Episode 18: Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA

Thirty year veteran of the financial markets, decorated investment manager, leader of investment teams, and communicator of investment strategies joins us this month for a chat amongst old friends.

Classmates at Babson and former colleagues at both Thomson Financial and Fidelity Investments, Dave and Rusty can practically end each other’s sentences, so this month’s discussion and debate takes us in many directions, including:

• Why do investors of high-performing portfolio managers fail to achieve the same returns as the fund?
• Why is communication of the strategy so critically important, and how can it be done better?
• Does “Value” work? And, what fundamental drivers help value shares outperform in inflationary regimes?
• Why is this Radiohead tune Rusty’s chosen walkout song? 
• Competitive Stationary Rowing is a real thing? 

Rusty is a host of Orion’s The Weighing Machine podcast and authored the book “Higher Calling: A Guide to Helping Investors Achieve Their Goals.” He also serves as the Chief Investment Strategist for Orion Advisor Solutions.

Rusty was such a fun guest to interview because he is always candid, full of energy, and has delivered excellence in every stage of his career. Currently, Rusty delivers relevant market-and platform-related content that supports deeper, more engaging conversations with advisors and investors. He is passionate about educating investors to help deliver more favorable outcomes. And as a successful fund manager himself, Rusty excels in identifying new investment offerings to meet growing marketplace demand.

To better understand the concepts covered, and current market commentary, we recommend reviewing the supplemental resources accompanying this episode using this link https://go.cmtassociation.org/ftge18 

Fill the Gap, hosted by David Lundgren, CMT, CFA and Tyler Wood, CMT brings veteran market analysts and money managers onto a monthly podcast.

For complete show notes of every episode, visit: https://cmtassociation.org/development/podcasts/

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CMT Association is the global credentialing authority committed to advancing the discipline of technical analysis in the financial services industry. We serve members in over 137 countries. Our mission is to elevate investors mastery and skill in mitigating market risk and maximizing return in capital markets through a rigorous credentialing process, professional ethics, and continuous education. CMT Association formed in the late 1960s with headquarters in lower Manhattan, NY and Mumbai, India.

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Transcript

Transcript

Tyler Wood 0:13
Welcome to fill the gap, the official podcast series of the CMT Association hosted by David Lundgren and Tyler Wood. This monthly podcast will bring veterans market analysts and money managers into conversations that will explore the interviewees investment philosophy, their process and decision making tools. By learning more about their key mentors, early influences and their long careers in financial services Fill The Gap will highlight lessons our guests have learned over many decades and multiple market cycles. Join us in conversation with the men and women of Wall Street, who discovered engineered and refined the discipline of Technical Marketing.

Good afternoon, David Lundgren and welcome to June 2022, and episode 18 of fill the gap, the official podcast of the CMT Association. How’re you doing? My friend?

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 1:21
I’m doing well. Tyler, I can’t believe we’re on episode 18. Already, this has been a fantastic run.

Tyler Wood 1:25
Well, I think it’s all about our guests. Right? We’ve been lucky enough to have some serious experts, legends in the field and some lesser known folks who have a ton to contribute to the conversation.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 1:35
Yeah, for sure. You know, this month is Rusty Vanneman, who is very accomplished investor on many fronts. Having been in the business for about 30 years. I’ve known him since the early 1990s. It’s always great to connect with folks that that have you I’ve known over the years and just have evolved as investors and just kind of reconnect with them and have a conversation around that. But it’s usually in the in these discussions prior to to the actual episode you asked me? What was my key takeaway from the discussion. But as you know, again, since I’ve known Rusty forever, I’d be really interested to hear what your key takeaway was are was from our discussion with Rusty.

Tyler Wood 2:12
For our listeners, this next hour is jam packed. And clearly the two of you share a friendship but also a real kindred spirit around how you think about the markets and really pick things apart in terms of process and tools. So for me, Rusty’s book, the Higher Calling, which can’t give enough praise to was really sort of the backbone and and for rusty to share with us his evolution from an investment manager to really more of a communicator and the leadership qualities that he has with his team, I think really stuck out. So in his role at Orion Advisor solutions, he’s talking with folks about how the strategies work periods of drawdown notwithstanding, how do you stick with a discipline? How do you approach your investing in a repeatable and disciplined way that sort of sticks with the process that you identify that that works. And so leading teams and creating groups in either an investment team or elsewhere that really have great analytical minds and don’t fall into the status quo? I think for me, the takeaways from Rusty were pretty universal. So it wasn’t just about the technical tools that he uses, but even how he communicates their strategies within the team and to clients that really stood out to me.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 3:25
I’m really glad that that was your key takeaway, because that was the same for me as well. In fact, you and I have discussed this very topic several times, either together or with prior guests on this podcast, and in the notion that you can be the best investor on the planet, you can have a rock solid process, and you can have even have great performance. But if your clients don’t understand the strategy as well as you do, during those periods of drawdown, it’s going to be very difficult to keep them engaged with the process if they don’t have the same confidence level that you do. We talked with Ian McMillan, which I thought was great. I forget what episode it was. But he talked about how every new client has to sit down with them for an hour and get debriefed on what they’re doing. So they fully understand what’s going on. We talked with Bill Miller in Episode 17 and a half, which was the the live production of the podcast at the symposium. And I asked Bill, what he thought about how to communicate with clients so that they are they don’t lose sight of the long term in terms of the strategy during drawdowns, and he said it was just as important for them to understand the strategy as well as you do it to have proper expectations around that. And then and then we get to Rusty and he wrote a book on on the concepts, you know, the higher calling and for our listeners, I mean, I’m assuming that many of our listeners are portfolio managers or analysts. I’m hoping that there are is a growing number of RAAs that are out there listening as well to the podcast, but to the extent that you’re an RA out there, managing clients money and trying to get them engaged with strategies, highly recommend this book, take take a look at this book. It’s basically written for you and it is about keeping your communications in proper tune with you clients in terms of the strategy and expectations and long term success of the strategy and you know, kind of navigating through in weathering those short term ups and downs.

Tyler Wood 5:09
Absolutely. And I think it was unique to have a guest like Rusty who actually had exposure to technical analysis very early in his career really sees the markets from lots of different perspectives. And I think had rusty ended up in any other field, aviation, aeronautics, healthcare, whatever, he would have been an exceptional asset to any team in part because the rigor that he brings to his process and then the way that he communicates it is really, those are universal lessons. So Dave, without any further ado, let’s dive into Episode 18 With Rusty Vanneman CMT CFA. Fill the gap is brought to you with support from Optuma, a professional charting and data analytics platform. Whether you are a professional analyst, Portfolio Manager or trader. optimate provides advanced technical and quantitative software to help you discover financial opportunities. Candidates in the CMT program gain free access to these powerful tools during the course of their study, learn more at optuma.com.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 6:20
Well, welcome to fill the gap, the official podcast of the CMT Association, and episode 18. We are joined by Rusty Vanneman, Chief Investment Strategist at Orion Advisor solutions. Rusty is a dual CMT and CFA charter holder. He’s the host of the excellent podcast, the weighing machine, author of a gem of a book called The higher calling. And we’ll have to talk about this a bit more. But he’s also a certified brand strategist. And he received his certificate in blockchain and digital assets from the digital assets Council of financial professionals. That’s a mouthful. I’m sure there’s a good story there. But of course, I’ve known rusty for years. And he is on an individual level, always super active, very competitive, whether it be hiking, snowboarding, and if I recall, he actually achieves a level of success in national stationary rowing competitions, if I remember. So we’ll talk about that, too. We’re digging deep here. But like I said, I’ve known rusty for about 30 years, this guy’s always high energy, and he’s tough to keep up with. So with that, Rusty Vanneman Welcome to fill the gap.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 7:33
David, it’s great to be here. It’s I mean, it’s actually really humbling to be here because I have listened to all the prior podcast and there have been so many legends and rock stars on there. I’m lucky to be here.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 7:43
You’re too humble because you’re You’re a legend and a rockstar in many, many ways. So it’s we’re honored to have you here, not just as a good friend, but also as a significant contributor to the community. So it’s great to have you on I can’t start this podcast without torturing you the first question you ask everybody on your podcast. I don’t don’t take this personally. But I’m going to ask you for your walk up song. Not your wake up song. Because I listened to Radiohead. I might be wrong and dude, I was falling asleep. This is supposed to energize me what’s your Give me something better than that.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 8:18
I’m sticking to it. So I it is the first question on my podcast. And by the way on my podcast, I think that is the one question that all my guests spend the most time preparing for. But my walk of song is called I might be wrong. And it’s by Radiohead. It’s just the first 15 seconds of it’s pretty cool. That is what I need is kind of the implied message because I could be wrong, but I also could be right.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 8:41
Tyler, what would be your walk up song Tyler

Tyler Wood 8:44
off the cuff, I would say While My Guitar Gently Weeps. But it’s the last 45 seconds of the Hall of Fame induction, where Prince, my hometown man, we have this superhero comes out and just shreds the end of that song. I could listen to that guitar solo 100 times and not get sick of it.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 9:04
Yeah, Rusty, tell us a bit about your background. I mean, you you know I mean, you can go back as far as you want. I mean, ranching and all kinds of stuff. Something led you to technicals. I was at Tech Data in Boston when you joined. So that’s how we first met despite both of us actually going to Babson College The same year, we both graduated the same year. Although as small of a school as it was we never met I would contend it because I was always in the library. You are always in the pub. That’s that’s what I want to give our listeners a little bit of perspective on Rusty Vanneman

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 9:33
it’s for how much time do I have again, now I so I’ve been in the industry for a while. So I’ve been now over 30 years managing investment portfolios, investment teams and investment messages. But how I got started it really the big break was technical data, which is now part of Thomson Reuters and I already was into the markets at that point in obviously Babson College. I emphasized finance and investments, particularly the investment side. I am originally from Nebraska and so obviously there’s always that influence of Warren Buffett, you know that I do recall the very first text I ever read was in high school. And I’m not saying this was a great text, though probably still has some slight influence on me. But the author’s name was RC Allen. And he did this moving average crossovers of like four, nine and 18 time periods, which I’ve never used professionally. But the moving average concept was planted, I was very interested in at Babson College. And, you know, I was fortunate to We were fortunate to hear Sir John Templeton speak back then. And it was just always stuck. In my mind, I wanted to be an investment manager. So at Thomson Reuters technical data, it was what an awesome experience that was, you know, all the talented people that were around us, you know, people gone on to do so many great things. It was fast paced. I mean, we were working early in the morning, late at night, on weekends, it didn’t even seem like work. It was just so much fun. And we learned so much. So that was really my start.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 10:53
I love it. You know, over the years, of course, you’ve you’ve held some some marquee positions, lead lead portfolio manager, I think you’ve had a five star Morningstar rated fund. So kudos for that, because that’s obviously no easy task. But I know, over the years, you haven’t been a pure technical investor. So obviously, your style and your philosophy has has morphed over the years, but you always, to a certain extent leaned on elements of technicals. So maybe take a couple minutes to just walk us through your philosophy, how you think about investing today, and then how technicals help you through that process?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 11:23
Well, I guess I can talk about the evolution. And, you know, the evolution really was really about, you know, where I was that and what my mandate was, you know, professionally, managing other people’s money, usually inherent situation. So, you know, back in the technical data days at Thomson, you know, I leaned heavily on the work of Welles Wilder, I mean, we had technical data, we had a tool that was basically based off of Adx, you know, we call the trend intensity, and, you know, didn’t really didn’t fight that. And so going with the trend was always really important concept. But over the years and picking up, you know, managing, you know, a lot of money over time, it’s we basically had to manage money that in a way that people expected it. So what are some of the things that really became how I still look at the markets, I mean, I lean heavily on looking at prices, and also looking at sentiment. And when it comes to prices, that kind of the what I like to look at is, and we still actually produce this is looking at relative valuation charts going back over time. Now, I just want to say something about valuation. So I remember you and I actually had this argument years ago, but I always say, you know, fundamental analysis is really the study of fundamentals. So how does a company make money? What is their business model? A technical analysis is the study of supply and demand with the ultimate expression as price and value investing is the combination of the two it is, you know, it is price divided by the fundamentals. And so I’ve always thought about doing value analysis was obviously strongly related to technicals. And so I like to look at relative valuation charts. And I also like to look at relative performance charts, those are produced internally weekly, where I’m at. So I still look at those all the time. And I also love looking at investor sentiment. So obviously, that’s not price, but it is another expression of you know, supply and demand. And those all factor into how I think about building portfolios, managing money, and also what I’m writing about. And when I’m talking about

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 13:28
them, when you say valuation charts, do you is that to imply that? When I think about that, I’m thinking that perhaps the way the the way in which valuation being reversed over time? And then do you just look for levels within that mean reversion? Or do you actually apply technicals to the valuation chart,

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 13:43
so I can tell you about kind of the charts I like to look at on a regular basis. So the relative valuation chart is really just about 2025 years of history, looking at a composite of various valuation metrics, try not trying to optimize it just simply equal weighted, so kind of looking at a long term average over that time and on the Charter, the one standard deviation around it. And so I kind of know what’s expensive, what’s cheap, and then I look at level and trends. And so obviously, if the trend is above or below a standard deviation, that’s saying something that is, that’s an area to think about fishing in. And that is probably an area that we we don’t want to fight it in the sense that let’s say something’s really, really expensive, doesn’t mean we’re going to be shorted. But it probably means we’re not going to be overweighted either. And then we look at the trend of that relative valuation over time. So that’s the relative valuation chart, I can talk about the relative performance chart, I guess, later on, but that is basically how we look at it. And you know, one thing when it comes to investment philosophy and managing other people’s money is I think, a couple considerations. And these aren’t numbers that necessarily a lot of clients ask for, but it’s one is how active is your strategy? So there’s expectation of how often you’re going to make a trade or change in a portfolio? Is it going to be weekly, monthly, quarterly, is it gonna be over a year and There’s also like how much conviction you’re going to have in those those trades. So in another fancy expression called tracking how much your returns deviate than a benchmark, there’s active shares, how much your portfolio holdings deviate from the benchmark. And I really think those are key characteristics. A lot of people could talk an active game, but there don’t take any tracking. So there’s really no conviction or, you know that and I think so when you kind of have that idea of this is our philosophy. This is how we’re building portfolios. But this is how often you’d expect traits. And this is, you know, this is how our performance can deviate from benchmarks. Those are really, really important, because it isn’t just about manufacturing, that rate of return, it’s also about communicating and setting the expectations. Because ultimately, we all want to beat the benchmarks. But you know, really, that at the end of the day, we want our end users to have a great experience. And if they’re always buying our strategies after they’ve been hot and sell them after they’re cold, then that isn’t quite working. Right. So I think you had a prior podcast, which is a number of which I forgot about was the Peter Lynch number, which, you know, we both also worked at Fidelity and Peter Lynch, obviously a legend there. But you know, I think the average return over his time was 30% per year, but the average investor was 10%. You know, that’s kind of a miss. And so I think it’s setting expectations are huge, and then delivering against those expectations. I just said a whole bunch of stuff. Where do you want to go now?

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 16:23
You actually did just touch on a whole bunch of things that we will talk about, and I want to try to keep them in order. Because I know you and I have to keep you wouldn’t want to. But so for our listeners, I would just quickly say that Rusty’s book, the higher calling, that’s what the whole books about managing expectations. And, you know, Tyler’s heard me talk about that very topic. So many times in this podcast, because it’s so critical, it’s actually not enough for you, as a portfolio manager to have a good strategy to believe in what you’re doing. And to execute it. Well, you can do all those things. But if the client doesn’t feel the same way you do, and have the same level of understanding and the same, to use your word, Rusty expectations about what the strategy will do in any given time, through a cycle, you can have situations like Peter Lynch, who delivered one of the best public track records in history, but the average shareholder in the fund was 10%, because they kept buying high and selling low. And that comes from that not having the right set of expectations. So that’s definitely a worthy part of this discussion. But before I go on to what I just want to maybe drill down a little bit more on what you’re managing today. So you, if I remember, it’s not it’s not just equities, but it’s asset allocation. So it’s obviously across regions within equities, but it’s also precious metals and commodities, etc.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 17:33
Well, first of all, I’m gonna do one quick aside in your prior comment, because it ties into, again, my experience with fidelity. And I was doing a presentation one time to Gary Burkett, who was in charge of FM Marko, in charge of all the portfolio managers and analysts, and the presentation, I got a chance to ask, ask him questions. And he I, of course, you know, always trying to learn and get better. But I said, What makes a good portfolio manager or an analyst, and he says, you know, obviously, you gotta manage money, but kind of the underrated thing is to be able to communicate it, if you’re a portfolio manager can’t express how your portfolio is going to behave. Or if you’re an analyst, who can get your foot in the door and sell your idea succinctly to a portfolio manager, it doesn’t matter how good your recommendations are, you’re just not going to be a good portfolio manager. So that’s just a quick fidelity anecdote, but but in terms of managing money, so I’ve done a bunch of different things. And so currently, my role at Orion portfolio solutions, were at Orion portfolio solutions, we actually work with financial advisors. So there’s 2500 firms we work with. And so there’s over 50,000 financial advisors, so we don’t manage money directly for investors, but really, for financial advisors who are outsourcing and the way we manage money is multi asset class. My role has changed in recent years. So I was the chief investment officer of all of Orion, but it’s, you know, we are actively growing, and we’re very involved in mergers and acquisitions. And so, on the investment management side, we bought a firm out of Philadelphia, so they basically kind of became the lead on a lot of the investment portfolios. My job as a strategist is kind of like your conventional strategist, I’m talking about the investment strategies available on our platform. This isn’t just our proprietary there’s over there’s like 600 strategies on our platform. So I have to speak to them, how they behave, how they actually blend together, because advisors are always asking how to blend these different strategies together. And I’m also talking about the markets, you know, thing about this role is it is helping advisors it’s helping investors is helping salespeople kind of understand and have confidence in putting things together, and I hope ultimately helping the investor returns as well. You know, actually used to kind of make fun of strategist being a money manager, but you can really actually help a lot of people. And you know, as an investment manager, even when your numbers are hot, somebody is still calling up and saying somebody’s hotter, and actually I still kind of liked that part of the job, but anyway, As a strategist, that’s what I’m doing working with strategies and the markets.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 20:03
And I know you have a team that works with you on the strategy side. And you know, one of the things that I’ve always admired about you in terms of one of the things you bring to the table is the ability to build enduring teams, but also to be a great mentor to those folks on your teams. And so you talk to me about that. How important is that in building an organization and building a team, like I said earlier, you’re very competitive person. So you’re always coming up with contests and pools and things like that, to try to drive competition on a team talk talk about that, and how important that is to you. Obviously, it’s a big role in a big way of how you think about the world.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 20:34
I love this topic. I think that recruiting and managing and mentoring and managing are just so crucial to having a high performance team. And so I have recruited a lot of people over the years, and I have so many talented people, it’s almost people might say, I’m a good manager, but I don’t know if I can, because I’m, everybody I’m hiring is just really passionate, and really into it. So this isn’t work to him, you know, everybody is fired up. And everybody’s ambitious. So I think that’s really critical is finding people who are legitimately into the markets. And then beyond that they have good energy, they’re achievement oriented. And every hire is a little different. Because you know, every time you’re looking for kind of a slightly different skill set, and you just want to kind of round it out, in one time I had my team was 16 was 17 people, including the admin assistant, but of those 17 people, you know, like on the Myers Briggs Personality Test, there’s like 16 different options, we had every single one of them represented. I mean, that’s really fluky, but it does kind of show that every time we are looking for somebody a little bit different. And as for building the team, it’s and is just always just pushing everybody all the time. And you know, a lot of those people now become directors of research chief medical officers, portfolio managers, so I’m definitely proud of that. I know another thing is, you know, we did have a lot of contests, a lot of reindeer games, because I wanted people to make decisions all the time. So fantasy football might sound kind of silly, but it is making decisions and in an uncertain world, and people can duke it out. And people can get emotional and all that sort of stuff. One of the things I like to do on a monthly basis, I always called it my my favorite meeting. I wanted everybody to make forecast. And obviously everybody was making their investment recommendations. But I wanted to talk about the markets too. And I would have an award called the maverick award. I think this was important because we looked we quantified in three different ways. One, you had an opinion. So did you like or dislike it. And if you were neutral, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. I know you could be neutral, but we wanted you to have a decision. Secondly, we wanted you got awarded if you’re outside of the team’s consensus. So if everybody like technology, and you did it, you got points for that too. And the third thing, because one of the most difficult things for people to do in the industry, which by the way is a great benefit of technical analysis is a lot of fundamental people when they make a stand on something they can’t change their mind. Be and like technicals will force people to know when you’re right or wrong. So if they change their mind, so if you change your mind, you’re out of consensus, you had a view, you got the maverick award, and it was our most highly esteemed award on our team. And if you were the completely the reverse, you had a trophy on your desk. That was the WIMP award. So we just wanted to make sure. Sure, yeah, we want to make sure people were making decisions.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 23:17
Yeah, I’m thinking that the WIMP award would not be allowed in today’s corporate culture. I’m just saying,

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 23:23
Well, it depends on the kind of team you’re building, you know. So

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 23:27
it’s hard to balance that, isn’t it the electronic trying to have trying to build resilience and competitive nature in trying to balance it in this world where you can’t have the wimp award anymore?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 23:37
Well, I think I don’t know. I think in arena, you’re probably right. But I think that’s what the team is a little bit like, I guess, a sports team in and I’d always say like, look, when we’re in our research meetings, we are practicing and butting heads, and we’re competing for every idea. But when we walk out the store, we’re a team now, so I want us to duke it out. But when we walk out of the door, we have to be unified.

Tyler Wood 24:02
That’s great management philosophy. Russell, you mentioned in your intro of titles that you are in part investment strategy communicator. And then you also mentioned that at Babson you and Dave, we’re able to learn from Sir John Templeton. So for our listeners, Sir John Templeton is very famously quoted for saying bull markets are born on pessimism, grow skepticism, thrive on optimism and then die on euphoria. So the fundamental investors out there who’ve been looking for bottoming since early March, and the idea of making a contrarian view from your process and combining fundamentals and technicals. Right, everything’s looking much better now from a fundamental basis from a valuation metric than it was even the last few months. What are the technical tools you use to actually find successful entry points in a market bottom?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 24:50
Well, I mean, it’s a question of whether the market bottom or not, you know, there’s, you know, some sentiment indicators obviously, are clearly bearish and knowing not thing else I would expect above average returns, you know, six to 12 months out, but I’m not so sure there’s a bottom, there’s this what people say. And that’s what people do. And the flows really haven’t been super negative yet. So it feels like there could still be a flush there. But in terms of how to find stuff, it’s I mean, the relative valuation chart pack that I just talked about earlier, that’s, that’s kind of a place where to fish, you know, it isn’t necessarily, you know, catching the fish probably at a more better timing tool. And something that I’m looking at is relative performance charts. And in the relative performance charts, we do look at absolute performance. But I have to admit, I really love relative performance, because I have, you know, be invested. And when it comes to relative performance, I have a standard chart that I love. And first of all, it’s a chart so you get the visuals of, you know, the highs and the lows, which I think are crucial to look at. But it has five other things you can glean out of it. And I like to look over three years. And I remember one is I love looking at three year relative performance, because three year relative performance tends to revert. So you know, if you actually just kicked butt over the last three years, you know nothing else, you’re probably gonna underperform over the next three years. I’ve studied this internally multiple times outside work, and you just see it all the time when people fire managers hire managers. So I never whenever an analyst would come to me say I love this idea. And it’s like, it’s been the top performing thing over the last three years, I’m not touching it. Now, the one year timeframe is a good thing, if you’ve outperformed the last year, that’s a plus. And then we also looked at a quarterly moving average. So we did 63 days annual moving average 252 days, and then the relationship between those two. So that was like five different data points that we’ve looked at. So if you think about it, that isn’t really fast, because a lot of the money we’re managing moves a little bit slower. So our average holding periods tended to be, you know, two to five years. So we want to things a little bit slower. So you kind of that technical setup is a somebody might like something looking at relative valuation and say, This is the area I want to be in. But the technicals haven’t really turned around yet, they might actually start dipping their toe in it, but they’re not going to have conviction in that trade. Until the trends on the relative valuation, the technical condition starts to look better. That’s kind of an example.

Tyler Wood 27:11
That’s a fantastic answer. I think for the record. I mean, there’s a lot of people who look too early for bottoms and get snapped up in those bear market rallies. Dave had a great post the other day, it’s like good cop, bad cop. Somebody comes in and gives you a little relief. You really want to fall in love with that bear market rally too fast. So same question, Rusty the Sir John Templeton, how do you communicate to those advisors who are holding the hands of their clients trying to get them? You know, eventually, when that bottoming process takes place? How do you combat the human psychology, right investors, the end investor wants to get involved at the point of maximum euphoria and the point of maximum risk. And they don’t want anything to do with, you know, risk on investing at a point of maximum return. When there’s blood in the streets. How do you communicate that,

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 27:57
I guess, kind of one of the tricks of my trade is I will look at sentiment surveys, you know, just a really easy one to use. And, you know, a lot of people can quibble with it, I do too, but it’s weekly, it’s free. It’s just the American Association of individual investors, you can just play with that data, just download it. And so if it is that extreme, it will influence what I’m communicating and writing about. So let’s just say people are really, really bearish. Like now I will go out and try to find more positive stories try to keep people balanced and centered, and on their plan that their financial advisor, whatever portfolio, they put them in, they don’t want them to be disruptive, because there are emotional extremes. So I kind of look at the sentiment and I find another story to go with it. And it kind of goes back to my training and technical data with Dave and it’s like, I remember it, we had to write commentary that was fundamentally based talk about economics, the advice was come up with your technical picture, and then find the economic story to match it. So really, the technicals was the discipline. And that was a lesson was giving you that you know, that that action that you could provide that you could have conviction in but you found the story to go with it. So my one thing is, is I look at the sentiment first, and that is for probably 20 years that has influenced almost every one of my monthly commentaries.

Tyler Wood 29:09
And have you seen the environment change? So I’ve heard that story before. The discipline is technical, but find the fundamental reason why we can tell people this is a good opportunity. Have you seen the appetite for some technical or sentiment driven commentary? Is there more appetite for that today amongst the advisors in your network than there was a 10-15 years ago?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 29:09
Good question. Is there more appetite for it. Well, I could sort of Taichi this a little bit and say there’s clearly more appetite for Behavioral Finance type stuff. I’m fortunate to work with Dr. Daniel Crosby, who’s fantastic and people just eat his stuff up. So but when it comes to more specific sentiment, you know, there’s always been kind of difficulty of saying like, everybody’s really bearish. They’re really really scared. So therefore and you’re scared to so you should be buying the market. So a lot of people you have to address kind of the emotions emotional side So that’s reason why in that particular case is I will try to give, you know, again, the more fundamental or more long term outlook and just try to give them some data in that case dependent, encourage them to stay on plan.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 30:10
This is a good spot to to jump in a little bit and talk a little bit more about your blog, you know, the book is the Higher Calling, I actually have two copies of it, neither one of, nice, by the way. On the site on Amazon, where the book is displayed, just a quick excerpt says investors rarely earn as much as they could in the marketplace, not because the markets are rigged casino style, or they haven’t made their bets on the right stock. investors don’t earn as much as they could, because they don’t stick to their plans. So that’s the essence of the book. But you obviously didn’t dive into the strategies in your experience around that, you know, you talk about the three steps to closing what you refer to as the behavior gap. Explain them are how the markets work, develop an appropriate risk budgeted portfolio and build trust, three critical pillars to that closing that behavioral gap. Can you talk a little bit about each one? So explain how markets work? How do you mean by that? What do you mean by that?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 31:03
So in terms of how the markets work out, one tool that I like to use source is a slide that talks about how often the stock market is up over a trailing 12 month time period and the data I have go back 1871 It’s the Robert Shiller website, I got a good story about Robert Shiller if you want one, but going back to 1871. I like those free websites, lots of data, just in case somebody wants to play with the data themselves. But anyway, how often is the market up to positive over 12 months, and I’ll ask like a roomful of investors or advisors. And usually, they guess a much lower number than it really is. So the markets up over 70% that time over one year timeframe. And then of course, I’ll build out the slide and say how often is three, five and 10 years. And of course, that number gets better, basically, to the point is that there’s a strong positive expectation to the market. But the other point is, on the one year timeframe, the market has like a double digit return over 50% of time is negative about 30% of time. So it’s sort of that typical Wall Street forecasts the markets up like five or 10%, it rarely happens in a one year time frame. So the markets much more volatile than people expect, but also has a much stronger positive expectation. So that’s sort of the base case. And then of course, I can take it like what about the markets expensive? You know, what are the chances of a bear market and the numbers don’t really change that much, though, the average return does drop when the valuations are higher. So that’s sort of like how markets work. That’s kind of an example of something I’ll start off with, when it comes to risk budgeted portfolio, kind of the idea is that a lot of advisors build portfolios, obviously, think about financial objectives, unique considerations. But there’s usually a risk target that’s associated with it. Some people might use an equity target, generally speaking, over time, we think a risk target is better, because just an example of 60-40 portfolio if you have blue chip bonds, and T bills, a lot different than the 60-40, a small caps on high yield bonds. So we actually like to focus on risk. And so a lot advisors will then try to design a portfolio that is has an appropriate risk level given somebody’s objective. So let us have we actively managed it over time, that the market expectation, and what’s really nice about kind of that risk budget is let’s say you have a portfolio based off of your goals and objectives that you should be taking half the risk of the market. That’s also a great way for a lot of investors to kind of understand the performance when they’re looking at their statements over time. Because a lot of times that people like I’ve even heard people, our own industry, who are pretty high ranking who let’s just say the market is up 20%. And they say I cannot believe my portfolio is only up 12%. It’s like until you’re like 50% bonds, you had a great return. I think that risk target for a lot of investors really goes back to where we’re talking about managing expectations.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 33:39
Yeah. And the third point is that build trust, which that’s where you’re you’re building expectations, but you’re also trusting each other that you’ll follow through on both sides of the the relationship, right?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 33:50
Yep, that comes to conversations and obviously building relationships. But from an investment management standpoint, it is being as transparent as possible, and doing exactly what you say you’re going to do. Having actually analyzed a lot of portfolio managers over the years. You know, one of my classic questions is just to ask them about when times were tough, sometimes you can tell when there’ll be SEO. So you need to be transparent. You need to be as authentic as possible and describing your investment process. And I think that builds trust over time, because every strategy, no matter how good you are, you’re gonna underperform at times. And you just have to address that upfront.

Tyler Wood 34:24
Right. I would like to make one edit to my earlier comment. I think my new choice walk up song is by Chumbawamba. I get knocked down. But I get up again, I think your point about every strategy is gonna go through a down period. I think that that should be our theme song for all traders and investors around the world.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 34:42
Consider changing that for the podcast title. Yeah, somebody else in the CMT association. So we’ll make that happen. We’ll we’ll definitely provide links to that book. I do think every RIA in frankly, every investor should read this book because it’s really it’s really that important, but another significant contribution that you’ve made over the years. I don’t know what year you’re in now, but it’s your third year with a weighing machine.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 35:05
Yeah, well, it’s something like that it kind of it’s kind of been around longer, but it’s gone through a couple of different formats.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 35:10
Yeah. Yeah. And so the way machine of course, we all I know what that what the reference is, but explain it to the to our listeners, what does the weighing machine mean? What does it mean to you?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 35:19
Yeah, well, first of all, in hindsight, the weighing machine, it’s it’s one time I had a guest on when they promoted it, they call it the weighing machine, WA ng wa ng is a weighing machine. So it’s not actually the references to the classic quote that Warren Buffett talks about the customer, Benjamin Graham talks about in the short term, the market is a voting machine. In the long term, it is a weighing machine. And really, the whole concept is just trying to stretch people’s timeframes out longer. I mean, we all love the short term in the information. And but for a lot of investors, we just want to kind of just stretch it out. So the emphasis on the on the podcast is the whole world listen to it. But I guess I really focus on financial advisors who might be driving down the road, or mowing the yard or on the treadmill. And they’re just looking for things they can add to their script to talk about the markets in particular investment strategies.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 36:11
So I can’t claim that I’ve listened to every single episode. But I’ve listened to a lot of I have listened to a lot of them. Many of them I remember the October 21 episode with Jeremy Siegel, I remember, as I was thinking about getting ready for this conversation, I remember that he just such a good conversation. It was unfortunately short, because it was recorded live, but one of your conferences and it was just when you were wrapping it up, I’m like, Wait, you can’t you can’t stop now. Because I’m sure you had so many more good questions for him. But I have to say I, you know, remembering that it was such an important podcast episode, I went back and listened to it prior to this current conversation just to kind of refresh on it. And I actually forget how good it was. I mean, he made some amazing calls with respect to white socks, we’re about to do bonds, inflation going up, I think he said 7%. So he missed it by a percent. But we’ll forgive him that over the next several months is what he called for. But he also called for the the implosion of growth versus value and all these other things, and it’s all hinging on this changing regime of inflation, etc. So fantastic episode, I would highly recommend folks go back and listen to it, but in your mind as a allocator, across assets that are affected by all of these things, especially these days, when you look at that forecast, and you look at what has moved since then, do you feel we’ve moved enough to reflect that change in regime? Or do you think there’s more to come to play out in those trends?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 37:27
First of all, I’m Jeremy Siegel. One one big takeaway from that, too, is it just goes to show that even though we’ve been doing this stuff for 30 years, we’re only mid career, you know, we got so many more years to go. So that’s what that was one thing that was really great, I feel as if it could go a lot farther. And probably the simplest way to explain is if you look at relative valuation charts, again, we actually put them on our website. So I can put that in the show notes. So people can check it out. You can move from a period of being undervalued and and then obviously, the trend is in your way. And then it doesn’t just go back to average, usually usually overshoots it, you know, some of the things that are happening else such as value versus growth. I mean, that could have a lot farther to run. I mean, obviously, you can have zigs and zags and, and stuff. But I would if I had to guess right now that’s going to play out for a lot longer.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 38:14
You said that you’d listen to our recent episode with the middle of the fourth, which we recorded at the CMT symposium just recently. And one of the concepts that we discussed and he agreed with was this notion that value per se doesn’t work, like stocks don’t go up because they’re cheap, they play a significant component role in the outcomes if the stock does start to work, but you’re just starting from such a base level of valuation that the compound effective and expanding valuation just makes the story or the outcome even better, but stocks don’t go up because they’re cheap. They go up because valuation. I mean, because the fundamentals change, it become a catalyst to unlock that cheapness of the stock, otherwise, it remains a value trap. So I get the idea that we’ve been selected regimes, I think we can point to all kinds of evidence in that regard. The question is what what is the fundamental reason for why value will continue to work going forward? It’s and it’s not just because they’re cheap. What’s the fundamental driver that’s going to make value do better than growth going forward?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 39:06
I guess you’d say the easy answer on that would be they tend to do better in inflationary environments. And so if inflation just stays sort of above average, that would be a kind of a fundamental catalysts or value stocks to outperform. And I agree to your your notion, just, it isn’t just a but that’s why I like relative valuations more. So. You know, for instance, we were long technology for years. But you know, it was a handful years ago that, you know, technology tends to trade at that time, over the prior 20 years, tended to trade at a 50% premium to the market, but it was that it dropped to a 10% premium. So technology wasn’t a value, a stock, I mean, but it was on a relative valuation. It was cheap. And so we liked it. And as the same thing about large caps, we were actually in some portfolios, we we shorted the Russell 2000 We’re actually we’re just underweight small caps. We were short are small caps. And it was all based off relative valuations. And so it’s really the relative valuation the starting point. And then ideally, you just want to see it obviously start to trend back the other direction, hopefully and answer the question.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 40:12
It kinda does part of the answer. And it’s not just your answer, but it’s every, every time I get asked this question, I get a similar, it’s because of inflation. But I, I still have a hard time translating that into, you know, you use the formula V equals P divided by f, right? The one I use is p equals F times v. But it’s the same formula. It’s what I love about it. Right? So same exact formula just rearranged in at the end of the day, you know, I guess it’s inflation part of the F. And if it is, does that translate into better fundamental underlying economic conditions for industrials than it does technology and why I’m a pure technician, so I’m long what you’re supposed I feel like I’m lying, what you’re supposed to be long right now, which is things that are working, and whether it’s cheap or not, but I’m just trying to ask as many people that are smarter than me to outline in detail, the fundamental reasons for why value is going to work going forward, because again, it’s not going to be because they’re cheap,

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 40:59
you know, a lot of companies are, you know, lower quality. So just in servicing their debt, it’s, you know, their debts a certain level, and, you know, inflation’s, you know, normally raising everything it becomes cheaper to finance or debt is another theory behind it. But this is my technical analysis, man, what are you talking about this fundamental stuff? Yeah,

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 41:20
yes, that’s right. fill the gap between the point so how about this one of the charts that was presented at the symposium from Jim Bianco, he presented a chart in the symposium where he showed the the 40 year downtrend and rates and every time we have this massive spike in rates in the context of that ongoing downtrend, Something blew up as a consequence of that spike in rates. And we just had another spike in rates again, up to 3%. We’ve seen what happened to the dollar yen. I mean, that’s incredibly aggressive move, seeing what’s happening in the commodity space. So do you think about those things at all as being potential catalysts to unlock some, some sort of a blow up that’s, you know, leveraged to those asset classes? I mean, these are significant large asset classes. And when they move so quickly, unexpectedly, they can cause ramifications down the road.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 42:05
Yes, in fact, I had a conversation just this morning. So it usually it it, I mean, that usually happens after a while. So once you get kind of that market stress, usually something shows up afterwards. So as we record this, I am concerned something like that could happen or could happen, you know, months quarters down the road, particularly there is more market stress. I mean, right now, as we’re recording this, there, there seems to be some signs of stabilization. You know, interest rates, you know, yields have come down the dollars, there’s the safe haven dollar hasn’t as lost its strength, commodities haven’t broken in new highs, at least not yet. So I think there are some signs of stabilization. But I think that, but nonetheless, that’s still a concern that I have I remember back 10 Well, 2008, you know, kind of felt like we had enough big things that happen that were sort of flushed out, but they just kept coming in. And obviously they just kept pushing the market lower.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 42:58
That’s the point is that is it as a consequence of that March to August, big aggressive moves, the Fed mishandled the situation, the government bailouts, mishandled some situations, and of course, the whole thing came on glued, and then it was just basically selling into an a hole of apathy, and just, you know, have no idea when it’s going to end. You know, I wouldn’t say we even need to position for something like that right now. But to your point, it’s hard to tell, you know, if there is something that’s kind of lurking in the dark corners of the other markets that might eventually blow up. But, you know, just something to think about,

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 43:26
you know, related to that my message, you know, personally is just, you know, just globally diversified isn’t just about going into international stocks, which I do think look more attractive relative valuations, and technically as well. But it also got another asset classes, including alternative strategies, which by the way about perform fixed income, and like every relevant timeframe going up 10 years now, or real assets, such as commodities seems like an easy call. But you know, what a lot of money is still not necessarily flowing that way. Some advisors have embraced that, but no flows this year, from what I see is still really, really hasn’t embrace commodities or alternatives yet to diversify portfolios. And if anything, it’s there’s been a lot of strong preference still for growth stocks. And this is anecdotally looking at, you know, some of the platforms I look at and some of the data I look at, you know, I think some of that is going to change something that just happened a few weeks ago, and has happened. And I think this is one thing that’s gonna be interesting is that commodities now, in the three year timeframe, remember, I think the three year timeframe is the one number that probably influences the most money in our industry. It’s not just individual investors that everybody talks about its financial advisors, it’s investment committees, it’s the financial press, think about in our industry investment proposals show like the three year historical number that changes that impact so much money, but so the commodities just passed up the stock market or three year timeframe, including growth stocks, and actually today as we record and this does depend on the indices you look at, but value just past growth on the three year timeframe. When you look at the Morningstar indices. I don’t think it’s the case and Russell, I haven’t looked them all. Now that just happened coming into today. Right now just think what’s going to happen at the end of this month when so all of a sudden proposals, investment proposals gonna look better, they’re not gonna look as good with the growth things everybody’s been using, they’ll look better with value. And it’s wait till it’s if it happens at quarter end, the value is still ahead of growth, I think that’s going to do forget all the fundamental things going on. But just thinking about how a lot of money flows in the markets, you know, a lot of you know, narratives are going to change and investment proposal is going to look a lot different. And so

Tyler Wood 45:26
That’s the hearding principle. That’s what piles investors into this same trade and then creates the long duration move.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 45:34
Exactly. Those would be arguments why those trends could persist right now that we’re seeing in value in real assets. Still,

Tyler Wood 45:39
I don’t want to give anybody whiplash but to bounce to another subject for a second, the destruction of value with the Terra Luna collapse couple weeks ago, 60 billion in that specific instance, but estimated maybe a trillion dollars of value lost across crypto assets. Do you see any corollaries? I mean, obviously, there’s there’s dislocations happening in the market. And even a little bit of pressure can can cause a big collapse in something that’s so highly levered. Do you see any corollaries between that and the housing market crash of oh eight? Do we look for more destruction? Before that’s over? I know you’re now a certified digital asset strategist, something something something they’ve mentioned. Talk to us a little bit about, about what you’ve seen there. And if it’s an opportunity now, when folks are so pessimistic on the whole space?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 46:27
Well, I would suspect they’re probably because of some of the stuff that’s going on in crypto, that the again, that’s gonna put pressure, perhaps on some hedge funds and some short term players. I’m not super crazy concerned on it otherwise, because, you know, if you look at sort of the demographics of generally who owns crypto or digital assets, it isn’t it isn’t really the same demographic as who’s the traditional investors right now in stocks and bonds. So I think there’s a difference. And also, the size of the crypto market still just pales in comparison to housing and the stock market and everything. So the assets concern, but I wouldn’t necessarily put a scale of one to 10 to 10, I have to imagine a lot of hot short term money is, you know, they’re playing volatility, or volatile asset classes, and I’m sure some people got burned.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 47:18
I’ve actually been to Warren Buffett’s annual shareholder meetings over the years, and I’m a huge fan, but yourself being from Nebraska, I know that you’re a huge fan as well. And when I think back in his investment, investing history, I can think of one time and that I’m aware of where he made an investment was wrong, said he’ll never do it again. Did It Again, lost money again. And that was airlines. And I was shocked when he bought them the second time, and then he went on to lose money again, which just goes to show you that we’re all human. But I will say this him and Charlie Munger for five years at least have been saying bitcoin and cryptocurrency is a weapons of mass destruction, they have no value, I will never buy them yet on his latest report, and he talked about how he sold the old intermediary tech financials like Visa and MasterCard, which he’s had for a very long time did very well would be sold them and put about a billion dollars in this new bank in Brazil, which is basically a direct play on crypto. So if you’re looking for a contrarian signal to to get out of crypto now, I just want to tell you that Warren Buffett just double down.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 48:18
Yeah, it’s a great point. It really is. So I actually felt that even though I was at the shareholder meeting. And by the way, that’s always great. And I always encourage people to go because you never know when the last one is going to be. It is amazing. It is so much fun to hear them speak and just the energy that is that it’s in town at the arena, it’s it is really cool. And those guys are still getting it done. You know, the maybe they’re a nanosecond slower. And I still think there’s probably something besides Diet Cokes, and peanut brittle. They’re eating keep them up for six hours because I but they are they are, you know, nothing about Buffet two goes back to a point we’ve already made a billion times is, again, just a year ago, they were old and lost it yet again. And now you look at their trailing returns in virtually every timeframe versus the market. And again, he’s a genius right. Now when you go he wasn’t.

So are you allocated to crypto assets in any form or digital assets in any form? And if so, how are you advising others to be involved in? Are there any like specific ways that you find it best to get allocation or exposure to that area?

I believe in multiple asset classes. So I am involved and have been well actually have been for quite some time. The volatility is pretty crazy. And I do believe in rebalancing it too. And so I’ve been able to rebalance it and I still have exposure to it in terms of sort of the guidance on it is, you know, kind of goes back to the advice that Rick Adelman gives out and I just give him a shout out he was not only behind that credential, but he just came out with a book as well and it’s, you know what, he just lays it out straight and you know, he goes through You know the concerns but why he believes in it, but it really, it’s like cayenne pepper, you don’t need much in your portfolio. I mean, like low single digit exposure for investors probably makes the most sense.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 50:11
Over the years, we’ve always shared back and forth our reading lists. I’d be curious what your what you’ve picked up lately. What do you what are you reading these days to kind of run what you’re thinking?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 50:19
That’s a good question. So I mean, I am reading a lot of stuff, but actually have a market book next to me. So let’s see here. It’s right behind me. This just happens to be because where I’m sitting right now, but it’s, it’s the soul in the game, as it came for the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting from Batali I’ve never said his last name before out loud, this person was saying and I’ve seen in public, katznelson, is spent solid two thirds of the way through it. He’s kind of jumping all over the place. But hey, you know, I like that. And it’s been a good read.

Tyler Wood 50:47
If you had the time machine, not the weighing machine could go back and tell young Rusty Vanneman, where to go digging? First, what would be your advice to yourself 30 years ago?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 50:56
Well, one of the classic advice when it comes to the markets I just sat down with young men last week is you have to read it, and you have to be in the market. So if somebody’s interested in the markets in Yeah, obviously, you should be reading. And there’s a couple of books. Of course, we I think everybody loves Market Wizards, I still think it’s a great tax I still handed out last week, also just get some money in the markets. And even if you’re going to manage money long term, you should get a taste of different types of investments. So you’re going to win some, you’re going to lose some, you have to get that feeling as soon as possible, what it’s like when you think you’re really good, you have to know what it feels like when you think I maybe I’m not cut out for this, you just have to kind of go through that process. Because you’re ultimately going to be managing money. For other people on origami yourself, you kind of need to desensitize yourself to a lot of those different things. We also think that people coming into the industry, there’s sort of that expression, it’s about learning power and not earning power, is you really want to get into situations where you can just learn as much stuff as possible. And I’m still old school, I don’t think you want a nine to five job necessarily, you want something that’s going to be demanding you an x plus one type situation. So you got to fulfill what you need to do. But you need to keep learning. I mean, David, I went through that at Thomson, I mean, we just never shut off. It’s always about learning. And quite frankly, even as we’ve been in the industry for 30 years, it’s still always about learning and growing and and performing at a high level too it isn’t just about, you know, putting facts in your brain is that you do have to maintain your energy. You know, we’re all basically athletes, and it is about performing at a high level. And it’s not like what it used to be once upon a time where you get four hours asleep. I mean, that sort of thing. I mean, you we really have to take care of ourselves to perform at a high level, because it isn’t just about us. I mean, we’re managing money for other people. And I think

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 52:44
that’s really important. Was that right about the stationary rowing championship?

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 52:48
So I am a Nebraska native and I went to school at Babson College in Massachusetts, as earlier said and then I worked in Massachusetts until I basically came home to CLS investments not part of Orion, which is based in Omaha. But when I moved from Marblehead one of the greatest cities on earth as you know, Dave towns on Earth, is when I moved away from there, I when I first moved back to Nebraska, what I did is I bought an indoor rowing machine, and I would row and watch surfing videos, because I moved away from the water. And so I did that enough that I actually competed in something called the crash B’s, which is the World Indoor rowing championship. I only did it once. It was I mean, it’s it was hard. And it really is people from all over the world came to it. And you know, there were people speaking or somebody from Asia on one side and somebody from Europe on the other they had their little fan clubs speaking and all their different languages. It was kind of a cool experience. And I still do row but I just haven’t competed in a while.

Tyler Wood 53:46
That’s awesome. That’s a great way to unplug from the markets and take care of your physical mental health

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 53:51
and also do a lot of hiking so every year usually gone. David I have hiked in years past and it was affectionately called the death march and I still need to do some hikes now which are like 30 miles and top 10 Most Dangerous hikes in America so I do that every year that somehow convinced my wife even to do them and so so that’s

Tyler Wood 54:13
not a lot of 14 years in Nebraska rusty not sure it’s probably

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 54:18
got to travel gotta travel. This Lake Tahoe this year it was it was let’s say oh my two years ago it was it also in California was at Palm Springs and you’re not supposed to do that hiking or the tram. It’s 10,000 vertical. Don’t do it in July. We did it in July and it’s right COVID So you couldn’t take the tram down so we actually hiked another eight miles over the backside so and then we did Glacier National Park last year. So anyway, do that till I do that. So the rowing

Tyler Wood 54:44
amazing, man amazing.

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 54:46
This has been phenomenal. It’s great to see you. I Like You know that I have a whole lot more stories that I could have actually taken this conversation towards but I also know better to do that because you intend inflict our listeners with stories about me so I will not do that. But I think we kept it within the rails and I appreciate is this great conversation? We’re going to provide links to your book, your what your website and things like that. How else can our listeners stay in touch with you? I mean, you you’re, like I said, you’re very active. So how else can they stay in touch.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 55:12
So again, we’ll provide the links to it. But at orionportfoliosolutions.com. And again, we’ll have the link to it. There’s the Resource tab, there’s all the material that I’m doing links to podcasts, videos, commentaries, I am on LinkedIn at Rusty Vanneman and then Twitter’s at Rusty Vanneman as well. So a lot of different ways to get a hold of me. And I do actually have a question for you guys and a favor because I used to say something once upon a time about my CMT credential. So I am number 256. And listening to your podcast with John Bollinger. He said he was a first CFA CMT. I used to like to say I was in the first 10 But I have no idea if that’s even true. I haven’t said in a while. But I’d like to know like, who were the first CFA CMTs. I think I might have been up there. I got my CMT and ’99. That’s back when you had to do a paper when I submitted my paper, I want to say like a 96 or seven, but there was such demand. And then you had to grade that can you imagine grading all those papers? So took a couple years for it to get graded. But

Tyler Wood 56:12
I’ll tell you this Rusty, there were a heck of a lot more CFAs that joined the CMT program in 2001 than in ’99.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 56:19
I bet no doubt

Tyler Wood 56:20
People rescale in 2001 – 2009 and now here in 2022 We’re at all time record highs but I’ll find out exactly which numbers CFA CMT dual charter holder you are awesome. Look at that in the show notes.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 56:35
There I can brag about

David Lundgren, CMT, CFA 56:37
thanks so much for taking the time and and spending your afternoon with us. Appreciate it.

Rusty Vanneman, CMT, CFA 56:42
A lot of fun. Thank you guys.

Tyler Wood 56:43
Thanks so much Rusty See you soon. fill the gap is brought to you with support from Optuma. In addition to candidate study of the official CMT curriculum, Optuma provides a full video course on all of the material that candidates need to know for each level of the CMT exams. Each course is broken up into modules, ranging from 15 to 45 minutes, depending on the complexity and length of the topics being covered. Learn more at optuma.com