Podcast: Speaking of Quality: Wealth Management Insights with Hank Smith
Season 2 Episode 4 Title: From Print to Podcast: Unraveling the Past, Present, and Future of Financial News with Chuck Jaffe

Episode Transcript:

Maxine Cuffe 0:06
You’re listening to Speaking of Quality: Wealth Management Insights with Hank Smith, a podcast by the Haverford Trust Company. On Speaking of Quality, Hank chats with authors, influencers and wealth management experts to bring a sense of clarity and calm to the complexity and stress of personal finance. And now here’s your host, Hank Smith.

Hank Smith 0:26
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Speaking of Quality: Wealth Management Insights.  I’m your host Hank Smith, Director and Head of Investment Strategy at the Haverford Trust Company. On this podcast we explore topics ranging from quality investing, retirement resilience, stock market trends, estate planning, small business ownership, behavioral psychology, and more. On today’s episode, I’m interviewing Chuck Jaffe, veteran financial journalist and nationally syndicated financial columnist.

Chuck boasts an illustrious career spanning over three decades marked by his current role as the esteemed host of Money Life with Chuck Jaffe, a weekday one hour radio show and podcast dedicated to the intricate world of finance. With over 11 years of hosting experience, Chuck engages with big thinkers, power brokers, and market movers providing listeners with up-to-date insights into the market and the economy. Chuck’s financial acumen extends beyond the microphone. As a returning MarketWatch columnist he shares opinion pieces about the market, economy, and notable individuals and companies. His impact on financial journalism is further underscored by 28 years as a syndicated financial columnist, allowing his expertise to reach audiences nationally. Chuck’s editorial leadership at ragingbull.com along with roles at the Boston Globe and writing for The Wall Street Journal underscores his diverse contributions to the financial media. Chuck’s journey reflects a commitment to informing and educating the public about the intricacies of finance, making him a luminary in the field. Chuck, thank you so much for joining me today on our podcast.

Chuck Jaffe 2:06
Well, thanks for having me. I’m not a luminary, I’m maybe the dimmest bulb in the pack. My guests who I talk to are luminaries, I’m just lucky enough to get a chance to chat with them.

Hank Smith 2:18
Chuck let’s start by reflecting on your early career as a business editor at The Morning Call in Allentown. What inspired your initial interest in financial journalism? And how did your experiences at that time shape your decision to continue down this path?

Chuck Jaffe 2:33
Well, I hate to make it you know, in the old days of journalism, because I am a newsman, like that’s a title that a few of us use these days, that really is not used much. But I’ll point out when I was a sports editor at the Michigan Daily in college, the thought was, “Oh, I’ll go into sports”. But my degree was in economics. And I kept meeting all these guys who were sports writers at the big newspapers, and they were all divorced. Because that’s a really hard life when you’re on the road with a team and you’re doing all that other sort of stuff. So I looked at it and in the 1980s, nobody was covering business. And I’m like, wait, I can get a job, an easy job, doing something that I like, because they’re all interested in me because nobody they have understands economics. So I went into business journalism that way. And I quickly realized that, you know, truth be told, from a journalism standpoint, business and sports are the same thing. Right? Because you’re talking about here’s the story, here’s the action. But if you want to dig in, you have to look at the box score. And the box score for a company is the balance sheet. So great, you can tell me whatever. But if I have to analyze it, I’m going to dig into the numbers and find out where the statistics are and pick those other things out. So, to me, it started with that. And then it was: Look, this is a place where you can go. And quite honestly, you know, not to brag or anything – I was good at it. Like I understood that this is where I wanted to be at a time when there weren’t many folks doing it. So now I’m one of those old, long in the tooth, curmudgeonly journalists. And I actually kind of like that role at this point in my life.

Hank Smith 4:18
I love that analogy of business and sports. It reminds me, I was told when CNBC first was started, that that set was modeled after the set of the CBS NFL pregame show. It’s really, they’re delivering a very similar type of product.

Chuck Jaffe 4:36
Oh, absolutely. And that’s the thing, you know, from a news standpoint, what are you trying to get out of it from a business standpoint? So you want to mention the Morning Call. So, when I got to the Morning Call in Allentown, at the time it was the 75th largest paper in the country, and I was in my late 20s, my mid to late 20s, I was the youngest business editor of a top 100 paper in the country. And they said, “Our business section is not that great. We need to find more readers”. And how do you do that? Well, you don’t get people who are not interested in business ready to go read the paper every single day, that’s not going to happen. If you’re reading the business pages all the time, you got a reason to do it. Now you can help someone develop a vested reason to do it. So, one of the things that I did in 1988 shortly after I joined the Morning Call was, I had a cat at the time, named Milly, Milly Schembechler, she was named after the wife of Michigan’s football coach, who would interrupt my mornings. I would remember, we didn’t have the internet in those days, I would read the newspaper spread out, my cat would get her breakfast, and then she would come and lay down, inevitably, while I was reading the charts. And so, I decided, she’s trying to pick stocks. So, I took a marker for a month and if she laid down, I used her feet and her nose. Because in those days, people would walk into a broker’s office and if the advice smelled good, they took it. So, feet and nose were the operative parts on humans are, let’s do that with her.  And I charted – if she had two feet on the paper, then it’s only two stocks today, if she had her feet and the nose, or whatever, you get a maximum of five on any given day, and I charted for a month, what she picked, and we created the Milly Index, which I’ll point out, we kept in two ways. We kept it in dollar-weighted way, like one share of everything that was in the index. And we kept it in an equal weighted way. And this is 1988, nobody’s heard of equal weighted indexes. But intuitively, it made sense to me. And I will just point out that this was in the days before the internet, and you know, that the internet was basically created as a way for people to share cat pictures, and not be embarrassed about it. And that’s what we did, we put this picture out of my cat on the stock table. And we talked about this, and it helped us get more readers. And by the way, my cat killed it. Her best pick, and you literally could not have set this up this way, because who’s going to be able to this, was LA Gear, which in the 12 months that her portfolio was together was the number one stock in the market, like literally of anything that wasn’t a penny stock. And so, you know, we tried to teach it there. And the lessons that I learned beyond the stuff on indexing, were really more about how people want their portfolios, and the things that they’re hearing to be relatable. And that still applies today, because everybody’s trying to find a methodology that works for them. And there is no one right way, that is just the way I do it. And it was funny because I’d had brokers in town say like, “how could you say that your cat can pick stocks as well as I did?” And I said, “Do you see anything on her portfolio that you have in client portfolios?” And they go “Yeah”, and I’d say “great, well, on those picks, she’s every bit as good as you are”. You know, you have got to have some fun with it. And once you have fun and you’re telling the right stories, if people can buy in and it works for them, then you’re making progress.

Hank Smith 8:31
And you’re 100% right. There are so many different ways to slice bread in this business of money management. There are so many methodologies, and some are better than others. But there’s no one right or wrong way of doing it. Let me just move on. I’ve got to talk to you about your podcast. First of all, you know I love joining your podcast as a guest. You’re a great host. As a host, what unique advantages do you believe podcasts and audio formats bring to conveying financial information compared to traditional written journalism? And how has this medium enhanced your ability to connect with your audience?

Chuck Jaffe 9:14
Well, it puts the personal in personal finance. And look, everybody has different ways that they do their job as a podcaster. In my case, I love getting a chance to appear with you, Hank. But as you know, from coming on my show, I never asked you about your background. Why? Because if you weren’t an expert, if you weren’t somebody who my audience could have a semblance of “this guy’s experienced and we can trust him and go to his website and check him out”, you wouldn’t be on my show. Like, that’s not a thing that happens, because we’re able to get the biggest, best, brightest names in the investing world. And in fact, one of the things that I say is that the real art and the real reason you want to listen to us is for the days when you don’t recognize every name on the roster. In other words, we’re currently in the holiday season. And we get all these people doing their year ahead outlooks. And if you look at my roster of guests, you might go “Wow, it’s one big name after the next and one big firm after the next”. But the real art is on that day, where you hear us talk about, coming up today, four guys, you’ve never heard of, talking money. But then you go through and go Wait; it was really smart talk. And I think that that’s a part of it is that, that we’re able to show a lot more than in a written form where, you know, when I was writing stupid investment of the week from MarketWatch, I could have called you and said, “Hey, Hank, I’m writing about this stock. I know you don’t like it, what do you think”, but we would take your opinion, and even if your opinion is tight, when it’s on the show, it would have been even tighter in that written form. So, the idea that we can get more information across is absolutely essential. The idea that you can, for us, do a lot more day-to-day like we’re an everyday show, we are five days a week, 250 days a year, four interviews most shows, that’s about 1000 interviews a year. And we’re a machine in terms of content. But we’re also a machine in terms of learning. In other words, we live in a world where disagreement makes a market. We live in a world where we’re struggling with civility and the disagreements that we all have, when it comes to our friends and neighbors when it comes to politics and the rest. But in the market, we don’t have those bipolar reactions, because there’s almost no one you know, who if they disagree with you says “You’re in the market? I’m out of the market.” No, it’s, “You’re in the market to a greater extent than I am. And I’m trying to figure out where I want to be.” And for some people, you navigate that by going and getting a financial advisor and putting all trust in them. For others, you want to have an understanding – maybe work with your advisor or do it yourself and go where you want to be. And so, what we do well, and what I think podcasting does well, is that we bring you this wide range of approaches and opinions. We always say you shouldn’t be surprised if somebody says buy this today and the next guy comes on and says sell this. Like, you’ll come on my show and for six months after you’re on my show, and your next appearance will be near the end of December, for six months afterwards – if anyone talks about the stocks that you talked about, we end our show going, “Joe Stein said today that XYZ was a buy. And then you know, but last week, Hank Smith was on he said it was a sell”. We’re not saying go do it. We’re saying in the middle, listen for the methods, which one resonates with you? And I think that’s what podcasts do well.

Hank Smith 12:56
Chuck, I can’t believe in my introduction, I didn’t mention that you have authored three books. Getting Started in Finding a Financial Advisor, The Right Way to Hire Financial Help, and Chuck Jaffe: His Lifetime Guide to Mutual Funds. Tell us a little bit about them. And also, what some of your more recent favorite reads have been.

Chuck Jaffe 13:17
Okay, well can I say that I hated writing books, which is why I haven’t done another. Although I have a book contract on my desk, and I’m debating it, it’s been on my desk for a while. So, I’m debating it. I will tell you that Chuck Jaffe’s Lifetime Guide to Mutual Funds – I never could have seen at that time, that mutual funds might not have lived out my lifetime. Now I will point out that next year, 2024, is the 100th anniversary of the mutual fund in this country, not talking about UITs, unit investment trusts in Great Britain, which were the precursor. But the 100th anniversary of mutual funds is next year, and I would have thought there were like a cockroach, and you couldn’t kill them. But if we fast forward two generations, you’re going to have to go about 30 more years, I think it’ll all be ETFs for the rest. So, my book has not lasted a lifetime even though all the advice that was in there all those years ago is still good advice. We’ve also seen enough developments that things have changed dramatically. Like, you don’t really have super high-cost funds anymore, you used to have to worry about it. Anytime you see a commercial and somebody is saying, “Hey make sure they don’t put you into high-cost funds”, they’re trying to fool you, because that doesn’t happen anymore. The average fund expense ratio is way below. Today, a high-cost fund is below what used to be an average fund in the 1990s. And oh, by the way, people are still reaching their goals. When it comes to the books on choosing advisors, you know, choosing an advisor is a hugely important decision – the choice of the advisor is more important than the investments that advisor and you will pick together. So, doing it right is really important, and most people don’t do it right. And most people need more help than they think they need. So, coming around and making sure you’re going to do the process is important. I love those books, because they are still very relevant, the questions that they want you to ask an advisor work, and they make advisors just uncomfortable enough to know that you’re actually in a good place, and you’re going to get what you want out of it. Because if an advisor blanches when they’re being asked a question, and they don’t have your money, imagine how they’re going to be when they do have your money. And as for books that I like, well, we talk a lot about books on the show. And there are plenty of things out there. But if you want to go sort of classic economics, and I’ve got a degree in economics, Jennifer Burns wrote a book called Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative that will go in that direction. You have to decide if you want to deal with the politics side of things. But that’s a decision anybody can make for themselves. I was more interested in Milton Friedman, the man, and how his version of conservative is different than mine. Speaking of that there’s a great book that was out last year, I want to say on Adam Smith, I’m not with it on the author’s name. But it sort of looked at how economics has changed. You know, to me, the question of what’s a great book is a hard one to answer because when it comes to financial books, as opposed to novels and stories, a financial book is only as good as what you are going to put into it. In other words, if you go read that book I mentioned about Milton Friedman, but you don’t kind of go “Wait, hold it, I want to add and layer what I’m doing to whatever I hear people talking about when it comes to economics”, then it was either a good story or a bad story – but it didn’t help you. I don’t find too many books where I go, “This guy’s stupid, what a terrible book, he’s leading people down the wrong path,” because there’s so many right ways to do it, as we talked about earlier. So, for me, a good book is one that I’m going to want to read and go, “If this was the position that I’m taking, if this one would educate me and inform me towards what I do, this book’s going to help me do that.

Hank Smith 17:23
You know we’re big believers in financial literacy, and in educating clients, because, you know, I know we’re managing their money, but we have to be constantly educating them. At the same time, I think one of the most powerful books I’ve read is the Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. And it’s not a how-to book and it doesn’t get into X’s and O’s, but it gets into something so, so, important and that’s people’s emotional reactions to having money. And so, we’ve always said, “there is no formula for asset allocation”. And it doesn’t matter how much money you have, it doesn’t matter your age matters, it matters how you react to volatility. And that does vary from person to person, and economic situation to economic situation.

Chuck Jaffe 18:26
Well, so, I’ve got a great story on this one, it involves my father. So, for years, my father was the one reader of my column that I knew would actually do anything that was a step that readers could follow up with. Like if it said, call your fund company and ask them this. My dad would be on the phone with the fund company the following day. So, my father, who was very conservative by nature (my parents were married for over 60 years, managed their money basically separately, because my mom was actually the risk taker and my father like sat out the greed decade of the 80s because he was scared. He came around and became a better investor). But my father wanted names he could recognize in a portfolio, and he wanted names you could recognize in a fund. And that’s a comfort level that you might get. But it’s not necessarily a good investing strategy all the time. So, my father, every time he tried to buy a small cap fund, he couldn’t stick with it – too many names he wasn’t recognizing, and the minute the performance was not what he was expecting, he was out. And so, every time it would say, “Go get a portfolio evaluation” and he would, even if it wasn’t my column, like if the brokerage firm said, “Hey, we’ll do an updated portfolio evaluation,” he’d said yes. And every single time he would do it, they would come back and say, “You have a hole in small caps”. And his basic response was, “Yep, I know it. And I’m okay with it”. And once he came to that, and he stopped trying to buy small caps, like the thing that somebody else was pitching him was, “Oh, this will diversify you better.” But it only diversifies you better if you can do what the asset allocation plan says, which starts with ‘Can you stick with this allocation’, if you can’t, and this allocation is de facto wrong for you, that has nothing to say about ‘Oh, those are good or bad investments,” that just says you can’t do it. My father, likewise, got virtually all of his international investments, which he believed in international investing through what you could call an America abroad approach. He liked a fund that doesn’t exist anymore, where again, my father would know fund managers because of me, and literally would have access to fund managers because of me, but a manager who basically said I want U.S. multinationals that get more than half of their business internationally. That was my dad’s idea of an international fund. It’s fine – as long as you can follow the strategy, and you understand what it limits you to, but what it opens you to, that’s okay. But that’s behavioral finance in a nutshell.

Hank Smith 21:15
And sometimes that investor needs a bear market to test whether the asset allocation was correct. So, at every client meeting we have, agenda item number one is: discussing asset allocation. And whether, for whatever reason, we need to make a shift. And so then, the other thing we do is we stick to the allocation. And that means trimming your winners during a bull market and trimming your equities. And it was particularly difficult in a decade where there was no income in fixed income to sell out of equities and go into fixed income that had no income. But still a very important discipline.

Chuck Jaffe 22:08
And now fixed income has been fixed. Right? It’s working again, for us. And by the way, rebalancing is important, but you know, the hardest part for you, I always believe the hardest part for you as an advisor, is that you hear what I hear from people all the time, probably much more so than I do, which is when you say, you know, “How do you feel about risk?” And the general response is, “Hey, I got no problems with risk. I just don’t want to lose any money”. You’re going to change your allocation when the market moves after that.

Hank Smith  22:42
Do you change your approach? Depending on whether we’re in a bull market or a bear market, or are you pretty much consistent in how you deliver your form of journalism?

Chuck Jaffe 22:56
Oh, I’m totally agnostic to market conditions. I could not possibly care less. You’re investing – and you’re not investing for today, you’re not investing for tomorrow, you’re investing for a lifetime. And you know, one of the things that I have said because variations have now come true that when I was in my late 20s, I got into focus, a man who I would meet some day. And he was 65-year-old Chuck. That is his actual name, 65-year-old Chuck. Now, he has cousins that I recognize relatively quickly. I would also meet 55-year-old Chuck, who was kind of important. 50-year-old Chuck was a little bit important as well. etc. And 65-year-old Chuck, there’s one thing I always understood about him – he was going to show up in my mirror someday and go “Here I am. What have you been doing with my money?” And if you are not investing, and now by the way I am 61 years old, I’ve now come to recognize that 75- and 85-year-old Chuck, are also somebody that I got to look out for. I think that those things are very important. But that’s why market conditions don’t sweat me, don’t squeeze me, etc. I’m investing all the time. I mean, as a journalist there are some rules I have to follow in my own investments, things I can and cannot do to avoid conflicts of interest, that would limit some of what I could do. I’ve certainly changed in terms of what is important to me, I’ve aged like anybody else. Now in my 60s, I like income producing vehicles, more things along those lines. I’m the only person you probably know, even among advisors, I would be rare. And I’m not a financial advisor. I know all my mutual fund managers personally, like I’m on a first name basis with everyone who runs my money. Not because I set out to meet them and then buy their fund. But because if I’m going to add, I’m basically a core and explore kind of an investor, so if I’m going, “Oh, I could use a little more emerging markets, which managers have I talked to that I’m like, yeah, I really liked their approach, I like what they do, I can agree with what they’re doing. Oh, by the way, let’s look at their fund, their fund has done whatever”. I literally know all my managers personally. So that changes a few things as well, in terms of the ability to say, “Doesn’t make a difference to me the market conditions, because I know that every single guy I’m investing with, they’re not that worried”.

Hank Smith  25:30
So, here’s an asset allocation story, one of my favorites. Our founder had an elderly woman in her late 70s come in, he had been working with her for 30 years – all equities. And she says, “George, I think I need some bonds, I think I need some municipal bonds, because that’s all I hear my friends talk about at cocktail parties”. No you don’t need municipal bonds, you’re not even spending the income that has been generated with dividends in your equity portfolio. And she says, “No, I want bonds”. While I’m your advisor, I’m saying you don’t need bonds. And she says, I’m the client, buy me some municipal bonds. And he gets up, slams his fist on the table and says, “Okay, I will, but your grandchildren are going to hate you”. The point being, when you go to a more conservative allocation, you’re not going to get the growth. And if she lived for another 20 years, that would be quite meaningful. And it parlays into another story. And I really think most people don’t understand compounding and the power of compounding. And so, we had a client give us one and a half million dollars in the spring of 1984. And 30 years later, she took out 7.6 million, this was 100% in equities in our flagship growth strategy, all dividend paying stocks. Took out 7.6 million and had 17 and a half million. And that was a compounded annual return of 11 and a half percent. So, it wasn’t 15 or 20%. Only a percent higher than the historical average. But that’s 30 years of compounding and if she didn’t take $1 out, it would have been 38 million.

Chuck Jaffe 27:36
Right. Well, so my story about that.  I mentioned that next year is the 100th anniversary of the mutual fund. The first mutual fund was the Massachusetts Investors Trust, it still exists, it’s a fund run by MFS. And I’m old enough to have covered its 75th anniversary. Right? So, when it turned 75, I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it was something like if you would have invested $1,000, it was worth something like 17 million, and it had produced about a 10% return. The second or third oldest fund was a fund from State Street. And I will get back to this in a second because they killed it off a few years later. But it did 1% more. So, when it reached its 75th anniversary, instead of having turned that $1,000 into $17 million, it was $74 million. Like it was it was you got a three times higher return because that’s what 1% over that many years does. Remember, and for anybody who doesn’t know what the rule of 72 is or to make sure that they’ve learned something today, the rule of 115. And everyone knows the rule of 72 that’s how long money takes to double. If you say, I want my money to double, if you’re getting it at 8%, your money will double in nine years. If you said I want to double my money in 10 years, then you need a return of 7.2%. Right? So, that is the rule of 72. The rule of 115 is how long it takes your money to triple. Okay? So, the power of compounding – people think, “Oh, well, I’ll start when I’ve got a lot of money,” It’s not the first double or the second double that that whole thing about 65-year-old Chuck is that if you started when you’re 25, you’re on like your fourth double, or fifth double. And that’s where the money gets serious. And that’s what you need to do. But by the way, State Street Global wound up killing off this fund, they did a fund merger. They literally took that fund, which had been a mediocre performer for a few years at that point. And they merged it with a smaller fund, etc. And they killed off the track record. And that’s what we lost. And what I wrote about when it happened was, I said, “This is like buying a new home, finding out that you have a living dinosaur in the garage and killing it because you need a place to park your minivan”. So unfortunately, we lost all that history as we get to the 100th anniversary. Don’t I wish we had that second fund for comparison, because that’s what you wanted. Second or third because I can’t remember – there was a State Street Global, there was a Putnam, and then there was the pioneer fund run by the legendary Phil Caray.

Hank Smith 30:14
So, one more thing on compounding. Becky Quick, at CNBC, three months ago, was interviewing Charlie Munger, and she asked him, “What are the keys to you and Warren Buffett’s success?” And he said, “Three keys: one, we’re less stupid than most other money managers. Two, we were lucky. And three, we had the privilege of managing money for many, many, many years. So that compounding worked to our advantage”.

Chuck Jaffe 30:51
I’m going to backtrack on something.  So, the audience cannot see me, but you can by the way that we are connected. So, you asked about books that I like, and on my desk, I don’t know if you can read it, yes, it is Poor Charlie’s Almanack, which is the essential written wisdom of Charles T. Munger. Now Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, of course, passed away. What most people don’t know is that he passed away at the end of November, the latest edition of Poor Charlie’s Almanack was released on December the fifth. And it is a fabulous read.

And I will say that if you have college age or young adults, go into that Poor Charlie’s Almanack and find the speech he gave in the 1980s at Harvard University as a commencement address, and make sure that everyone in your life knows that the book is worth it for just that. He gave a speech that basically said, “I’ve been to a whole bunch of Harvard things, and the best speech that was ever given here was Johnny Carson, who said, ‘I can’t make you happy, but I can tell you what you would do that would make you miserable.’ And he listed a few things and then he said, ‘And I’m going to add to that if you do the following things, you will guarantee misery. So don’t do these things.’” And he’s 100% right. It’s a brilliant speech. If for nothing else, if you’re looking for a great book, just go find that speech.

Hank Smith 32:18
Chuck, have you ever taught, or have you ever considered teaching?

Chuck Jaffe 32:24
Oh, I would love to. But for me, the teaching side would undoubtedly be on the journalism side of things. And I have some side projects where I’ve done some teaching and things along those lines. And Lord knows it would be the fallback position if this journalism thing doesn’t work out. But now that I’m in my 60s, probably not. I am very involved in the sport of lacrosse. I’m a longtime coach there. I love working with folks, and I’m excited by that. But I have been in financial advising, which is a form of coaching to folks.  There is one significant difference between me and you and the other people who I talked to, which is while I do put my money where my mouth is, it is my money. And I don’t take responsibility for anyone else’s. Because I will tell you that I consider that responsibility daunting. So, I admire folks like you who do this for their clients and do it well. And that’s why I’ve written the books on making sure you find the right person. Because people would tell me all the time, “Oh, I wish you would manage my money,” no you don’t. No, you don’t. I can do it well. I’ve done great for myself. My family knows, “Oh yes, I can pick a mutual fund” or what have you. But to do what you do with the discipline that’s necessary to keep people on the straight and narrow, and to guard against their own worst instincts. That’s a level of expertise I don’t have.

Hank Smith 34:03
Yeah, this is a fascinating subject. There’s a big difference between managing money and let’s be more specific, managing other people’s money, and talking or writing about money. So, you remember Elaine Garzarelli, she became famous when she called the crash of 1987. And her newsletter was one of the best performing newsletters. Now she’s writing about stocks, and Shearson Lehman hired her after the October crash in 87, to manage a mutual fund.   The following year, her newsletter maintained a number one ranking. And her fund was, if Morningstar was around then, a zero-star fund. In other words, bottom of heap. So, she’s writing and talking about money, and doing well. But when it actually came to managing it, pulling the trigger on buys and sells, not so much.

Chuck Jaffe 35:12
Well, let’s also point out there are different skill sets, right? When you’re talking for a newsletter, you don’t have to keep a cash cushion, you don’t have some other things that will meet your performance. There’s a bunch of stuff that goes into that. But no, she was terrible at it. That was not the only mutual fund that she ran. I talked to Elaine multiple times over the years, every mutual fund she ran was terrible. And she’s not alone in that, like we’re not picking on her. Trust me, I can show you a bunch of different people there. But what I would point out is this: on my show, so when I have you on my show, and you come into the Money Life Market Call, it is different having you, a financial advisor who puts together specific client portfolios, and a guy who runs a mutual fund. Because the guy who runs the mutual fund only has to manage the portfolio and never has to worry about client emotions – you’re in or you’re out of his fund. They only have to focus on stocks. And a guy like you, yes, you have to pick the right investments, whether they’re stocks or funds, but you also have to do the emotional side. And there is a difference, and we find ourselves talking about it a lot. I don’t know that it makes a difference if you’re going oh, do I want to buy this investment that I heard about on the show. But I think it does matter that people look at one and they think, oh, if you can do this, you can do all of it. And that’s like saying if you’re a good, you know, if you’re a good first baseman in baseball, you can also play shortstop and pitch. Like that’s not really the case.

Hank Smith 36:40
Yep, it is much easier to manage a fund or a limited partnership than a separately managed account where the client is seeing the trading in real time is seeing capital gains being created, and then reacts to all of this. Where in a mutual fund, you only see it when the fund reports the year end gain, and you don’t see all the trading so they’re two different animals entirely. You mentioned lacrosse and I know you have a passion for lacrosse. Where did that occur? Growing up in New England playing lacrosse?

Chuck Jaffe 37:34
Well, I grew up in New Jersey. Most of my youth was spent in New Jersey. A few years before I was like elementary school, I was in Illinois. I grew up in New Jersey, I happened to live in a town that was really dominated by baseball. And I’ve loved playing baseball, but I wasn’t particularly good at it. So, I recognized that that couldn’t continue. My sister went to Johns Hopkins University. I was introduced to lacrosse when she went to college. She is six and a half years older than me. I got a stick, and I couldn’t put it down and I haven’t put it down ever since. So, you know it’ll now be I haven’t quite been involved in the sport for 50 years. But I have played at every level, I have done international stuff, I am a broadcaster, I own an adult men’s league that is considered widely to be the best men’s league in the country for box lacrosse, which is indoor lacrosse. And yeah, when my old fat body allows it, I still play.

Hank Smith  38:38
Well, Chuck, this is actually my second season of doing podcasts. And I hope you’ll consider in a few years coming back for another season. This has been an absolute pleasure to spend time with you and I can’t thank you enough for joining us on Speaking of Quality.

Chuck Jaffe 38:55
Hank, anytime you want me – happy to come back.

Hank Smith 38:58
To our listeners: If you’re interested in learning more about Chuck, you can visit moneylifeshow.com. And be sure to tune in to his podcast as well. Thank you for listening to this episode of Speaking of Quality: Wealth Management Insights. Our next episode will be released shortly. In the meantime, please send suggestions or questions for me or the Haverford Trust team to marketing@haverfordquality.com. And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, review, and share this podcast. Until next time, I’m Hank Smith, stay bullish.

Maxine Cuffe 39:33
Thanks for listening to this episode of Speaking of Quality, Wealth Management Insights with Hank Smith. To hear future episodes of Speaking of Quality, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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