Transcript

Live Birthday Q&A Stream # 5

From The Plain Bagel · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 3 min · 11,298 words · 78 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Live Birthday Q&A Stream # 5", an episode of The Plain Bagel published November 14, 2025 (1 h 3 min, about 11,298 words). It mentions 10 people, works and ideas, including CFA, CFP, Patrick Bole, Ben Felix, The Bitcoin Standard.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Michael Bur, Patrick Bole, Scion Capital
  2. – 20:00: Financial Times
  3. – 30:00: The Bitcoin Standard, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Ben Felix
  4. – 50:00: Patrick Bole, Ben Felix, Julian Joseph
  5. – 1:00:00: Ben Felix

Notable quotes from "Live Birthday Q&A Stream # 5"

  • When do you release a financial rap single with Patrick Bole? Clap coming.
    about Patrick Bole · at
  • Is as good as mine, but maybe pray for him a little bit. did you hear Michael Bur from Big Short is closing his hedge fun? I did hear that. Scion Cap Scion Capital, is that…
    about Michael Bur · at
  • Happy dude. Did you read the article in the Financial Times on South Korean retail investors causing big swings in US markets getting called the squid game market? No, I have not heard that.
    about Financial Times · at
  • Other and it trades at a fraction of the price, right? That's the only reason I highlight that. have you seen Ben Felix's Rational Reminder podcast where they cover passive investing dilemma?
    about Ben Felix · at
  • If you want to jump down the rabbit hole of like what is money? because I actually so I read the Bitcoin Standard.
    about The Bitcoin Standard · at
  • Julian Joseph thank you for the super chat. I appreciate that.
    about Julian Joseph · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

  • Scion Capital — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Did you hear Michael Bur from Big Short is closing his hedge fun? I did hear that. Scion Cap Scion Capital, is that right? seems to be alluding to some other action he's…

Concepts & topics

  • CFA — Concept · 5 mentions
  • CFP — Concept · 4 mentions

Full transcript with timestamps

Ah, hey. Hey hey hey. Heat. Hey, Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey hey. Hey hey hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey hey hey. Hello everyone. Can you hear me? Okay. I swear every year I have to relearn this live streaming stuff and I'm so paranoid because I think last year we froze like within two minutes of starting. So, let me know in the live chat if you guys can hear me, okay? If I'm freezing or if I look good. Okay, perfect. We're hearing some some good stuff loud and clear. Hello. Thank you for coming, guys. Welcome to the annual happy birthday well birthday live stream Q&A.

uh kind of the one time a year I I consistently go live. Um live streaming is not really a big part of the channel, but it's always fun. I I enjoy um doing these once in a while and figured the birthday had come once again. It was a good time to jump in and and chat about the year, chat about what's happened so far and mostly answer questions in the live chat. So, if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment there. Um, when I've done this in the evening, I've enjoyed a a beverage. But, uh, today, well, an alcoholic beverage, but today it's work day, so I have Timmy's uh, coffee, dark roast coffee to enjoy with the live stream today. Uh, [sighs] now I just want to make sure, God, I'm so paranoid that Yeah. Okay. Okay, so for some reason my live chat's taking a moment to to update, but uh thank you guys for joining. Tyler Evans, hey Richard, happy birthday and greetings from Nova Scotia. Thank you

for joining today. I appreciate you being here. Happy dude. Happy birthday. Thank you. Happy dude. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Appreciate it, guys. Um yeah, and uh you know, as always, um the Q&As's are always tricky because every so often you'll have someone asking personal advice. I am registered as an adviser, but I don't give advice in the live chat, but feel free to ask questions about general economics stuff, [clears throat] uh, what's happening in the news lately. And sorry, I have a gain over a cold, so I apologize if my voice is a little scratchy today, but double double or plain and black. Uh, right in between single, single, I guess. Uh, just one milk, one one sugar. The coffee like Timmy's coffee is not I'm a Canadian, but Timmy's coffee is not very good. But the dark roast is not too bad. Um, and I was swinging by, so I figured I'd I'd grab a drink.

All right. Turtle called Call Me Q1. When do you release a financial rap single with Patrick Bole? Clap coming. Uh, yeah. You know, I I've heard he's been uh dropping my name a little bit, which uh, you know, not cool. And maybe I have to address that at some point with a rap battle, but I'm going to save that heat until uh until everyone's ready for it, I think. Uh, happy birthday from Quebec. Thank you very much. Gravy salad. You don't go to Timmy's for coffee. You go there for extremely cheap, decent, warm food.

That's right. I mean, Tim Hortons used to be better. They got bought by an international conglomerate. Uh well, I don't even know if that's the right term because they own mo like [clears throat] fast food chains. They own Burger King, too, I think. Um and then the quality really went downhill, but you get what you pay for, right? Like probably one of the cheapest lunches you can find in the area, but um you get what you pay for. I'll leave it at that. That should be their slogan. I know it's it's like always fresh or whatever, but should be uh you get what you pay for.

Uh, Tyler Evans, as a young CFP, I just started at a big five bank as a financial planner. Can you share any tips for growing your book as a new professional? So, I wish I could give more pointed advice. Uh, I'm very lucky in my regard because uh, one, the company I work for is very easygoing in terms of sales, which is very rare in the finance space. Sadly, a lot of advisor roles are really sales positions, and they really encourage you to kind of bring clients in the door. uh the company I work for is is not like that which I'm very fortunate with and a lot of my job is actually to take over a book of business from someone who's looking to slowly exit the the business.

So um you know and and I haven't really used the channel to promote my financial planning in part because of that. Um there's already a capacity considerations on that side in terms of the the books I'll be taking on. Uh but also just I like keeping the two separate, you know. Um I like what I do. I'm I'm proud of the work I do. Like I'm proud of the the investment management we do. Uh but I don't feel a need to to really market it or push that stuff. Um on the channel, I like having them separate because on the channel I can kind of do things the way I want. And in my works, uh to their credit, they've been done a very good job of of allowing for that independence as best they can.

Uh there's some compliance considerations, but for the most part they're very very hands-off, which I'm very lucky because very rare in the finance space. Um let me read through some of these. It's past 7. Sorry, it took me a second. 7 p.m. in South Africa and it's your birthday. One drink won't hurt. Uh well, it's uh noon here, I think, and I'm doing some work after this. But happy birthday. Thank you very much. [sighs] My friend just became private equity bro. Should I be concerned for his mental health in the future? Again, I don't have any experience in the private equity, but I mean, your guess is as good as mine, but uh you know, maybe uh pray for him a little bit. Uh did you hear Michael Bur from Big Short is closing his hedge fun? I did hear that. Scion Cap uh Scion Capital, is that right? Um seems to be alluding to some other action he's taking, like some other activity he'll be pursuing. So, I

don't know if it's indicative of bad performance. I haven't looked too much into it. Uh but um seems more so just some sort of transition he's he career transition he's he's going through. Uh B2 career CPA or CFP. I want to go for my CPA. Should I do both? [clears throat] I live in New York City. Uh two very different designations. So it depends what you want to do. Um and that will ultimately guide which one's better. So the CPA is an accounting designation. uh kind of the gold standard in accounting for accountants to have. Uh so any accounting work definitely the one to pursue. Uh CFP is is certified financial planner. Uh and to I don't have my CPA.

I have my uh CFP uh designation in my CFA charter. Um the CFP is strictly financial planning for individuals and families and the like. So uh it's a kind of a broad overview of a bunch of different topics. insurance, taxation, estates, uh, investing, and it's intended for one-on-one financial planning advice. So, it's just two different realms. It depends on on what area you want to go down. Um, CPA probably has a broader application in terms of the the jobs you can have with a CPA. Uh, but very different job, you know, an accountant versus an adviser, right?

Uh, happy dude. Did you read the article in the Financial Times on South Korean retail investors causing big swings in US markets getting called the squid game market? No, I have not heard that. That's interesting though. Um, you know, I think with retail investors, it's always tricky to um understand what's moving the markets because retail investors can start a trend and then that can be amplified by momentum based funds and the like. So, uh, but interesting. No, I hadn't heard about that. That's that's something to to look into. Um Tyler Evans, absolutely. That is a rare thing in the industry. Appreciate the answer and happy birthday again. Thank you very much. Yeah, it's um it's actually near impossible for most registered adviserss to have a social media presence um without kind of the full backing of their firm. most banks will just veto it because a they're such a large operation that the idea of kind

of compliancing every individual who wants a social media presence is it's opening a can of worms I don't they don't really want to deal with and b there's a lot of liability because [clears throat] as a excuse me um as a registered adviser there's liability that comes with what I talk about online so if I were to say something that were to be construed as advice someone were to follow that and then lose money um there could be a responsib ibility there, perhaps even more so than an unregistered individual. It's a really gray area because a lot of social media stuff is not considered financial advice because it's not in part because it's not one-on-one advice.

So, if you uh go on a YouTube channel and you say, "I like this stock. I think everyone should buy this stock." That's not generally considered a registered activity, like an activity you need to be registered to to carry out. Um, and so that's not that doesn't fall under the legal definition of financial advice. But if I were to go to one person and say you should buy this stock, that can be construed as advice. So it's it's a weird precedent. Um, but the idea is that the one is tailoring the advice and that's why it becomes a registered activity and the other one is kind of a broad dissemination of of information um and your opinion.

Um, let me read through some of these. I got to catch up a little bit. Uh, just checking in to say happy birthday and thank you for spreading common financial sense to YouTube. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Chicken Keeper, happy birthday, Richard. Do you think the finance industry can be partially replaced by AI? Will some CFAs lose their jobs? I mean, not at this point. um [clears throat] like grunt work maybe, but like so at my company we use some AI tools, but it's more kind of on the search side of things and we just don't trust anything that comes out, right? Um you search for a figure and they give you a number, but that number isn't always what you're looking for. Um because you have to remember like these are are prediction models. They aren't the the program doesn't understand what you're asking. It's just predicting what you're looking for, but it's not always accurate. Um, what it is good for is

cert is the the program will link the articles or the sources of that information. So, it is handy in that regard where I can look for a very specific figure um and then it will link a source and I I almost never actually look at what the AI tells me. I just look at the source of that of what the AI has found. Um, and that helps quite a bit. But um definitely uh yeah, I don't think it's going to replace anyone. It will augment the industry just like many other industries, but replace certainly not with with what we currently have. Um the financial planning is different. I'm talking more on the analysis side. I I could see some interesting tools on the kind of financial planning, but uh could the US ever use Bitcoin as a reserve to ease long-term debt? and how would the impact that impact the dollar's reserve currency role? Um, so good question. Uh, if the US uses Bitcoin as a reserve, I don't know what the impact on the

dollar reserve currency role would be. Um, you know, the the dollar as a reserve currency is slowly decreasing. the the problem with having Bitcoin as a reserve, people kind of assume, well, you put Bitcoin in the reserve and then it's going to, you know, just grow in value and that will help all the problems. Um the issue is that uh that doesn't always happen. We're seeing that today, right? Bitcoin has fallen below $100,000. Um and central banks don't want that. Central banks don't want volatility. It's the same reason why central banks don't hold stocks in their foreign reserves, right?

Um, stocks have proven a very good long-term investment, but that's not the purpose of the reserves, right? The purpose of the reserves is to have that liquidity, that cash on hand. Some countries use reserves uh to float or uh sorry, imp fix the value of their currency, right? They'll buy or sell other currencies. So, they need that to be very easily accessible and not to be fluctuating day-to-day in value. Even if Bitcoin increases in price, that volatility alone kind of discourages that idea of using as a reserve asset because it's not a stable value that it has. Um Rusty, thank you for the the super chat. Happy birthday, Richard.

Love the content, man. Thank you very much. Uh question, I believe you mentioned the tech to finance pipeline on last year's stream. Do you know how it works? Dev who likes finance? Yeah. So um there's a specific indust so it's more on the quantitative side of finance. So different investment [clears throat] firms will have different investment philosophies. Some use uh statisticians and the like to build models. And in that realm of of quantitative investing, there's a lot of demand for kind of tech engineers and the like to build these programs and models for for um investing and trading on on a daily. other areas uh not as much of a of a demand. But you know, I think so what I I think what I probably said last year is that when I was in university, I had a finance professor say the best kind of dual um major you can do is in IT and and finance because um it gives you that competitive edge in

the finance industry. And I'm I'm sure there's merit to that. Uh but I think it is certain certain industries are looking a lot more for those those technical skills. Uh, big pap 90. When is the plain bagel memecoin coming out? Uh, I don't know what you're talking about meme coins. We only launch utility high utility coins on this channel. The bagel bagel booty coin or I don't remember what I called it. Um, let me read a couple of these. Have you ever tried options trading yourself? No, not really. Like I've bought and sold options, but not like day trading.

Um, and in fact, it's usually sell because some way or another a client ends up with an option and and we we look to exit, but no, not really an area I I pursue. Bagel co bagel coin is backed by a bagel reserve in Montreal. That's right. Yeah. Truth. Uh, do you think that amount of passive investor skews the market? Meaning because of number of people buying broad market indexes, it becomes overvalued and it stops being sound investment strategy. Uh I actually covered this it would have been years ago like probably five years ago there's kind of [clears throat] this this growing concern of that there was this ETF bubble kind of concern. Um it's been a while since I've reviewed that idea but I think it ultimately landed on the idea that uh it doesn't really matter how many people are holding an investment the value of a stock is determined by the at the margin. So the buys and sells um of investors that day and that can be

a very small float to move the price of the stock. So you don't need a lot of the um outstanding shares of a stock to be changing hands for its price to be impacted. So I think and again I haven't reviewed the research but back then sort of the conclusion we came to was you know yes if it continues to escalate if we see more and more passive flows this could eventually become a thing but right now there's ample active trading of these stocks to impact their valuations. Um, but you know, then there's other considerations like the the index inclusion effect, right? The idea that when a stock enters the S&P 500 that it's price increases, but that might be a self-fulfilling prophecy as well. Um, let me see here. I think my chat is frozen but now myself, happy birthday. Thank you very much. Uh, yep, there we go.

For some reason, updated super quickly all of a sudden. Um, let's see. The investor Uh, you live in Canada, right? Do you speak French? Uh, no. If not, I recommend you use an allin on duel, but seriously, any option on that stock? Any opinion on stock? Sorry. I haven't looked into dual um Dualingo. I've used them. Um, so my family is actually on the one side French. My my mother is is franophhone. Uh, it's a big disappointment on on their side that I'm not fluent in in French, but um I'd love to learn French. Uh it's it's hard to find the time, but if I were to have all the time in the world, definitely I'd be I'd be putting more effort into learning French. I had used Dualingo for a period of time trying to to learn French and then that kind of fell off. But uh let's see here.

Bull Run, how is the Canadian economy growing? Uh good question. I haven't looked too much into into broad stuff. You know what? Actually, Mark, our our government just released their budget. I know there's a lot of infrastructure spend. I still haven't taken the time to go through it, which is a kind of a poor reflection on my part, but uh I want to pursue CFA, but I've heard it's not something that has career growth or it's better to have low ambition for growth and that's it's very saturated. Happy birthday and love your content. Uh yeah, I mean it depends, right? So uh it's definitely a competitive industry finance. The CFA I think is if you want to work in finance on the analysis side, I think you should pursue a CFA. Uh that's kind of my own opinion and I've seen it's almost a bit of a bare minimum for a lot of these companies. It's a lot of effort though.

So if you want to be an analyst, it's something worth pursuing. But will finance jobs exist in five years? Yes. Many many happy returns. What's your views on 100% allocation to gold? Can gold demand be brought down again like 2011 2015? Uh it could. Uh good question. Again I can't give much I won't I don't give much advice on these but uh gold again it's um it's a speculative asset. I don't mean that in a you know disparaging way but it is a speculative asset right? People buy because of its financial use not because of any other purpose. Um, I always like to highlight that palladium is 30 times more rare than gold, has many similar properties and even more industrial use.

So, it has more commodity value and yet it trades at like a third of the price of gold. So, it's not just the rarity of gold that makes it uh have the value price that it does. It's it's that social inertia. I often use that term but really it's just it's a socialized you know gold is just a concept man like the value of gold it really is a societal concept right because we are taking this thing we're designating this as a financial asset and then demand on that thing comes from that designation um padium game to be clear I'm not a palladium investor uh I just I like that example to highlight because a lot of people they sort of they have this mental model of like if something is scarce its value will increase mathematically, right? And they have this kind of framework that, you know, quantity of dollars increases, this thing's scarce, therefore it's its price will equal X or increase over time. It's

a bit more complicated than that because you have situations like palladium and gold where one's much more rare than the other and it trades at a fraction of the price, right? That's the only reason I highlight that. Uh, have you seen Ben Felix's Rational Reminder podcast where they cover passive investing dilemma? Market efficiency is not the question. What are your thoughts about it? I have not seen that although great podcast um you know two very very smart guys hosting that. Um Michael Jorgensson Jorgensson happy birthday. I'm curious to your view on investing in [clears throat] perspective to climate change. Do you think about it this in your own investments or has it changed anything about the way you invest? Um so our company is not a a green investing company. Uh however, we view climate related stuff as uh a risk factor and I know that you know there's kind of the issues with ESG

definitions and stuff but we do consider that in the regard of in the sense that a company that is say a high poller um uses forced labor just as a you know bad example but uh those are companies that are likely to face a lot of regulatory risk over time right as regulations crack down and advance and look to eliminate these practices, those companies will be hurt. So, that's a risk consideration as an investor. So, it kind of aligns to to find good companies that treat people well and are generally green uh versus kind of high polluters and the like. I I definitely wouldn't say it's a a high priority or consideration, but it is a consideration. It's something we we you know we don't want to invest in in diabolic diabolical polluters, right, that are are destroying communities because that is going to lead to a crackdown. That's a risk uh at that of that company's operations. That might be

heartless. That that's not my intent, but I just that's my role as a as a portfolio manager, right? My role as a portfolio manager is to preserve capital of our investors. So, um that's how we view that. Uh just dropping in to say I love your videos. Thank you very much. Keep up the great work. Appreciate that. Thank you for coming by. Uh, [sighs] let's see. Bagel or donut or waffle? Get out of here with that. Happy birthday, Richard. Any chance on reviewing financial economic books like you do with films? I have covered I I had a old video like five of my favorite investing books. I have read more since then, couple more. Um, I don't know if I highlighted it in that video, but debt the first 5,000 years is a really, really good book in terms of if you want to jump down the rabbit hole of like what is money? Uh, because I actually so I read the Bitcoin Standard.

Yes, I read that. Uh, you know, I got kind of tired of the argument of like, oh, you just don't understand. Like, so I I I'm not even I'm not a Bitcoin bear. I'm not a Bitcoin bear. I just think that people are are highlighting arguments for Bitcoin that are are not true, right? In terms of why it's increasing in value. It's not really this fundamental adoption of its of its use case. That's fine. That's just the reality of it, right? It's not a a you know, a political opinion on it. But, uh, you know, I a lot of people were highlighting, well, you have to read the Bitcoin standard. You have to read the Bitcoin standard. So, I eventually read it. Um, and it was interesting. The first part was was interesting. I really like the history part of it. Um, that was my favorite part of the book. You know, they highlight history of money over time and then they kind of dive into arguments of why fiat currency is

doomed to fail and why fiat currency is so bad. The problem I have with bitco and I've actually so to this question I have debated doing a book on a video sorry on the bitcoin standard because I really didn't like it. Um the reason being that so much of the the book just makes sort of these huge leaps in uh assumptions. I guess it makes these massive assumptions and these uh assertions with no backing for it. So one example is they argue that like fiat currency is literally correlated to um like the declining ethics and values of society. like the idea that as countries adopt fiat currencies, people just become more unethical. Like they make that argument that and they argue that money is the reason for that thing. And there's a quote and I'm not I don't have the exact quote, but it's something along the lines of like Beethoven's uh you know symphony was created in the time of uh you know

hard money like this idea of like fixed supply money. Miley Cyrus's twerks were invented in the era of fiat currency. Like that's the the justification they make for like fiat currency being bad for society. And it's like okay well that's a bit of a a bit of an oversimplification like there's you know sexual liberation of society and things of that sort that that might factor in as well but sure you know we can assume that they uh that they're money is the only reason for these things. So that's what I found difficult about the book.

Like I think for understanding Bitcoin it does a good job. It does a good job of explaining the network and and things like that, but those those arguments and and things about like society and how societyy's shaped by its money, it made too many stretches for for my liking. And but that book did lead me to debt the first 5,000 years, which uh dives more to the history of money. And it's it's by a um a guy who's not an economist. He he studies the history of of humans, human civilizations, and he just recounts basically how money has developed in different societies over time. One of the key takeaways for me, sorry I'm going on about this question.

I'll move on to other questions in a moment. But one of the questions uh one of the takeaways for me is he argues that uh there's not this linear progression of money like many people assume. People assume we used to have barter and then that didn't work. So we switched to precious metals and then that was tough to transact in. So then we switched to coinage and then we switched to fiat currency, right? And then people that kind of leads to the argument that Bitcoin is the next money. What this book argues is that money has historically fluctuated between commodity money and uh fiat currencies or or non-backed currencies. And that fluctuation back and forth typically revolves around trust in society or or trust in well just levels of trust in society, sorry. So the higher the level of trust, the more fiat currencies prosper and the more civilizations can prosper. And the lower the level of

trust, the more you see commodity money take over because you don't trust who you're transacting with. So you rely on commodities to to carry out to maintain that value. So it's a really interesting book. Really good book. Um really quite liked it. Uh yeah, sorry I got to catch up on on some of that. Um Kenny when uh is coping FOMO on BTC by buying a small portion of it makes sense in your point of view? I myself own 5% of Bitcoin since I have the feeling feeling of fearing missing out on the growth of Bitcoin despite it being irrational. Um I mean so that's the thing right is my view is is everyone has to make that decision for themselves whether they want to hold Bitcoin or not. I don't hold it personally. Um I know many people that do.

You have to make that decision but definitely you know if you do hold it just recognize that there are risks that are often overlooked by a lot of people. you have kind of this dangerous movement where it's kind of a religion, right? And all downside is sort of irrelevant to to them and they don't highlight that. I've seen Bitcoin called a risk-free asset which is ridiculous. Um, so as long as you're aware of those arguments and really the point of all the videos I've highlighted is just to present both side like the the other arguments I guess. Um, but yeah, something to in terms of uh whether you should buy it over fear of missing out.

Yeah, it's it's generally I I wouldn't encourage buying anything out of fear of missing out, but I buy it for for like the reason of you have to make the investment thesis for for the buy, right? Uh don't buy something just because it's increased in price. Buy it because you have an underlying thesis and the price is something you're willing to pay for it. Uh happy birthday, big dog. May you get blessed by all of life's blessings. Thank you so much. So, it's very sweet. Um, take a sip and pull up one of these questions about investing growth companies.

They're usually priced at a premium and rarely get cheap. How do you decide when to invest in such a company when you really believe in it? Yeah, I mean that's been the the challenge for the last few years, right? Um, you know, something to consider consider with valuations and growth. So, you know, I invest in some growth companies. Um, I consider myself like growth at a reasonable price. But I think some people misconstrue that as like, you know, you have a a cap on the PE you'll pay for a company. That's not necessarily the case. I think growth investing at a reasonable price, you consider how an investment will play out even if you see a contraction of the multiple, right? So just as an example, and this is, you know, this is a crude example, uh, but just stay with me. If you have a company that say every year is consistently growing 20%. but they're trading at like a 40 times multiple. Uh

you know the standard value investor might say well 40 times is expensive for a stock I don't know if that 28% growth will continue into the future. If you have high conviction that that growth will continue um then you can kind of calculate out with 20% growth if we saw say that 40 times multiple drop to 20 times what kind of return could I expect over say 10 years if that 20% growth continued and even with that contraction you might find that you earn a solid return. So, those are things to consider as well, but yeah, definitely a tough area. Humphrey Yang, happy birthday.

Love your videos. Thank you very much, Humphrey. Thanks for dropping by and saying hi. Uh, happy birthday. I've been learning from your videos since 2019. Thank you for what you do. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Release the files. I don't know what you're talking about. Wrong wrong social media account. Um, in what aspect do you see being in a bubble? In theory, couldn't anyone just keep investing in all assets to keep high prices to avoid a bubble since the country is at a high time debt? All alltime high debt is what I'm guessing.

Um, good question, man. Uh, yeah, I mean, so things to consider, right? Uh, on the one hand, we have selloffs like today um where part of that there's other factors, right? It's not just who's all investing. uh it's what the liabilities of those investors are. Um there's things like uh liquidity in the market. So we've seen liquidity in the market decrease quite a bit recently. Uh you might have heard of stuff like the repo market kind of drying up. Um some kind of mistaken takes on that, but it is true that we're seeing liquidity decrease. And what that means is that investors are either becoming more riskadverse or they're having less access to cash um or using it for other methods outside of safer loans. So that eventually will feed into other areas if it continues and means that investors will likely decrease valuations and for higher risk stocks. But um yeah, it's a very it's a very high level question. I

don't know if I can answer it properly, but uh Ronald Pado, how do you feel about prediction markets like Kolshi? I actually just commented on the on a advisor upside newsletter article on this exact topic. Um, so they're actually those markets are actually banned in Ontario. So where I live in Canada, uh, these prediction markets are banned because they don't fall under current legislation. So the government just took the step to ban these platforms in the meantime. Um, in the US it's controversial because it's federally regulated by the CFTC. So, they've made the argument that they're not a gambling website. They are a contract kind of derivative site that should fall under the CFTC.

Uh, which means states don't have the authority to to legalize it or criminalize it, I guess. Um, and I think it's it's dangerous uh in the sense that it's sort of the continuation of the gamification of of investing, right? You have people who have very valid concerns about investing of traditional finance uh the traditional financial industry and they have um [sighs] you know they have this distrust of like traditional investing insider trading things like that and this kind of pops up as like a a an alternative I guess and it's being you know you saw Robin Hood is now offering this as an option on their platform right I think that's dangerous because it kind of blurs the line between gambling and investing yes you can do your research and maybe have an edge on one of these bets pets, but the idea of consistently profiting seems very slim. Uh, and yeah, I don't know. I I don't like it. I'm

cautious of it. Uh, geez, let me go through some of these. Sorry, I I told myself I wouldn't spend as long answering questions so I could read more comments, and here I am falling behind quite a bit. Uh, thank you for all your content. What are your thoughts on financial literacy education for younger people? When to start, what to focus on, does it even matter? Yeah, I mean, one of the best things for if you I don't know if you're speaking from the perspective of a younger person or you have kids or the like, but um definitely something to to you know, like the idea of spending and debt management, all that stuff is is are very good skills to have very early on, right? If you're a teenager, those are skills that you can be developing or or just learning about, right? Learning about credit scores and things like that. Um let's go through some of these

Have you ever reached out or reached out to Atriarch? I think you guys I am somewhat familiar with Atriarch. I haven't watched a lot of his content, but you you guys are mentioning him a lot in the comments. So, I'm guessing we I think he I saw his circular financing video. So, he and he's funny. Like, the video I saw was was was very funny and pretty good. Um, yeah. I mean, I'm I'm always I I'm always cautious with collaborations because of, you know, what's happened in the past with some finance creators. Uh, but yeah, I mean, I'm I'm always happy to meet other people and and, uh, chat with them about potentially collabing. Uh, happy birthday. I like to consume finance economy related content online. What solid, relatively unbiased other creators than yourself can you recommend? Uh, for economics, I I've talked about them all the time. Uh kind of biased because I've I've spoken to him offline. Well, not offline, but off

of YouTube. Uh but Money Macro, uh it's run by Yuri Shassford. He's a I think still a professor in the Netherlands. He might be doing YouTube full-time now, but he uh has formal education in economics. He's taught economics at an institution, and he covers a lot of interesting economic topics like a lot of the trade war stuff and and things like that. So really smart guy and I've actually passed some content by him before. Uh not to say he's like, you know, signed off on my content, but I've asked him questions and he's been a great resource for me. Um so definitely I can I can't recommend him enough.

Uh happy birthday. I have a question. What is something you learning too late or you wish you learned sooner about investing? That's a good question. I feel like I learned about investing at a good time. Uh I like I started my career in finance, right? So right when I started making money, I was learning to invest. Uh so I'm very lucky in that regard. And even before that, like my parents put me in a GIC and a government bond I think I got for my birthday when I was growing up. So you know, I had some exposure to investing as a kid, but I didn't really fully understand it until I studied it and started working. But uh something I regret learning too late. I mean like as an analyst, I've I've learned a lot through trial and error. some stuff like um I think one thing that's that I've had a hard lesson on is uh putting too much faith in historical performance.

There have been companies that are like dividend aristocrats, meaning they they've consistently paid a dividend for a long period of time and we've and I've invested in them and then you know it pivots 180 like all of a sudden their dividend gets cut. They stop paying a dividend. they they fall a good amount of they fall a good amount. Um so that's something that that you know I had to teach myself again you know you the history of a company matters because it shows management skill and things like that but you you can't sort of project that into the future without justification right um so that's one one example I would give uh I've seen some people argue that the reason Bitcoin increases in price is because everything else in the world isn't fixed in quantity and is getting devalued versus Bitcoin. What do you think of that? No, money's just not that simple. Um, you know, there's and certainly there's

other stuff that's fixed in quantity. What about NFTTS, right? Uh, the whole point of an NFT was quite literally this is a one-of-a-kind that doesn't inherently give it value. Um, so no, it's more complicated than that. There's there's things like flows, institutional demand um momentum traders, there there's all these factors that aren't fundamental to the use case of Bitcoin that are going to impact its price. So, so no, it's not that simple. Um that can certainly be part of a thesis around Bitcoin, but it's not as simple as Bitcoin's price is increasing because everything else is falling in value.

And also the idea that you know on a given day like something would fall like five or 10%. Everything else has fallen five or 10% in value is just obviously not not true. Um happy birthday Richard. I've been watching your videos since 2018. Wow. Right on a real one. I that's when I launched a channel I think. So thank you very much for uh for hanging on this whole time. Your videos have kept my fear in check especially during the 2022 selloff. Thank you. Oh, I'm honored. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Um, let's say that this guy gives horrible advice. Be safe and save for 30 years and then be rich.

If that I want to be rich now. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're welcome to pursue that. Uh, that's okay. We take we take negative criticism here, too. We we take all the feedback. Birthday crash in the market. Yeah. Sorry, guys. That's my bad. I shouldn't have turned shouldn't have turned another year old. Uh, turning 32, by the way, uh, for those those unaware. Uh let's see value at least requires utility and scarcity I assume I think the question open question on crypto is utility utility is doing a lot of work there yeah I mean I don't know much about the broader crypto kind of ecosystem I think you have to we have to see a lot more scaling of that utility before it it kind of cements its its place but uh that certainly could be happening and you know like there's a I covered DeFi the idea of DeFi a while ago and kind of highlighted some risks and issues but I I think the idea of like someone

launches a successful cryptocurrency is certainly possible. Like you if you have a good idea and a good kind of system around it, great. Um it's just there's kind of this inflated like any new technology like like AI, right? You have a lot of people rush into the space and then a few might stick around, but unlikely that you see that the area take off like expected. Uh Dwayne session, thank you for the the super chat. Happy birthday. I was considering becoming a financial adviser. Then I hear that it can be automated. [clears throat] Is financial advisory still a growing field? That I don't know high level if it's a growing field. I would say that um even at the company I work for, there's still plenty of demand for for the stuff we do. I think people are going to have a hard time replacing stuff. Like frankly, this argument of advisor being replaced has been around well before AI. Like since I've I've

started in my career, I've heard about advisors being replaced. And I think there's definitely been a trend towards DIY investing. So, it's definitely been an impact, but not for the reason people are saying, which is people are saying, well, advisors can just be replaced with a a program. Well, they they were able to be replaced by a program, if you're being quite literal, for for a decade at this point, right? Um, I think the reason they haven't is that people still value having human and and human input on on their situation, right? Um, Kenny, thank you for the for the super chat. Appreciate it. Uh, any advice about Irish doicile ETFs for non US residents wanting to invest in US index funds? No, sorry. I should read these before I click them just because I don't want to disappoint people highlight their question. Just say, "Oh, sorry." Um, Patrick Bole is a great finance YouTuber, too. Yep. I

think he's great. Patrick's, you know, for me, it's it's, this is not to say that finance channels need to have that professional background to to put out good content. Um, I think a lot of great content comes from people who are just sharing their experience and and are honest about it being their experience. But, um, you know, because I work in the industry, I don't usually watch that content. I look for people who have more experience or or different education than I have. And so, Patrick Bole, Money, and Macro are two examples of of channels I really think do a good job.

Um, let's take a look at some more of these. He's a great hip-hop YouTuber. I've heard. I've heard. Uh, happy birthday. I've invested for about three years now. Congratulations on getting started. Why do so many investors chase complicated products and strategies when just buying and holding a global index fund is so easy? You know, that's so speaking of of YouTubers, Ben Felix has really been having it with the the covered call ETF community. I've actually chatted with him about this topic, but yeah, you know, the unfortunate like we're at a point where we I think we have more ETFs than we have individual stocks. So, there are wider array of strategies for investing in stocks, which I guess makes sense, than the stocks themselves that you can buy in. Um, and the issue is that companies are just financial engineering different augmentations to attract more buyers, right? Because from the ETF company's

perspective, yes, index investing might have been how they got popular, but they want to cast as broad of a net as they can to capture any sort of investor out there. Because if there's an investor out there who says, "I want to buy the S&P 500, but without this company, this company, this company, then and the if they find an ETF that has that exact combination, great. You know, they they've bought one more investor." And the idea like you know yes ETFs are expensive to run but if you get enough demand the marginal cost of launching a new ETF to get more investors is is it's great payoff right um so you have to be careful because yeah companies are the a good investment strategy doesn't have to be complicated but companies are profiting by continually launching more and more complicated uh strategies.

Uh Julian Julian Joseph thank you for the super chat. I appreciate that. Uh, I'm going to stay on for another What time is it? Uh, 13 minutes or so, kind of around 1 PM. Call it call it quits and, uh, get back to working. But, uh, no, I appreciate you guys coming by for again, I don't think I'll live stream more often than than once a year. This is kind of a good amount, uh, to to, uh, chat with people. But, and I apologize if if I don't get to your questions. I had told myself this year I'd have someone moderate my my chat so I could actually get to more people and have them keep me on top of get reading more comments, but alas, uh, do not get organized this time.

Uh, take a look through some of these. Hey, birthday. Tomorrow's my birthday, too. Hey, right on. Congratulations. I don't know why I said congratulations on getting older, buddy. I'm right there with you. Happy birthday, Richard. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Um, let's see here. Happy birthday to channel. Uh, not quite the channel. This is this is personal birthday. I think my channel's birthday is in August. Um, I think we're eight years old. Eight or nine years old at this point. I'm older than eight or nine. Uh, just to be clear. Hi, Richard. I love your videos.

Thank you for the super chat, Brian. Uh, do you have any advice for other aspiring finance YouTubers? Ah, man. Uh, I get this question a lot and I wish I was more I wish I knew what I was doing more so I could give good advice. A lot of it has been trial and error. I hate looking at my older um Oh, sorry, Julian. I did not see I highlighted your question, but there was no no uh there's no text there. But if you comment again uh just a normal chat, you don't have to super chat. I will try and highlight it and answer your question. So, I'll look for for your comment and I'll I'll try to get to it.

I don't know why I don't know why that didn't show up. Sorry about that. Um, but I'll look for your name. Uh, yeah. Advice. I don't know. Just post like look out there, see what what there is, see how you can do things differently. But if you add value in the space, I like I always encourage people to go for it. Like I know a lot of professionals who um have thought about entering the space. I always highlight that you have to be careful going into it with like a marketing first mindset. Like a lot of companies are like, "How do we get into the social media space?" And the thing I always I usually highlight is that look like I I don't think it works that way. Like I don't think you can build trust by starting off as a as a marketing uh you know strategy effectively. Like some companies have done it successfully, but it's a really hard sell to be like I'm a finance company. I'm going to try and

build trust with people and advertise my service while I'm doing it. Um, you know, I think go into it, add value to your audience, and like that's the best you can do, right? Uh, it doesn't have to be amazing quality. One thing I would say is lighting. Uh, technically, lighting is such an important thing that I learned. Like you can have the best camera and your video will look like crap if you don't have good lighting. So, definitely invest in lighting if you want to do like a full production, but you don't need like I had a very cheap setup. My setup was like under $200 or $300 when I started. you can tell but you know that's how I got started right okay there's your question given that AI is now framed as a national security priority does that extend to life the lifespan of the bubble since US can't realistically afford to lose the AI race yeah good question I mean government intervention will certainly

impact the area right like if the government continues to to support the area there's a whole bailout comment that came out right as I was putting out my video and then you know they kind of walked back those statements so I didn't bother like rush out a quick update for that. But um yeah, I mean certainly the government can kind of prop up any industry and that can cause problems but you know ultimately the government also doesn't want to make bad investments, right? Because that also drags on their own finances. So government finances are different than household finances but they matter. Um and you know if you put too much money into the system that's inflation and things like that. Good audio is the most important thing to make good YouTube videos. Audio is important, too. Um, definitely invest in a a I mean, again, I didn't have a very good mic for like my mic was like 30 bucks for the longest

time. You can tell again, you can tell. You can tell as I've updated my stuff and I've learned what I'm doing. Um, because it's all trial and error on my part. But, uh, yeah, I mean, good microphone you can get for not too much money. just do a bit of research and uh good lighting like not expensive lighting but just make sure that you have proper you know there's kind of the three-way light system that people have of like a key light I think filler light and uh background light or I don't know what's properly called but I agree that lighting is an easy way to make it look very professional even with an iPhone that's right I mean iPhone cameras have have like are great at this point right um Marco Rubio do you own any alternative investments like Pokemon or collectibles. Thanks for your question, Marco Rubio. Um, uh, no, not as investments. Like I might have a collectible somewhere, but not

not like as an investment. No. Is S&P 500 buy and hold still the best strategy and will it be the future? Uh, I don't know. Maybe. Uh, it's tricky because of the concentration, right? Like a 10 companies make up like 40% of the index now. I don't invest just in the S&P 500. Uh it's been a great strategy. I think index investing is still a good strategy for a lot of people, [clears throat] but you have to be you have to be aware of those risks and you have to be aware of of the type of call you're making when you buy the S&P 500, right? I think people unfortunately they buy the S&P 500 and they sort of wipe their hands clean. They're like, I didn't have to make an investment decision. I just bought the market. But the S&P 500 is really a bet on US large cap stocks, right? That might work out, but that is an active investment you are making, an active bet you're making. So, you have to kind of own that, right? You can't

just ignore it and pretend that you're doing a perfect passive investing. Now, the US market is representative of a good chunk of the global stock market. I think they're over half the global stock market in terms of market value. So, you know, you are and and there's global companies with diversified operations, but just something to consider, right? I think some people buy the S&P 500 to shut off and not think about it, but you have to own the decision that you're making. Uh, happy birthday, man. What do you think about the CFA and the investment banking sector? Don't know much about the investment banking sector, but I imagine CFA is still worthwhile in that area. Hi, hey, hi Plane. What do you think of the capital assets pricing model? Munger used to call it stupid. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's dated. Um, you know, it's good from a theoretical standpoint, but you don't see it used much in practical terms.

I've used it for uh calculating expected returns. Sorry, uh equity the cost of equity in uh cash flow models before. So I've used kappam before for equity. I'm getting lost in my terminology. For cash discounted cash flow models, I've used kappam as part of the calculation, but it's not something that like we we you know for expected returns or things like that that you would use too much. Uh Mario, thank you for the super chat. For young investor already using factor tilts and leverage, what are the next strategies to consider for taking on more long-term compensated risk for young?

[sighs and gasps] I mean, if you're already using factor tilts and leverage, I don't know what else there is. Like, um I think you have to be careful not to overengineer investing, right? Um it's okay that you just uh turn up the input on Oh, I'm just getting a comment here. African crypto warlord. Turn up the input on your mic. The LED part on your mic. Is this better? Sorry, have I been quiet this whole time? You guys said I was crystal clear. God, we're almost done and I'm just fixing that. Thank you for for the comment. Um, yeah, Kappam is used for whack in valuations. That that's what I was trying to get to. Uh, thank you for putting it in words. Um, happy birthday. Oh, yay. Happy birthday.

I watched all your videos. Much better, guys. Ah, come on. Damn it. I I'm at the end of the live stream and I I relied on you guys. Ah yikes. Okay. Well, maybe next year. Maybe next year I'll learn how to do it properly. Okay. Well, thank you for joining anyway. I got five more minutes. I'll ask a few or answer a few more questions. But how do you think demographic pressure people getting older and AI will affect jobs in financing of doing accounting myself? Maybe. So, I want to know if it might have negatives. I mean, like I I would think that would increase the demand for finance. Like you typically see people engage with adviserss as they get older.

Um, AI, tougher to say, but I don't think it'll have as pronounced of an impact on finance. Maybe kind of the more of the grunt work like I said, but uh, how to hedge against tech and AI overweighted ETFs. Uh, you can look into things. It's not again financial advice, but there are alternatives like, uh, equal weight ETFs where you put less weight on large cap stocks and more weight on small or medium cap stocks. Um, more international, right? Other countries don't have as much weight as the US, but again, that's a decision you have to make.

Uh, Richard, can someone with a mental disability possibly study any of the CFP, CFA, etc.? I mean, it depends on what it is, right? Um, I like finance overall and you and Ben Felix, I also had the finance bachelors. I mean, if you did the finance bachelors, I don't see why not, but I, you know, I don't know your situation. How do I tell if funds uh the minor? Thank you for the Thank you for the super chat. How do I tell if a if a fund's fees are high when FX hedging is included? My Thai bank offers an IBV feeder with FX hedge at 1.2% ABR. That's pretty expensive. Uh but I don't know what what's normal, right, for for Thailand. Um that's that's expensive though. Usually like in the US where you know natur even naturally it's a more I would expect a larger market financial market sorry.

Um, it's, you know, 10 20 basis points sometimes that you see because of FX. I I actually don't even know what the figure would be, but it's not it's not that much. That's that's a huge fee. Uh, but that comes with currency risk maybe as well. Uh, Alex Wong, hi Richard, this is not a question, but I want to thank you for bringing all this content into the YouTube space. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Um, how are you so rich, handsome, and successful? Uh maybe one of those is right, but I appreciate that. Um I'll let you guys guess which one. If you could do a bachelor's, you'll have no problem with Yeah, that that was my thought in terms of the the mental disability question. I think if you can do a a bachelor's, I don't see why you couldn't do one of those. CFA is definitely tougher than the CFP, and I haven't done the CPA, but um yeah, I mean, if you can do a bachelor's, I don't see why not.

Uh, two more questions and then I'll have to sign off. But, hi Richard. Any tips for someone trying to break into equity research? How difficult is it for someone with limited professional finance experience? It can be tough. Um, one things one thing I I talk to a lot of students who are trying to enter the finance industry. Um, I go to a lot of like my old universities like networking events and stuff like that with students. One thing I always highlight is if you want to do research, if it's a passion of yours and you want to kind of get your foot in the door, look into doing research yourself, right, in your spare time. Um, if you can put together a research report for a stock you like, then you have something you can bring forward as an example of your work. It doesn't have to even be that good of a of a recommendation, right? Um, I got hired on a bad recommendation on JP Morgan. I think I said to sell the stock

based on like you know I I did a very fine calculation and it was like within 10% of the stock price and I was like well it's over that so uh we we we were going to sell it and then of course JP Morgan has been a huge winner. Um but the point was I was able to so show a process and my company kind of acknowledged well we can teach him how to invest right we can teach him how to research he's got the the technical skills we can teach kind of the the philosophy and stuff like that. Um, and what I would suggest is there are student funds that you can that will publish their research publicly and you can kind of take a stock and base it off of one of the published research reports. Um, that will help kind of uh you can you can sorry I'm losing my train of thought. Uh, you don't want to copy the research they're doing. like you don't want to do the same company and just copy and paste what they did,

but you can take the framework of what they've done for researching the stock and apply it to a different company. Um, something I I definitely suggest. It's a lot of work, but uh, Breto, thank you for the super chat. Variable or fixed mortgage? I do fixed. Some people would argue variable. So, in Canada, everything's variable. Effectively, every five years at least, you have to uh, update your rate on your mortgage. Companies don't lend for a full 30 years like they do in the US. Uh but um I do fix just because for a budgeting standpoint, it's less risk.

Yes, you can get a discount if you do variable, but for me, I just I like the more consistent budgeting. That's personal choice. It's not even I would say like explicitly the advice I'd give to someone based on their situation. But okay, last thing. Uh that that was I'll I'll give that an extra question because that was a super chat. But um let's see. Uh [sighs] I'm going to pick one more question here. Got to pick one more. It's a lot of pressure. Smash your faces on the like button. Thank you, Af African crypto warlord.

That's definitely That's my advice. Um, oh, I I went to click another one and that one popped up. I'll I'll do this one and one more. What impact do you think demographics and aging population will have on returns in the coming decades? Good question, man. Um, like demographics matter. There's there's a good there's a Canadian economist I think he who is famously quoted saying demographics explain twothirds of everything I think was the quote um I don't know enough about it in terms of you know it'll it'll impact different areas so you know you have people retiring where is their money invested but I don't have the the highle answer there sorry uh this was the one I was going to answer and then I'm I'm done for the live chat uh Ben how confident were you after you graduated university with your finance degree. I am a fourth year and I am and am not too confident in my knowledge of finance.

Did you do any extra research while in school? I yeah you know I can I can empathize with that. Um I had a somewhat similar experience where you know I did a lot of research in university like you research companies but then [sighs] like in terms of having the whole comprehensive view of like investment research it just wasn't there when I graduated and I you know I was like I have some technical skills but like I don't know like I can look at a stock but and I can tell you what the different things say but like I don't know how to make the ultimate judgment of like yes this is a buy or no this is not. Um so working in the industry definitely filled those gaps.

So I started at one finance company in the back office but while I was there I [clears throat] spoke a lot with the finance department um and eventually worked into more on the investing side of the business and that's where I really learned the most of my investing knowledge and stuff like that. So it is unfortunate that the technical skills even the CFA is to the same extent right like the CFA teaches technical skills uh but it'll say like these are all the things but it's up to you to prioritize which ones matter and which ones don't right so um it is it is a tough call but that's where I'll stop it for today thank you everyone for for coming for the annual live stream I'm sorry the microphone was quiet for the first five sixth of this video but I appreciate you guys uh toughing through it I will try to make sure next year is better uh every year we're learning right uh don't Oh, I think we're our

quality is probably staying a bit flat, but I appreciate you guys popping by and saying hi. Uh, a few more videos planned for the rest of the year. I will probably take a break in January as I typically do, but uh kind of regular once every two weeks, we'll do a a video on the channel. And yeah, I'll leave it there. Happy holidays, guys, as they come up. I know not quite in that season yet, but uh since we're live, I'll say I hope you guys have a good holiday season in December. And uh yeah, we'll see you in the next video. Until then, stay safe out there,

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Live Birthday Q&A Stream # 5"?

In order: 0:00 Michael Bur, Patrick Bole, Scion Capital; 10:00 Financial Times; 20:00 The Bitcoin Standard, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Ben Felix; 40:00 Patrick Bole, Ben Felix, Julian Joseph; 50:00 Ben Felix.

What is mentioned in this The Plain Bagel episode?

10 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including CFA, CFP, Patrick Bole, Ben Felix, The Bitcoin Standard, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Live Birthday Q&A Stream # 5"?

The episode runs 1 h 3 min; the transcript is about 11,298 words in 78 timestamped sections.

More from The Plain Bagel

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.