22 Jun June 24, 2019 – And Babies Too Tammy Sun, Money Tree Michele Schneider and Everyday Magnificent Gabriela Masala
“The audio file was removed when we switched hosts. Sorry. The cost was prohibitive. If you need the file, contact us and we will send it.”
Tammy Sun – CEO and Co-founder of Carrot
In the very beginning it was everything from cold emailing,
LinkedIn messages, asking friends of friends to introduce me
to people who worked in HR.
Tammy Sun is the CEO and Co-founder of Carrot, a company that enables employers to offer customizable, flexible fertility treatments to their employees. Carrot facilitates the fertility care needed by any individual a business might employ; it doesn’t only help employees access well-known treatments like egg freezing for forward-looking women and in-vitro fertilization for heterosexual couples, but also serves people with less common sexual preferences and gender identities by increasing access to services like egg donorship and surrogacy. In a tightening talent market, offering such benefits can be crucial to attracting and maintaining the team members who will keep your business growing strong. Better yet, Carrot is completely customizable, allowing you to offer more robust services as your company grows; they can assist the fertility needs of small and large companies through every stage of their development, while staying well within budget goals.
Michele Schneider – Director of Trading Research and Education at MarketGauge and Author of Plant Your Money Tree: A Guide to Growing Your Wealth – Read interview highlights here
I don’t care what side you are on in terms of climate change.
It’s irrelevant to me. What’s relevant is that the whole solar
area in the stock market over the last six months has exploded.
Michele Schneider is the Director of Trading Research and Education at MarketGauge.com, a company that provides market research and financial education to individuals and institutions alike. In that capacity, she serves as the analyst, writer, and host of Mish’s Market Minute. She also contributes to two of MarketGauge’s newsletters, MMMDaily and Market Outlook. Her company’s services have been utilized by many companies over MarketGauge’s 20-year history. Their clients have included companies like Fidelity, ILX Systems, and Bank of America. Dow Jones has named Michele one of the top 50 financial people to follow on Twitter, and in 2018, Michele was the winner of the Top Stock Pick of the year.
Gabriela Masala – Founding Principal at Source Consulting Group, Life Artist, Change Agent, and Author of: Everyday Magnificent: Practices to Activate an Unlimited Life
Who can’t use more access to their innovation and their creativity?
Gabriela Masala is the Founding Principal of Source Consulting Group, an agency that aids professional services firms in optimizing their operations. Whether a firm needs help with strategic planning, process reengineering, operational consulting, or with getting a new financial system up and running, her team is there to help. Gabriela also pursues a deep interest in wisdom teachings, energy medicine, and the expressive arts. To this end, she does work with groups, couples, and individuals to help others dive into the truth and accomplish their own, personal transformations. Whether it’s during one-on-one interventions or one of the events she designs, she helps people access their authentic voices and unveil their most essential selves using tools including authentic movement, visual journaling, inquiry, poetry, music, dance, ritual, and energetic anatomy.
Highlights from Michele’s Interview
I think the stock market is one of the great bastions of capitalism that we have in this country. But the idea of it being rigged really means that you absolutely have to know what you’re doing, or at least have some level of a plan, a strategy that’s repeatable. Otherwise, you can be taken out financially completely. Now, in terms of manipulation, do I think the market is manipulated? We can we can go through the reasons why that’s probably true. But again, that should not stop people from being afraid to invest, because where else is there that you can actually make some money? Outside of whatever your job is, there aren’t very many other places to go in terms of making investments.
Think about what happened at the end of the year. The market crashed, because of the Chinese tariffs and the threats. And also the Federal Reserve looking like they were on the path of continuing to raise rates. And then we had what is being known as the Fed flip, when they said, “Okay, well, we’ll consider lowering.” And then we had that big rally a couple of days ago, when Trump came back out and announced that we’re going to potentially slap another 25% tariffs on China. So yeah, there’s a little bit of the manipulation that you’re talking about. And yes, it also has taken what seems to be complacency throughout January, February, and March back into volatility.
I wrote the book, because there’s so much noise that we deal with every day. If you are as active an investor as I am, then you are exposed to more noise, because most likely you’re on Twitter, which I am pretty much 24/7. So there’s all of that. And then there is the media, and then there’s whatever you get in terms of emails and recommendations, and everybody’s going to have a different opinion.
What I think people need is a compass to base their decisions on. It’s a two level thing, the book gets more into the phases. But there’s also sectors, which are cyclical and non-cyclical, that one has to be aware of. It sounds like a lot, but it’s actually pretty simple.
For example, let’s take right now, we still have three of the four indices in a bullish phase. The noise at this point, unless it breaks down, once it subsides, could actually turn out to be a buy opportunity. On the other hand, the diamonds on the Dow Jones Industrial just flipped into a caution phase. Which means even though the others are selling off, even if they hold, unless the Dow Jones actually goes back into that bullish phase, it takes a little bit of caution right now, and that’s for people who are active. If you are looking to make an investment for the first time, you can always find something that is set up well. And that’s really what I try to help people with in this book. And what I do every day of my life. I mean, that’s my job as Director of Education. And I want to service.
The bullish and bearish phases are the ones that people know the most. If you ask anybody what the market is doing, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s bullish,” or bearish. But we have these in-between phases that I find very, very interesting. That’s what I like to focus on. For example, if things are starting to get cautionary, then you have the next phase after bullish, which is basically a caution phase. That tells you exactly the time to exercise some caution. Sometimes it goes from caution right back to bullish, because it’s just whatever temporary blip has happened on the headlines or what have you. But if things start to deteriorate, then we go into distribution phase. That means that people are taking their cash out of the market. Then if things continue to get bad, we go into this bearish phase. That’s a very interesting phase, because in this country, we have not really lived through a bearish phase for very long. And so what happens is we wind up, whether it’s the Federal Reserve coming in and doing QE, like what happened in 2008, or more recently, when it looked like we were going into a bearish phase, again, the Federal Reserve coming in and promising that they’re going to lower rates if things get bad, etc. We go into this hopefulness, we’re a very hopeful species, we human beings, and that’s where the recuperation phase comes in. That’s a great phase for people to know about, because that’s when the smart money comes in. It’s the lowest risk time to get in, because pretty much right away, if you’re wrong, and then if things get really good or money starts to accumulate, we go into an accumulation phase, and then of course, things get more euphoric and back into a bullish phase. What that does is it really gives you a navigation system.
The website is marketgauge.com, but if you go to marketgauge.com/resources, you will see I have a daily blog that I put out called Mishs Market Minute, and I comment on not only where the phases are, but I also comment on what I was mentioning to you before, which is the cyclicals and the non-cyclicals which I’ve called the Economic Modern Family.
The cyclicals are when the economy’s doing well, those are the stocks that are not consumer based. Non-cyclicals are things that we need no matter what; that’s where you would see food and gas and energy and stuff like that. Those are the non-cyclicals that do better during poor economic times, because people will still buy what they need. The cyclicals are the things that are more speculative. What I’ve done is, instead of it being so confusing, most people wouldn’t know what I’m talking about, which will be what my second book is about.
What I decided to do was create characters, human characters that represent each of these sectors that I think are super important to gauge what’s happening in the overall US economy. For example, transportation, which is not something that I made up.
Charles Dow, 150 years ago, came up with the Dow Jones Industrial and the transportation index. That’s super important to the economy, because when you can see what the transportation sector is doing, what does that tell you, it tells you how goods are moving. If they’re not moving, that’s not a good sign. If they’re moving really well, like the railroads, for example. It’s really planes, trains and automobiles, that’s a better sign. I would call that the demand side.
The only index that has made my economic Modern Family is the Russell 2000. And the Russell 2000 represents 2000 smoke capital of capitalizations stocks, which are all 100% manufactured within the United States. I consider him to be the granddad. So I’ve made him into a grandfather, granddad Russell, because if you watch him, you can see how robust and what manufacturing is doing in the United States. Plus, you can also gauge what I would call the supply side. So then you have a little dance between what’s happening with the Russell 2000 and what’s happening with transportation. And that alone, without the other four members, which are also important. Those two alone often can give you almost as much information, and maybe even more reliable information than you would hear from any economists, because economists look really far out. We’re trying to see what’s happening in the immediate short term.
Some of the mega trends, like for example, artificial intelligence, have been around for a while. Get video gaming, which has been explosive, but has been explosive for the last 15 years. What you really want to do as an investor, if you want to look at long term investing, is you want to decide what’s going to happen over the next 10 years. For example, solar energy, alternative energy. I try to tell people, I don’t care what side you’re on in terms of whether you believe in climate change or not, it’s irrelevant to me. What’s relevant is that the whole solar area in the stock market over the last six months has exploded. That’s a mega trend that will continue, I believe. There’s also cannabis, another great example. People ask me all the time, should I invest in cannabis stocks? Quite honestly, even though it’s not legal federally, and it’s growing legally, from state to state. If you look at it over the 10 years, yes, it’s probably a really good investment to think about. And that’s only two, there’s quite a few others. But with that said, you still have to have a navigation system, you still have to have a compass. Would you be buying cannabis stocks that are in a bearish phase? That would probably not be too intelligent. So you would want to wait. And that’s exactly what I try to teach people. You’d want wait till that phase improved, and then you can get in.
First of all, let’s assume that you understand your portfolio. I don’t want to put you on the spot, but do you? Most people don’t even know if they have a 401k or an IRA. I know a lot of people who don’t even open the statements, they never open the statements, they get it in the mail, and they throw it into a drawer. And they’re really complicated.
I would say that the first thing I would do is try to figure out what’s in my portfolio. Especially if you’re not making the investment decisions, question yourself, your financial planner, or whomever is the one in charge, or look at your 401k if it’s something that’s related to your job, and try to figure out what you have. What is the phase that it’s in? Is that a good thing? Do you want to hold it? I’m not trying to get people to be making decisions constantly. Because I think that would drive people nuts. What I’d like them to do is to have some level of knowledge, even if they decide to do nothing with their portfolios, at least they have the information. Then they can take it from there. It’s a first step.
This book is meant to be foundational. If you do know what’s in your portfolio, yes, take a look. And see, are you in a really weak scenario? Is it in a bearish phase? Then you might say, “Hmm, I’d like to get out of that, and look at something that’s actually starting to emerge more into a better face.” So that’s what we’re starting to look at with people.
I’m always available for answering questions. I’m on Twitter constantly, as I mentioned before, so that would be the kind of thing I get people asking me all the time. What do you think of this? What do you think of that? I’m thinking about getting into this? Oh, I stayed long 3D systems into earnings, and now it’s down 22%, what should I do? Etc, etc. I would always be happy to answer those type of questions for people.
Right now you can go to moneywithmish.com. We have a special website set up right now, the book is actually released today. You can go there and you can order it. But the advantage of not doing it on Amazon and doing it there is that we’re offering a bonus. Exactly what I just described to you very quickly about phases, we have a $97 bonus for free. That is a video of me explaining each phase with visuals, very helpful. So that’s one way to get the book is moneywithmish.com. Another way is to go to marketgauge.com/plantyourmoneytree. Amazon is another way. So there’s plenty of ways to get the book. In terms of following me, on Twitter, my handle is MarketMinute. I also have a Facebook page called MishsMarketMinute, daily. I have a LinkedIn page, and that’s under my name, Michele Schneider. I also have an Instagram, MishSchneider. I’m all over the place, you can’t miss me.