It IS Gambling

Talking Real Money - Investing Talk

Don McDonald

Education, Investing, Business, How To

4.5 • 811 Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Don goes solo this week and covers the wild state of “investing” in 2025 — including single-stock ETFs, leveraged funds, and zero-day options that look more like gambling than investing. He answers listener questions about Roth strategies for kids, aggressive long-term allocations, finding fiduciary advisors, dealing with inherited stock portfolios, and the ethics and fees of big Wall Street firms. Plus, he fields questions about new tax-focused ETFs and whether complicated multi-fund factor strategies are really worth the trouble. 0:04 Don jokes about ChatGPT replacing him, welcomes listeners 1:53 Today’s topic: 30% of new ETFs are tied to single stocks — “this is gambling” 4:27 Zero-day options and high-frequency trading likened to sports betting 5:23 Congressman Ro Khanna’s 2,800 trades this year — four per market day 6:12 Don’s call to stop pretending this is investing 8:16 Caller Mike: 3 kids with $100k+ Roths each — aggressive allocation recommendations (AVUV, AVGE, DFAW, 100% equity) 12:24 International weighting debate — Don likes 60/40 global tilt 15:34 Caller Dan from Israel: How to confirm if an advisor is a fiduciary; why inheriting stocks isn’t a reason to keep them 18:08 Transitioning from stocks to ETFs while minimizing capital gains 22:23 Caller Laura: Ethical concerns with J.P. Morgan, fees near 1%, annuities in portfolio — Don urges finding a true fiduciary and offers local resources 27:07 Caller Jim: New ETF (TOT) promising tax efficiency — Don warns against chasing “magic tricks” for small benefits 31:44 Question about swapping gains between mother/son’s VTI shares — IRS won’t allow 33:47 Kath reads listener question: Three-bucket retirement system, comparing iShares GLOF vs AVGE — Don says it’s fine, but may be overcomplicating 35:34 Rebalancing frequency discussion — annual is enough for most Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Reality Radio for a really great future.
0:07.9	We're talking real money.
0:10.2	Well, after spending some time with chat GPT, I think I have to work on my robot voice so that I can still have a job.
0:20.4	Actually, that's a job, actually.
0:22.2	That's a pretty terrible voice.
0:25.6	Robots sound really good these days, don't they?
0:29.3	Anyway, we had chat GPT on last hour, so I just thought I'd mention that.
0:31.3	Hey, everybody, welcome to Talking Real Money.
0:32.2	I'm Don McDonald. Good to have you with me here on the radio show that the radio show that becomes a podcast next week,
0:39.6	because I sit here in my studio and I edit it down into a podcast and put it up on all the
0:44.1	podcast services.
0:45.3	But in the meantime, it's a radio show every Saturday from noon to two Pacific time, for
0:50.7	those of you listening elsewhere in the country, three to five Eastern time.
0:53.9	And one of the best parts about it is that it is the only time during the week that Tom and I are
1:00.8	able to spend a couple of hours interacting live with you, where you call us and we have a
1:07.0	conversation. And you do that by calling our phone number. Old-fashioned idea I know,
1:13.5	but it works. That number is 855, which means it's toll-free. For some of you, young people,
1:21.6	you go, what the heck is toll-free? We'll ask your folks to explain it to you. Toll-free,
1:26.9	855-935-935-8-25-5-8-25-5.
1:31.7	Yeah, I know.
1:32.2	We live in an age where you can call anybody anywhere toll-free.
1:36.9	Remember?
	...

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