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Smart Investing: How to Avoid Mistakes & Build Lasting Wealth

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  • (1:10) - Lessons from the Collapse of Long-Term Capital Management
  • (8:45) - The Missing Billionaires: A Guide To Better Financial Decisions
  • (16:00) - Investing Games To Use And Learn
  • (29:50) - Should Investors Continue To Invest Into International Markets?
  • (34:35) - Episode Roundup: ELM, VTI, SCHB, VWO
  • podcast@zacks.com

 

In this episode of ETF Spotlight, I speak with Victor Haghani, Founder and CIO of Elm Wealth, about a long-term approach to building wealth and managing risk.

Victor was also one of the founding partners of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), whose collapse in 1998 sent shockwaves through Wall Street and threatened the stability of the global financial system.

 LTCM was run by some extraordinarily smart people, including two Nobel Prize–winning economists. The fund saw meteoric success followed by a dramatic collapse. It has been the subject of countless case studies and the bestselling book When Genius Failed.

LTCM’s collapse completely changed Victor’s investment philosophy. He founded Elm Wealth in 2011, which focuses on diversified investing using ultra low-cost index ETFs.

Victor’s book, The Missing Billionaires: A Guide to Better Financial Decisions, explains why investors should focus on how much to invest and not just what to invest in.

Elm’s Crystal Ball Trading Game and Coin Flip Challenge show that trading and speculating based on headlines is often futile. Most people fail to make money even when they are given the front page of the next day’s Wall Street Journal. A humble, sensible, long term investment approach is the way to build lasting wealth.

The ELM ETF (ELM - Free Report) employs a rules-based approach to dynamically allocate across U.S. equities, international equities, and fixed income using low-cost index ETFs. Its top holdings include the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI - Free Report) , Schwab U.S. TIPS ETF (SCHP - Free Report) , and Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (VWO - Free Report) .

Currently, the fund is overweight international markets, which outpaced U.S. equities last year by the widest margin since the Global Financial Crisis. Victor remains bullish on international markets, citing attractive valuations.

Tune in to the podcast to learn more.

Be sure to look out for the next edition of ETF Spotlight, and remember to subscribe!

If you have any comments or questions, please email podcast@zacks.com

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