Welcome to Shared Lunch, brought to you by Chairsas at Cheers EA's. We're on a mission to crack financial empowerment for everyone, and these convos are a part of that, a chance for us to take a deeper dive into what's going on in the world of wealth. I'm a Sonya Williams, co founder and co CEO at Chairs EAS and today we're joined by Bryce from Equity Mates to discuss what's going on in the markets and how investors should be navigating these times.
Investing involves for risk you might lose the money you start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor. We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest. Everything you're about to see and hear is current at the time of recording.
Before we get started, I want to acknowledge the Getigal people of the Ura nation, the traditional custodians of the land, water and sky where we're filming from today, and pay respects to elders, past, present and emerging.
Welcome Bryce, Thanks for having me. Great to have you here.
So there's been so much interesting stuff happening in the markets at the moment. Can you tell us a bit about what's going on.
You're right, there has been a lot. It's been a pretty it's been a pretty active period of time over the last few weeks, and it's all been driven by some of the big announcements that Donald Trump, President of the United States, has made regarding his policy on tariffs. And so there's now this global trade war going on with real serious fears that it is going to lead
to a global recession. And of course when we're in a recession, it's going to slow down economies around the world, and a lot of the companies that we're invested in are going to be impacted. You think Apple, you know, it imports a lot of its products from China or its parts for its iPhones, and so everyone is uncertain about what is going to happen because Trump is a very unpredictable person, and so markets are now reacting and there's a.
Huge sell off and because we can see that you know, you're talking about the tariff being a cost of exporting, so that drives cost to business, but it would also mean that the cost of goods go up, so would hurt consumers too.
Absolutely. Yeah, So there's I mean, that is how businesses deal with it, they don't necessarily absorb that cost. Let's use Apple as another example. They're likely to increase the cost of iPhones, They're likely to increase the cost of MacBook pros. That is going to impact us, and that's going to flow it. That's going to have impact on inflation.
And we know we've spent the last three or four years globally trying to push down inflation, and there's real fears again that this is just going to push inflation back up. And central banks are now uncertain about the future and what to do there. So it's not a pretty picture, that's for sure, but that this is this is markets.
Yeah, so with all of that, is now a good time to elist.
I think I would couch it and say the only certainty is uncertainty at the moment. And this is not an unusual thing to happen in markets. So we've seen a pullback in one of the big indexes over in the state. It's the Nasdaq, which is a tech heavy home to some of the biggest tech companies. But over the long term, this is part of a market cycle.
So every sort of four to five years you will see are twenty percent full or thereabouts and so you know, personally taking these opportunities to get into the market or to add to my portfolio, is it's an opportunistic point or time to do it. And we are seeing our community really sort of rallying around this moment. That's not to say though, that we're anywhere near the bottom. It could get completely worse. It could bounce from here. You
cannot time the market. It is impossible to time the market. And so I think the more important thing is if you are looking at the markets now and getting engaged, it's actually thinking about how you can build a long term investing strategy that sees you through these market sort of movements and you don't have to worry about is now a good time to buy or sell?
Yeah, Like we often talk about how envisting in itself is inherently optimistic. You know, leave that things like you believe in growth or you believe that people are going to be successful through that. But often it's like what changes or the uncertainty is what changes, like our assumptions around how that business is going to operate in the short term. But there's a belief that people will adapt and people will find a new way to be successful in the new circumstance.
Absolutely. I think there's a stat that I always remind myself in these times when the market has just been wiped and I'm looking at my portfolio and I've lost a lot of money. It's that there is no twenty year period on the S and P five hundred where if you had invested in year one and stuck through the year twenty that you would have lost money. There is just no instance where the market has not recovered.
So despite the wall of worry that the world has gone through over the last hundred years, world wars, disease, you know, COVID, changes in presidency, like, there has been so many reasons for the market to not perform well, there is no instance where it hasn't recovered and gone on to hit new highs. And so I look at this period. You know, I've gone through the COVID crash, twenty twenty two, there was a pullback two thousand and
seven global financial crisis. I was in high school, and through all of those moments, I always look back and go, Damn, that was actually a really good buying opportunity, and I wish I'd been more active and not as fearful as the markets sort of make you feel. And so that's kind of how I'm trying to approach this now.
Yeah, Like you know, you talk about your experience, but you've been in visting since you were five, haven't.
You very young?
Yeah?
Yeah, and so you would have seen like these moments as you say, they kind of happen around every five years, and you know, our platform has been around now, you know, through the COVID pandemic things like that.
Is there anything you're observing about.
How people are reacting this time versus the times that have happened over the last free while.
I think this time there is a real feeling of excitement from our community and A and from what I'm seeing, their investing behavior is the right investing behavior, which is either I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to stick to my strategy and know that if I'm investing every month two hundred dollars a month, I'm just going to keep doing that and know that I'm going to get the market as it falls and if it recovers, I'm going to get it because trying to time it
is just a fool's game. Or it's like I'm going to continue doing my strategy. But take this exciting moment knowing that I can pick up some of the stocks that I've been looking out on my watch list for cheaper than they were three months ago. I think I look back at COVID and that there was a real not so much fear, but a lot more a lot more uncertainty, and people very scared of what was going on.
But I think we've now had five or six years post that where people have sort of looked back at that and said, I wish, knowing what I know now, I wish I'd actually been more strategic and put some money in so our community is excited at the moment. Yeah, it's like you could easily sell out and be fearful.
That's the worst thing you can do. But yeah, I think you probably see it on shares this platform as well, like huge engagement levels and investing in those core long term ETFs as well, not sort of punting on individual you know, gold specky stocks.
Yeah, like we've seen still more people buying and selling through the platform and people really sticking at that strategy. As you say, Like what we have noticed over the last few months as a shift from maybe investing in individual companies into putting more into ETFs.
Why do you think that would be happening. Is that something you're noticing as well.
Or like what you talked about, you know, investing for the time, you know, how does that kind of play into it? Do you think?
Well?
I think like if you look back over the last sort of two or three years, the market's done incredibly well overall. Like you know, we've seen in video push the market to sort of record high as a lot of the tech companies have pushed well. So if you've just been exposed generally to the market, you've done incredibly well. There hasn't really been a need to invest in individual stocks. I think we've seen a huge influx of new ETFs to market as well that are really interesting for a
lot of our investors or our community. But I think like at the end of the day, ETFs are just such a nice wrapper and a nice stress free way of investing long term in the market, and people are sort of looking at the opportunity that has been really playing out since the start of the year, which is the market has been pulling back. This isn't just something
that's happened over the last few weeks. Although it's been accelerated, and so you know, you know, we talk about the opportunity or dollar cost averaging, and so now is that time where our audience is sort of saying, well, hey, there's an opportunity here, I might start topping up the portfolio, and the best way to do that is low cost, well diversified ETFs that are going to give me global exposure. And so yeah, we love that.
Yeah, yeah, on dollar cost averaging. And I think especially like a good reminder that it's a pretty poor strategy if you don't keep investing while it's while the market is going down. So it's like important if that is your strategy to kind of stick with.
It one hundred percent, Like this is the moment that you want to be dollar cost averaging, Like there's no point thinking you're a hero when the market is going up and putting money in every month as the market goes up, and then as it starts to fall, you stop doing that because it's when it's falling that you're really getting the benefit of dollar cost averaging, because you're getting more for the money that you're putting in than on the other way. And I think doing that it
removes any emotion from your investing strategy. I think one of the biggest things I've learned. I look back at COVID, I look back at global financial crisis, and like it can be paralyzing. You can make some really bad decisions when you're going through a traumatic experience, whereas having a strategy that is just clear takes out the emotion. You know what you're investing in and you just stick to it.
You could actually turn off the news and not know what is going on and still have an incredibly effective investing strategy over the long term and have a very healthy outcome because things can change so quickly. I mean the stats show after a market fall of twenty percent in the following three months, it can rebound incredibly quickly. We look at COVID, it was the fastest rebound in history. If you tried to time that, you would have missed it.
And the stats also show that if you miss that rebound, then the difference in investing outcomes can be significant, so you you don't want to try and sell out. And that's why a dollar cost averaging, which is effectively putting in the same amount of money at the same cadence, is approven strategy.
Yeah, and so like I mean it's very real, like when you see your portfolio going down, you know, like there's that feeling like there's you know, it's kind of important to acknowledge that that sucks. It's like a really hardly to see and like, but what I'm kind of noticing is like there's more of a cinema of like, yeah, that feels like that.
But do I need to do anything about that? And I mean do people need to do anything different?
No? No, no, no is the answer. Like do not sell. If you have cash and you want to be opportunistic, of course buy, but also be cautious of what you're buying and how much you're putting in because, as we said, we don't know what's going to happen from here. Trump might come out and say, you know what, We're going to put more tariffs on everyone around the world, and you can expect the markets are not going to appreciate that.
And so if you have cash sitting on the side and you put the whole lot in now, do so knowing that it could fall further, but you've still got in at an opportunistic time. Or take that lump some of cash and say, okay, let's just see how it plays out. But every month, I'm going to put a little bit more in. But I think to answer the first part of that question, it's like, no, you don't
have to do anything except turn the app off. If you are one of those people and I have been there, who looks at it and seize the red and you think and five or six years of work down the drain, I've just lost all this money. Don't look at it and know that over time, your strategy has been successful and it's proven over the last hundred years to be a successful strategy. Just investing low cost into the market,
try and like tune out of the noise. I think as well, like it goes back to the foundations of setting up a good investment strategy, which is you shouldn't be investing any money that you need, like you don't want to. I don't have any money in my portfolio now when I'm like, okay, I'm going to need to sell some of this to pay my mortgage. I'm going to need to sell some of this if I have
an emergency. And that kind of gives a bit of comfort because I can sit back and say, you know, I've lost twenty thirty, forty percent whatever, But that's okay because if I zoom out, I know that it's going to go up. And I also don't need this right now.
Yeah, that's an important point.
Like we're saying it's a good time to invest, you know, through this, but it's like if you need cash on hand, like it's a good time to invist if you can kind of write out the long term, like we're not saying, and that's completely how we see investing is like that it is for the long term. Yes, And so I think that's an important, you know thing, just to tack
on the end there. Do you have any kind of pills of wisdom that you are keen to share with people about kind of going through these times or through you know, the experience that you've had investing today.
I think just like stick with it, read as much as you can. And I think, you know, we were talking off about Buffet and one of one sort of quote that rings true at this time is he says the most important behavior or the most important characteristic for an investor is temperament, not intellect. And I think this moment is all about managing your behavior and managing your emotions.
And if you are starting from scratch right now, that's great because you've recognized that this might be an opportunity to get in. But make sure that you are setting up a strategy that you know automates as much of your process as possible, because I think if you can automate from getting paid through to investing in ETF, you don't even have to look. So I think automating it takes out the emotions and just being conscious of the opportunity that we have and that the worst thing you
can be doing is selling right now. But look, as I said, remind me that this is this is not an uncommon thing to happen. This happens every four or five years. It's how markets are supposed to work. And as I said, there's so many instances in history where the market has not only recovered but gone to hit new highs. So stick with it. It might not be for another twelve or twenty four months, we don't know, but it eventually will get back to where it was.
Hey, thanks heaps, Bryce.
Definitely an interesting chat with everything going on as well, so I appreciate you.
Having us and I think good to see that the shares is community as well getting around it and buying. I think it's an exciting time.
Hey, thanks Haepspryce and thanks everyone for tuning in. You can watch your lunch on YouTube well, follow Long on your favorite podcast app. Leave us a rating and comment of what you'd like to hear about next m