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Dan Slagle  00:00

For me, I always look at specifically like promoters, influencers, like the news in general, especially market news. There's some good content on it, but it like the headlines, like the Dow plummets. You know, we've talked about this before. It's just like it's just noise, especially in 2026. We all need to better understand like what our sources are, what's the validity of the information that we're getting, and who who benefits to win from

Natalie Slagle  00:26

it? Yeah, how do they benefit? Do they benefit on the outcome of your portfolio? Do they benefit on your viewership? Welcome to Money Dates, the podcast that makes money conversations with your partner feel a little less taboo. I'm Natalie Sleigel, a certified financial planner, and I'm joined by my husband and business partner Dan Slagle, also a certified financial planner. Say hi, Dan.

Dan Slagle  00:54

Hello.

Natalie Slagle  00:55

In each episode, we'll share honest stories and practical tips to help you and your partner feel more connected and confident on your financial journey, so grab your drink, get comfortable, and join us for our money dates. Dan, you know what I'm excited for this week?

Dan Slagle  01:15

Well, it is Tuesday at the time of this recording, so what would you be excited for? I'm leaving on Friday. I hope that's not your answer. It is

Natalie Slagle  01:26

not. And actually, like when you were like, "What would you? What does your week look like? I do have some fun things going on this week, but this is the first week that we are starting our date night, official date night with a babysitter every other week, starting this Thursday.

Dan Slagle  01:47

This is not true. We did this like two weeks ago.

Natalie Slagle  01:51

Was that the first? That wasn't like the first. This is like the. I feel like this is the first.

Dan Slagle  01:56

Okay. All right. So you're excited for that. I don't think we've narrowed down our plans. Are we really going to use the intro to the podcast episode today to figure out what our plans are?

Natalie Slagle  02:06

No, no, we don't need to do that. And I think we did narrow down our plans. But I was thinking about it this morning, getting ready, and I'm like, we did it. We prioritized our relationship, our time together, and I feel like we needed this even before we had kids. I think it's always everybody's like, oh, when you have young kids, like it's hard to do this. I think it can be hard to do this even if you don't have kids. I feel like before we had a kid, sometimes we just like, I don't know. It just was like, oh yeah, let's just go grab dinner because we don't feel like cooking. But it wasn't this like we're going on a date? Like I don't know. To this now feels so intentional. I don't think I've I've shouted out where I got this idea from, but it's actually clients of ours. Am I allowed to say their first names or is that? Can I do that? No. Okay. Don't

Dan Slagle  02:58

do that. Don't do that. You know the rules. Don't do that.

Natalie Slagle  03:01

Starts with a B. Starts with an L. I'm going to do that. I think they do date night weekly, and usually we end up meeting with them on the day of the week that they meet. And it's they like get on the train and they meet each other. And I'm just like they inspired me to like push go on the baby or on getting a babysitter on a very like predictable cadence, not just this like once a month when you find out. It's like, no, we're doing every other Thursday because we couldn't commit to every Thursday just yet, and I'm just really proud of us.

Dan Slagle  03:33

I think it's really cool that they actually spend a portion of their date night meeting with you as part of their date night to hire a babysitter, the first hour or so of that is meeting you.

Natalie Slagle  03:45

Yeah, yeah, and obviously this only happens a few times a year, but still, I am very romantic and I just talk up their love the entire time. No, I'm just kidding. But

Dan Slagle  03:58

oh, I thought you were just saying in in general, like you're just-I'm very romantic. I-I thought you're-you're tooting your own horn there.

Natalie Slagle  04:05

No, I probably could be a little bit more romantic, but I do love love. I love other people's love. So their love inspired me to take more initiative and intention in our own relationship, and and we nailed a really good babysitter. So things are just working out. Things are working out.

Dan Slagle  04:26

You said love like 10 times in the span of like two sentences. There, that was pretty incredible.

Natalie Slagle  04:33

Love. You know what I don't love.

Dan Slagle  04:36

Go on.

Natalie Slagle  04:37

Market bubbles.

Dan Slagle  04:39

Market bubbles.

Natalie Slagle  04:41

Bubbles. That's my transition. Market bubbles. What we're going to talk about today, and I'm, we're recording this in a time where we are, the market is still up, up quite a bit year to date, and when we release this, it could be something completely different. And we wanted to make sure we worked on this before it's like obvious that we're in a market bubble or a correction or something like that. So this is good. It's things are going well in the investment world. I mean, obviously, it kind of depends what you're looking at, but eventually that won't be the case. So we are going to have a conversation About how market bubbles work, what we not necessarily what we look for, but just what we need to be mindful of when it comes to being an investor for the long haul. So, buckle up, everybody.

Dan Slagle  05:36

If the market is down by the time this episode releases, I'm going to blame you strictly and only you because you just you might have put that out into the universe. Okay, let's get started. I want to open up this episode by asking you a question, Natalie. So, if you woke up tomorrow and your portfolio is down 40% what's the first thing you do

Natalie Slagle  06:00

as a individual? or as a financial planner.

Dan Slagle  06:04

Put yourself in the listener's position as an individual. What do you do? Which shouldn't be that much different than you as a financial planner. But anyways, so as an individual, what would you do?

Natalie Slagle  06:16

With my own situation, I would pull up our net worth statement, and just look at what has transpired of a 40% depreciation of our investment portfolio. I couldn't not look at it. I would look at it. That would be the first thing I do. Is there's like the things you do on your computer and the things you do on your phone. This would need to be on my computer. I'm looking at it, and I'm taking it in, and then I'm probably calling you over for my voice of reason. What would you do?

Dan Slagle  06:48

I would have to be your voice of reason in that that moment. If you're calling me to be your voice of reason, I have to show up as your voice of reason, which is basically my job in a nutshell. And what you just shared is probably the most honest thing that you've ever shared on this show. I know you, and you would look at your your accounts, and I think that, in summary, is the whole episode right there.

Natalie Slagle  07:12

What do you mean?

Dan Slagle  07:13

Well, I think every bubble in history at some point ends with someone doing exactly what you just said, right? The market's down. There's a period of exuberance. Things happen. Bubbles form. Bubbles burst. And at the end of the day, I think what needs to happen is just instilling the fact. And again, this isn't. This is just overarching advice. Like you should not take any action potentially with what is happening, and like depending on what the purpose of your investment accounts is, like does a a one drawdown of the market really impact results that you'll need from accounts in 20 plus years? That's what we're going to talk about today. So I want to focus on today, like we try to better understand why people do not so smart things with their money, like collectively and on a massive scale. I think those would be really important things to look at.

Natalie Slagle  08:16

Yeah, absolutely. And when we talk about bubbles, there's certain bubbles that come to mind as a financial planner, and and those who pay attention to the investment markets in the history. They've got like when I say tulips, people are like, "Oh yeah, the bubble. I think we'll talk about that today.com. housing bubble, crypto. Like there's so many different bubbles, and one bubble that has been talked about quite a bit with our client base is like the AI bubble. Like, of course we're in an AI bubble. That's what I've been told, and I want to unpack that a little bit today as well.

Dan Slagle  08:53

Yeah, and like the point of this episode is not necessarily to like recite history at you, the the listener. Like, I think, what would be a better spin on it that we should approach it as is like we want you to actually like sit in some of the discomfort of it, right? Like sit in the discomfort of historical potential future bubbles and ask some real questions about like how would you behave if we were in that exact moment, right? Because what is the saying? Hindsight is 2020. This is true. Hindsight is 2020. So when we talk about historical bubbles, it's easy to say, "Oh yeah, I would have done this. But like when you're actually present, you're potentially in a bubble. Like, how do you really think about it? How do you react to

Natalie Slagle  09:36

it? Right. If we're in a bubble now, then are we at the top? And if we are at the top, you should be selling, right? If it was that easy to predict, the same people who are saying we're in an AI bubble, well, those same people should then be selling, and they're not. And so it it seems easy to call it out and to label it before the events are actually happening. But that's not what actually takes place. It's bubbles are crazy. Bubbles are crazy.

Dan Slagle  10:09

Bubbles are crazy. That's the the TLDR. If that's still like a cool thing, I don't know if that's still a cool thing. But that's basically it. Bubbles are crazy. Before we talk about some of the historical context of market bubbles and bubbles in in general, like let's take a step back and like some listeners might be like, what even is a bubble? Like the only bubble I know is like my child playing with bubbles in the backyard, and we pop the bubbles. Well, it's kind of like basically a market bubble, right? So

Natalie Slagle  10:38

yeah, that's pretty much Natalie. I

Dan Slagle  10:39

guess like what what is your definition of a market bubble?

Natalie Slagle  10:43

A market bubble would be something that is priced in a way that's not reflecting the actual underlying value. So the price can't necessarily justify what investors are paying for, and a lot of the price then is driven by expectation or speculation that it will keep rising, rather than the fundamentals supporting what that price is reporting. How'd I do?

Dan Slagle  11:12

Nice. I think that was pretty good. So, like in summary, it's like not. I mean, the asset the asset that goes through the bubble is important, but a lot of the importance also to what you're talking about, like speculative pricing or like rising in price way faster than its like actual like true value is worth. I think that oftentimes comes from a lot of like the story people are actually telling themselves about the specific asset.

Natalie Slagle  11:41

Yes, the story is big because we can justify quite a bit in our heads. We will say, you know, this time is different. Oh man, I've heard that so many times, and I've said that. I have said that, even though I know it. When you say that, that's you got to check yourself. Everyone's getting in. I don't want to miss out. That's the fuel for the story.

Dan Slagle  12:07

FOMO.

Natalie Slagle  12:08

FOMO.

Dan Slagle  12:09

Potential FOMO, right? So I think like when we think about the phases of a bubble, like the classical model is something around like displacement, a boom, euphoria. Then at the top, there's like people start to take profits off the table, and then when the profits are taken off the table, that's usually when the panic starts to potentially occur. And I think like displacement to me, out of those like those different stages, displacement is like the spark, right? Like this perfect world we're in right now, the example is like some sort of new technology that is genuinely like changing people's expectations about the here and now and in the future, right? And I think the boom and what a lot of our clients have reiterated to us is they feel like we're definitely like in that stage now. The boom is like when prices start climbing, you start to get attention of media outlets, right? Euphoria is when like caution is caution just goes out the window, right? Like I always like to say, I'm cautiously optimistic. Like I like to be a little more calculated, but like in euphoria, like screw caution, right? Valuations stop mattering. Like everyone is a genius in this space, right? Like this is where we get to, and then where we start to see maybe things unravel a little bit is like the profit taking. Like people who are are watching this or maybe happy with their gains, especially if we're talking about like stocks, for example, money starts to be taken off the table like quietly. People are kind of exiting, right, and like and capturing those gains that they've they've held. And then to me, like the the tail end, of course, is like the panic. It's the crash. Like everyone starting to realize what is actually happening to an asset versus like where the underlying value of that asset should be, and everyone tries to start selling simultaneously.

Natalie Slagle  14:06

Yeah, and that's just the selling that occurs in these types of market conditions is just really propels us down. Yeah, I think.

Dan Slagle  14:16

Yeah, for sure. And I think like the idea of selling like during euphoria, it's just like a sense of like people feeling right, and I think that's kind of like the whole trap, right? Like getting out when things are are bad,

Natalie Slagle  14:30

right?

Dan Slagle  14:31

And not potentially thinking as they're like, what about the future upside? Maybe not in like a single stock, but like overall markets.

Natalie Slagle  14:38

People tend to focus a lot on the top, right? The top of of a bubble and getting out, but you also have to focus on the bottom because if you get out, you have to come back unless you're going to stay in cash forever, and most people can't afford to do that. So you have to make two very painful decisions. And the odds are against you that you're going to get the timing right, but you have to get out when it feels like everybody's still staying on and making a bunch of money, right? Like that's a really hard time to say time to go. And then when everybody's pulling money out, the market is so down. You have to feel confident enough to then put your cash back in the market, and it's both of those sides are so uncomfortable to make decisions on. People almost always get the timing wrong because you have to get it right on both ends. And there doesn't exist someone who has done it right over and over again. Otherwise, we would all be investing our money with that person. But it just it doesn't exist.

Dan Slagle  15:41

Let's talk about some actual historical bubbles that have happened, and I think the first one that that comes to me, at least in in the field we're in, because I don't know if like the general public is aware of like the tulip bubble, like tulip mania, and I think that's always a fun place place to start because I think it's such an interesting bubble, like especially in 2026, when I'm like tulips, like really dang, like there was a bubble that like burst about tulips. Let's go back to the tulip mania, we'll call it, or the tulip craze. So we're going back 1630s Netherlands, like we're going to talk about tulips, right? Like, and Nellie, like I think you said early on, this is the one that like everyone starts to name drop, right? So set the stage for me.

Natalie Slagle  16:24

Okay, so tulips arrived in Europe from the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s. Okay, so by the 1600s, they became a status symbol in the Dutch Republic, and remember, this was in the middle of the golden age. So wealthy merchants, booming trade economy, and lots of ways for people to like show off their their new money and you know things like that. That's the scene.

Dan Slagle  16:56

Okay. Okay. So, like tulips were, I'm capturing it correctly. Like tulips seem to be around this time, like exotic, obviously beautiful. I love tulips. Do you love tulips?

Natalie Slagle  17:09

I love tulips. Yeah, we got. What if I just showed up to a

Dan Slagle  17:11

date night on Thursday and just brought you some tulips? How nice! You couldn't

Natalie Slagle  17:15

find them. They're not in season, Dan, unless they're being formed from somewhere else. In case I

Dan Slagle  17:20

really know about tulips. Okay, so tulips are obviously like with this the stage of the the 1600s like trades really important. They're kind of mysterious, right? But there's also this thing about like tulips like breaking air quotes this like breaking thing. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Natalie Slagle  17:35

Yeah. So when you think about a tulip, usually think of like a red one or a yellow one, but they started to develop this flame-like striped pattern on their petal, and later it was found out it's caused by a virus. But at the time, nobody understood why. It just seemed like random, and you know, it's like the four-leaf clover, and if you have it, then it was special. So those ones that again had this virus, but they looked really, really neat, became insanely prized because it was kind of random. Like you couldn't necessarily predict, or you couldn't predict if you were going to get one if you planted them, and and you obviously couldn't reliably reproduce them as well.

Dan Slagle  18:23

Okay, so it so like what we're talking about now, like as you mentioned that you you've got like scarcity thrown into it, a little mysterious status around tulips and like having tulips, and then like obviously the variety of special tulip. And I would imagine now like there's a class out there, like a working a new class of people, I should say, with like more disposable income, and I think that's kind of the recipe for where we're going to get into next with this story.

Natalie Slagle  18:51

Yeah, so it has the whole framework, the whole recipe for a bubble, because the bulbs trade seasonally, which I was explaining to you for date night purposes, but you can only move them around when they're dormant, so out of the ground. So it's like a a futures style market developed. And I remember, like when I first got a, you know, I just said something that like maybe not all listeners understand when you think about a futures market, and I remember, like back in our Minnesota days, there would be this column of like futures with corn bushels of wheat and cows and stuff.

Dan Slagle  19:33

Oh yeah, that was goofy.

Natalie Slagle  19:35

What am I listening to? But anyways, it's just because well, the bulbs aren't there yet. So, what do you think the price of the bulb is going to be in the future, so people were buying and selling these contracts for tulip bulbs that were still in the ground, and it didn't really exist yet, and they weren't sure what the specific variety or coloring was going to be. So it's like this really great. Environment for how markets work, how we think about markets today, future style markets, like kind of neat. I think it

Dan Slagle  20:07

is super neat, nerd. Okay, so speculating, like basically, what's happening is like there's speculation happening, right? Like speculation on on paper with contracts, and like people are are pricing things that like whilst like not even holding on to the physical flower, essentially,

Natalie Slagle  20:25

right. So, and this is when the peak happens, which is so again, it's like so easy to say this and be like, of course, because it was in the 1636 into 1637, the prices for the rarest bulbs were reportedly reaching the price of a house in Amsterdam, and so when I just say that, it's it's like of course we're in exuberance and bubble territory, but when you're in it, it's not so obvious. So some accounts describe the single bulbs trading for the equivalent of a skilled craftsman income across several years, like we're talking about, like these flowers that I see every spring, that all the neighbors have, everybody like as much as a house. What

Dan Slagle  21:13

man? If only that was the world we still lived in. Like, just kidding. I don't want to live in that world. Okay. So anyway, so and then what happens essentially? So we've reached like the peak of what you're saying. So I am fully expecting things to go bad. What happens next?

Natalie Slagle  21:29

So in 1637, at a routine bulb auction, buyers just didn't show up. So no one knows why exactly on that specific day, some historians point to a plague outbreak disrupting the market, and others say that, like, hey, maybe people just the confidence cracked. They just decided to put their focus elsewhere. But the point is, prices didn't gradually cool off; they collapsed, and this is what tends to happen in a bubble, right? So, in a matter of days, in some cases, to a small fraction of their peak value, the prices absolutely crashed.

Dan Slagle  22:09

That's crazy. Where do I want to go with this next? I feel like, like here's the thing that like always gets me about tulip mania. It's like WrestleMania, but tulip mania, right? Like imagine Hulk Hogan, like at the Hulk Hogan, with tulip mania, like specifically, like historians. It seems like they kind of like have actually argued about like how bad it it really was, right? Like I feel like when we recount the story, it's like, oh, this is so crazy. But I think there's some like discrepancies and like how big of it of an event this actually was?

Natalie Slagle  22:43

Yeah, yeah. Like maybe, especially in the investing world, we love to talk about it. We love to use it as a lesson, and maybe it's like what we're repeating is what we believe to be what happened. I'm, you know, the 1600s. Who knows? Maybe it's all made up and we got it all wrong, but the myth and the story is still a really good story on how we can get so excited and so blinded by the excitement of a market and what that can lead to. And I think there's just a really important lesson to be learned with these tulips, and it's a tulip. People, people are like, "What? That's what people went crazy for.

Dan Slagle  23:28

That's wild. Let's talk about some other recent bubbles. I said recent, but I'm going to hit you on with that. It isn't that recent. It's more recent to the the tulip mania. So, just a brief bubble that historically had happened involving a very smart person, 1720 South Sea Bubble. So basically, the British company gets like a monopoly on trade with South America. So they kind of own what's happening from a trade standpoint. So the stock literally goes from like 100 to 1000 in a matter of months, based on pure like speculation of overall hype, right? That's kind of like the moral of where bubbles are getting to, right? And then it essentially collapses by the end of the year. So, one and I talked about this smart person. Actually, fun fact. Well, let me tell you who the smart person is first. Isaac Newton. Fun fact: When we were in London earlier this year, yours truly actually stood on the grave of Sir Isaac Newton.

Natalie Slagle  24:26

Yeah,

Dan Slagle  24:27

at Western. There was foreshadowing,

Natalie Slagle  24:28

foreshadowing happening. What

Dan Slagle  24:31

do you wait? What is the foreshadowing like

Natalie Slagle  24:34

of this episode recording?

Dan Slagle  24:36

Oh, okay. I thought you were getting to something like eerie or grave about me?

Natalie Slagle  24:42

No, no, I will keep you alive.

Dan Slagle  24:44

Okay, so Isaac Newton, obviously, you know, very very smart person in historical context. Like he himself also lost a large sum of money in these speculative trades. So this obviously goes to show that no one is, no one can hide from these types. Events, right? Like if you take an action, something could happen. If you're invested in in a bubble, I think that the next bubble, which definitely our listeners can relate to a little bit more, the.com bubble.

Natalie Slagle  25:13

Yeah, yeah. The internet came alive in our generation, which is really neat to think. But the delusion of valuing any company with .com in the way that it was is it was happening everywhere. What was it like? Pets.com that was why it was something like that had to do with pets. I remember that being a really big one. But the Nasdaq roughly quintupled between 1995 and its peak in March of 2000, and then lost about 78 percent of its value by October 2002.

Dan Slagle  25:52

Y2K, that's crazy. Another recent one, 2008. Obviously, the the housing crisis. So a little different flavor here, but this one, this bubble is completely built on debt and leverage more than pure speculation. So certain standards around mortgage practices collapse, housing prices treated as like a one-way bet. I'll call it, and the the risk essentially gets bundled, sliced, and sold off globally as supposedly safe securities. And when home prices stall, and then they decline, they fall. Like the whole structure underneath the global financial system just crack.

Natalie Slagle  26:33

Yeah, that was a really scary time.

Dan Slagle  26:36

Super scary. Yeah, yeah, super scary. The last one we we can get into briefly 2021, like post, not post COVID. Sorry, like we're still in the midst of COVID during this time frame.

Natalie Slagle  26:48

Yeah. So GameStop, AMC, Dogecoin. Do you all? This wasn't that long ago. What was that movie that was made on GameStop that we went and saw?

Dan Slagle  26:58

I don't know. I just remember the guy's name was Roaring Kitty.

Natalie Slagle  27:01

Yes, that was actually a pretty good movie.

Dan Slagle  27:04

It was played by the guy who was in. His name is Paul. I'm pretty sure his name is Paul. I don't know his last name, but I do remember him from like my like early teenage days of watching the movie The Girl Next Door.

Natalie Slagle  27:18

Yes.

Dan Slagle  27:19

Real quick, he had this great quote in the movie. I think it was him or another one of his friends in the movie, and it was like talking about how we are a tripod. There were three three friends, and they were talking about how like if one leg of the tripod gets kicked over, then the tripod collapses.

Natalie Slagle  27:37

That's the quote that you thought was genius, really, Dan?

Dan Slagle  27:42

No, the the quote that's genius in that movie was the juice is worth the squeeze. Anyways, go ahead.

Natalie Slagle  27:48

Okay, that's a good one. But that was a really fascinating time, and I thought the movie did a good job displaying what was happening because retail investors, so people like you and I and listeners, were coordinating in real time on social platforms, partly for profit and partly to just like stick it to the man, you know, to the institutional short sellers. So Bitcoin went from around $5,000 in early 2020 to nearly $69,000 by November 2021, and then dropped by more than 70% within a year, so again, just similar story, right? Just a different asset.

Dan Slagle  28:27

Yeah. All right. So we have given you now historical context in terms of market bubbles. We've explained what a market bubble is. I want to get to the point now of where we can put ourselves in situations such as these, historical and forward-looking, and and start to think about like what questions or question should you be asking yourself when you open your investment accounts and things don't look as good. So this is kind of like the uncomfortable part, uncomfortable in terms of like what putting yourself in in that position, because it again is really easy like to hear these stories and think I would never, right? Like I would never invest at a peak. I would never have sold off in like a broad market, knowing that the market is going to recover because, again, hindsight's 2020. But almost everyone in every one of these bubbles thought that too. Maybe not everyone. Maybe that's a little generous, but a lot of people think that way. Basically, right up until like they did or they didn't take an action, right? So I think we should just let's just go. Let's just go off with some of these questions and think about it out loud and and honestly. And I'll start us off with with what I think is a big one to ask, which is kind of what I opened the podcast with with you bringing it full circle. If you saw your portfolio drop 40% In a month, what would you actually do? Not what would you like to think you'd do. Like, what would you actually do?

Natalie Slagle  30:09

I think I'd be sad. I think I'd have a lot of conversations with you. I think these feelings of anxiety would spiral. You know, I'd think if this is happening to our portfolio, what is going to happen to my job? So, I think even though I know that this happens, this is the price we pay as an investor. It is not easy. We have to go through hard times. Like I would, I know this. I've studied this. But when you're actually in it, I would question a lot of my studies, and I honestly, I would think whatever I do is what we should also do for our clients. And so this is a level that, like, I get to go. You know, a thought process that I get to go through that our clients don't get to go through. Most people don't. Is whatever I do that should be what I recommend to our clients. So would I, in this instant, recommend that we get out of the portfolio. We put our money. We like we save it, or we we reposition it in cash where it's not depreciating so much. Because if I do that, I should be recommending that to my clients. And I know it's like once I put that layer on, I'd be like, no, I know this isn't in their best interest. It's gonna suck, and I know, and that's going to be what helps me not do something that I know will feel really good, but will not be good for my long-term projections. That's my honest answer. Is that extra filter helps me? And I, you know, not everybody gets the the privilege of that extra filter that you and I get to have, Dan.

Dan Slagle  31:40

To me, it's important to delineate between like, is this a single asset class type bubble, as opposed to maybe being invested in like what I'm getting as like single stock risk, which we talked about in the past, right? Versus like diversified for portfolio risk, especially when we talk about bubbles, because like if I'm talking about single stock like risk, I think for me, or maybe industry-specific risk. Like I, I think for me, my honest take and my honest lens on it would likely be: I'm going to start looking for narrative and reasoning of why it's basically going to be different this time, right? Some like some narrative that lets me either hold on or buy more because we're thinking about it from a discount pricing standpoint now. Which sometimes that's right, sometimes that's right. But go back to tulip mania, like that's what someone thought themselves, right? Like buying up tulip futures and and look what happened to them. I think for me, that's typically where I I tend to go. Even just from a professional lens, is like, is this instance going to be worse than what's happened in the past? If so, does this present an opportunity to like the old adage, buy low, sell high. It's just the opportunity to to buy low. Also, just a random thing. When I was just starting off in this industry, there was some guy in my office that had BMW, and his license plate was buy low, and I think that's so so trashy. It's like that's so weird.

Natalie Slagle  33:25

That is so oh god! Finance bros are the worst, Dan. They are the worst.

Dan Slagle  33:32

I'm about to bust out my Patagonia vest next meeting. Next meeting. Next podcast.

Natalie Slagle  33:37

I like how you kind of brought up like, well, is it an asset class bubble is it asset bubble? Because we think about you know the tulip bubble is a very specific thing. We think about the housing housing crisis that started in a specific in a specific asset class that then, like you pointed out, it took down the entire system, so you had nowhere to hide. You were, as an investor, you weren't really safe in in most places, even though it started in a specific realm. So it that's a really interesting. Just taking a step back and and just saying evaluating and don't evaluate with news people with news outlets like they're not in it for portfolio returns in the long run. They're in it for clicks and views, right? So evaluating with the right research and people what is actually happening here and and how is it impacting you? So Dan, I want to ask you a question. When was the last time you bought something like a stock, crypto, a big purchase, mostly because you were afraid of missing out, rather than because you had done analysis and that's that's the appropriate investment for your portfolio.

Dan Slagle  35:00

You are busting my professional chops here. Okay, you mentioned crypto. That's an easy one for me. I I bought some crypto for the first time going back in, and I think it was 2021, like around the time of the bubble that you said because it was getting so much publicity. Like honestly, like a lot of our clients were bringing it up in meetings and was still a fairly new asset class, if that's what we want to call it. Like at that time, so I needed to educate myself, and for me, sometimes educating myself means like participating in that asset to better understand it. So I bought some Bitcoin. I won't say how much I bought Bitcoin, but I actually put more of the investment into Ethereum because I had read more about Ethereum, and I thought, okay, people are putting their money into Bitcoin. I'm going to be a little different, put some more into Ethereum, and I mean that account just has sucked over the past like four to five years. Like no, no filter on it. You know, I like after I put money in it, of course. And the hard part is like it trades 24/7, right?

Natalie Slagle  36:06

Yeah,

Dan Slagle  36:07

it's a very small portion of our overall investment portfolio, like probably less than 1% So it doesn't really move the needle, but it allowed me to participate. So I think that to me is probably the last time that I bought something without maybe doing the proper analysis. Although my analysis approach with that asset was let's just participate and learn from the experience. I always look back because I want to toot my own horn of when you and I first started dating. So it must been like 2013. I remember going to a used bookstore and buying a book about Bitcoin, and I kick myself sometimes, just like most people do when they have an investment opportunity and they don't take it. I wish I would have rather at that point rather than buy the Bitcoin book. I should have just bought Bitcoin, like that would have paid off so much more. But anyway, so like, what about you? What's something like whether it's a stock, you know, crypto, or just like another bigger purchase that that you you went through with like the idea of like you were just afraid of missing out?

Natalie Slagle  37:10

I didn't pull the trigger, and I wanted to. And my guess is you were like, no. Because with me,

Dan Slagle  37:17

well, it depends what you're going to say, but

Natalie Slagle  37:19

no, it was you were no you gave great investment advice. It was NFTs. Remember those were big during COVID. Not those

Dan Slagle  37:28

are so fungible.

Natalie Slagle  37:29

What's the acronym? Non fungible

Dan Slagle  37:31

tokens.

Natalie Slagle  37:32

Non fungible tokens. And I remember like Justin Bieber had some, and there was this monkey one, and I was like, I don't know what is happening. I don't get this, but I want to buy this digital piece of art that is a banana driving a boat, and someone's gonna tell me it's worth $2 million in three years because that's how. And it just felt like you know we were all online, we were on our phones because it was COVID, and it felt like everybody was getting into whether it's crypto or these NFTs, and it does just-it's like a part of the human experience. You feel so wrong when you're not participating, and I remember we made like a social media post about NFTs, completely driven by the fact that I was starting to get interested in them, and I was like, "Damn, damn! Let's go buy the banana on the boat thing. And you were like, "Please go watch your TV or read a book and stop talking to me about NFTs.

Dan Slagle  38:35

This this sounds right.

Natalie Slagle  38:36

I would have. I absolutely. But you were like, "No, like, and you weren't knowing like a disrespectful like you can't do that with our money. It was like you figuratively slapped me across the head and was like, "You fool, what are you doing? It was right, and so, but again, it's like you. I think back to that moment. I'm like, I can't believe I wanted to buy one of those. That's not like me. Like you and I are really level-headed with our investment decisions, which is why we're we have the jobs we do because being level-headed is so important in investment management. But this is why you lead the investment management and I don't because I got a little swayed. I got a little swayed.

Dan Slagle  39:18

Well, I'm glad you're doing this self-reflection and also giving me kudos when I deserve it. The next question that I think is important to think about, and I don't want you to answer this one. I want to just read this one off to to our listeners. I I think you know you need to ask yourself like, how would you know the difference in the moment between a like a real paradigm shift, like something genuinely different, like the early internet and a bubble narrative, that sounds, that just sounds like one. Like, how do you identify the shift, whether it's a bubble or not? Like, just think that through. The next question I, I think, is really important, and I want listeners to really sit with this. Especially for those of you who have single stock risk, maybe you have some crypto risk on the table. Whether you have like a legacy stock, right? Like to me, this is a really important question to ask yourself. So, if you are currently holding an investment that's gone up a lot in price, you need to ask yourself: Would you buy it today at today's price if you didn't already own

Natalie Slagle  40:27

it? Yeah, that's a great gut check because I think of people who have a million dollar exposure into a single stock investment, and they see their cost basis and they see their gains, and if they had that million dollars in cash right now, would they put it into that same single stock for the appreciation that they're thinking is ahead? It's a really good way to frame it. Also, we have a really great episode on concentration risk, that if you haven't had the chance to listen to it, ties in really well with this podcast. So make sure to give that that one a listen as well. We'll put it in the show notes. But I really like that question, Dan. And you know, I said a million dollars because it's easy to use that as a figure. But it could be anything. It could be $100. It could be 100,000. Whatever it is for you.

Dan Slagle  41:22

Yeah, and then the last question to think about too is like, who's, especially in times of a of a bubble or like the impending bubble bursting, like whose voice are you listening to right now, and what does that person gain if you believe them? Because every single bubble that we've talked about up to this point, there is no shortage of people with some sort of incentive potentially to keep the story going, right? And like for me, I always look at like specifically like promoters, influencers, like the news in general, especially market news. It's so there's some good content on it, but it like the headlines, like the Dow plummets. You know, we've talked about this before. It's just like it's just noise, and it's not like I'm not trying to be like cynical about like everyone. I just like think you need to better understand potentially like what your sources are, especially in 2026. We all need to better understand like what our sources are, what's the validity of the information that we're getting, and who who benefits to win from it?

Natalie Slagle  42:27

Yeah, because is how do they benefit? Do they benefit on the outcome of your portfolio? Do they benefit on your viewership? For us, for our clients, if their portfolios did not perform optimally in the long run, they wouldn't be able to work with us. It is we are incentivized for our clients' financial plans to work. That's like how we make investment decisions. That's where we make advice. So I think about to your point, Dan, an influencer, someone in the media. Your financial outcome doesn't really impact how they're getting compensated or their job or whatever it may be.

Dan Slagle  43:07

Yeah, let's wrap it up. This has been a lot of fun. I enjoyed revisiting some of these these bubbles that I haven't really recalled in in several years. So I guess what what's your takeaway? What's your actual takeaway from this episode,

Natalie Slagle  43:22

my takeaway is that having time to pause and think about this has actually been really helpful, not just professionally but personally, because this is going to happen to us numerous times as an investor. And so, your questions that you came up with, how would I react? I always tell my every time I have conversations with like this, I'm like I should journal more. So I'm thinking I should journal more because journaling in times like these are going to be important. Hey, remember you said that this is how you would react, and now you want to sell your whole portfolio? Hmm. You know, my takeaways are to really stay calm in these moments, to ask yourself meaningful questions, and to think about where am I getting my information from, how, and how does that information impact the decisions I make going forward?

Dan Slagle  44:15

Yeah, that's really good. I think my big takeaway is maybe just we all need a little more humility about the fact that, like, even 400 years later, since Tulipania, since the South Sea Bubble, like, we're still doing some sort of version of it, and it won't stop. Right? There's always some new going to be some new technology. There's going to be some new shift, some new way of thinking. It's just always going to be some sort of different story, different asset. But here's the thing: we still have the same nervous system that we had back

Natalie Slagle  44:45

then. We do. I'm not a doctor. I can't

Dan Slagle  44:48

like medically say that, but like that's my intuition. That's true. Same nervous system, and honestly, like that's just that could be like the whole real headline of of this episode, right? Is that. Bubbles are just going to constantly come and go, especially if you're on the younger end and you have maybe 70 more years of life, however many more years of life. Not to be morbid about it, it's not morbid. I just need to get over it myself. But like, have a little more humility around it, and give yourself some grace and have a thought process. And hopefully, these questions are going to attribute to that thought process of what would you do if there was another bubble? I should say sorry. When there is another bubble,

Natalie Slagle  45:31

when there is another bubble, it's happening, going to happen. We're in it. We're not in it. I don't know.

Dan Slagle  45:38

It sounds like you need one of those magic eight balls. Like shake it real hard. Did you ever have a magic eight ball growing up?

Natalie Slagle  45:44

Of course.

Dan Slagle  45:46

Okay. What were some of the prompts? What were some of the responses? I never had. Try

Natalie Slagle  45:50

again. I hated that one. Try again. Try again. There you go. Try

Dan Slagle  45:54

again.

Natalie Slagle  45:55

Yeah. If I was like, I'm shaking it. I'm shaking it. Are we in a bubble? It would say try again because it's like it's not that easy. Can't shake the magic eight ball. We just have to be mindful of our thoughts and what we can and can't control when the market bubble presents itself.

Dan Slagle  46:13

That's right. Thanks, Natalie.

Natalie Slagle  46:14

Thanks for the conversation, Dan.

Dan Slagle  46:19

If you've enjoyed this episode and are looking for personalized financial guidance, schedule a free complimentary consultation using the link in the description. Natalie and Dan Slagle are the founding partners of Equal Voices Wealth, a registered investment advisor. The information provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any securities. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Equal Voices Wealth and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. For more information, including our disclosures, please visit our website at www.equalvoices.co.