YouSaid · the spoken record

Robert Johnson

lines on the record: 85
first: 2016-04-22
most recent: 2016-04-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Dr. Bob Johnson. This has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you for being so generous with your time. If you've enjoyed this conversation, look up an intro down an inch on Apple iTunes and you'll see the other, let's call it 90 or so podcast radio broadcast conversations that we've been doing. I would be remiss if I did not thank Taylor Riggs and Charlie Vomer. producer and booker for the show and Michael Batnick, the head of research, who helps me put together all of these scintillating conversations. I'm Barry Ritholz. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Famously stayed away from technologies in the late 90s. Everyone said he was a dinosaur, and then a year later everything crashes on him. Right.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, is it safe to say that that's a feature not a bug? It's not an accident that it happens that way, but there's some element of design”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you could do well by doing good, in other words. And our last question, I know they're going to kick us out of here any second. What is it that you know about investing that you wish you knew 30 years ago when you were just getting out of school but perhaps didn't?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the house is paid for, the kids' college is paid for, retirement is set up. And although it's a terrible tragedy, at least it isn't a second tragedy when everybody is set back in their lives and can't achieve what they want to achieve.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That seems to be a pretty traditional factor for people. Once you realize that all your material needs are met and how fortunate you are to be born in the United States, born in the century, and being a career that pays you more than anyone has any right to expect in a given lifetime relative to the rest of the... World, you start to think, hey, I want to give some back and just recognize how appreciative I am of the opportunities that were afforded to me that might not have been afforded to everybody.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To say the least. And it's how much of that wanting to do good is a function of the fact that he's 21. And when you're young and idealistic and life hasn't kicked the hell out of you yet, you can look at the world that way.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You just have to be able to recognize a really good idea when it comes you So my last two questions, my favorite questions. So if a millennial or someone just graduating college were to come to you and say, I'm interested in the career in finance, what sort of advice would you give them?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As does everybody, though. The takeaway, the conversation with clients are what about this? Well, who doesn't know that? Therefore, that's in the stock price. The way a piece of information is going to give you an investing advantage if it's a unique analysis or unique piece of data, assuming it doesn't get you sent to jail. So that really eliminates a lot of the...”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My colleague Josh Brown has a quote I love, and he says the solution to high frequency trading is low frequency trading. So the less you trade, the less likely you are to do something. Really silly”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“David Booth of DFA, Bill McNab, CEO and Chairman of Vanguard both insist to me that HFT has made their cost lower. It doesn't feel that way to me, but that's what they've said.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The PDF is on the internet. It's free. You could pick it up for nothing I would want to save the book, but that's just me. So, for better or worse, what has changed since you joined the industry?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Day of the annual meeting. And I hope you have that letter somewhere. Oh, it's framed. No doubt about that. So you mentioned three books. Any other books worth bringing up?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, wait, it's not enough that Warren Buffett is coming to speak to your class. While he's there, you're twisting his arm for, hey, give me some more names. Yeah.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could have been one of the greatest buying opportunities in decades, to say the least. Although March 09 is looking more and more like that these days.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, until they unplugged, Tim Metz wrote a great book called Black Monday. And if you read the story, I'm drawn a blank on his name, who used to be the head of the New York Fed, this was early in the days of the Chicago Futures feeds, and he went into the NYSC and he saw the futures feed. That's what was driving, that's at least the argument story, that you saw what the futures were. He had that unplugged and the big banks decided to reestablish credit with the specialists because they had cut them off or were about to. And he said, so you don't want to ever do business with the New York stock exchange. He goes, if you cut off credit today, you're done off the record, he says it to them. And if you're interested in the academic history,”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even if it's temporary, it's a horrific. It is horrific. You want to just return your guts up. A friend of mine, Rob Frame, talks about his vomit indicator. He knows it's time to buy when he's getting ready to puke. When he feels that coming up, and he's tracted over decades, and he says, when I feel like throwing up because of how sick I am as to what either I or the market have done to clients, usually it's a good time to go the other way.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, no. When you're sick to your stomach, at least if you have a well-developed sense of ethics, why don't you make an investment that goes down, you're not happy. When it's other people's money, like I've heard, I've seen people throw up in waste paper baskets. I remember early in my career waking up and just being sick to my stomach over, I can't believe I have clients in this and it's a disaster or I can't believe this group of brokers has clients in this and it's a nightmare.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, so let's put aside all these in the weeds stuff, which I think is really quite fascinating. Let's jump to some of my favorite questions. So I didn't ask you your background, what did you do before you got involved with the financial services industry? Is this right out of college?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't they capture some of the finds they issue, which creates this idiotic conflict where you're incentivizing the regulator to fine industry in order to have a budget?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, I'm the last person, literally the last person who would ever defend Finra. I have my longstanding views on them. I've never had an issue with them. I've never been in trouble with them, but I'm not a fan. But to take the other side, they would say, well, we want to bring diversity of thought. We want to avoid groupthink. We don't want to be insular. We want to bring people who are going to bring an outside perspective. And perhaps if we make it only industry people, we're going to miss some important things. What is it that we need to see or do or what have you?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the people who are from outside the financial services sector who are on the board, why and what is the downside other than they don't really know the industry?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you are preaching to the choir here. Let me, before we get into our favorite questions in the last 20 minutes or so we have, let me ask one more question. We briefly talked about the suitability standard and FINRA. So FINRA is the SRO as a self-regulating organization that covers the brokerage firms, all of the broker dealers that aren't RIAs that aren't covered by the SEC, They're kind of an unusual organization. What are your thoughts on Finra?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of my colleagues likes to say, hey, if something in your portfolio isn't doing poorly, you're doing it wrong. You should always, if you're diversified, you're going to be sitting with something that's a dog. For now, and eventually it will go from go to hero while one of your heroes will eventually go the other way. How would you define the proper responsibilities and roles of the financial advisor?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Acadactyl. Yeah, praademics works. But the idea of saying, hey, here's what the academic data shows. It's overwhelming. It's clear. Listen, the market may not be perfectly efficient, but the odds are that you're not going to beat the market on any consistent basis over any length of time. What is it that we know? Well, we know quality beats junk over long periods of time, unleveraged companies are going to do better than highly debt and inconsistent. And we know that there's a small cap premium. And we know that over long periods of time, sometimes the U.S. does better than overseas, sometimes overseas. There are all these things that are out there that you cannot argue with.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you're taking that, I hate that word, but I love the concept. See, keep saying it, Barry. Praademics, I actually prefer.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you have Eugene Fama and French, and by the way, the booth school in Chicago is named after David Booth, the founder and CEO of Dimensional Funds. They're a fascinating shop. They're essentially a hybrid, you know, when I try and describe, well, I thought you guys do indexing. Well, this is indexing, but it's indexing based on this dimension. They were really, I hate to use the phrase smart beta, but they were really a factor shop before that became the hip phrase of the day”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Person who you wouldn't imagine would have a focus on that just because of where they sit are capable of gleaning great insights.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there are all these resources you can get from different firms. We're essentially a Vanguard dimensional fund. We work with other asset managers, but the bulk of our holdings are Vanguard and Dimensional. And dimensional DFA very intelligently recognized that they were sitting at this fantastic nexus where all this information was passing, and they signed up a person who only looks at firm analytics to try and figure out what can we figure out from all the data we see from firms? What are small firms and big firms doing right? What are they doing wrong? What are best practices? It's really fascinating that an asset manager developed that sort of practice, and we see similar stuff from Vanguard and similar stuff from other shops. But I find that fascinating.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you look at the nonprofit version, we work with some foundations and some charities, so things have come up on the nonprofit side. The nonprofit equivalent of the 401k is the 403b, you would think it's the same rules, but it's totally different rules. And again, same situation if you want to work in that space, you need a person who's dedicated to that. We ended up bringing in a team that only works with teachers and educators and other nonprofits because you can't do it on the side. You can't dabble. You can't be, well, the bulk of my clients are this, and I'm going to work with a handful of teachers to understand all the permutations and wrinkles, it becomes a full-time thing. And so we're seeing more and more specialization. I wonder if you're seeing that at all.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, my own practice, we've discovered that when you're doing corporate retirement planning, the skill set, the things you need to know about everything associated with 401k, plan sponsors, third party administrators, custodians, we hired a full time person to just do that because it's not the sort of thing that you could kind of do. Well, the bulk of my practice is this, but I dabble in. You can't. You have to have a person who is the expert in that, who can answer any questions and who is doing it for a while.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is truly fascinating. So that leads me to one of the questions we didn't get to before on the financial planning segment. What sort of changes do you see taking place for the financial planning industry over the next decade or so?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's pretty clear most people are not either adequately planning or if they're planning, they're not adequately funding their retirement plans.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Add in a giant baby boom demographic as the pig is almost through the python. And at the same, those three things plus, what is it, $65,000 a day are retiring? Yeah, I think it's 10,000.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a little wonky. It's a little in the weeds. I know there is an audience that's going to eat this up and a lot of people are going to go, Dr. Who? American College of What? How well known is the American College of Finance?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How about this one? We make them, they have their own healthcare plan, they have their own retirement plan, they have their own automatic salary increases. Why don't we take all that away and make Congress have social security, have Congress have Obamacare, and have Congress get paid the federal minimum wage? We'll see how fast things improve across all those. If you don't like Obamacare, then fix it. You have your own Cadillac gold-plated healthcare plan and your own gold-plated retirement plan, no wonder Social Security is a mess, and no wonder Medicaid is a mess. But that's me getting on my soapbox. In the last minute or so that we have, what should the average investor know about the Federal Reserve and how it impacts their portfolio?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're giving a lot of money away. This goes back to a lack of appropriate. Understanding of Congress's own role, look, there's no people are willing to lend Uncle Sam money at absurdly low rates. Take advantage of that, take all of this debt, which is financed with all the short-term paper seventeen trillion, or now it's almost up to nineteen trillion, take that debt, roll it into a fifty-year bond. People are dying for yield, dying for good paper, roll it into a 50-year bond, refinance America's debt, get it as low as possible, do another set of build America bonds and repave, reharden the airports and ports, redo the electrical grid. There's so much stuff we could do if we weren't stuck in a universe of partisan gridlock and just, you know, the inability to imagine what made America great in the old days seems to have everybody confounded. It's not let's make America great.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were, I want to say it was somewhere between $15 and $20 trillion, like huge, huge number. Assume that bad financial advice costs 1% of that, and let's assume that bad financial advice is only 10%, right? So the $17 trillion becomes $170 billion, and then we're going to take a 1% drag on returns. That's how they got to the $17 billion. Now, I will tell you that bad financial advice is out to more than 10% of clients out there in the world. And even worse, it costs a whole lot more than 1%. I think they were being really kind. I think the number is closer to $50 billion. But that's just my back of the envelope calculation.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we don't have to worry about good financial advice. It's doing good. We have to worry about bad financial advice. By the way, someone challenged me on that $17 billion number. They said, how on earth did you come up with 17? And the answer was, well, if you look in 401k, not 403b, just 401k and iras.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if you go back and look at what took place post-crisis, we saw Merrill Lynch tell brokers, hey, if you're going to have accounts under $250,000, that's up to you, but we're not paying any commission on it. UBS, Morgan Stanley, a number of other firms have similar, but not identical restrictions. But there's really a discouraging of taking small accounts from the big firms because it's a huge volume and there's no money in it. And that's without the fiduciary standard. Yeah, the fiduciary standard, is there really much of a change if those clients aren't being served today anyway?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've been speaking with Dr. Robert Johnson, president and CEO at the American College of Financial Services, Dr. Johnson of People Want to Find Your Writings and Your books are obviously online. Where else can they read anything you've written?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what you can get is just so regional you can't draw any specific questions. So let's switch gears. I know you left the CFA Institute in 2011. About that time, that's when the SEC published a study that was mandated by Dodd-Frank that that specifically recommended that advisors, whether you're working on retirement accounts or discretionary investments, whether you're at a broker dealer or at a registered investment advisory, all financial advice providers should be put under the fiduciary standard. But that ended up not happening. The SEC was deadlocked and couldn't agree with that. What are your thoughts on that fiduciary standard for everybody?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why? Because you're raising rates and making mortgages more expensive. Usually when the Fed is tightening, it means that you're later in the cycle and the economy is already heated up. One would imagine that In yours to the benefit of certainly residential real estate and perhaps commercial resident real estate as well.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That makes perfect sense. What else do we know about not fighting the Fed and investing with them? What else would you add to that conversation that I don't want to go chapter by chapter with the book, but I thought there were some interesting things in there.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But by the way, I've pulled up your book on Amazon and looking at some of the interesting comments here on Invest with the Fed. Five stars on Amazon, 40 plus reviews. That's actually really, really interesting. So it's not that the Fed is what's driving the markets necessarily. It's when the Fed is doing their cycle, when they're expansionary, something else is going on, when they're less expansionary, a different thing is going on. And you could parallel their behavior in order to most advantageously position your portfolio.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, is that correlation relative to the fact that when the Fed is cutting, it usually means that you've just had a huge revaluation in markets and you're getting to buy when things are fairly cheap? Or does it mean something else”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let's talk about another book of yours Invest with the Fed that came out fairly recently. What does that mean? And this goes back to the old Marty Zweig comment, don't fight the Fed.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's quite interesting. So let's keep plowing our way through. So you're saying that your version of strategic value investing, it's based on traditional value investing. You're just looking at certain variations on that theme.”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, someone from Berkshire reached out to you and said, We want you at the annual meeting and come sign books and will you get a chance to meet?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's very, very sounds very familiar. I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to masters in business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Dr. Robert Johnson. He is the president of the American College of Financial Services. He is a former head of the curriculum and testing at the CFA Institute. Author of a number of books, let's talk about a couple of books you wrote that I think are really interesting. What is it that strategic value investing is and how does that differ from just good old value investing?”
2016-04-22 · Masters in Business · Interview With Robert Johnson: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source