Fear is a Four Letter Word
The Dividend Cafe
The Dividend Cafe - The Bahnsen Group
4.9 • 572 Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2021
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One of the questions I get asked the most is, “what scares you right now?” Clients ask it every now and then, or some version of it, but I also get asked in various TV interviews that ever-so-compelling question, “what keeps you up at night?” There is one particular problem with the question I want to address in this week’s Dividend Cafe, and I want to provide a really thorough answer to it.
What is the problem with the question, “what is keeping you up at night?”
The problem is that the real question the person asking means to ask is, “do you think the market could go down?”
It’s a dishonest question, but probably not intentionally so. It’s a couched way of basically asking something reasonably worthless and unhelpful. Why is it worthless and unhelpful? Because the market can always go down, and anyone asking the question knows it, or anyone invested in the market ought to know it.
But, but, but you say – aren’t there times where it is extra super-duper extra likely to go down? And wouldn’t that have you worried? The answer to those two questions is, “of course not, other than in hindsight,” and “not at all.”
But, but, but, I say – if one ever just asked the question, “are there macroeconomic conditions that bother you, that you really dislike, that even though they don’t foolishly lead you into market timing or false prophesy or clickbait dis-ingenuity, you really are troubled by?”
Well, that question I can answer, and I will …
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Dividend Cafe, weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends in your understanding of economic life. |
| 0:12.5 | Hello and welcome to the Dividend Cafe, our weekly podcast and video. |
| 0:19.0 | My name is David Bonson. I am the managing partner at the Bonson Group, |
| 0:21.8 | and I am recording here today from our New York office. And I got to tell you, I wrote the entirety |
| 0:30.5 | of the Dividend Cafe for the week over the last several hours. I came into it this morning |
| 0:36.9 | without any of it pre-written. I had a general idea what I wanted |
| 0:40.0 | to talk about. But by the time I was done writing, I really liked what I'd come up with. But I'm |
| 0:47.3 | going to have to leave that to readers to decide if it captured what I was getting to. But what I want to talk to you about today, |
| 0:56.0 | same thing that I wrote about in Diven Cafe, |
| 0:58.0 | is first setting it up around the question that I'm continually asked. |
| 1:04.0 | And it's a really kind of regular question that gets asked, |
| 1:08.0 | not just of me, but a lot of people that appear on financial media. |
| 1:12.0 | But it's also a question that comes about very organically and very practically, day by day, |
| 1:17.0 | from clients or what have you, something on the lines of what are you afraid of right now? |
| 1:22.7 | What are you? What's what's scaring you? What's keeping you up at night, so to speak. |
| 1:29.3 | And I think that most people mean well asking the question. |
| 1:34.3 | I don't necessarily think that it's always the best of intentions when it's asked in a media context, |
| 1:40.3 | because I think it's intended to generate an answer that will frighten some people |
| 1:45.7 | and there's some sort of perpetual benefit to fear when it comes to the media from a |
| 1:54.4 | click standpoint or a eyeball standpoint, what people read, what they watch, what they click |
| 2:00.4 | on online, fear sells |
| 2:03.8 | in the media. |
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