Ep403: Eric Rosenberg – Start Investing by Making Regular Monthly Contributions
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Quick take
BIO: Eric Rosenberg is a financial writer, speaker, and consultant based in Ventura, California.
STORY: Eric always played it safe by investing in conservative low-list investments. This made him miss out on huge investments.
LEARNING: Understand and manage your investment risk. Stop making excuses and start saving and investing by making regular monthly contributions.
“Let your money be something that helps you live the life you want. Not the reason you can’t do the things you want.”
Eric Rosenberg
Guest profile
Eric Rosenberg is a financial writer, speaker, and consultant based in Ventura, California. He holds an undergraduate finance degree from the University of Colorado and an MBA in finance from the University of Denver. After working as a bank manager and then nearly a decade in corporate finance and accounting, Eric left the corporate world for full-time online self-employment. He recently passed the five-year mark of self-employment.
His work has been featured in online publications, including Business Insider, Nerdwallet, Investopedia, The Balance, HuffPo, Investor Junkie, and other fine financial blogs and publications. When away from the computer, he enjoys spending time with his wife and three children, traveling the world, and tinkering with technology. Connect with him and learn more at EricRosenberg.com.
Worst investment ever
Eric graduated from college in 2007 with a finance degree. He came out of grad school into the beginning of one of the worst economies.
The conservative investor
Eric started investing with a lot of very conservative investment ideas because he was nervous about losing. He had taken Warren Buffett’s advice of not losing money to heart. He concentrated on making long-term value investments that are low-risk.
This way of investing saw Eric not make many investments that would have made him a lot of money.
The WWE stock
One of the most notable investments that Eric missed out on was the WWE stock. While in school, Eric did a presentation on the WWE stock. He argued that this was not just about muscle men fighting, but it was actually a very profitable business. However, the class voted not to buy it.
But Eric was convinced enough, so he bought WWE stock worth about $300. Initially, it went way up, and it was doing great. Then all of a sudden, it was not doing so great. He ended up selling it for a modest loss. It wasn’t a big one.
But later on, Eric learned that his research was pretty much spot on because the stock eventually returned multiple times over. If he hadn’t sold it and had just held on and rode it out for another couple of years, it would have turned profitable.
The Teva pharmaceuticals stock
Another stock that Eric sold for a loss was Teva pharmaceuticals. He didn’t do an in-depth financial analysis on this stock as he usually did. This is because he is very passionate about Israel, so he went with his emotions. He invested about $800, but the stock never did well.
Lessons learned
Understand and manage your investment risk
Everyone has a different risk tolerance. Understand what your tolerance is. If you always get sick to your stomach every time you think of losing money, you probably don’t want a very risky portfolio. If you get excited at the idea of taking on risky ventures, then maybe you can invest a little bit riskier. But understand and be in control of that risk.
Start investing by making regular monthly contributions
Start investing by making regular investments over time. The best way for most people to get started is by taking advantage of 401k if you have a job that has one. If you don’t have 401k, find another investment and start saving regularly, even if it’s just $5. Just start with something you can always build from there, but you can’t build on zero. So you got to start with that first dollar.
Andrew’s takeaways
Quit with the excuses and start saving and investing
Most people come up with all kinds of reasons not to start saving and investing. The truth is that it’s never going to be convenient. You just got to start.
You won’t always get it right with the stock market
The stock market goes in waves. Sometimes it’s really high; sometimes, it’s really low. Therefore, not every stock you invest in will be a winner, and that’s ok.
Actionable advice
Set up your automatic monthly recurring contributions and start saving either into your work or personal IRA, or your HSA, or a taxable stock account. You won’t make money if you don’t start. So get something automated, and you can always grow from there.
No. 1 goal for the next 12 months
Eric’s number one goal for the next 12 months is to survive. He hopes the world will look a lot more like it did five years ago in the next 12 months.
Parting words
“Until next time, stay profitable.”
Eric Rosenberg
Andrew Stotz 00:01
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community we know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big you've got to reduce it. To join our community go to my worst investment ever.com and receive the following five free benefits first, you get the risk reduction checklists I created from the lessons I've learned from all my guests. Second, you get my weekly email to help you increase your investment return. Third, you get a 25% discount on all a Stotz Academy courses. Fourth, you get access to our Facebook community to get to know guests and fellow listeners. And finally, you get my curated list of the Top 10 podcast episodes fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast hosts Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Eric Rosenberg. Eric, are you ready to rock? I am always ready to rock. Yeah, well, I'm going to introduce you to the audience so they know you really are ready to rock. So here we go. Eric Rosenberg is a financial writer, speaker and consultant based in Ventura, California. He holds an undergrad graduate finance degree from the University of Colorado, and an MBA in finance from the University of Denver, after working as a bank manager, and then nearly a decade in corporate finance and accounting, Eric left the corporate world Yay, for full time online employment. He recently passed the five year mark for that self employment. His work has been featured in online publications including Business Insider, nerd wallet, investopedia, the balance, the Huffington Post, Huffington Post, investor junkie and other fine financial blogs and publications. When away from the computer. He enjoys spending time with his wife and three children traveling the world and tinkering with technology. Connect with him and learn more. And Eric Rosenberg, dog calm boy, Eric, can you take a minute? And finally further tidbits about your life?
Eric Rosenberg 02:05
Yeah, definitely. So I'd say the quick elevator pitch if we only had 15 seconds together. I'm a financial writer, as my main thing. As I write articles about money, you just mentioned a bunch of the places I write, I love what I do. It's pretty cool. I, the way I look at it, you know, I never thought I'd be a writer. When I started, you've heard of to finance degrees, I always thought I was going to go be a CFO or a CEO at a fortune 500 company. And along the way, I actually found I really liked this blogging thing, was able to make a few dollars doing it. So I started my own site, personal profitability at the blog, podcast and YouTube channel. I started that as just a little side hustle, a little fun project in 2008. And five years ago, I was able to go full time. So it's a great thing. I'm primarily a freelancer. So I write for other sites, in addition to my own Mine, mine is kind of a hobby pet project. But that's where it all started, you know, like the chicken and the egg thing. It all started with the blog. And it led to this great career path that I'm living now where I can work whenever I want, as long as I meet my deadlines anywhere in the world. So wherever my laptop is, that's my office. So yeah, it's a great way to go
Andrew Stotz 03:14
fascinating and in for your writing. How would you describe kind of your most common area of interest that you're you love writing about within the world of finance, investing and all of that.
Eric Rosenberg 03:26
I always joke, I can write anything with $1 sign attached. That's, that's kind of my thing, money world. But I do focus a lot on FinTech. That's an area of kind of a passion area. For me, I really enjoy seeing how, you know, different companies and different technologies, especially recently, things like blockchain. Maybe we'll mention that in a little bit. How how that's all come together, and you're seeing the future. And I write for some companies that were really trying to help people with their money and teach great lessons. So I feel good about what I'm doing. I'm not out there pitching payday loans. I'm out there really trying to help people make the best financial decisions and pick the right bank accounts and investment accounts. And whatever your financial goals are, I want to help you reach them. So what were your goals look like are probably different than my goals. That's okay. Don't let anyone judge you, or tell you where you should or shouldn't spend your money. As long as you are able to meet your financial goals. And make sure your savings are on track and your investments are on track. Then you have budgets or fund money. That's okay. Spend it enjoy it. So that's kind of my philosophy. Let your money be something that helps you live the life you want. Not the reason you can't do the things you want.
Andrew Stotz 04:32
Hmm. And one other question is when you were in the corporate world, and that time, were you writing a lot or like, are you a writer? Were you know, whenever you got free time you sat down and took notes or you wrote something, or did you just move into writing? Yeah, it
Eric Rosenberg 04:51
was it was an evening and weekend side hustle. It started after I started writing online. I shared about a totally unrelated topics I was writing about Israel in the Middle East. And that was how I learned about blogging in the beginning. And then I learned more about the business side of blogging, I learned about hosting, I am one of those people that I have to learn how to do it on myself. So I learned how to build websites. I actually was a web developer for a little while freelance when I left my job before I went 100% into writing, I was probably at 20. That's a whole nother story. But yeah, so it's been, it's been a long and interesting path. But yeah, it was always a side hustle in the beginning. And then it turned into this full time, full time opportunity.
Andrew Stotz 05:37
Well, I think there's a lot to learn from you. And I know the listeners want to learn more, but now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one ever goes into their worst investment thinking it will be. Tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story.
Eric Rosenberg 05:53
or so before I tell you the worst one, I'm going to keep you on edge for a minute, we're going to Tarantino it kind of we're gonna go back a couple steps and build up. So I had a couple of losing investments that I want to share. The first one was WWE, the pro wrestling company. So I bought that stock. It actually in my graduate school, I did a really in depth presentation on WWE, I was part of a team of about 10 students managing a half a million dollar portion of the university endowment fund. So I was part of as part of the MBA program. So every week, a different student would pitch a stock to the class that we would either want to add to the portfolio or want to take out or decide, you know, is it a buy, sell or hold something that we either have or we want to add in. And I really brought WWE to the class. And I said no, it's not just about rock bottoms and stone cold stoners and pro wrestling moves. It's a real business. And it's a really profitable business with a huge fan base. And the class voted not to buy it. But I was convinced enough I bought, you know, at that point, I was early 20s, I didn't have a lot to invest to think about $300 worth or something. And initially, it went way up, and it was doing great. And then all of a sudden it was not doing so great. And I ended up selling for a modest loss. It wasn't a big one. But something I learned about that was my research was actually pretty much spot on because it eventually did come back multiple times over. So if I hadn't sold it, if I had just held on and wrote it out for another couple of years, it would have turned profitable, but I don't really regret the loss because I sold it and a couple other things at the same time to buy my first condo. So that condo was a hugely winning investment, maybe my probably my second best investment ever in ROI. So it was okay that I sold that stock for a loss. Another sock I sold for a loss, and also not my worst investment but building up to it was Teva pharmaceuticals. And this one, there, there's a few things that happened. So one I didn't do as in depth of financial analysis, as I normally do. Now, the MBA, they taught me how to do it. And I just kind of skirted that a little bit. I was like, the financials look good, I think I'm gonna buy it. And also, I have a little passion in my heart for Israel. I've spent a lot of time there. tebah is based in Jerusalem just a couple miles from my old university that I did a semester at. So I was like, oh, like biggest Israeli company. It's one of the biggest generic pharmaceutical companies in the world. I thought that's like a big economic moat, as Warren Buffett would say, it seemed like a good one. And if you pull up a Tesla stock chart, you'll, you'll see what happened there so that when I sold for a loss, it just a really funny thing that happened. I do a lot of investment product reviews. So I was reviewing weeble, the brokerage and I signed up when they were doing the free stock giveaway promo. And it was about a week after I sold Tesla for a loss. And they gave me one free share of tebah. So I still have one share. And every time I look at it, I remember that, I don't know seven $800. I probably lost there. So you're not a not the kind of loss that will change my life but definitely stung. And that one kind of taught me. You know, think about the emotions. Think about your specific tie to a stock. It's easy. Let's say you're a Disney fan. You know you that's just an easy one to pick on. If you love Disney World, you might think oh, I'm gonna buy Disney I love Disney World and I love Mickey Mouse. But that doesn't necessarily mean Mickey Mouse makes money. And Disney is actually a stock I do have so I think it will make money. But there are a lot of stocks people might like, you know, GoPro, like any stock that gets kind of a cult following where people get really into it. Be careful investing in something you're really into, because that can kind of blind you to the risks that other people might notice that it really comes down to profit. ability not just having you as a customer. But that brings me Drumroll, please. My worst investment ever. So I graduated from college in 2007. From with a finance degree, and anyone who's a millennial or older probably knows what that means. I came out of grad, I came out of school into one of the worst economies or into the beginning of one of the worst economies and 80 years or something at that point. So I started investing with a lot of very conservative investment ideas, I was nervous to lose I was I was Warren Buffett, I mentioned him a lot when I'm thinking investing. I'm a big fan. He said, rule one is don't lose money, rule twos Don't forget rule one. So I tried to take that to heart, I really tried to do long term value investments that are low risk. But that has also led me to skip a lot of investments or not invest heavier. And I think there's a lot of millennials, I don't think I know, there's a lot of statistics that a lot of millennials had been at least up into the beginning of COVID, pretty cash heavy, and reluctant to really all in any investment. So my worst investment is the one I didn't make. There are a lot of investments I didn't make. And I sat on a lot of cash. And if I look at my investment accounts, other than have WWE and a couple others that weren't so bad, I pretty much made money on most of the things I picked. And I'm not a big stock picker, I have maybe 10% of my portfolio in a single stock account. And the rest is all in low fee index funds. And those have all done really well. And any dollar that sitting on the sidelines has just not grown the same. And now, just this morning, as the day we're recording, I listened to an NPR story worrying about inflation again. So it's a time to think, is that investment, I'm not making really the worst investment ever, because you don't know what you're not getting back. And if you go to any investment calculator and type in an interest rate, and see what happens if you invest for 1020 3040 years, and there are going to be bad years, we are going to have bad investments, we are going to have losses, that's part of investing. But if we're diverse, and you have a portfolio and an investment strategy you can believe in, then in the long term you should do okay. Now, I'm not saying the worst investment I didn't make was something to do with day trading or some high risk thing. I mean, I could look back at my you know, I started with Bitcoin when it was really early. And I sold it early on for $1,000. And if I'd kept it today, that'd be worth like 30 or $40,000. So I guess that's an investment I didn't make right, I got cold feet that I sold out early. You know, every all the crypto right now, everyone feels smart, who has it because it's gone up so much lately. But you know, there's a lot of other examples, notably in the stock market, you know, long term, s&p 500 funds, things like that, just, there's gonna be bad years, there's gonna be good years, but over any long period of time, they return about 10%. So I'd rather have that than point oh, 1%, or whatever your bank gives you these days. That's my worst investment. That's my story.
Andrew Stotz 13:18
So that's my story. And I'm sticking with it. I
Eric Rosenberg 13:22
wish I had invested more and held on longer to more things even that WWE stock if I'd held on and double down on my conviction, I would have made a fortune. I'm glad I got the condo, but
Andrew Stotz 13:33
what what lessons have you learned from this experience?
Eric Rosenberg 13:36
Yeah, so the biggest lesson I've learned is, how to understand and manage my investment risk. You know, everyone has a different risk level. And that tolerance, and that's in portfolio management classes, we call it risk tolerance. And everyone's is different. And that's okay. You know, if you think of a stock going up and down, and you feel like your stomach goes on that roller coaster ride feeling if it makes you feel sick to your stomach that thought of losing money, you probably don't want a very risky portfolio. If you get excited at the idea of going to Las Vegas or Macau, if you're over in Thailand, you know, not too far away. You know, they maybe you invest a little bit riskier, but right, do understand and be in control of that risk. Don't let it be in control of your investments. And the same thing I said about the money earlier, by understanding what makes you nervous and understanding where you have good opportunities. And then just looking at the statistics and the numbers, you know, where you will probably do best and, you know, I hate to say it's probably not going to be Bitcoin, it's probably going to be something a lot more boring, like a low cost index fund from Vanguard or Schwab or fidelity, something like that. And you can just sit on it and forget about it. And then when you're ready to retire and 10 2030 years up, it should be there and a lot bigger than when you started.
Andrew Stotz 14:57
Let me summarize a few things I took away I've written down about bunch of stuff. And the first thing I wrote down was decades. And you know, I wrote a book for my nieces, so that when they graduate high school, they could start investing. And I helped them to start investing. And what I said is, you know, if you're 20, and you plan on retiring, when you're 60, you got a 40 year investment horizon. But the reality is, is that if you retire when you're 60, you could live to be 90. So actually, you've got that 40 years plus another, let's just say 30 years.
Eric Rosenberg 15:34
Now. Depending on how old your nieces are, they could easily live to 110. Yeah, we got to think about living well past 100. I think for young people.
Andrew Stotz 15:43
Yeah. So if you think about it, in that case, we're talking about seven decades of investing. First of all, no investor advisor is going to even be around to really help you through all that. So you have to take responsibility. But then also, what, what I've kind of come to the conclusion is, is that most people just come up with all kinds of reasons not to start and not easy to not start.
Eric Rosenberg 16:09
Yeah, it's not easy to say, Oh, I need to pay this bill now. Or, oh, I'll start in five years, or Oh, I'll start when it's more convenient, it's never gonna be convenient. You just got to start.
Andrew Stotz 16:20
Exactly. And I think that the other thing that I want to talk about is that, you know, the stock market goes in waves, you know, sometimes it's really high, sometimes it's really low. And there's some good research that's been done to show that, you know, if you take a average index fund, and you just say that it had a return, on average of 10%, over, you know, the 30 year period that you're looking at it, it seems pretty fantastic. But we have to realize that people have really bad instincts and really bad timing, in fact, we're not really built for a stock market. And, and so the result is that they've done some tests to try to measure the amount of damage that people do to themselves. by, by, by the way they timed the buying and selling of that index fund. And I've seen some research that have shown that people lose anywhere from like two to 6% of that 10% return through going in and out of that index fund and just the wrong time. And, you know, that's where I wanted to just think for a moment about your worst investment ever, and say, you know, when the markets down, everything looks terrible, nobody wants to invest. Now, when we look, in hindsight, we see that dip and go, man, I should have bought them. But if you're in that dip, it's painful and all that just curious about, you know, when you think about the investments that you didn't make, you know, how do we overcome that? How do we how do we try to deal with them.
Eric Rosenberg 17:47
So I don't know if I love the term, but dollar cost averaging, as what people call it. So Well, I haven't come up with a better term yet. But the basic idea is, if you're not familiar with that jargon, it's just making regular investments over time. And the best way for most people to do that and get started, especially young people, if you start at a job that has a 401k take advantage, at least of whatever match you get at the very minimum. So let's say, as an example, you work at a big corporate company, and they will give you a 100% match on up to 3% of your salary. If you contribute to the 401k, we'll do that. So you put that 3% in, it's like you magically get a 3% raise, just for taking advantage that you get in retirement and there's tax benefits. So and it comes out of your paycheck without you having to touch a thing or think about it, which is usually where people get messed up, setting it up to be automatic. So let's say you don't have one of those accounts, you can do the same with an IRA or a Roth IRA. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head. But when I was had my last corporate job, I contributed $211 per paycheck. Because if you multiply that by 26 paychecks a year, that was almost exactly the amount to max out my Roth IRA, it's a little higher now. And I as an entrepreneur, my incomes lumpier so I don't automate it, I kind of do it in chunks. Yeah, but most people do have regular paychecks. And if that sounds like you automate as much as you can, because then you're not having to think oh, is the market good buy invest. Right now, it was the market badge that I invest right now, you just know, you're going to keep putting in that, you know, $200 a paycheck $100 a paycheck, $50.20 do something, you know, if you're not investing at all start with $5. It doesn't matter. Just start with something you can always build from there, but you can't build on zero. So you got to start with that first dollar. And if your employer doesn't make it easy, go find another way. There are other investment options out there.
Andrew Stotz 19:53
So I think that we need to really identify this much more clearly. So let's call it our MC Regular monetary monthly contributions much better than like DCA, you know, dollar like
Eric Rosenberg 20:05
regular monthly contributions. That's a good term, we should make that the term, the industry term. Here, first, let's just coined regular monthly contributions. Perfect.
Andrew Stotz 20:16
And now I want to say something kind of dangerous here. And, you know, you had said something about, you know, about assessing your risk level. And, you know, people need to look at the amount of risk that they can take. But when I talked to my nieces, I said, Don't listen to anybody that tries to talk to you about your risk level. And they're like, Okay, uncle Andrew. So they trusted me, then they trusted me. And I said, here's the reason why, you know, at your age, 20 years old, you know, even when you're 30 years old, your time horizon is so long, in the power of compounding in in equity is so powerful at that young age, that if you listen to people to say, you know, oh, well, yeah, I get nervous when I see the stock market fall or something like that, they're going to advise you to reduce your risk. And when that happens, what they're going to do is reduce your allocation to equity. Maybe they put a little bit in bonds, or property, or Reed's, or whatever those things are, or cash. And that is going to cause a new risk. And that's called shortfall risk. And that's the risk that when it is time for you to retire, and live off that money is just not enough there. And that's because you haven't been exposed to that equity return over a long time. Now, I think that's dangerous in the sense that if you're 60 years old, 70 years old, I think you got to look at that a little bit more carefully. But I'm just curious with all of your knowledge and experience, what do you think about my dangerous advice for my nieces?
Eric Rosenberg 21:51
I think it's probably, I think I might have worded it a little differently. But I agree with the principle. So if you are, it's a very good point, most times, the markets have gone down for even any pro long period look at, you know, since the Great Depression, let's look at the last 100 years, anytime there's a big downturn, I can't think of any that have lasted more than seven to 10 years. So if you will be retiring in less than seven to 10 years, you can't afford to ride out a, you know, a recession, possibly into retirement, that would either mean you start drawing down on your assets at a bottom level, which would not be ideal, or I don't know you, you have your own choices then. But if you're so when I was talking to my my parents in the last decade, I was saying, you know, this is kind of that time, you got to get more cash, you got to get fewer single stocks, you know, get things set up to, you know, maybe move into, like a big boring dividend fund that I'll just keep paying you out. At that point, you want cash out of it. But if you're 30, you're I'm 36. I have, if I were going to a traditional retirement age, I hope to retire on my own terms earlier. But let's say I was going for 65. That means I have about 30 years to write out a recession. And there has never been a 30 year recession if there were a 30 year recession, and we would have much bigger problems than our retirement. We're talking like Apocalypse, if we're having a 30 we'll be supporting each other in caves. Yeah, would not be good. I'll be living off my solar panels on the roof.
Andrew Stotz 23:31
Yeah, in fact, I did. I did a study on this. And I saw that, you know, I looked at like recoveries from bottoms in one year, three years, five years. And I found that 100% of the time, any bottom that we had had been returned to where it was prior by five years. So even though there were you know, so if you're, if you're 60, just based on history, and you plan to retire at 65, that's the time to start really cranking down your risk level.
Eric Rosenberg 23:57
That means if you're 50, and let's say you're 50, and you don't plan to retire till 70 that's the point someone, you know, an experienced financial professional might say, Oh, you should start moving into you know, 40% bonds or something. And that's probably a poor decision for you at 50 years old at this point. So, yeah, so you'll take, so do take risk into account, I wouldn't go back on, on what I said there. But you have to think really hard about what that means. And that doesn't necessarily mean just go buy a bunch of CDs, because you're afraid your stocks are gonna go down, you have to take on some level of risk, and maybe you have to get a little bit more comfortable. In some cases, maybe you have to get a little bit less comfortable in some cases, but there there is an ideal place for most people, and that usually shifts around based on your age, but unless there's we just did the math on up until even if you're 60 potentially, you don't necessarily need to be cranking down on your risk and going you know, at percent on bonds, because that'll probably cost you a lot of money in the long term.
Andrew Stotz 25:04
And one other controversial thing that I advise my nieces, I said, never sell. And what I meant by that is that, you know, when I started in the industry was 1993. And the only way you could really build a portfolio, you know, an investment portfolio was to build it, you know, to buy the stocks and constructed there were of some funds, but you know, it just wasn't that common. But nowadays, you know, there's, for instance, there's the vt fund at Vanguard that owns every stock in the world, it's got more than 8000 stocks in that. And, you know, I basically, if you own something like that, the fact is, is that there's no real strong reason why you would sell it, unlike, if you were owning, let's say, you have a portfolio of five stocks, and one of them's Apple, you know, I would never say never sell Apple, because anything can go down. But what I would say is when you build very broad exposure across the world, in this case, there's just no compelling reason, except obviously a personal financial need for something else or something. But I was trying to teach my nieces to set this account up, and just contribute to it on a consistent basis. never sell it and let it grow.
Eric Rosenberg 26:18
I agree. I like that one. I think the only thing that you said there that made me a little nervous was you brought up the example of someone with a portfolio of only five stocks. Exactly. Because that is really not that diverse. I usually tell people start with the index funds, you usually in a retirement account. And once you feel like you're doing the right things there, then if you have extra cash that you're able to allocate, then maybe pull off, you know, 50 $100 a month, whatever you can afford into a taxable account, which I mentioned earlier, about 10% of my net worth and an account that has single stocks, I think it's about 20 stocks in there. So 10% of my portfolio is 20 stocks. And the other you know, let's say 90% is probably read 1000 stocks, 5000 stocks between s&p 500 the Russell 2000 Russell 3000, there's a bunch of indexes in there. Yeah. So yeah, get diversified first. And yeah, there are times you might want to sell a single stock, because it doesn't make sense. If you're investing and I'll pick on like, Ark, I think Ark fund, that's one that right now, it's easy to pick on, because they're only buying a Tesla in space stocks. So if you're investing in a really, when that almost is acting like a stock, you know, it's like a bundle of five stocks or something. It's not 100 stocks. So something like that that's riskier, you might want to sell but yeah, to the point you were making, if you're buying diverse long term boring index funds, because of the way they adjust to the market, like s&p 500 funds, I actually kind of like that they market wait. So what that means for people that don't know, a company with a big market cap, like apple or Amazon is a bigger percentage of your purchase than, you know, company number 400. On the s&p 500 list. And what's cool about that is you I, I was an apple skeptic earlier on that's one of the ones that I didn't make. My dad bought that one he did well. So go Dad, that was a good one. But I missed out on that. But did I really miss out on it, because I've had s&p 500 funds, and Apple has been in there for a while. And as Apple has grown, and Apple has done really well. It grown as a portion of the s&p 500 fund and it's driven the price of the fund up. So I've actually gotten a lot of benefit from Apple and Tesla, even though I never bought shares in them. So don't don't forget about those ones that you want to your funds, because you do have little slices.
Andrew Stotz 28:57
And that's the last bit of advice I gave my nieces because you own 8000 stocks. When you go to a party and someone says yeah, I bought apple at 100. And it's now up to x. You say I own Apple two. And when someone comes in, says, I got this mid cap company out of Cleveland, Ohio. And it's really awesome. And you can say, Yeah, I own that too. And you say what someone else says, Yeah, I bought this tie stock, you know, and it's a really playing on the consumer theme. And tonight. Oh, yes. I've got that one too.
Eric Rosenberg 29:27
Like, if you have the total market fund, you got it all. Yeah, I gave my best one, the one that I can brag about. I got Amazon at 250. And like every other stock other than two, I just wish I'd bought more investment I missed I just didn't buy enough and I just didn't go all in with my convictions.
Andrew Stotz 29:47
So based upon what you learned from this story, and I know you've been continuing to learn through your writing and expressing yourself what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?
Eric Rosenberg 30:00
If you're not already set up your automatic monthly recurring contributions, your Mr. C's, get those happening, whatever, whether it's work, or your own IRA, or your HSA, or a taxable stock account. If you live, wherever you live in the world, there is some kind of investment account you should have access to. So you won't make money if you don't start. So get something automated, get something started, and you can always grow from there.
Andrew Stotz 30:29
And that will be your regular monthly contribution. Last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months.
Eric Rosenberg 30:36
And number one goal for the next 12 months? Going off just a real quick what I'd say survive. It's been, we've all had a rough one in this last year, actually, seven months ago had a pretty big concussion. This is my second podcast I've done since watching them all the time. So it was a big injury. We lost my dad in the last year, also, the prostate cancer, it's been and we've all been stuck at home with COVID. So it's hopefully the world just becomes a little brighter place over the next 12 months and people can get their vaccines and keep wearing their masks and be safe and get back out there. And hopefully the world looks a lot more like it did five, six years ago and 12 months than what it did 12 months ago in 12 months.
Andrew Stotz 31:23
Well, listeners, the world is getting brighter because we can all share in this conversation. And there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. My number one goal for the next 12 months is to help you my listener reduce risk and increase return in your life. To achieve this, I've created our community at my worst investment ever.com. And I look forward to seeing you there. As we conclude, Eric, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?
Eric Rosenberg 32:04
Well, I was in my own podcast with a little catchphrase, so I'll give it to all of you here. Until next time, stay profitable.
Andrew Stotz 32:13
Amen. That's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying I'll see you on the upside.
Connect with Eric Rosenberg
Andrew’s books
- How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market
- My Worst Investment Ever
- 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
- Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming’s 14 Points
Andrew’s online programs
- Valuation Master Class
- How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market
- Finance Made Ridiculously Simple
- Become a Great Presenter and Increase Your Influence
- Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming’s 14 Points