
Empowering long-term investors with actionable insights on retirement, personal finance, and portfolio strategy. Hosts Christine Benz, Amy Arnott, and Ben Johnson talk with influential leaders in finance and investing every Wednesday.
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<p>Our guests on the podcast today are Andy Clarke and Nelson Wicas, co-authors—along with Ganesh Suntharam—of the new book, The Architecture of Wealth: The Art and Science of Portfolio Construction. Andy has spent more than three decades as an investment researcher and writer. He has worked at Morningstar and Vanguard, where he served as assistant to Vanguard Founder and indexing pioneer, John C. Bogle. Andy has published research in practitioner journals such as the Journal of Index Investing. He is the author of Wealth of Experience and a CFA Charterholder. Nelson has developed and managed quantitative equity stra...

<p>Our guest on the podcast today is Jeff Ptak. He’s a longtime Morningstar employee and currently serves as managing director for Morningstar Research Services. He originally joined Morningstar back in 2002 as a senior mutual fund analyst. Jeff was one of the original two co-hosts of this podcast and regularly posts his thoughts on Morningstar.com, Substack, X, and LinkedIn. Ptak’s work really focuses on investor outcomes. One of the highlights from the podcast today was when Ptak talked about how such a small number of stocks tend to generate a disproportionate amount of the market returns and what...

<p>Today on the podcast we welcome back Nick Maggiulli. He’s the author of a new book called The Wealth Ladder: Proven Strategies for Every Step of Your Financial Life. His first book was called Just Keep Buying. In addition, Nick writes a wonderful blog called Of Dollars and Data, which is focused on the intersection between data and personal finance. In his day job, Nick is the Chief Operating Officer and Data Scientist at Ritholtz Wealth Management. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University.</p> <h2>Episode Highlights</h2> <p>00:00:00 Writing The Wealth Ladder</p> <...

<p>Our guest on the podcast today is Stefan Sharkansky. Stefan is a Ph.D. statistician who specializes in finance. He wrote a provocatively titled paper, “The Only Other Spending Rule Article You Will Ever Need,” which was published in the Financial Analyst Journal. Stefan has also developed a related website called, The Best Third, designed to help people with their retirement spending plans and portfolio structures. In addition, he developed and operates the website PersonalFund.com, which provides proprietary cost analysis of mutual funds to financial advisors. Stefan has a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M...

<p>Our guest on the podcast today is Ryan Frederick, an author, speaker, and entrepreneur focused on the intersection of place and healthy longevity. As founder and CEO of HERE, he provides content courses and coaching in place planning, a holistic, research-based approach to help people find the right place for every stage of life. He’s also the author of Right Place, Right Time, a book that helps individuals think through housing decisions for the second half of life. In addition, Ryan provides strategy consulting to organizations looking to create better places, including Fortune 500 companies, institutional investors, health systems, an...

<p>Our guest on the podcast today is Brett Arends. Brett has been a columnist for MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal, and other Dow Jones publications since 2007. His regular column for MarketWatch is called ROI, and he has also written for SmartMoney, TheStreet.com, and the Boston Herald. In addition, Brett has written several books including Storm-Proof Your Money: Weather Any Economy, Rebuild Your Portfolio, Protect Your Future. Brett took a double first in history at Cambridge University and did postgraduate research at Oxford University. He’s also a chartered financial consultant.</p> <h2>Episode Highlights</h2> <p>00:00:00 Financial Journalism Or...

<p>Today on the podcast, we welcome back Dana Anspach. Dana’s the author of a new book about retirement called Living Off Your Acorns: Your Guide to the Four Phases of Retirement. This is her third book. Earlier books are Control Your Retirement Destiny and Social Security Sense. Dana is also founder and CEO of the financial planning firm Sensible Money, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, and she has been practicing as a financial planner since 1995. In addition, Dana’s the author of the lecture series, How to Plan for the Perfect Retirement, available on The Great Courses, and she has...

<p>Our guests on the podcast today are Cody Garrett and Sean Mullaney. They’re both advice-only financial planners, and they’re the co-authors of a new book called Tax Planning To and Through Early Retirement. Cody is a certified financial planner and the founder of Measure Twice Money, where he helps DIY investors make informed decisions aligned with their values. He also leads Measure Twice Planners, which is an educational community for financial planners. Sean Mullaney is a certified public accountant and head of Mullaney Financial & Tax. He also writes the blog, TheFITaxGuy.com, which is focused on the inte...

<p>Today on the podcast, we’re delighted to welcome back Jeremy Grantham to discuss his book, The Making of a Permabear: The Perils of Long-term Investing in a Short-term World, which he co-authored with Edward Chancellor. Jeremy is the long-term investment strategist at his namesake firm, Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Company, or GMO, which he co-founded in 1977. He serves on GMO’s asset-allocation committee and board of directors. Prior to GMO, Jeremy was co-founder of Batterymarch Financial Management and, before that, was an economist at Royal Dutch Shell. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Sheffield and his...

<p>We’re taping this podcast live at the Morningstar Investment Conference, where we’re delighted to be joined by Fidelity’s Will Danoff. Will runs a number of Fidelity equity strategies, the best known of which is Fidelity Contrafund FCNTX, a mutual fund he’s been managing since September 1990. Morningstar named Will its Domestic-Stock Manager of the Year in 2007. Prior to becoming a portfolio manager, Will served as a retail analyst at Fidelity and assistant portfolio manager at Fidelity Magellan FMAGX. He graduated from Harvard University and earned his MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Will, we...