Podcast Episode - Suze School: Your Super Financial Playbook

Since this Suze School dropped on Super Bowl Sunday, Suze wants you to be as prepared as her favorite Quarterback (Patrick Mahomes) is.  This episode is a financial playbook for you, made up of balance and maturity to hopefully bring you financial success.

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Podcast Transcript:

February 11th, 2024 Super Bowl day, everybody. But welcome to the Women and Money podcast as well as everybody smart enough to listen, Suze O, here.

Oh God. I'm so excited. I can't wait. I have been waiting for this day for a long time and I thought about, oh, I know I'll do a podcast on winners and losers and what your stock portfolio may look like in terms of winners and losers. And then I realized when it came to the Super Bowl tonight, there will be no losers. Obviously, one team will lose, but to just even get to play in the Super Bowl. Both San Francisco and Kansas City Chiefs are incredible winners and one will emerge for me. Hopefully the Kansas City Chiefs as the ultimate winner, but there's no way that we could call San Francisco a loser on any level.

KT and I will be watching it by ourselves. Colo is still in Colombia. He will come home in another four days, but he's there with Annie and he also will be watching it. So I have no doubt that we will be WhatsApping each other every time. Something great happens for either team. And there's one other person that I'll be watching the Super Bowl with long distance and that happens to be my brother in law, Tom.

And here's what's so great about that. It is his birthday to day. So Tom, from both KT and myself and everyone in the family, we wish you a happy happy birthday. And who are you wanting to win? By the way, I haven't asked you that it better be the Kansas City Chiefs or we are not talking at all during the game

Yesterday in our household between me and KT, it really was an incredibly special day and that is because it was the beginning of the Chinese New Year and many of you may not know, but KT did spend 20 years of her life from approximately the age of 26 - 27 to 46 - 47.

Her true really development years as an adult, in my opinion, she spent them as one of the presidents of one of the five divisions of Ogilvy Mather, which is one of the largest, if not the largest advertising agency in the world. She was in charge of the branding of the most luxurious brands, hotels, watches, and so forth throughout all of Asia.

She still celebrates Chinese New Year. Truthfully more than she celebrates the New Year on January 1st. KT also happens to be a Dragon born in the year of the Dragon.

And for those of you who maybe want to know what years are they. There are years 1952, KTs year of birth, 1964 1976 1988 the year 2000, 2012. And obviously this year 2024 the year of the dragon comes about every 12 years as well as every other animal sign of the Chinese zodiac.

But KT, as you know, because I just told you is a Dragon, she happens to be what's known as a Water Dragon. But this year is the year of the Wood Dragon. I know. And you're wondering, Suze, can you just get to a financial podcast here? And the answer to that is no, you need to listen to what I'm about to say

And the color for this year for everybody, no matter what year you were born in is green. And green, for me, obviously, is the color of money. And the three attributes for this year of the Dragon are, peace balance and maturity. And when I saw that I went, oh my God, that's exactly what everybody is going to need with their investments this year because the majority of you have participated in one of the greatest uptrends of a stock market in a long, long time, whether you were invested in index funds or in the QQQs that specialized in the Magnificent Seven that we've talked about probably you are up significantly.

However, there are some of you out there who are invested in energy stocks as well as dividend paying companies and you did not participate in the same way that everybody else participated in this uptrend.

And now you are like, oh my God, I didn't make money. What should I do? Should I sell? Should I, you know, rebalance? Should I go into the Magnificent Seven? Should I go into the QQQs? And if you don't know what I'm talking about, everybody, you need to listen to a few podcasts ago where I talked about all of this.

So what is really important this year is that you have balance maturity and you're at peace with the majority of stocks I hope or ETFs or mutual funds that you do own. And I'm going to tell you why in one second.

So it's important to know that I do think that it's very probable that these markets will continue up. However, when something has gone up as fast as this has gone up, trust me, don't be surprised if it can go back down, take a rest and then turn around and go back right up again, which is why it is incredibly important, even though many of you are tempted that you're just about to fund or you funded your retirement accounts like your Roth IRA for this year and you have a lump sum of money sitting there to just put it all into the tech stocks, the Magnificent Seven and do it all in one lump sum and don't follow the dollar cost averaging rules.

And if you do that, maybe you'll be a winner, maybe you could be a tremendous loser, but that is not a mature and balanced approach.

You have to understand that you need cash on the side to take advantage of the declines. Like just happened with Tesla a little bit ago.

So when your dollar cost averaging, that doesn't mean that you have to buy these stocks every single month, you may just wait until they do pull back some and then you do it. Now, I understand that that's very difficult to do because when you see these things going up so fast, you think possibly you've missed it. But if you really believe in the stock and it was great at 21 and now it's at 24 and maybe the goal is for it to go to 50 just continue to buy it. And it's just that simple.

Now, I want to talk about two things here. It was October 24th of 2023 that all of you knew I had gone on to CNBC. It's on video, you can see it there and I named five stocks that I would buy at that time.

And those five stocks were Shopify, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir and Broadcom. And I told you all about this on one of the women money podcasts. Since that time, those stocks now are up 57% 78% 31% 70% and 69%. Those are the exact percentages according to the order that I just said the stocks in and a lot of you, maybe you participated, maybe you didn't, but here's what you're not thinking about.

You're thinking, oh my God, I missed this opportunity. What should I do? I'm in these energy stocks. These energy stocks are down really low. Maybe I need to sell them and get into these stocks or an ETF that specializes in these stocks.

Get out your Suze notebook, now pretty please. I'm gonna give you a financial playbook just like the quarterbacks have a playbook on their little arm. They look at, they know what will work, what won't work. This is going to be a financial playbook for you that is made up of balance and maturity to hopefully bring you financial peace.

If we go back to the year 2021. Shopify's high that year was 164. Then over the next year or so, it went down to 39 and now it's at 91.

Microsoft's high was 329 in 2021 went down to 258 and now it's at 420.

Palantir was at 35 then went down to all the way to 640 now it's at 2438.

Amazon was at $185 a share went all the way down to 85. And now it is at 174.

and Broadcom back in 2021 was at 664 went down to 444 and is now at 1283.

So if you had purchased these stocks in 2021 at their high for that year, what would you have done in 2022 when they all went down significantly Shopify from 164 to 39. Would you have held on to them?

I want you to answer that question or would your tendency have been to sell out? And during that time, transfer to the only stocks that were really working, which are the energy stocks that I had many of you buy as well as the energy ETF we had invested in Devon in XLE, which is the ETF in Pioneer Natural Resources. We invested in those for the dividend. But besides the dividend, because the stocks at that time were very low, they also skyrocketed in price. So would you be tempted to sell every stock that I just talked to you about?

And would you have sold at a loss, taken it off your taxes and transferred to energy stocks? Or would you have just stuck with your game plan and actually dollar cost averaged into these incredible stocks while they went down and down and down? And if you had done that, you would be up so much money right now. It's not even funny.

However, a lot of you are looking at your energy stocks, especially Devon, which you are down significantly in, it's down at about 40 something right now and is now the time seriously to sell your energy stocks and get into the stocks. And the answer to that is no, it is not.

Hopefully your game plan was not, I'm only gonna buy energy stocks because if you did that, you did not listen to the intelligence of why you need to always be diversified.

So hopefully you didn't put all of your money just into energy stocks and hopefully you also dollar cost averaged into them. But if your decision is for instance, to keep Devon, then you have to also think about possibly dollar cost averaging down at this price or into another energy stock at this price.

But if you are tempted to sell energy stocks right now to buy something else with them, I want you to remember what I just did with you of what happened to these fabulous stocks that are up so much just two years ago.

Energy, in my opinion. And I've said this now for the entire year, which isn't that long really. But I do think you're going to see energy go back up.

I don't know when that will be, but I do think that will happen. So I don't think that you give up on something when it is down this low, just like you should not have given up on Shopify, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, Broadcom or any of the magnificent seven when they were down so low a year or so ago.

And now look at the money you could have made, don't think that can't happen with the energy stocks as well. So you have to maintain a balance approach. When it comes to investing, you have to develop a mature outlook and not be freaked when something has gone all the way down, especially if it is giving you a dividend and you are being paid to wait.

So you really have to think about it if you wanted to sell one energy stock and take a loss on it, maybe wait a little bit and see what happens and then buy another energy stock, ok? But don't go from the category of energy into technology, not when technology, artificial intelligence, all of that is at its high.

That is not a peaceful move because if you do that one day, possibly you could be where these stocks have totally pulled back. These tech stocks and energy stocks are roaring up and you will be so upset that you did that I cannot even tell you however, with that said, please know that I don't have a problem. In fact, I would encourage you to continue investing in some of the Magnificent Seven, if not all of them and to just keep in that area as well. So don't take it that I'm saying stop now they've reached their high because truthfully I don't think they have also, I just have to say for those of you who listened and you bought reality income as well as Care Trust - CTRE symbol, you're doing great with those. Those are REITs.

So it's very, very important that when I say balance that you do have your money balanced in different sectors, the Magnificent Seven energy REITs, utilities, possibly dividend paying stocks of different kinds. So you just have to have that diversity.

But I gotta tell you, it still looks like these markets want to go up on all levels, but don't be surprised if they need to take a time out.

So that is today's podcast. I don't want to go on and on because there's so many things that I need to do today to get ready for me and KT to do the Super Bowl. Believe it or not, we're cooking, we're having a barbecue, we're having a special Super Bowl breakfast and we're celebrating. We look for any reason for the two of us to celebrate alone and Colo even though we miss you so much.

It's so fabulous when just the two of us have time with nobody else around us to really just enjoy each other, to simply enjoy sitting and being silent and no other noise, no other person around us. And to come back to

why we really love each other. Just the two of us alone as much as we do.

I don't want to waste one moment of that opportunity.

So until Thursday, when Miss Travis will join us once again for an Ask KT and Suze anything, I wish all of you a very, very happy New Year. If you want, you should all go on to the Women and Money app.

And if you don't have it, you can download it on Google Play or Apple Apps and you'll see a video of 1500 drones that were released in China and what they do there with the form of the dragon. I think these drones are gonna take the place of fireworks, which I think would personally be 10 times better for the environment and also for our little animals lives that freak out when all that big noise happens, go there and look at it. I didn't post it anywhere else. It really, really is magnificent.

So there's really only one thing that I want you to remember when it comes to your money.

And that for this particular day is I want you to live a life of peace balance and maturity for this entire year. And forevermore, and if you do that, you will be unstoppable.