Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.

Hi and welcome to the Longview. I'm Christine Ben's Director of Personal Finance and Retirement Planning for Morning Star.

And I'm Ben Johnson, head of Client Solutions for Morning Star.

Today on the podcast, we welcome back Ben Carlson, who's the author of a new book called Risk and Reward.

Ben is the director of institutional asset management for Ritt Holt's wealth management.

In addition, Ben's a prolific creator of content.

His blog is called A Wealth of Common Sense.

He also co-hosts the podcast Animal Spirits with Michael Batnik.

Ben is the author of four books about investing in money,

and he's a CFA charter holder. Ben, welcome back to the Longview. Glad to be here. We're glad to

have you here, and congratulations on your new book, Risk and Reward. The book has a lot of market

history in it. You're obviously a huge student of market history.

Why do you think understanding history can make us better investors?

I originally started reading market history because I was such a new, inexperienced investor

when I was young and just out of school. And I thought the way for me to kind of learn about markets is to understand what came before me. And I think the biggest thing for studying

market history is not necessarily that it's going to help you predict the future because it can't.

I think it just gives you this idea that there's a range of outcomes and that usually the risks

are relatively surprising and the way that things play out are surprising. And I think you can use that to sort of color your thinking about the future.

Certainly, just this decade alone, no one could have possibly predicted how much a pandemic

would change the course of the world and that we'd have 40-year high inflation and all these things that have happened that were completely unknown and surprising.

I had an old boss who once told me that it's okay to be surprised, but don't be surprised

that you are surprised by the markets.

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