Sydney Sweeney Proved Most Investors Are Stupid

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]I've often said that humans are just terrible investors because we're humans and we're emotional. And so humans from a like if you understand like marketing or psychology, really humans are motivated by two things. That's it.

[00:00:15]Two things.

[00:00:16]Um and those two things are wanting to get more pleasure and wanting thing to get away from pain.

[00:00:24]The carrot or the stick. Right? The carrot or the stick. Um and so we want more carrot and we want less stick. Um and the problem with that when it comes to investing is that one, uh we want pleasure. So when we see assets making new all-time highs and new all-time highs and new all-time highs, we want to buy it. Everyone Everyone's getting rich but me.

[00:00:46]It's going to keep going. I I And also we suffer from a lot of biases. It's super important to understand that we all have biases. And so we just have to understand that we have those. And so one of the ones that we suffer from as humans is recency bias or normalcy bias.

[00:01:01]So whatever has been recently happening will continue. Well, Bitcoin's been crashing. It's going to just keep crashing.

[00:01:08]Just because that's what's been happening recently doesn't mean that will be continue to happen. Or we have normalcy bias. Hey, this is the way it always works. This is what's normal.

[00:01:16]Well, that's a bias. So So number one, uh when asset prices are going up we want it. Um and then so we buy the top. And then because we want to get away from pain, as soon as the price starts going down, we want out. Oh my gosh, it's so painful. I'm watching my portfolio drop. I'm out. But then that forces us to buy high and sell low.

[00:01:36]Which is of course how we're not supposed to work. We're supposed to buy low and sell high.

[00:01:41]Um so so that that's a problem. The other thing is that um especially today probably I don't know I don't know I maybe I don't know the answer to this, but it seems like maybe more than ever people are more ideologically driven.

[00:01:53]And uh one of my friends, Jeff Park, he wrote this article, I think it was last September, it's really good, and he said the the I think he called it the end or the death or the end of the value investor or what do you say? The end of the Yeah, the the end of the intelligent investor. So, so Warren Buffett is sort of like the value investor, meaning he buys deep value, he doesn't buy like venture capital stocks, he doesn't buy gold or Bitcoin, he buys value-based companies. So, these are companies that have what he calls capital-efficient business models. Um and so he's like a value investor, and he learned that from Benjamin Graham. Benjamin Graham wrote a book called the intelligent investor, it's one of the most widely read sort of cited books. Um I don't think it's super relevant today, but it's still good to understand that value-based lens. Uh but he said end of the intelligent investor, the rise of the ideological investor.

[00:02:41]So, today people aren't buying things based off of value, they don't even know what value is.

[00:02:47]They're buying things ideologically. So, they're buying um so for example, like Sydney Sweeney did the post about like good jeans or whatever, right? And American Eagle jeans stock went through the roof.

[00:02:59]Why? Cuz Sydney Sweeney said good jeans.

[00:03:02]And then you have like Budweiser did a thing with Dylan Mulvaney, and then like their stock went through the floor.

[00:03:09]But what changed in their business model? So, you you have people buying ideologically driven.

[00:03:14]And so, it's just super important to just be aware of these things so that we can learn to navigate around these for ourselves. So, like Anyway, back to what Brett and I were talking about. Um how do you feel about Trump? How do you feel about America?

[00:03:27]How do you feel about tariffs? How do you feel about any of those things? Just just put your feelings to the side for a minute and just try to think about this like logically. And so, as investors, I do believe I I I'm I'm actually a firm believer in investing and into building the world that we want, but I'm also believing that I should invest in the world as it is and not as I wish it was.

[00:03:52]So, I may hate Trump or I may hate tariffs or I may hate the US or I might hate um gold or I may hate Bitcoin or I may hate what AI because it's going to take everybody's job or whatever.

[00:04:02]But, like we also have to understand the world as it is. Now, there's nuance to this. I remember uh I think it was around 2020 2021 as I was writing my financial newsletter, I made like a public statement like we're not going to invest into China anymore. Like China had been a really good market. A lot of times you want to invest into like emerging markets, but I'm like we're just not going to invest into China anymore. Like there's there's a there's 10 million places for for me to put my money. Why would I put it there?

[00:04:26]So, you know, there's nuance to this, but anyway, what a time to be alive. We have uh whatever you think about them, the tariffs in many ways are um they're they're well they're good and bad at the same time.

[00:04:41]Things can be good and bad at the same time. I have many friends that run businesses that rely on imports and their business are getting crushed. It's been tough for them.

[00:04:50]Um so, it's bad for them.

[00:04:53]It's good for other reasons. But, what it is doing specifically is it's creating uh a shift in the way that the money is being spent, the industries that are being built up and specifically back to this because of the shift to uh bring tariffs, re-industrialize the US base, there is $8 trillion that's been committed to re-industrializing the US.

[00:05:19]The US government has made it a national security imperative to rebuild a lot of our manufacturing base specifically around what they've deemed now a whole list of critical minerals, silver, gold, nickel, lithium, etc. Um and not just the minerals themselves, but mining them in the US, but also refining them in the US for example. And what they're doing is just like they did in um you know, after World War II is you create this wartime economy and just no different than every other country does. What a lot of people think like I don't like tariffs. Well, they would never work. Well, they have for all of humanity.

[00:05:55]Every nation has tariffs.

[00:05:57]But also what other nations do and the reason why tariffs are good and bad, but one reason why they're good is because every nation not every nation, a lot of dominant nations in the world invest into their own economies. So China specifically weaponizes their economy.

[00:06:14]They subsidize like cheap manufacturing.

[00:06:16]Um And so the US is is doing that, right?

[00:06:19]So but this wartime economy. So they've set aside hundreds of billions of dollars the US government to They're they're because the US is still somewhat quasi capitalistic, not quite totally socialistic, but um they're not just going to invest into the companies. They're not going to own the companies. They're going to give them as loans. But they have like hundreds of billions of dollars of of money that's going to go to like loans for these like companies that are going to create these these are critical minerals, energy infrastructure, military infrastructure.

[00:06:49]And so you have like this very small little sector that's not even really around in the US right now.

[00:06:55]Getting hundreds of billions of dollars shoved into it. And like what do you think happens?

[00:07:02]Probably going to grow pretty fast. So anyway, that's a little rant that I have this as I'm thinking. Now we have to just be aware of these things and forget what we think as good and bad.

[00:07:11]Things are good and bad at the same time. Sure, don't invest against your morals, but don't only invest on your morals.

[00:07:18]And learn to think learn to think through things more objectively.

[00:07:24]Where something like man, I'm not really a big fan of tariffs or Trump or MAGA or whatever, but like I do recognize the US government's going to spend $300 billion to build up the refining industry. So you know, maybe I should think about some of these critical minerals, things like that.

[00:07:39]All right, that's my little rant.

[00:07:41]Um