Only Six Minutes?

Talking Real Money - Investing Talk

Don McDonald

Business, Education, Investing, How To

4.2 • 680 Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Don and Tom dive into a new study showing the average investor spends just six minutes researching a stock—most of it just watching the price move. From gut feelings to hometown bias, they unpack why individual stock picking is often driven by emotion, not logic. Along the way, they skewer myths about control, tax efficiency, and the Warren Buffett fantasy. Listener questions cover Roth 401k rollovers, Roth conversion timing, and Fidelity’s commingled active target-date funds—and why none of them beat a good portfolio of low-cost ETFs. 0:04 Stock picking takes 6 minutes, says NYU study 1:09 Why people pick stocks without research 1:56 Risk analysis ignored by most investors 2:57 The illusion of gut instinct investing 4:22 Beating the market is harder than it looks 5:44 The fantasy of picking only “good” stocks 7:10 The control myth and cost of stock picking 8:29 Buffett’s process vs. your fantasy 9:53 The illusion of control and tax myths 10:58 What real diversification means 12:11 You’re wasting time, not just money 13:11 Emotion makes individual stock picking harder 13:59 Familiarity bias in hometown investing 15:21 Listener Q1: Roth 401k rollover planning 16:27 How many ETFs should a multimillion Roth have? 17:59 Get fiduciary help or risk being sold garbage 18:21 Listener Q2: Roth conversion tax trap 20:17 RMDs aren’t the enemy—bad Roth math is 20:29 Listener Q3: Fidelity commingled target-date fund 21:35 Why active target funds fail investors 22:07 Better option: Three low-cost ETFs instead Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rated T for Teen.
0:02.0	Each year, thousands of adults lose their shred.
0:05.0	It's an epidemic simply known as shred loss, but it doesn't have to be this way.
0:09.0	Because rekindling your shred is as easy as playing the new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4.
0:14.0	With new parks, cross-platform multiplayer, and sick new game modes,
0:19.0	we can put an end to shred loss everywhere.
0:22.2	Hit the new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 and show the world that the shred's not dead.
0:26.4	Pre-order Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 and play the foundry demo.
0:34.9	Reality Radio for a really great future.
0:37.9	We're talking real money.
0:40.2	Do you have six minutes to spare?
0:42.7	Do you have an extra six minutes laying around?
0:45.2	Well, if you do, and you're like most Americans,
0:49.1	you too can apparently be a stock picker because that's all the time most people spend trying to pick
0:59.1	individual stocks. What? Hi, everybody. I'm Don McDonald. This is talking real money and over there
1:07.1	taking a brief break from his many vacations is the inimitable and uh and actually
1:14.6	working tom cock for a change just he'll be back on vacation just he'll be back on vacation
1:19.5	for the rest of the summer i like to break things up a little bit come into the office
1:24.7	i take i like take my gear along but no no no i wouldn't know how to do that only time i didn't take my gear along, but no, no, no.
1:28.7	I wouldn't know how to do that.
1:29.7	Only time I didn't take my gear was when I had to go to the hospital.
1:32.6	That one, I didn't take my gear for that.
	...

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