The Long View

Ben Carlson, director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz and author of Risk and Reward, reflects on market history and investor behavior. He covers lessons from Japan’s bubble and 1970s inflation. He talks about the rise of automatic investing, why patience is harder today, retail access to private assets, inflation psychology, and two kinds of bear markets.

Amit Wadhwaney, portfolio manager and co-founder of Moerus Capital with 30+ years in deep-value investing. He discusses why survivability matters more than macro forecasts. He explains how trouble creates extreme bargains. He covers value-accretive corporate actions and investing in resource-linked businesses without betting on commodity prices.

Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors and creator of the Sahm rule, brings macro and household finance chops. She dissects the “whiplash economy,” risk-focused scenario thinking, and how energy shocks reshape sentiment. Conversations cover Fed communication, tariffs’ costs, AI’s economic effects, and threats to US data quality.

Michael Gates, BlackRock’s head of Model Portfolio Solutions and veteran portfolio manager, discusses why advisors increasingly use model portfolios. He covers how tax overlays and rebalancing with risk shape model design. He explores AI’s role in productivity and how to build thematic AI and defense exposures. He also explains when active management adds value and how tech will change model implementation.

Harry Margolis, an elder law attorney and longtime writer on aging issues, walks through planning for incapacity, long-term care funding, and realistic aging-in-place choices. He explains Medicare misconceptions, power-of-attorney pitfalls, DIY estate-planning limits, family money conversations, NORCs and senior housing, and special-needs housing and trust basics.

Wade Pfau, a retirement researcher and professor of practice who runs Retirement Researcher, joins to discuss how higher bond yields and TIPS real yields help starting withdrawal prospects. He covers income-first asset allocation, annuity integration into target-date options, retirement income styles, flexible spending rules, the retirement risk zone, and rising equity glide paths after retirement.

Pat Dorsey, founder of Dorsey Asset Management and former Morningstar equity research director, built the firm’s economic moat framework. He breaks down moat types like brands, network effects, and pricing discipline. He discusses common mistakes in identifying moats, evaluating management and founders, when to avoid “too hard” areas like frontier AI, and using premortems to spot risks.

Bill Yount, a practicing emergency physician and co-host of Catching Up to FI, shares his late-start journey to financial independence and how he reversed lifestyle inflation. He talks about burnout and a wake-up call at 50, aggressive saving through downsizing and reverse budgeting, risk-parity investing choices, working with a planner, and strategies for giving and transitioning from saver to spender.

Emily Guy Birken, a personal finance author who writes about retirement and Social Security, walks through what matters in the five years before you stop working. She covers assessing if you have enough, the levers to pull if savings fall short, why delaying Social Security can help, health insurance and HSA/Roth strategies pre‑Medicare, budgeting for lumpy expenses, and mortgage vs investing choices.

Bonnie Treichel, founder of Endeavor Retirement with deep retirement-plan expertise, and Jamie Hopkins, CEO and retirement educator, discuss retirement planning. They explore shifting to a retirement mindset, in-plan annuities and creating retirement paychecks. They cover bucketing assets, managing sequence-of-returns risk, Social Security funding risks, and how advisors address emotional and lifestyle planning.