Sunlight is the optimum disinfectant.
The Food and Financial services industry spends billions to deceive consumers and place investors in the dark.
Big Food doles out over $14 billion annually to mislead its customers.
According to Johnny Brown, “All Natural” is a legal loophole.
When you see the term “All Natural” on food labels, buyer beware. The only FDA requirement for this distinction is that these items have no artificial flavors or synthetic colors. The definition does not include HFCS, GMOS Seed Oils, and Antibiotics.
Organic Food may not be what it seems because it may contain high sugar, artificial natural flavors, radiation-exposed seeds, and certain pesticides. Loopholes are a bitch.
Speaking of natural flavors, up to a hundred hidden chemicals can fall under this definition if they “originate” from a plant or animal.
How about the delicious sweets and fast foods pitched incessantly on your TV or computer screen?
Do you know the truth behind these visionary delights?
Pancakes appear sturdier with the use of strategically placed cardboard.
Glue is poured into cereal to prevent it from displaying a soggy image.
Shaving cream coats Pies to make perfect mounds of Whipped Cream
My favorite is heated tampons, which create the smoky effect from a baked potato.
If you don’t believe me, check out this video.
How do these egregious examples of deliberate deception relate to your investments?
It turns out plenty. Investors often purchase synthetic portfolio products that are far inferior to owning the S&P 500 at almost zero cost.
Speaking of the S&P 500, this simple all-natural (sans-smoking Tampons) investment hasn’t done too badly over the decades, as my colleague Ben Carlso points out in a recent post.
Indeed, you could poke some holes by changing your start and end dates to make things look better or worse than these figures. But I’d say these time frames cover various markets and economic environments.
Over this same time period, many fund managers have attempted to beat this OG Investment Health Powerhouse. The results speak for themselves.
The main reason for this underperformance is not the acumen of the portfolio managers. The culprit is the investment fees associated with running actively managed funds. It’s time to pay the piper after expensing salaries and rewarding stockholders with increased dividends. The price is underperforming in comparison to a basic unmanaged index.
Jeffrey Ptak points out the cold, hard facts in his post It’s So Simple.
Talk about a good sort. It’s an almost perfect stairstep from the cheapest funds to the priciest, and it didn’t matter how long the period was. In fact, the longer the trailing period stretched, the wider the outperformance margin grew between the averages.
There’s a new push to inject private equity and private credit into 401(k) plans. These historically complex and opaque investments provide an excellent opportunity for enhanced investment companies’ profits, not retail investors’ portfolios.
If fees are the prime determinant of investment performance, what are the chances of this ending well for the average retirement investor?
Just because it looks good doesnt mean somebody didn’t pour a bottle of Elmer’s Glue into your Cheerios.
The same goes for your investments. Fancy narratives don’t pay the bills.
Stay healthy by eating and investing clean.
