Podcast Episode - Don’t Get On The Financial Roller Coaster

On this Suze School episode, Suze explains more about the concept of a “free trade”.  Plus, why it’s vitality important to know exactly what you’re invested in, how to figure year end tax strategies and what your cost basis will be, so you know what your plan is and how you can stick with it.

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Podcast Transcript:

Suze: November 23, 2025. Welcome everybody to the Women and Money podcast as well as everybody smart enough to listen. Today is Suze School, so get out your Suze notebooks.

You know, I've been doing this now for 40 years.

And over those 40 years I have watched these markets go way up and I have watched them go way down.

But I've always known one thing.

That if you are invested in good quality stocks, if you are invested and you have a plan in the areas and you are diversified enough that you're not just all in one sector.

That over time, you will make a significant amount of money.

I've always said to you, you are only to invest in the stock market if you have at least five, 10, 15 years or longer, truthfully.

Where you don't need the money and the minimum there was five years. And why five years? Because normally it will take five years from the top of something like the market to go all the way down to the bottom and then all the way back up again.

So I could quote you numbers, I could give you examples, I can give you all of that.

But we could also talk about where many of you probably are, emotionally and financially speaking at this moment in time.

We have had an extraordinary run, extraordinary with stocks like Palantir, IONQ, and others with the Mag 7. Extraordinary run.

And in the last week especially, we've watched a stock like Palantir go from, actually last two weeks, from 207 down to 170, back up again a little, and then last week down to as low as 147 and end at about 150 something and who knows how low it can go.

You've watched IONQ do the exact same thing, go from the high of approximately $85 a share all the way down to $41 where it is right now. Of course, when you look at both those stocks within this 52 week period, they started IONQ at about 17.88.

You saw Palantir this year, in just this year, everybody, you saw it as low at $63 a share. When we really started talking about it, it was at $7.

So there is a law of money which is look at what you have, not at what you had. The biggest mistake you will ever make in life when it comes to investing is when you say to yourself, if only I had.

If only I had sold Palantir at 207. If only I had sold IONQ in the 80s, look at the money I would have made.

I have said over and over again on this podcast that it's not until you sell, that you have made that money, and what's most important for you to do when you are investing is not really what you could have made, but take an honest look at what you actually have made. What did you buy those stocks at?

Are you still up considerably, like over 100% or whatever?

But you're upset because you're no longer up maybe 200% or whatever it may be.

That will be your downfall if you spend time going, I wish it would go up. I want it to go back up. I liked knowing how much money I had. You have to look at what you have and for those of you who bought IONQ or Palantir or the other Mag 7 or whatever it is that you bought at the top.

And now you're down. Here's what I can tell you. A good quality stock, and those are great quality stocks, your NVIDIAs are great. They are great.

Will always come back over time, which is why dollar cost averaging is so very important. And have we not said that the way you want to invest is through dollar cost averaging, and you always want to leave enough money there so that when something does go down like they are going down now, you're able to take advantage of it and if it goes down further, you're able to take advantage of it and you just stick with it. But let's just say you're in a situation where...

You don't have any more money to invest. You have put it all in there, and now what do you do?

Now you just stick it out, believe it or not.

Unless the stock itself has changed, unless what they're doing has changed, you just stick with it, and it will eventually go way back up and above where you are right now. Now we could go into recession. We could have a lot of those stocks go way back down even more.

But overall, as long as you are totally in other areas as well, which is why I always said for those of you who don't own a whole lot of stocks, you don't have that type of diversification. There's nothing wrong with owning a Standard and Poor's 500 index for the majority of your money or 50% of your money, and then put a little more money in those four or five other stocks that we were thinking were really going to continue up and wanted to and probably will.

So with that in mind, we were also talking last week on the Women and Money podcast, and we had Fritzy, Fitzy with us, Keith Fitz-Gerald, and we introduced one of Keith's absolutely favorite things to do called a free trade.

And in introducing that concept, a lot of you got very, very confused.

And one of you wrote me and you said, do you do a free trade, Suze? Is that what you do?

And I want to set the record straight on who does this free trade and who does not...

A free trade, and a free trade by the way, everybody, is: you invest money, you've now made 100% on your money, you sell half of your position, take off what you originally put in, and just see what happens from there.

Now, I don't think that's a bad idea on any level—if and only if this is money that you may need. This is really important money for you to maybe have to access within five years or whatever it may be, or if you are a nervous investor, and you are an investor that doesn't know quite what to do and just gets afraid. If that is who you are, then you should absolutely do a free trade at least once.

Should you, in my opinion, continue to do a free trade every time it doubles? Actually, if you are an investor that has time on their side, I don't believe that. I think if you have taken your money off at least once, OK, from that point on, maybe you want to let it ride forever. If you're an investor who isn't nervous, who isn't afraid, you never have to do a free trade.

Have I ever done a free trade? And the answer to that is no. Did I take 10% off the table of Palantir when Keith said to do so? I absolutely did. Did I do it the first time that he said to take it off the table? I absolutely did. And then I saved that money. And then when Palantir did happen to go down from the points that I took that 10% off, I bought back in.

Because I want to own that stock. I want to own IONQ. I don't want to limit my position, so...

Another thing you have to take into consideration—it is very, very different if you have money in a Roth retirement account, even a traditional retirement account, an IRA, and if you own these stocks in an investment account that is subject to taxes.

Because you have to make a decision. Oh my God, if I take money off the table, what does that do to my income tax bracket overall? Are you already in a higher income tax bracket? If you bought a lot of shares of stock outside of a retirement account and now it has doubled, and you take 50% off, and you haven't even owned it in a year—a year that would qualify you for long-term capital gains—and it's going to be taxed to you as ordinary income simply by taking the money off the table, have you lost it anyway because you gave half of that to the government and then gave yourself a higher income tax bracket overall?

So it's never just so simple. There is no rule that is hard and fast. All of you have individual personalities, individual comfort levels, individual tax brackets, individual situations as to where you bought this stock to begin with, individual goals, and all of that has to be taken into consideration.

A lot of times when you do a podcast or whatever it may be, you're on TV, you talk to the majority of people that are out there. And you introduce an idea to everybody.

So, investing is a very individual thing.

And I have tried to teach you that you have to do what's right for you. You have to have enough knowledge in what you are doing and what you want to do, so that when somebody introduces an idea or whatever you go, oh, I like that. I should do that.

Now somebody, by the way, was listening. One of my neighbors here on the island that we live, and she listened to it, and she wrote me, I really needed to hear that because I have a 1,000% gain in NVIDIA, and I really should take some of that off.

And the reason probably is that now makes up too big of a position in her entire portfolio, so you are not to look at your portfolio as one or two stocks. You are to look at your portfolio as to all the money that you have invested, and do you have it invested in such a way that you have cushions for yourself.

Cushion that if one area really goes down, maybe the other stays stable or whatever. Now there will be times when the entire market goes down, like in 2008, and there is nothing you can do about it except dollar cost average back into it and wait for time to correct it.

So, these are very important things that I'm telling you, and it's not just the stock market. Bitcoin has absolutely been obliterated. It broke its support levels, it's absolutely down in the 80,000s, down from like 134. It is down significantly.

Does that bother me? No. Do I look at that as an opportunity to invest and buy more? I do.

However, I don't plan to touch that money for years. I don't plan to touch Palantir for years. I don't plan to touch my portfolio for years.

Now, for those of you who need your money to generate income for you, then have I not always said to you dividend-paying stocks are the way to go because you will get growth and you will get possibly a higher interest rate than what bonds and CDs and other things are going to give you.

And that is the way that you should go, and you should still go that way. But if you're just simply investing, and you're nervous about it, and you bought a dividend-paying stock, but the dividend-paying stock now is going down, then you have to really look at yourself in the mirror and just maybe you are somebody who only belongs in treasuries, in certificates of deposit, in individual bonds, in things that make you feel secure, since the goal of money is for you to be secure.

And the biggest mistakes are made when you are not secure, when you are afraid. Like if you have been selling and you're selling now, you're making, in my opinion, if you have years till you need this money, you are and will be making one of the biggest mistakes ever.

And it's because they want you to sell.

I still think, and I don't care what anybody tells me, that this market is still on some level being pushed down. And it's being pushed down and it will be continued to be pushed down until all the people who are so afraid they actually got out. When that happens, that's when this market will go back up. Will it go back up with the velocity that it went up before some of these AI stocks? Maybe yes, maybe no.

But that's not the point.

The point isn't about how fast is your money going to return. How long are you going to have to wait until it's back up there again? And then chances are when it's back up there again, you may absolutely probably just go, I'm selling it here. I should have sold before. I'm selling it here, and then all of a sudden it's at 400 two years from now, and you're going, Why did I sell?

This is not a financial roller coaster for you to want to ride on.

This is where you stand on the sidelines and you look at the roller coaster and you watch it go up and you watch it go down, and you take joy in knowing that you are invested properly.

And that maybe you do have some more money that you could dollar cost average into and take advantage of it, or you know you're invested properly and you just stay there. However, with that said, we are also entering the very end of this year.

So what am I doing?

I'm actually, ready for this? I am looking at all the stocks or any position that I do have that I have a loss in. And I am going to take that loss this year, then I'm going to offset it with stocks that I have maybe a tremendous gain in. Let me just give you Palantir as an example.

I have an extraordinary gain in Palantir. Because my cost base is really, when it's all said and done, is like in the 40s. So I'm still up considerably on Palantir.

I have stocks that I have a loss in, certain things that just didn't work out. I will sell 100% of those shares I have a loss in. Then whatever that amount of money is, I will sell those shares of Palantir right now when I do this to 100% offset that loss.

So, if I have a $10,000 loss, I will sell enough shares of Palantir, where I have a $10,000 gain.

Did that make sense? And then I will immediately turn around and buy those shares of Palantir back. Now what I have done is on those particular shares I have increased my cost basis from possibly $40 a share to $150 a share so that as Palantir continues to go up, my cost basis on those shares will be 150, so when I do sell in the future, my gain won't be as big and therefore I won't owe as much in taxes. Did that make sense?

The stocks that I have a loss in, I cannot buy them back for at least 30 days because there is a 30-day wash rule. You cannot sell a stock at a loss, take it off your taxes, but buy it back right away. You have to wait 30 days. Now. Will I buy those stocks back or not? I may not. I very well may not.

And I may take that money and put it in something that is making more sense for me at this particular situation. Now I hope I just didn't make your head spin, but there's always something that you can do to help with what's just happened, to look at that given that we are coming up at the end of the tax year for those of you who own stocks outside of a retirement account.

Inside of a retirement account, you're lucky, because normally you don't pay taxes on the gains or whatever, especially if it's a Roth, you don't get to take the losses off, but in a retirement account, every year you usually have money going into it. If it's an IRA you usually fund it to the max, and then you can dollar cost average into these stocks. In a 401k, you have more money coming in every single month, and therefore you're automatically dollar cost averaging, so that's a good thing.

It is very important that every single one of you knows your cost basis in your stocks. In your ETFs you have to know your cost basis. Otherwise, how do you know how much you're up? How do you know how much you're down?

So, you need to get yourself a program that every time you buy something, you enter it into this program, it averages it for you, and all the time, you know what your cost basis happens to be.

However, this podcast really is all about you knowing what you have, not looking at what you could have had or had. Deciding what you should do—year-end tax strategies, understanding the free trade and when does it work for you and when does it not, understanding that you can take advantage of things when they go down. Just never put everything you have into it because it goes down, because it could go down further, so always leave some money there. To know your timelines, to know what type of investor you are.

To really be in touch with yourself and your money, to know your cost bases, to make a plan, and to stick with it.

That's what this podcast was all about. Now I know that I also said on Thursday that I would be going over all the new limits for retirement accounts, Social Security, all of that. I think I've given you enough right now that you don't need more numbers, so I will do that next time.

I want you to go to youtube.com/SuzeOrman and I want you to subscribe. Can you do that for me? And last but not least, I want to say one more thing. I have a feeling that interest rates on the one-year certificate at Alliant Credit Union is going to change shortly and go down. I don't know what it's gonna go down to, but it's gonna go down.

Therefore, if you're interested in a 4.10% APR or 4.15% APR for amounts of $75,000 or above, go to myalliant.com now, cause I'm telling you, things are gonna change. And by the way, you can do a minimum investment of $1,000 to get that certificate.

All right, until Thursday, when Miss Travis will be joining us again, and who knows what we're going to be doing on a Thanksgiving Day, there's only one thing that I want you to remember when it comes to your money, and it is this: people first, then money, then things. Now you stay safe. Bye bye.