like exotic vacations, you don’t need to go to fancy restaurants, great if you can and you can afford it. But listen, like, you can also have a happy life if you do that.

And I was reading an article the other day and I don’t want to take too much of a deviation here, but this author was talking about this concept of the K economy where the people who have assets at the top have done amazingly well since the pandemic and the people who don’t are really struggling because they only depend on wages and wages are being eaten by inflation and the cost of living. So, I think what you’re saying makes sense because if you get to that point where you can save and people can find creative ways of saving. Right. If they really like to try. You want to be in that category that has and is building assets.

Nicolas:  Exactly, exactly. And not a week goes by without me hearing about a worker who makes a good amount of money and is just burning through his paycheck or her paycheck. And it doesn’t build well. So having a good paycheck is good, but it’s not the finish line to me. It’s closer to the starting line because you have to build well.

Marcello: So, from the 17 lessons, which one was the most difficult for you to accept or implement in your life? If you reflect on that, I think

Nicolas:  It’s the lesson about that as an investor, if we tinker with our investment, we likely won’t add any value. And that’s a hard one to accept. Right? We all want to know what the recipe is. How to trade. If you look at the best-selling books, it’s like it’s all about how you can trade, how you can build a portfolio that will outperform. But every study for the past 50 years has realized that beating the market is extremely rare and getting rarer by the year because the market is now dominated by very, very sophisticated big players. So, it’s very hard to beat the market.

And so yeah, this idea that with a lot of time and a lot of energy, I like to see this as a doorman in front of a bar will select the young men and women who would go inside based on how they’re dressed and do they look fun and all that. So that’s the role that we as investors like to play. Like, oh yeah, your company, yeah, this company, it goes in this company, it stays outside. So, we think we can add value by doing that. Unfortunately, that’s very rarely likely to be the case. Most of the time we will destroy value doing that. So, to me that’s the most difficult idea to understand and to implement. But it’s also liberating in a way because you don’t have to be that person to have success in the market. That’s what I’m trying to tell my readers.

Marcello: That’s a great point. And we see it every day here when we’re onboarding clients. I mean, you know this. We believe in market efficiency and then markets are efficient, they’re hard to beat. So, we spouse an investment approach that is like indexing. So, we believe that markets work and markets are efficient. So, it is the hardest thing to do.

Like when you sit across a client and they say, hey, like if this happens in the market, are you going to do something or are we moving stuff around? If this market will do well, it’s like, well, you know, like that’s not really how it works. And then it’s our job to unpack the data and explain it to them. It’s a weird thing because, you know, like, I read this quote the other day. It was a quote about faith, and it went something like this. For those who believe, no proof is necessary, and for those who don’t believe, no proof is enough.

So, I think the person has to be open also to believe that things can be done. I think it’s harder when you get investors, they espouse an idea and they don’t have that mental flexibility to think about something else.

Nicolas:  Yeah, yeah, I see it every day. And people will write to me about, oh, I have this big dividend stock and I’m very successful with that. Why don’t you talk about that in your column? And I mean, I don’t come at this with my opinions, or I don’t come at this with, oh, I have the solution in here, let me tell you. I mean, I’m just following what the science says, what the study says. I don’t really have a dog in this fight. If people were beating the market on a constant basis, I would be the first person to acknowledge that. But that’s not the case. So, yeah, okay, perfect.

Marcello: So, let’s talk about some of the market myths that you hear about a lot in the media. And I hear this with clients, by the way, even though they’ve been with us for a long time. I mean, not all of them, but you hear things like, the US Market is already very diversified. US Companies have exposure to global markets. Is that all you need? How do you convince someone to go outside the United States and diversify their investments?

Nicolas:  It comes up a lot, and it’s not very hard to know why, because the US market has done extremely well for the past 15 years. And so, what most people do is they look at a chart, and they see a line and they want to see the steepest line, and they want to go with that. So that has nothing to do with the US or anything. It’s just you react to what the market did recently, and you want to pick the winners. Right? Of course. You and I know that’s not desirable. I mean, if we had this conversation in, let’s say, 2010, 16 years ago, your clients wouldn’t be asking about U.S. stocks. You wouldn’t be able to give them. They wouldn’t take them for free. Because US Stocks were the worst investment you can think of for a decade.

Marcello: For a decade?

Nicolas:  Oh, yeah. Because in the first decade of this century, the Canadian market did 141% of compounded return and the U.S. market did minus 9. So, you had less money in 2010 that you had in the year 2000 if you invested in U.S. stocks. And 10 years is a long time for most people. So, in 2010 what people wanted to do is to invest in Canadian stocks and they said, hey, we don’t need US Stocks. Who needs US Stocks? This is all they have is crisis after crisis and we don’t need that. It’s yesterday’s superpower. You know, the US is in decline, everybody knows that. And then 15 years later it’s the other story. All people want is the US stock.

So, you’ll always find, and I have a chart in the book about the country that is the winner of every decade for I think 50 years. And one decade is Sweden and the other is like Canada and then the US there’s a rotation. So, so only investing in the US market, it’s probably not the worst idea in the world, but we can do better.

And we don’t know who the winner will be in five years, in 10 years and 15 years. And underperforming for a long time, as we know from studies, is very hard on people because now you try to second guess yourself, oh maybe it was a mistake, maybe I should have gone with this. And then you hear your brother-in-law who’s killing it and then you want to tinker with your portfolio. So that’s in real life, that’s what happened. Because people say, oh yeah, I can underperform for a while, it doesn’t matter. But people second guess themselves, they see retirement closer, they can’t afford to have a few bad years and then they make a mistake. So, since we don’t know who the next big winner is going to be, it’s better to be diversified in order to be able to catch the growth where it happens.

Marcello: Yeah, for sure. And then you look at it in, I think there’s two things, like 2023, 2024, the US did outperform every single market, and a lot of people were second guessing themselves. Right? Like should we have more investments in the United States? Funny enough, in 2025, the Canadian market crushed and the international market crushed the US market. And it’s a testament of why the diversification strategy works. And in fact, if you look at the five-year return of the TSX, it had stronger returns than most of the markets in the last five years. And if you had told someone five years ago, they would have laughed in your face.

Nicolas:  Of course I’m proof of that. When I lived in the US for seven years in my 30s and when I came back to Canada, I said, well, okay, now I have to diversify. I’ve heard of my investments in Canadian funds, but I was not happy about that because I was like, Canada, you know, it’s not dynamic. There’s no Silicon Valley here. Housing is expensive and people are in debt. It’s not a dynamic economy.

And so I went against my instinct, if you will. It was not fun to do, but now I’m glad I did it, of course. And then when you see years like 20, 25, it’s true, Canada made double the money, the growth that we saw in the US and so now, you know, it’s interesting, getting older, you kind of see your knowledge that you accumulated over the years. You kind of see it apply in front of your eyes. So that’s kind of a bonus, if you will. You kind of see compound interest. You see yesterday’s loser becoming winners and yesterday’s winners becoming loser. So, you can see all that applied in real life. So that’s cool.

Marcello: Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the other points you had in the book, which I really love, is the idea that average return is an illusion. So, for example, you hear a lot, people say, oh, the stock market returns 10% a year. That’s easy, right? Like, I’m just going to sit down and enjoy. Why is this an illusion?

Nicolas:  First of all, we talk about average. It’s true that the US market has returned about 10%, but there are no, almost no years where the market lands on a 10% or 9% or 8%. It’s more dispersed than that.

And so, if you look at the average for the US market, the average up year is something about 21, 22% and the average down year is something like minus 10%. So why is that important? Well, what happens is you will get a year where the market does 25 to 28% and maybe two years or three years in a row. And you say, oh, the market is expensive. I should not put my money, because the pendulum will swing hard in the other direction. Well, no, it’s an illusion because the market does that kind of return most of the time.

That’s hard for people to grasp this notion when you walk around in your head with having like a 7 or 8 or 9%. So, the conclusion is that a return like that is extreme. Like a return of 8 or 9% or 10%. It’s extreme and it’s super rare. So, we should be prepared to see big up years and down years as well. So, when people know that they kind of breed a little easier when we get good years and bad years.

Marcello: Yeah, that’s good. Have you heard about the weather analogy in relation to the stock market?

Nicolas:  I’ve heard a few, but I’m not sure which one you have in mind.

Marcello: This one I use with clients because I find it’s very powerful. So, it goes something like this. So, you know, the average temperature in Montreal is about 20 degrees for the year. But as Montrealer’s, you and I know, like how many days do we actually get at 20 degrees? It’s usually 35, 34 degrees in the summer and it’s usually minus 10 in the winter. They average out to be 20, but you’re rarely going to live through 20 degree days.

Nicolas:  That’s well put. Yeah, exactly, exactly that. So, people get it with the weather, but it’s the same thing with the stock market, correct?

Marcello: Correct. All right, so I think that my next question is related to that. So, I hear this a lot sometimes where people say, markets are too high, we’re at an all-time high, I’m going to wait for the crash and then I’m going to invest. What would you say to those people?

Nicolas:  Well, I would say first of all, it’s a very human thing to say. It’s a very rational thing to say.

Marcello: Yes.

Nicolas:  And unfortunately, it’s a mistake. That’s what I would say. Because this has been studied from every angle you can imagine. And the market is usually in the business of getting people wealthier than they were the day before. And so, on average, you’re better off investing in an asset like equities than having cash sitting and doing nothing for you. And so of course, at any given day you can buy a stock and then the next day it will be down. And you will interpret this as a mistake, but it’s really not. Because on average, in aggregate, you will get a better return as soon as you invest your money. And it’s been studied by Ben Felix; I think I did a big study on this.

Marcello: Yeah, the timing of the cash flows.

Nicolas:  Yeah, yeah. And you looked at eight or ten international markets for the last 50 years, I think. And there was always a positive association with investing as early as possible. It went from I think it’s 0.3% of excess return per year up to 3% excess return per year. The basket of good experiences. It’s common to every market.

It’s not just the US or Canada or France or Switzerland and all that. So, people have to understand that it’s a probability game. It’s not about what the market will do that one time when I invest my dollar, but you’re better off. And in my life, I implemented this. As soon as I have money to invest, I invest it. I don’t care what Donald Trump says that day. I don’t care where the interest rate is, I don’t care if there’s a crash, if we’re at all-time highs. By the way, an all-time high is nothing magical in the market. I mean, I remember when I started investing seriously in 20, it was in 2012. I remember the Dow Jones was, had just crossed the 10,000-point mark and the year before or two years before it was under 10,000. So, I was like, okay, I’m too late, the train has left the station. Right. I’m here with my little money that I invest in and now the Dow Jones is at 36, 37,000. Oh, sorry. We’re closer to 50,000 recently and went down a little bit. So yeah, had I decided to wait that day, I would still be waiting because the market never went down that threshold again.

So, people tend to not think about that. Maybe today is the lowest the market will ever go in your life. And that’s an uncomfortable thought if you’re waiting on the sidelines. So better to just put this on autopilot and not try to be too cute and wait for the sales that might never come.

Marcello: Yeah, 100%. I think it’s something very different from when you tell people, you know, we know this from the evidence. Right. Like the best time to invest is today because even if you invest today and the market drops 20%, you’re in it for the long term. So you almost should be agnostic about whether like the short term noise right now it’s very different to say if you have someone, for example, who’s systematically investing every month or every year without looking at the timing of the market and then it happens that the stock market crash and then you’re sitting on some cash by happenstance.

Yes, it’s a good time to invest, but not from the perspective that you’re going to try to time the market because we know it doesn’t work. So, I agree with what you said. Okay. So, it’s a good segue for the next topic. So, we have three wars going on right now. You just wrote an article last Sunday about war and I do feel bad for this lady, and I do hope she gets back into the market, by the way.

Nicolas:  Yeah.

Marcello: But yeah, give me your thoughts around war time and investing in the stock market.

Nicolas:  Yeah, the lady you’re talking to is a reader who wrote and she realized that. She told me she went to Cash a few months ago because she was scared of Donald Trump. And she read my book and she realized that it was a mistake to go to Cash because cash can’t do anything for you other than making you feel good in the moment. She wanted to know, first of all, was it a mistake and what should I do about it? And I told her, yeah, first of all, of course it’s a mistake. You don’t react to what you see in the news. If following the news made you rich, journalists would be millionaires. And I’m here to tell you that on aggregate, they’re not journalists. They’re my friends. I love them. But most of them, most of them have an amazingly bad track record of their investments. It’s really not pretty.

So, following the news can’t do anything for you. Why? Well, because by the time you’re reading a story, it’s already included in the price of the market. The market doesn’t wait for people like me to type on our keyboard about the war. It already knows about the war. So, there’s nothing that you can add. There’s no value added to you tinkering with a portfolio that already knows what all there is to know about this conflict.

The other thing is we think that a war is this event that is catastrophic for investors. This is how we come to assume that this is the case. And history tells us that while wars are obviously catastrophic for the people involved and the victims, and I don’t want to minimize that. No, no, no for sure at all. From the point of view, if we look at it through the lens of investing, wars haven’t been even the worst in terms of market drops.

If you look at the first World War, the second World War, they had a broad diversified portfolio. You saw drops of just over 20% for the First World War and I think 12% for the Second World War. And after the wars you saw a big jump when the economy resumed working normally and finding some growth. So, you look at the very, very scary episode like the 1929 crash, the crash of 1973 related to oil in the U.S. this crash or even the dot com crash of the year 2000 or the great financial crisis in 2008. These events that were very catastrophic for investors, they didn’t happen during wartime. And so that’s kind of counterintuitive.

We’re always trying to protect our portfolio from these events, but they’re not even the worst thing that can happen. To our portfolio. And the last thing I’d say about that is sometimes we think that in the case of a conflict of war, we should go away from equities, from stocks, into bonds, because bonds are much less volatile. They’re safer. They’re always there when we need them. Well, that’s a mistake too, because even though stocks are more volatile, they have the biggest odds of increasing our network over time and beating inflation.

So, what happens in wartime? Inflation usually picks up. Everything is more expensive in wartime. And so, your bond will lose purchasing power every day that you owe them. While stocks, even though they are more volatile, over the long run, they are the asset with the highest expected returns. Right. And so, it’s very counterintuitive because stocks don’t feel safe. Right. They feel the opposite of safe. Going down the stairs. You want to hold something that feels safe. You don’t want to hold something that’s just wobbly and scary. But again, it’s. We have to go against our intuition, and we have to go for the asset that has the better chance of increasing our net worth and protecting our purchasing power. And in times of conflict, historically, stocks have been good at doing that.

Marcello: I think there’s two things, right, like it plays on our human psychology to see so much destruction and the fact that we have so much more exposure to the news now. I think that has to have an effect on people as investors. And in catastrophizing, at least, or thinking that things are worse than they are. There’s something very morbid, too, about war. Right. And war sometimes leads to good economic outcomes because a lot of the reconstruction and expansion that governments do ends up helping a lot of the companies that are in the stock market.

Nicolas:  We should expect conflicts to happen now. We’re in a period where the price of oil is going up and is very unpredictable. And we don’t know when the market is going to drop or if the market is going to rush up. That can happen too. We just don’t know. So, there’s really nothing we can do about that other than instead of changing our portfolio so the portfolio reflects our feelings, we should change our feelings, you know, to be able to achieve our financial independence one day. So, it’s much less expensive to work on yourself than to work on your portfolio. And that’s what I. But I think anyway.

Marcello: Yeah, that’s a great point. I was surprised to learn it’s something that’s there, but we don’t think about it. And it’s true. Most of the worst crashes and you mentioned this in your article. It happened during peacetime and we don’t think about this. Right. Because it feels horrible when we’re going through the war. So, yeah, excellent points there. Okay, so I want to move on here and I want to talk about some of the points that you’ve touched in the book. But I think one of them was you’ve been very vocal about why the banks are not talking to people about ETFs. And why do you think we still have this friction point between what good advice is and what banks are providing Canadians?

Nicolas:  Well, if I’m a bank, I mean, what should I push? Should I push an ETF with 0.2% fee, or should I push a mutual fund with a 2% fee? If I’m a bank and I have shareholders to please, I mean, I will be tempted to push the more expensive product. A lot of people who work at banks, there was a lot of investigation that was made in Ontario and with the CBC as well. They sent journalists in there with hidden cameras, and they were giving all types of bad advice about their investment. And we’re talking about the big Canadian banks, not your little corner like Landing Shop or anything like that. So, I think the knowledge is not there. Sometimes the people who work there, they don’t have, they’re obviously good people, but they don’t have maybe the latest information or the curiosity to read about evidence-based investing.

And a lot of the public is frankly uninterested. It’s a complicated topic. People don’t like to think about their investment. For the most part. Nobody will really explain to you why you should care about these things. So altogether, it’s not a pretty picture. And unfortunately, some firms that are working with people with index funds, well, they need to see a certain amount of assets before they take you on as a client. Obviously for the model to work, it’s obviously the case.

So, a lot of people who have between zero and half a million or more are kind of stuck in this no man’s land where the bank will maybe help them but not give them the best products. But the best managers want to see more assets. So, I’m trying to bridge that gap, trying to help tell them that there’s a way, that there’s a way to invest in a low fee, diversified way. But it’s not easy. People will sometimes have to get out of their comfort zone and invest by themselves. I’m mindful of that. I’m not pushing too hard. You know, people don’t cut their own hair. Why would they manage their own investment? I’m sensitive to that. It’s not an easy problem to solve.

Marcello: Yeah, I mean, I think you’re doing a terrific job. And I can tell you I’ve been doing this for 12 years now. And I increasingly see more and more people coming through the door or people asking me questions about investing. And more and more I see people with Wealthsimple, with index portfolios, the Questrade portfolios, with indexing using Vanguard, using BlackRock, the BMO ETFs. I think this is something I didn’t see 10 years ago and I’m seeing it more. I mean, you discussed this in the book. There is a huge discrepancy. If you go to the US a lot of the market is passive or like, you know, indexing. Canada still lags way behind. I mean, we’ve talked about this on the podcast in many articles we’ve written. We talk to clients about this all the time. The problem is that the banks own the distribution of the products. Right. But I think people like yourself, and you do feel that there’s more awareness now. The problem is, Nicola, is I feel like if people had to pay upfront for the product that they’re buying, there would be much more awareness or at least much more questions. The fact that the fees are embedded in the product, and they never see it and they think it’s free is a huge problem too.

Nicolas:  Oh, yeah, definitely. For a retired couple, their investment fee can be their biggest expense of the year.

Marcello: Yeah.

Nicolas:  And then they have no idea. They think food or travel is their biggest expense. But no, it’s definitely the fee that is. And from the other end of the spectrum, if you’re the bank, you’re kind of happy to, you know, take this fee and there’s no pain associated with that for the client. But yeah, hopefully it will correct the law that has been changed and it will be more transparent starting this year. But again, I’m questioning, let’s say you’re with Big Bank A. If you’re not happy, you will go to Big Bank B. And will the fee structure be very different? I’m not sure about that, but hopefully, yeah, any pressure will help and maybe a better product will be, you know, pushed more and be pushed at the front.

Marcello: Yeah, I agree. One of the other big topics that you see a lot. I think a section of the investing population in Canada is obsessed with this subject. You talked about it in the book and that’s dividend investing. So, tell me, why are people obsessed with dividend investing? And give me your thoughts. Around that you’re smiling because you know where I’m going with this.

Nicolas:  Yeah, it’s always a controversial topic because people who love dividend investing really love it.

Marcello: Yes.

Nicolas:  And I think it comes from education and media. If we go back in the 90s or even the 80s, if you read the Financial Columnist back then, they were big, big believers in dividend investing. For a whole generation of investors, it’s basically the way to go because, hey, passive, right? I get this income. It’s almost like a paycheck. And so, for a lot of people, it makes a lot of sense. And then when you tell them that it’s not optimal, they’re sometimes not happy about it, so. Well, why is it not optimal? Well, the dividend that you’re getting, you owned it even before they gave it to you.

So, let’s say the stock price of the company is, I don’t know, a hundred dollars, and they pay a $1 dividend. Well, the day they announce their dividend, the stock price will go down to $99. And then you will get your dollar in your pocket. So, nothing has been created. It’s like you take a dollar from your right pocket and put it in your left pocket. And when you’re in your working years, it’s bad because you will get to pay tax on that dollar whether you need it or not. And some studies have said that people don’t use the dividend to reinvest in the company. Sometimes they speculate with it, or they go out and they buy something with it. They consume it.

Marcello: Well, it’s almost like casino money, right?

Nicolas:  Yeah, right. It’s just this money that just landed in your account. And so, I’m trying to get people to understand that. And so. But people say, well, just look at the big banks. All you had to do was to buy their stock 20 years ago, and you will get this massive dividend. Well, yeah, there’s a lot of survivorship bias there because some banks have not been performing well. Kosher banks, from memory, had a rough patch for a number of years.

So, people will associate a good portfolio performance with the way to go. And it’s a bit like me saying, well, I never buckled my seatbelt when I drove and never had an accident. Well, okay, so should we all, like, cut our seatbelts and not worry about them? It looks silly, but sometimes there’s a lot of that in investing.

And so, there’s a funny story in my book about Warren Buffett’s sister, and she is a very rich woman, but she has Berkshire Hathaway stocks. And Berkshire Hathaway very famously doesn’t pay a dividend. I think they paid a dividend before Warren Buffett’s years. I’m sure some listeners can correct me on that. A very, very long time ago, they paid a small dividend. But, yeah, famously, Warren Buffett refused to pay a dividend. Now he says, if you want to live off your investment, just sell it. But of course, people don’t want to do that because they feel that they’re hurting their future growth. Well, it’s the exact same thing when you get a dividend, but when you have to sell to get income, you choose when you do it. Sometimes it’s more tax efficient to do it that way. And Warren Buffett’s sister started doing that, and now she’s super happy about it because she gets to decide when she sells and blah, blah, blah.

So, I’m trying to. Sometimes people think that, you know, index investing, it’s fine, but there’s a better way. And then this better way is dividend investing. Unfortunately, if that was true, I would be the first one to tell you about it. I would write columns every week about it. And you will be sick of me telling you about this, but it’s just not the case. So maybe somebody listening to this has a good experience with dividends. Probably the case is just on aggregate. It’s not a way to beat the market. It’s not a way to make your portfolio last longer. And if you had good experience with that, maybe it’s just luck. I will give you one anecdote.

A reader wrote to me last week and said, you never talk about dividends. You should. I put all my money in Philip Morris. Twenty years ago, Philip Morris, the cigarette maker. And now the stock is called Altria. He said, see, I did that. And now I have this amazing dividend. And I told him, wow, you won the lottery because Philip Morris Altria is the best performing stock of the last hundred years. It literally is. Okay, So I told them, you won the lottery. Like, should I turn around and tell people to buy lottery tickets? Because one guy won the lottery? Like, this is not a way. This is not a good way to invest.

And so, people have to dissociate their experience and what the research tells us to do. And in that case, that person was happy with their situation. I totally understand it, but it’s not something that we can replicate. Basically.

Marcello: Yeah. I think that the issue with dividend investing is there’s a huge psychological aspect of, hey, I’m getting my cash Flow. And I never have to sell. Right, I get that. But, you know, I think all the studies point to this. You lack diversification, number one. So, you’re going to get companies by doing just dividends. You’re excluding a bunch of great companies. The other thing, too philosophically. Right. Like if you have a company that is giving you a dividend.

I don’t know you, Nicola, but personally, I rather own a stock that when they get money, they reinvest in their own business for growth. Right. So, there’s also that. And it’s not tax efficient if you get capital dividends. And principle is. Capital gains, in principle, is way more tax efficient than if you’re getting dividends or interest. So, there’s a lot of problems with dividend investing. I think it is a strategy where Yes. If you’re not doing anything and you’re dividend investing. Okay, I get it. That could feel like it’s working, but it doesn’t mean it’s the best way.

Nicolas: Exactly. And studies after studies have shown that. But it’s very hard to get people to understand.

Marcello: Okay, perfect. So, before we move on to the next subject, I want to ask you just briefly about bonds. You spoke about bonds in the book. How do you feel about bonds? And do you own any bonds in your portfolio?

Nicolas: I own it. I calculated the other day that about 10% of my investment is in bonds and about 90% is in stock.

Marcello: Interesting.

Nicolas: Yes. And bonds are mostly in my RESP. For my son because now he’s in high school. So.

Marcello: Nice.

Nicolas:  The withdrawal date is getting closer.

Marcello: Yes.

Nicolas: But he was 100% stock when he was born. And why is that? Well, to me, bonds are kind of a cushion, if you will, so you can have your stocks work for you. And a lot of people don’t like bonds that much. And the reason they don’t is because bonds have not performed well over the last five, 10, 15 years, if you compare them to stocks. But the problem is bonds are reassuring when there’s a lot of volatility and people do very poorly when there’s a lot of volatility. People tend to tinker with their investments, stop investing at some times, or switch funds. And so, I don’t think most people can support or can go through a 30% drawdown.

Marcello: Yeah.

Nicolas:  And a 30% drawdown is almost certain to have happened in the next five years or even less than that. And so. And that’s even the worst-case scenario. You should be able to go through a 50% decline and 50%. Calculate it in dollar amount, okay, because it’s very easy to just throw a number like that. Oh yeah, 50%, 40%. But you will have to grow through phases of 50% drawdown and maybe the market will stay down for three years. You don’t know. And so, I am trying to convince a few readers to have more bonds.

And on the other end, I’m trying to persuade a few readers to have more stocks because they don’t like volatility. Bonds are bad for people who know and like to invest, bonds have a bad reputation. But I’m telling them, unfortunately, when you look at a 100% stock portfolio, if you look at the worst event for that portfolio in memory, or our memory is the year 2008 crash, okay? So that was the worst event for a diversified portfolio. If you held onto your portfolio during that period, you were down 40% at the worst and you stayed in the negative territory for four years. If you held a diversified portfolio, 60% stocks, 40% bonds, you were down at the worst 25% and you were in the green in less than two years. So, there’s a two-year difference between a 100% stock portfolio and a balanced portfolio. So that’s a long time. Two years of underperforming, two years of being negative. And remember, why are people in 100% portfolio stocks portfolio, they’re there because they want to see growth. Then counterintuitively, you won’t see growth. You’ll see less growth than the other guy who is in a more balanced portfolio.

So, I don’t think it’s very, it’s a big mystery why people switch from one asset class to another and then they hear their friend talk about investing in these assets and they move. And so, people won’t stay long enough to reap the benefit of stocks in the long run. And so, to me, that’s the only problem with having a lot of stocks in your portfolio is that you won’t be able to stick to your plan if it goes down. You’ll say, oh, I’m forced to sell. Nobody forces you to sell. It’s just that you set yourself up for failure by taking on more risk than you thought you would. And maybe that will manifest itself in the future.

We had a few good years for stock returns. Maybe we’ll get another few good years, maybe we won’t. So, I think it’s not popular when the sun is shining to buy bonds. Nobody wants to buy insurance when the sun is shining. But you know, if the hurricane comes, people will be happy that they have something to rely on. During those years?

Marcello: Yeah, yeah, 100%. Next question I had for you. I found this lesson in the book was excellent and it was the one on why a great story sometimes is a terrible investment.

Nicolas:  Yeah, that one is very hard to acknowledge.

Marcello: It’s very relevant now, by the way, because you hear there’s a lot of stocks that have a really great story around it.

Nicolas:  Of course, if you just take AI, right? AI is the future. And I’m meaning from the wrong run. Let’s say I’m 20 years old and I want to invest for the long future. And will technology be more present in our lives 20 years down the road than it is today? Of course. So, I’m thinking I want to buy technology stocks. Why should I waste my time with anything else? Well, the problem is that we have a lot of data from past decades. And if you look at the top performing sector of every decade, you can see ten years later it was not the most performing sector again. And sometimes this sector underperforms the market as a whole.

So, you think you’re taking a shortcut to greatness when you just identify the hot sectors. But no, the market already knows that it’s hot. The market already knows that 20 years from now there’ll be more technology in your life. So, this is not an insight that you can act on and to increase your expected returns. And people, they freeze when I tell them that because they haven’t thought of that. To them it makes total sense. And if we look at, let’s say, the stock that had the biggest return over the last hundred years, I just mentioned it earlier, the one that has been beating the others is Philip Morris. And of course they sell addictive products with a big margin. So that’s kind of not a recipe for health, but it’s a recipe for success in business. But if we look at the company following Philip Morris, it’s a company in the US market called Vulcan Material. The Vulcan Material. People don’t know about this. I had to Google it. And the researcher who did this study on.

Marcello: Is this called Centerbrick?

Nicolas:  Yeah. No, it’s not Centerbrick. I think it’s Hendrik Bessembinder who did this study. He realized that Vulcan Material is a company that sells rocks and sand and gravel to make asphalt. Okay, what is the most boring thing? I mean, we could talk about investment teams for an hour, and we wouldn’t get within 10 miles of asphalt and rocks and sand. Right.

But this is the company that’s been beating the whole stock market for 100 years. And the reason is all these rocks are very heavy. And so, there’s not a lot of competition because transportation takes a lot of the cost of the product. And so, you have your little territory, you can charge what you want. And so that’s how they make money. And you’re miles away from the hot stocks from Silicon Valley or miles away from any good story you can think of. But that’s the reality.

So, we’re better off not trying to pick the winners in advance and to just hold the whole market because the market is way more skewed than people imagine. I have readers, they tell me, oh, I bought this stock 20 years ago, it’s doing nothing or it’s going down. What should I do? I tell them, well, most stocks are bad. Investment stocks as a whole are good because there are few winners that pull the market up. But most stocks end up being bad investments. And a good number, I think it’s 40% and end up being of zero value eventually. And so, you know, choosing winners and losers sometimes hurts more than it helps.

And so, yeah, it’s hard for people to let go of their great story. But the thing to remember is that am I the only one who thought of that, like, am I the only one who knows who thinks that electric cars are going to be more prevalent in 25 years than they are today? I mean, no, it’s common knowledge. And if it’s common knowledge, there’s nothing that we can do to increase our future return with that knowledge.

Marcello: Yeah, 100%. I saw this thing with, I don’t know if you know, Howard Marks. So, he writes the memo, which is, you know, a publication. Warren Buffett says that that’s one of the only things that he reads religiously. He’s a terrific writer, but he had one on AI recently. He was talking about it. The analogy he was using is when cars started coming into the market in the United States, there were about 50 or 60 companies. When cars started coming into the market, fast forward 50 years, there were three companies left. So just because the technology may be revolutionary doesn’t mean that every company will survive.

Nicolas:  Yeah, or the sector will make money. If you take aviation, airlines. Correct. Have been very bad investments for the most part for the last 80 years. But have they been successful in changing the world? Of course, a sector can be very influential and change the world. It doesn’t mean that the investors will be the one rewarded for that. Maybe the public will be rewarded with cheap travel, etc. But to just associate something that’s popular and new with great returns for investors is not the case.

Marcello: Yeah, 100%. Okay, look, I want to ask you also, you mentioned that the crashes are inevitable in the market. What we know now compared to 30 years ago about behavioral psychology and behavioral finance, I would say we’re way more equipped to deal with these things. But it also sheds light on how terrible investors human beings are. But you talked in the book about some strategies that people can go to when there is a big crash. So, talk to me about that.

Nicolas:  Yeah, it comes from Jason Zweig from the Wall Street Journal. He made popular a way it’s called regret minimization. So, what it is that you have to, you know when there’s a big crash that lasts for a few months or years, we don’t know. That’s the thing with crash. There’s no end date. Right. It can end tomorrow in five years.

The way to deal with that is not to go take a walk, although that’s always a good thing. But sometimes people like to have agency. They like to do things. And if someone like me or you tell them to do nothing, it’s not satisfying. So, what they can do is to first of all start with actions that will generate low regret. And those actions are, let’s say you planned on changing your car this year and buying a new one. Well, maybe you want to hold on to your car for a year or two and that it’s. Maybe the car is already paid off a lease, so you won’t have this big purchase coming.

So, that’s one thing. Maybe you had a vacation planned abroad. Why don’t you stay closer to home so you will have more money in your account. The idea is to change your behavior on a day-to-day basis so you can have more money and feel more insulated from what can happen in the economy.

If there’re layoffs or if there’s a recession, you will be prepared for that. And the next layer of the pyramid is to take some actions that will generate likely medium level regret. Like let’s say you have maybe too much stock in your portfolio and you’re selling stocks are going down. In a perfect world you will not touch your stocks. But if you realize in this event that you maybe took on more risk, you can have a more balanced portfolio with the understanding that you won’t be changing it in six months’ time. You just found a better portfolio for you, and you want to stick with it for the long run. Maybe you also want to not reinvest your dividend. Maybe you want to keep some more cash there as well.

So, all this will kind of help you insulate you from the market and from maybe a recession. And if you do all that, the last action that you can take is the one that will likely generate the strongest regret, which is to sell your assets, because you’re moving from stocks, which has the highest expected returns, and you’re jumping into cash, which has almost no expected return at all.

So, it feels good, but you just forfeited a chance to grow your wealth and grow your money. I know from anecdotes that some people did exactly that during the Liberation Day tariff about a year ago. Yeah, people will remember the market fell 5%, I think, two days in a row. That scared a lot of people. And then a lot of people sold back then and say, oh, I’ll let the dust settle, and let’s say where we are in the summer or in the fall.

But the thing is, the market rebounded very strongly, very quickly, and some people were not ready for that, and they lost some ground during that time. And so that’s unfortunate. So, if you kind of follow this step by step, you will likely end up richer. You will likely sleep better at night. So, I think that’s a great approach for portfolio management. And to tell people to not do nothing but do something that more likely to help them, to hurt them.

Marcello: I like that a lot. I think it’s a good framework to have when these bad periods do happen, and they will happen. Let’s move on and try to end it. I want to end on the topic of financial planning. You talked in the book about this idea of leaving off your investments. I think we have seen this in the marketplace for a long time. I mean, Tulett, Matthews and Associates has always been a planning first firm. We recently welcomed three new financial planners, me included. And we’re trying to integrate a lot of these planning ideas with our clients. But you’re seeing it also with your readers and personally, I’m guessing, if you included it in the book.

So, let’s spend some time talking about decumulation strategies. And there’s two things I want to pick your brain on. One is how do you think people should think about the psychological shift from accumulating to spending? And then how do you think Canadians should think about this shift? And what are some of the strategies that they should be looking at?

Nicolas:  Yeah, it’s a very interesting time when you have to switch from being a saver to a spender. I think people who have accumulated assets over the decades, they don’t switch very quickly. Sometimes I feel that.

I did a story for La Presse recently. I interviewed some retirees and some fellowship planners, and they said the questions always come up. People don’t like to spend because they don’t know how long they’re going to live, right? So, if you know you’re going to die in two years, well, you can plan for that. But you know, financial planners, as you know, like to plan until age 95 for at least one of the spouses of a couple. So that can be a long time for some people. So, I think the answer to that is looking at the numbers, right? It’s not my word against your word or the client’s word. It will always be that. But if you look at the numbers and you’re being conservative with the numbers, that can be a good way to make people feel comfortable and so they can spend.

I think one of the big problems is getting people to spend and to enjoy life. And so, one way to do that is with the numbers. I know there’s a few calculators online if people want to play around. I think there’s a PWL, they have a retirement income calculator. So, if you Google that, you will see the link and there’s a few inputs that you can put, and they will tell you how much you can withdraw from your portfolio. They will even tell you if you should start with which account you could start in order to maximize the unwell.

And so that’s one way to do it. What I tell my readers about a rule I love is the 4% rule. As you know, the 4% rule of thumb. It’s a rule. It’s not a law. It’s just a way to. It’s a starting point. And so, the idea being that you can withdraw 4% of the value of the portfolio every year and you adjust this amount for inflation, so it stays the same throughout your life. And so that’s 4%. It’s 4% of, let’s say, a $100,000 share of the portfolio where you can withdraw $4,000 a year from that portfolio. It has to be mostly in stocks. It should not be like a super conservative portfolio because otherwise it’s maybe a little bit too much.

But there are some criticisms of this rule. Some people say it’s too aggressive, some people say it’s too conservative. But I think it’s a great way to start knowing that there will likely be more sources of income with Quebec and there’ll be other sources of income along the way. As well, and it gives people a guideline so, you know, they can have an idea of how much they can spend and all that.

But it’s, I think it’s very difficult. I think one advisor told me that what he likes to do with his client is to withdraw smaller sums of money, but more frequently, because more often than not, retirees will live on less because they want the amount that they have to last longer so they can push back the moment where they have to withdraw from the portfolio. So, the kind of trick to go around this behavior is to withdraw a little bit less, but on a more consistent basis, and people were okay with spending that money. If you’ve been a good saver and if you’re a good investor and you use the 4% rule, you’re more likely to finish with double the money you started than to have depleted your account, you know, by the time you’re at the end of your life. So, it’s a conservative rule. It’s not, you know, some people like to spend more than 4%, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You just have to know that you have to have other sources of income.

Or maybe eventually you sell your house and then you have a windfall or you have an amount that you can invest as well. But yeah, I like to think about these things. I mean, we’re just investors. Sometimes it feels like it’s almost like a game or making the number go up.

But there’s a book called Die with Zero that’s super interesting. And this whole thing is, you know, when is the party, right? You’ve been saving, you know, for your whole life. Is there a party at any time? There is this or you just going to click coupons well into your 90s, right. And I have to say, as a saver, in terms of it pushes me to think differently. I, the way I’ve implemented it in my own life, is almost in my 50s now. I’m 49 next month, and I’ve started to work a little bit less. I work four days a week for the newspaper and on the fifth day I write my books. And so that’s a way that I found to just reclaim time for myself and to not work full time. And I would not be comfortable doing that if I didn’t have any investment in assets. But since I’ve been saving and investing, I feel that these assets can work for me and make it all work.

So I’m kind of joking that I’m pre retired, but it’s a good feeling to be able to fund your own lifestyle and know that if something happens to your job or if you lose interest in your field or there’s something else you want to do more, you can make it work. So, a lot of people don’t have that in their life. They don’t have the flexibility or possibility to do that. But yeah, to me, that’s the most important thing money does for you, is to give you options, setting you for, you know, a great life that you want to choose for yourself 100%.

Marcello: Well, listen, supposed to be a tool, right? And I think one of the most satisfying moments for me as an advisor is to be able to sit across a client and say, hey, what is that thing that we’re pushing around? Because we think we don’t have the money, but we actually can afford it and do it today. And it’s so satisfying when we go into the plan and we say, hey, you know that trip to Turkey, you want to take the family, it’s going to cost you 15,000, you can actually afford it. And it’s going to create a lot of memories and satisfaction.

And what we tend to do here is the 4% rule is a good one because it gives you a framework, but it’s a good starting point. The software we have now, and it’s only getting better. And what we’ve done here is that. And I think you talked about this, about this in the book. And one of the things that we’ve realized is people’s spending doesn’t go down when they retire. It actually stays the same or goes up because now they have more time, they have more things to check, hobbies to pick up, things to do. And what we tend to see is from 65 to 75, we call them the go-go years. They tend to be the same or more expensive.

So, we break down lifestyle, travel and then, you know, any big expenses they may have. If you’re replacing a car, for example, we break that down into each category. Then from 75, 85, you get to see that retirement spending slows down because you tend to be more mobile. You know, travel insurance is a bit more expensive. The hangouts tend to be more local. You know, grandkids coming to your backyard type of thing. You may also downsize your house and then go to a smaller place.

And then 85 to 95, it’s a fork in your road, right? Like, it’s really. Can be very expensive, but. Or it can be very cheap if you have good health and you have good spirits. Right? So, I think we also revise that every year.

But I think if you end up dying with 3-4 million dollars and you have that in the back of your head, that man, maybe you could have helped your kids start a business. Maybe you could have helped your kids earlier or take that trip that you never took. That’s the worst place. And that’s. I think, as advisors, we don’t want our clients to end there. And even as a person, you don’t want to end in that situation. Yeah.

Nicolas:  And I think it’s very, very common. I include myself in this. I have to force myself to upgrade some things, like biking. And last year, I bought a new bike after 20 years. I upgraded my road bike equipment. It was not easy for me. I’m the type of person who says, well, my bike works. Why should I change it? But now that I have the new bike, I’m like, oh, why did I wait so long to do this? So, it’s almost like a new sport, right? So, yeah, I have to physically push myself to do it because it’s not comfortable. But after I do it, I realize that it’s worth it. So, I encourage people to say that. And people like me who talk about it. And you talk about investing and saving. We don’t want to overdo it and have people live miserable lives so they can have a big TFSA. I mean, it’s all about balance, right?

Marcello: 100%. Hey, Nicholas, thank you so much for your time. I want you to just, before we go, just leave the reader with some of your takeaways. Like, if people are picking the book and they have to remember one or two things, what would you leave them with?

Nicolas:  I would say that, yeah, multiplying your money is a worthwhile goal. It’s way simpler than we are led to believe. The less you mess with the recipe, the better the meal will taste. So that’s what. That’s what I would like people to remember.

Marcello: Thank you so much. And we appreciate your insights. And I know the readers will continue to read your content. I personally will continue to read your content. I was very excited when I knew you were publishing the book. And when it comes in English, I still will read it again because I love this stuff and it’s a good reminder, I think, you know, a lot of the stuff you write about, it’s like religion, right? Like, we people who go to church, like they’ve heard the same story a thousand times, but it helps to hear it every Sunday, and it keeps you in check, right?

Nicolas:  Exactly. It’s fitting that it’s on a Sunday. Sometimes I try not to preach too much, but yeah, there’s only so many times you can tell people to save and invest. But yeah, I try to make it interesting.

Marcello: Thank you very much.

Nicolas:  Thank you, Marcelo. Happy to talk to you.

Keith:  Thanks for listening to the Empowered Investor Podcast, brought to you by Tulett, Matthews and Associates. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to follow or subscribe and share it with somebody who wants to invest with clarity and confidence. To learn more about how we help investors build lasting financial peace of mind, visit us at tma-invest.com. Until next time, stay informed, stay empowered, and stay on track to your financial goals. Investment and investing strategies should be evaluated based on your own objectives list. Listeners of this podcast should use their best judgment and consult a financial expert prior to making any investment decisions based on the information found in this podcast.