The path to variety matters. In this week’s video, I’ve got a hot take: it’s a lesson from sock shopping. Confused? Meet you in the video.
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research process
It’s a Market of Socks!
Imagine buying a value pack of socks. Unlike your everyday value pack, this one contains 500 pairs of socks, and every single pair is different. Some are ankle-height, some crew. Some black, some brown. Some striped, some filled with pictures of cheese. Some will become your favorite socks ever, and some of them you’ll become embarrassed to own.
All in all, the pack could still turn out to be a good deal, right? But one more thing: you can’t break up the set. If you really wanted to return one pair of the value pack, you’d have to toss all 500 pairs back. Even those favorites!
Things could get hairy. If you ever needed to pull back, and no longer had room for 500 pairs of socks, you’d have to clear house and start from scratch. Discover that one sock had a hole? Live with it, unless you’re ready to pitch the other 999 socks too.
Doesn’t it sound like more fun to only buy the socks that you like best? Socks that you can actually imagine owning? Or socks that may have untapped potential (think of those warm, fuzzy ones you’re glad you got for the depths of winter). And—when you need to get rid of a sock—you’re not losing your whole collection.
Some people do buy stocks that way in effect: indirectly, 500 at a time. But what a tremendous privilege and exciting challenge to pick only those stocks, I mean, socks that you find most worthwhile.
Clients, if you have any sock tips, email or call.
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Play the audio version of this post below:
It's a Market of Socks! – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services
This text is available at https://www.228Main.com/.
Mark & the Team
The One and Only Us
Clients, I’m one of a kind. I’ve worked many years and traveled many paths to be the person I am today.
Even though I’m the one and only Mark Leibman, I get to do what I do as part of an amazing team at 228 Main. I notice this truth now more than ever.
The enterprise has three core activities:
- We talk with you about your plans and planning, to sort out how best to connect your money to your life—your goals.
- We research and manage investments, striving to grow your long-term buckets.
- We take care of the logistics and paperwork you need to try to get where you are going.
I sometimes say I am in business to talk all day, but as you can see from these notes, it takes the whole team to make that possible.
Four of us here in the shop contribute to our communications. Three of us collaborate on investment research and analyze portfolios. Two focus on logistics and paperwork, taking care of details.
While I spend the most time with you, Caitie Leibman directs our communications, which really is just another way to talk to you, with contributions from Greg Leibman, and Billy Garver, and me. Greg, Billy, and I work on research and portfolios. And Patsy Havenridge and Larry Wiederspan take care of service—the paperwork and logistics.
The buck stops with me, of course: I take responsibility for investment decisions and trading and recommendations and everything, but I could never accomplish by myself the things we are able to do as a team. We are working with more than $100 million for clients in twenty states.
I’ve often said that if there were three of me, we’d all be busy. But the world does not need any more copies of me. Every member of the 228 Main team knows that the better off you are, the better off we will be—and they each contribute skills and abilities I don’t have.
I couldn’t be more proud of them.
Clients, is there anything for which you could use our team’s perspective? Call or write, anytime.
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Play the audio version of this post below:
The One and Only Us – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services
This text can be found at https://www.228Main.com/.
Your Safety Net Is Not a Hammock [video]
Your Safety Net Is Not a Hammock
The advancement of technology has helped humans perform more tasks more safely.
Backup cameras and drift warning systems help curb preventable accidents in our vehicles. Even in our pastimes, technology can monitor more risks and dangers than ever. Big-wave surfers take on, well, bigger waves, prepared with more data about the conditions than ever before… not to mention a jet-ski nearby, ready to help anyone who crashes.
Such monitoring technology may allow us to take on more risk, but this doesn’t mean we ought to. Specifically, this tech becomes dangerous when we let it take over and do our thinking for us too.
Some providers offer tech tools to help “measure” risk tolerance. The tools are, in theory, designed to increase transparency. If we know more about the dangers present, shouldn’t we be able to make better decisions?
For some investors and clients, it’s perfectly comfortable to use such scores to determine the “appropriate” investments. The trouble is that then the tech tool is doing the interpreting, moving from observation to decision.
That middle part—the thinking, the choosing, the deliberation—that’s where we like to focus our energy in this shop.
Many tools may seem like safety nets, keeping us from ever falling too hard, but they should not replace the process.
You may remember The Flying Wallendas, a family that for generations has performed high-wire stunts (one of them crossed the Grand Canyon on live television a few years ago). The family avoids nets when they can.
Why?
The net may make you feel better about the risks involved, but it’s counterproductive—and dangerous—if it leads you to behave with less awareness, intention, and energy.
You must behave as if the risks are always present… And carry on, making the best decisions possible.
Clients, wondering about nets, risk, and more? Let’s chat: call or write anytime.
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Play the audio version of this post below:
Your Safety Net Is Not a Hammock – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services
This text is available about https://www.228Main.com/.
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