September Nonsense

Talking Real Money - Investing Talk

Don McDonald

Education, Investing, Business, How To

4.5 • 811 Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Don and Tom mark Labor Day weekend with a lively discussion of the so-called September Effect—Wall Street’s superstition about historically negative returns in September. They remind listeners that short-term market timing is a losing strategy and that knowing (not guessing) your risk tolerance and asset allocation matters most. The conversation ranges from Florida’s endless summer and biblical rains to ETF overload, collective investment trusts, tax quirks, and the futility of dodging volatility. Along the way, there’s humor about Costco, fertilizer, wrong numbers, and shameless plugs for Don’s LitReading podcast. 0:04 Labor Day banter, Florida heat, biblical rains, Asheville trip 2:12 September Effect explained—history and hype 4:41 Why you should know, not do, with your portfolio 6:15 Average September returns since 1928 and investor psychology 8:28 Market timing pitfalls and missing best days 10:28 Costco’s Jim Sinegal quote and life’s sugar vs. manure metaphor 12:29 Bogle wisdom: don’t peek at your portfolio 14:05 Listener correction: senior deduction phase-out details 19:14 Don plugs LitReading’s return with an O. Henry story 20:34 ETF explosion—4,300 funds in U.S., 12,000 worldwide 26:15 How to eliminate bad ETFs (fees, leverage, active management) 29:11 Don tests a new GPS analogy ad for Appella Wealth 31:12 Listener question on state tax burdens (California vs. Washington) 34:05 Call-in about 401(k) funds converting to CITs 37:19 CIT regulations, reporting, and transparency explained 39:39 Apple vs. Spotify podcast listener demographics 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.
0:08.0	We're talking real money.
0:10.1	It's the most wonderful time of the year.
0:16.0	Bah, humbug.
0:17.1	It's my favorite holiday season right now.
0:21.0	That is Labor Day weekend. You know why I like Labor Day weekend?
0:24.7	Because summer's ending? Because summer's over all for some.
0:28.9	I just, you know, summers are excused to just do not. Can you imagine how much more productive
0:33.8	would be if we didn't have summers in America? You're going to go ahead and cancel that for 2026?
0:39.0	And as a Floridian, I want to cancel summer because summer is sort of like, if you want to
0:43.9	experience what the afterlife is going to be for many of you, spend three or four,
0:50.1	five months in Florida in the summer.
0:52.2	There's some love for the audience today.
0:53.9	Thank you for sharing that. For many, a big hug. Hi, everybody. Welcome to talking real money. It's Don, back in the saddle again after a little excursion up to Asheville where it was cooler than Florida. Over there is Tom Cock doing the thing that he does in his Don McDonald's show hat. Yeah, I was cleaning the garage. That's how exciting the holiday is for me. The garage is getting, garage, well, because you got to clean the garage out so the car can go in there because the, the September is coming. And you know what that means here? It means the rain. So, yeah, I got to get things cleaned out. Man, have we been having rains here? The summer rain. You guys had like an inch in 15 minutes or something.
1:30.0	Not only is it very hellish.
1:32.9	It's also very biblical.
1:34.8	It's like Noah's Flood.
1:37.5	We just had so much rain falling from the skies.
1:40.0	So everything is gone in celebration except the studio.
1:43.4	Just that's the one thing. Yeah, we always have. Everything else gone. We'll celebration except the studio. Just that that's the one thing.
1:44.8	Yeah.
1:45.0	We always have.
	...

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