In the latest episode of The Money Game, Phil and I talk about the old cliché, 'Everything happens for a reason'.

It's funny because it doesn't. Not everything happens for a reason. What's the reason?

It's hard for humans to accept the element of randomness. Sure, good things can happen after a tough breakup or losing your job. Like you can meet your future wife or start a successful business, all after what seemed like a negative event in your life. But connecting the 2 dots is silly.

Now, it's perfectly natural for us as humans to want to do that, but it doesn't make it right.

We inherently want to learn, and how I see, the best ways to learn are from experiences. Some of the most important lessons I've learned came the hard way, for sure. And I can think back to those moments and I'm now thankful for them. But they certainly didn't happen specifically so I could use that information to my advantage today. They were just events that happened, that fortunately I learned from.

In this episode of The Money Game, Phil asks about what's more important to me. Is it collecting material things, or enjoying experiences with family and friends?

For me, it's quite obvious after looking back that I've enjoyed my experiences traveling throughout Asia and Europe with my wife. I remember my Dad let me skip school when I was 11 years old to go to Marlins Opening Day in 1993 (My mom was thrilled about that). I have a nice watch that I never wear. I haven't bought a car since 1997. And I have little interest in wearing that nice watch, or yet alone buying another one. I think cars are cool, but I'm still in no rush to go get one.

Let's go out for sushi. How about a hike? College football game perhaps? Let's throw a charity event and raise a ton of money to help people. Want to come to Edison, NJ for Indian food? Go wine tasting in Sonoma Valley? Hit the beaches in Miami or the Caribbean?

In this episode of The Money Game, Phil wanted to talk about the importance of exercise. He compares the human mind and body to auto racing and how in order to succeed, the car must be in great condition. For Financial Advisors, Traders, Portfolio Managers and Analysts, we regularly go through very stressful times, and in other cases very boring times. In order to put ourselves in a position to excel, we need to have our minds right. The best way to make sure the mind is in top working order, is to make sure the body isn't being ignored. They work together.

Phil reiterates a lot of points that are probably familiar to a lot of us who focus on physical and mental health, which is fantastic. But for those of you looking for a spark, just to get the ball rolling, Phil offers some advice on easy ways to get started. He also discusses the Height-to-Waste Ratio and what we should be looking for. I thought that was really helpful too.

In this episode of the Money Game, Phil and I talk about how Technical Analysts have an advantage in the current global environment. The fact that we're accustomed to focus on price behavior, and therefore tune out all the noise, we already have those good habits in place for a world filled with more noise than ever. I see people daily poisoning themselves with massive doses of news consumption, particularly horrible things happening all over the world. This conversation brings up some great points about taking care of your business, your family, your health and making sure that the things you can control are in order. If you don't have your own house in order, you can't help others.

There are a lot of people out there who would rather fight trends than take advantage of the ones that are already in place. The idea is they are always looking for the reversion to the mean. And while some think prices always come back to the mean, it's often forgotten that the mean can also catch up (or down) to price. I learned this lesson the hard way in 2013 and it has served me well ever since. This episode is short and sweet but I think adds a tremendous amount of value.

When I asked Phil to comment on the subject, he said, "Give me someone who can adapt, someone who is flexible over someone who is a rocket scientist any day because I can teach him to ignore that voice inside his head telling him that breakouts must revert.

In this special episode of The Money Game, Phil asks me about any new trends I’m seeing for 2020. I give him both the sexy answer, that everyone seems to want to hear, and the real answer. I think this was a quick but valuable conversation about US and foreign markets, US Sectors like Technology and Financials and even what we see coming for Bitcoin. We had good timing on this conversation as we’re just getting starting the new year.

In this Episode of the Money Game Podcast, Pearlman goes off on what a Gamer Lamar Jackson has been. Growing up in Baltimore, Phil a big Ravens fan so we take this opportunity to talk about something really important: Going for it. We look a few weeks back when the head coach believed in Lamar's enthusiasm to just go for it on 4th down and it most certainly paid off! You live once and have the option to either go out there and get it, or always think back wondering what if? Whatever it is that's your thing - just go for it!

This week I sat down with Pearlman to talk about the fact that stocks are making new highs but the amount of bulls betting on higher prices is near now lows. It was a really interesting conversation so make sure to check it out.

At the end of our chat Phil asked me about some comments I made recently regarding the CCI Commodities Index.

Here is the chart he was referring to where Commodities are doing something they haven't done in 8 years. I think it's worth pointing out for sure:

In this episode of the Money Game Podcast Phil and I talk about the stock market making all-time highs while sentiment points to very few bulls. This is an interesting dynamic where the behavior of the market is pointing to one thing and the behavior and emotions of society are saying something different. I've been in the camp that this negative sentiment unwind is precisely the catalyst to take stocks much higher, not just in the U.S. but around the world. It's very rare to have stocks this strong, yet so few people betting on higher stock prices. It's pretty awesome. We also talk about the deterioration, or at least an end to the expansion we're seeing, in the upside participation in stocks. We're seeing MORE stocks, sectors and global indexes participating to the upside, not fewer. Until that stops, we want to keep looking for stocks to buy.

We are back with another episode of The Money Game Podcast with Phil Pearlman. Today we talk about the inability for some people trade US stocks from the long side due to biases stemming from past experiences. This is a real thing that we see constantly. So we talk about the causes, being aware of these feelings and what can be done to overcome these hurdles. I'm lucky that I've been through enough bull market and bear market cycles to not get stuck into betting on just one side or the other. But some people have a real fear of admitting they're wrong and turning bullish at, what they think might be, precisely the wrong time. Some of this is driven by ego and some is just irrational anxiety. This is a really important conversation and one that I will likely listen to again several times over in the future.

In this episode of The Money Game, Phil and I talk about the Availability Heuristic and why we are more likely to invest in certain types of companies depending on where we live. This is a really interesting phenomenon that makes a lot of sense. I'm lucky that I get to avoid this bias more than others simply because of the process I use to perform my analysis. It's a solution to a problem I didn't even know I had! This is a short one that I think is worth a listen just to learn a little bit more about yourself.

If you still think the media is there to provide you with useful information, there is little I can do to help you. It's 2019. They're only there to sell you Buicks and razors and whatever else they can shove down your throat.

The content they provide is designed to get you to consume it for the sole purpose of selling your attention to their sponsors. That's just the business.

You have two choices: You can just take it until your punch drunk or you can take what you consume into your own hands. It's up to you.

Phil and I sat down for an interesting chat about this very topic: