Today’s rant by Dan Ferris is about you – you and your investments. Hardly anyone will tell you this, he says, but investing is personal – it’s an extension of who you are. And before you buy one stock, or bond, or share of a mutual fund, there are questions you need to know the answers of concerning… you. Most people shouldn’t want anything at all to do with the stock market, because of their own beliefs and preferences. And big banks and Wall Street don’t want you to know investing is so personal – they want you to think there’s a one-size fits all formula to it. It’s total B.S. – and as Dan will show you, you can no more outsource investing your capital than you can outsource someone to digest your food. Of course, people like Dan can point you to helpful insights and “news you can use.” We’ve got a bit of that this week, as Dan breaks down the news of Tesla’s $20,000 deposits on its new semi truck, Apple’s game-changing streaming service, and Lyft’s looming $2.1 billion IPO.

On the heels of the 10-year anniversary of the March 2009 stock market nadir, Dan sums up how things looked when the S&P 500 bottomed out at 666 at the dark days of that crisis, how things look a decade later, and why investors should keep a two-word phrase at the top of their minds: “Cycles matter.” 

Last week Dan talked about the master investing skill of accumulating capital.  But what do you do with it once you have it? Here lies the big difference between being an investor and a speculator. And according to Dan Ferris, before you buy one more stock or bond, you really should understand how they are different. He provides a detailed definition of what investing really means, and how you can avoid being just a speculator. He’s later joined by this week’s podcast guest, Chris Mayer. Chris likes sharing investment wisdom through books as well. His first, Invest Like a Dealmaker: Secrets From a Former Banking Insider, covers time-tested essential principles of investing. His newest book, 100 Baggers: Stocks That Return 100-to-1 and How to Find Them, teaches readers all the key characteristics of companies that return $100 for every $1 invested.

The biggest news over the last week has undoubtedly been the release of Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway investors, which contains some gems Dan is ready to break down for you. By now, as Buffett points out, his partner Charlie Munger is 95, making 88-year old Buffett the young one. And there’s one prospect Buffett mentions in his letter that “causes my heart and Charlie’s to beat faster.”

Extreme Value Editor Dan Ferris discusses the tweet now “burned into his brain.” He’s joined by New York Times bestselling author Diane Henriques, whose book about Bernie Madoff “The Wizard of Lies” became a HBO movie starring Robert DeNiro. She explains why the next Bernie Madoff will be impossible to spot.

With the market’s whipsaw turnaround from December continuing through this week, the question of where the market is headed for the next 10 months of 2019 is dominating most financial discussions. Everyone has an opinion – and Dan Ferris is ready to reveal why those opinions are often catastrophically wrong. From billionaire Paul Tudor Jones predicting markets could go “crazy” on the upside at the ed of 2018 after the midterm elections, to surveys of 22 of America’s most powerful banks and brokerages being wrong on market movements by an astonishing 14.6% each year.

A handful of billionaires have renewed their warnings of a global recession – with one legendary commodities trader even predicting something worse than the Great Depression. In this week where 20 tons of gold have mysteriously disappeared from Venezuela’s vaults, Tesla has another $920 million in debt payments due, and a value investor just dived into an iconic fast food business, Dan Ferris makes sense of it all.

With markets continuing to recover this week after an epic selloff that included the worst December since The Great Depression, Dan revisits his initial 2017 warning, when he first reported that a genuine stock market mania had arrived. 

Dan Ferris launches into this week’s episode dissecting the warning from billionaire investor Ray Dalio, who’s saying there’s significant risk of a recession in 2020 – not just in the U.S., but a global slowdown. While no one can tell the future, there is one grim statistic on Dan’s mind that doesn’t dispute this claim. He then introduces this week’s podcast guest, Christopher Irons.

He then introduces this week's podcast guest, Aaron Edelheit. Aaron is the CEO and Founder of Mindset Capital, a private investment firm. After being of their first investors, Aaron was also the Chief Strategy Officer of FLO Technologies and helped the company grow from a pre-revenue startup to raising $28 million and launching in over 500 Home Depot stores.