Podcast Episode - Suze School: Be Your Own Financial Crystal
December 11, 2022
Listen to Podcast Episode:
In today’s podcast, Suze shares stories and examples about her trusted analytical programs, so you can learn to use the correct tools to make the best financial decisions for yourself.
Podcast Transcript:
00:00:33
Suze: December 11th, 2022. Hi everybody, welcome to the Women & Money podcast, and everybody smart enough to listen. Suze O here. And first of all, we want to welcome all of you who are joining the Women & Money podcast. You're finally finding me, aren't you? I'm getting emails going,
00:00:57
Suze: are you telling me you went from CNBC and now here you are on a podcast and I didn't even know? Yeah, that's right. That's what happened there. Although the CNBC shows everybody you can watch all 600 of them fabulous on freevee. It's just something you all should do. But yes, so welcome all of you who are joining us
00:01:25
Suze: and today's is always dedicated to what we call Suze School because this drops on Sunday morning. So Thursday's when we drop the podcast, it's Ask KT and Suze Anything. On Sundays when we drop the podcast, it's always Suze School in the hopes that I can teach you
00:01:50
Suze: how to be smarter and stronger and more secure and more powerful really with your money. Because I firmly believe that you are never powerful in life until you are powerful over your own money. How you think about it, How you feel about it, how you act with it and how you invest it. So this whole podcast is dedicated
00:02:15
Suze: to making you stronger, to making you smarter, to making you more secure and to making you financially independent. So you can make your own financial decisions so that you can own the power to control your destiny.
00:02:33
Suze: I must be in quite a mood this morning. I'm already preaching and we've just gone to Suze church. What do we just do there anyway? We welcome all of you also...
00:02:46
Suze: we're welcoming all of you who have yet to participate in the Suze Holiday sweepstakes. And this is a sweepstakes that ends in just four days. You only have four days till December 15 to be part of this. And this sweepstakes is very easy. All you have to do is become a member of Alliant Credit Union
00:03:14
Suze: and you are automatically then entered into the sweepstakes. So if you're already a member, you're already automatically entered and one of you, no in fact two of you,
00:03:27
Suze: will win $10,000 each. It will be put directly into your account. Which is why we need you to become a member and open up an account, it doesn't cost you anything to be a member. Just go to my Alliant dot com and become a member, join absolutely free. Alright, that's one. Two:
00:03:54
Suze: for those of you who already are a member. Remember you've automatically, like I said been entered into the sweepstakes. But if you want extra entries you should have gotten an email with a link so that you could give that to friends and family members. And if they just opened up an account
00:04:12
Suze: they were entered and you got another entry. If you don't have that link, go to My Alliant, A L L I A N T dot com slash Suze S. U. Z E. All right, here we go.
00:04:30
Suze: You know, way back in 1980 now, I may have told you this story and one of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of podcasts that I've done. But there's a reason that I'm telling you it again today.
00:04:48
Suze: And when I first started as a stockbroker,
00:04:52
Suze: I didn't know anything about money. Do you all remember, I was a waitress for seven years, making $400 a month until I was approximately 30 years of age. What did I know about money? Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Okay, everybody. So here I am. And if you don't know my story, it's somewhere out there, I'm sure.
00:05:17
Suze: Right, I get hired as a stock broker at Merrill Lynch, again in my opinion, simply to fill their women's quota
00:05:25
Suze: and here I am. And I'm with like 100 men. I'm the only woman stockbroker at that time and I didn't know. What do you do do you buy? Do I had no idea what to do. And I would go into the sales meetings and I would listen to all these people come and tell you what stock to buy and this and that. And somehow in my gut,
00:05:52
Suze: I would always say to myself, how do I know I can trust this person? I don't know this person, Why are they telling me to do this to do that? I just didn't really understand it.
00:06:03
Suze: But remember, I was a California person from san Francisco, I had left the University of Illinois in a Ford Econoline van before I even graduated. in 1973 headed out to Berkeley California and with my girlfriend at the time, Lori Seligman, we lived on the streets of Berkeley California in that van
00:06:28
Suze: until we landed my dream job, a waitress at the buttercup bakery, where I was, that waitress until 1980. Okay, that made a very long story short,
00:06:40
Suze: So
00:06:42
Suze: in California, in San Francisco, in Berkeley,
00:06:47
Suze: you know, you believed in astrology, you believed in psychics, you believed in crystals and all of that stuff. And on some level, I still do just so, you know, but that's besides the point.
00:07:00
Suze: You wanted to know, you know about the inner workings of something, not just the outer workings of it.
00:07:08
Suze: So during that time
00:07:11
Suze: that I was a waitress, I had gotten involved in crystals and where I would attach a tiny little crystal to the end of a rope
00:07:23
Suze: and I would ask it a question and if it swung clockwise, I would know that was a yes, if it swung counterclockwise, I would know that as a no, and if it just stayed there, I would know that was an answer and don't do anything now I learned this through my acupuncturist, because again, in California
00:07:48
Suze: acupuncture was all over the place. And I was having trouble breathing back then, and, and blah, blah blah with my lungs and so I would go to an acupuncturist and they would do that with me. They would swing a crystal over me to see where was I weak? Where was I strong? So that's where I picked up that idea.
00:08:09
Suze: So now here I am at Merrill Lynch, a stockbroker and I decided
00:08:15
Suze: I know what I can trust, I can trust my little crystal.
00:08:21
Suze: So I would then look at different stocks that I thought were stocks that I would want, my clients to buy. There were actually stocks that I wished I could buy if in fact I had the money to do so, which I did not.
00:08:36
Suze: And so then I would look at those stocks and I would hold my little crystal on this little rope over those stocks, one at a time and I would ask, should I buy this or should I not? And depending on which way it would swing
00:08:56
Suze: is what I would do.
00:09:00
Suze: Now a lot of the ideas for those stocks that I got, I got at the sales meetings once a week or I got from other financial advisors,
00:09:11
Suze: but I always needed to check it out myself.
00:09:16
Suze: And after a few months of doing this, what would happen is all the stocks that the crystal told me to buy, which I did for my clients that would come to me that had money would go up all the stocks that the crystal said I shouldn't buy would go down.
00:09:40
Suze: Now
00:09:41
Suze: what started to happen is because I was a new broker, you would sit in these little cubicles where you would share what was called a Quotetron machine where all the quotes of all the stocks would come up with the person right next to you, you were right in front of somebody that was right behind you. So there would be like four or six of you that could hear everything that you were doing knowing you were buying something, knowing you were selling something
00:10:09
Suze: and so you all were very financially intimate, so to say, with each other's moves. And the other brokers started to notice that the stocks that they were buying from that meeting they were going down and that I had chosen not to buy those stocks
00:10:29
Suze: and the stocks that I did buy that were going up, they may have decided not to buy it. So they started to see the crystal all the time and they wanted me to ask about them and the crystal and which stocks they should buy.
00:10:48
Suze: What happened at that moment
00:10:52
Suze: is that I had this gut thing of don't do that Suze, you shouldn't do that.
00:10:58
Suze: But I had this realization
00:11:01
Suze: that this little crystal on this little rope
00:11:06
Suze: wasn't telling me what to do. I was telling the crystal what to do by my energy. I realized that I was the crystal.
00:11:19
Suze: So at that moment in time I told everybody I'm not using the crystal anymore so I can't help you.
00:11:29
Suze: And I then started to count
00:11:32
Suze: on what I was feeling my own research and what I was thinking about it.
00:11:37
Suze: Then as time went on
00:11:40
Suze: I realized that in picking stocks, in deciding on the direction of the stock market, the economy all of that, you needed more information than just feelings about it.
00:11:56
Suze: Because the stocks were dictated by the economic circumstances at the time. So you really needed to know about numbers, all kinds of things you needed to know and how would the economy
00:12:14
Suze: affect the stocks that I wanted my clients to buy?
00:12:20
Suze: In buying a stock. Alright. Get out your notebooks. Everybody get them out
00:12:26
Suze: because this is a little bit different of a Suze School today.
00:12:31
Suze: Well, they're kind of all different aren't they? I make myself laugh anyway. So
00:12:37
Suze: when it comes to buying a stock
00:12:41
Suze: There are two gauges, so to speak, that most professionals use
00:12:49
Suze: And they actually should be gauges that all of you should use as well. But I have to tell you they're not so easy. For instance I think it was last Sunday or the Sunday before that. And by the way are all of you following me on the Women & Money app? On, you know the update section my wall because I told you all I would be giving market updates there.
00:13:18
Suze: I would be telling you information that I needed you to know
00:13:24
Suze: between podcasts. So you all should be going to Apple apps or Google play downloading the Women & Money app
00:13:34
Suze: And following along there. Look to where it says market updates.
00:13:39
Suze: I'm commenting on energy and what I think is happening with it now and that the market would go down and the market did go down and then it was like be careful because I think now which I do by the way the market could very easily go up a little bit for the next week or whatever.
00:13:58
Suze: But then I really think we're going back down again. So you best be following me on market updates on the Women & Money app when you go on you'll see all these little squares. It's really the first one that says updates and that we call the Suze Wall. Oh okay. What was I saying? Anyway, so lately I've been telling you
00:14:25
Suze: about the support and resistance and those kind of things which are a certain type of indicator. And you've been writing me saying how do you figure those things out Suze? So I will be the first to tell you that it's not always easy but the information can be found. But sometimes it's better to let experts do that research for you. So there are two gauges
00:14:54
Suze: that you normally look at before you buy a stock.
00:14:59
Suze: The first gauge or indicator
00:15:03
Suze: or analysis so to speak is called fundamental analysis.
00:15:09
Suze: This is where you can look at: Who is the manager? What are the earnings of this company? What are the assets of this company? What are the liabilities of this company? And on and on and on.
00:15:23
Suze: And those are things that are really easy for you to look up. In past podcast, we talked about the P. E. Ratio which is the price to earnings ratio. We looked at what is earnings per share
00:15:40
Suze: and so all of those things have become really relevant and were always relevant in the fundamental indicators of a stock.
00:15:50
Suze: The next gauge is something called technical analysis. Now listen closely.
00:15:58
Suze: Technical analysis is a method of evaluating stocks
00:16:05
Suze: by studying their past price. How many shares did they sell things like that? And the analysis is usually done using the charts of those companies. So every stock can be charted in many, many different ways and there are many financial indicators so many, it's not even funny,
00:16:34
Suze: that a technical analyst will look at
00:16:38
Suze: and then be able to identify patterns and trends in that data.
00:16:45
Suze: And those identifications can be used to make predictions about the future direction of a securities price. However, technical analysis by its own, everybody,
00:17:02
Suze: really is worthless unless you put it together with the fundamental analysis in my opinion.
00:17:11
Suze: Which again focuses on the company's financial and economic fundamentals and then you can make a true investment decision.
00:17:22
Suze: However, alright,
00:17:26
Suze: fundamentals like I said in my opinion, are pretty easy to find out and know how to make a decision about it.
00:17:35
Suze: But technical analysis is a whole other story
00:17:41
Suze: And an important part of the equation of where everything is going and I would be very hard pressed to recommend a stock or a trend in the stock market or whatever it may be without having an opinion on technical analysis
00:18:06
Suze: and what do the technical indicators say about this company maybe about Treasury Notes, whatever it may be.
00:18:17
Suze: Now, my favorite technician currently
00:18:22
Suze: is a woman by the name of Katie Stockton. Who is the founder of Fair Lead Strategies. And I have to tell you maybe she's only been doing this for 20 years. But this woman is seriously bright and if you turn on CNBC, she now is a contributor to CNBC,
00:18:44
Suze: And you can watch her and what she says about things and you can really learn from her.
00:18:50
Suze: Now her service that she offers is seriously expensive. So I don't expect any of you to go and buy her service. But somebody like me
00:19:05
Suze: institutions, other serious financial advisors who want the best and they want to know certain technical analysis from somebody who really knows, then they would be interested in spending a whole lot of money on Katie Stockton at Fair Lead Strategies. But that's not the reason I'm telling you about her
00:19:28
Suze: because I subscribe to everything she does by the way, the other day then I was able to attend a webinar that she put on
00:19:41
Suze: featuring a woman by the name of Louise Yamada.
00:19:46
Suze: Now, you may not know Louise Yamada, but in the world of technical analysis, Louise is a legend. I mean all of us used to just look at her going, oh my God, this woman is so bright. Oh, look at what she said, can it be? Now Louise has her own firm for 25 years. She led technical analysis. I think it was for Smith Barney and then went on when Smith Barney was... fabulous woman.
00:20:15
Suze: But she's not just a fabulous woman because she's a fabulous woman and not just because everybody knows that in fact most of her clients are institutions. So many of the institutions, by the way that may be employing your financial advisors, probably subscribe to her services so that they can tell you all about it.
00:20:42
Suze: But major institutions are mainly her clients. But she is seriously known for her long term calls. She's not in this to trade the market or anything like that. But what happens over the long term, because you need to know what's going to happen over the long term
00:21:06
Suze: so that you have the right direction into where you should be investing over the long term. Now, some of her long term calls - just to give you an idea of how accurate this woman was, even though she's been doing this for far longer than where I'm going to start.
00:21:25
Suze: Is, in 2007... before it even happened,
00:21:30
Suze: I remember her saying that the financial sector meaning the banks, things like that
00:21:36
Suze: are in a structural decline, be careful everybody.
00:21:43
Suze: It was when I heard her say that
00:21:47
Suze: that on the Suze Orman show,
00:21:50
Suze: I was taking that as mortgages and everything else that makes banks money. So obviously real estate would be in trouble. I was telling everybody do not buy, sell your property, do not reinvest. That was the one line when I heard that
00:22:09
Suze: that I knew
00:22:11
Suze: that people should start getting out of real estate. Okay? In 2008 and 2009,
00:22:21
Suze: before it even happened, Louise was saying that we are going to enter an equity bear market and to be careful.
00:22:34
Suze: And that again is exactly what we were doing. And that is when if you watched the Suze Orman show,
00:22:43
Suze: I was telling all of you to buy municipal bonds, to buy municipal bonds to get into municipal bonds. 00:22:52
Suze: In fact, it was right around that time,
00:22:56
Suze: that I was on the Today Show, I'm sure you can find all this stuff and somebody I can't remember if it was.. Who Wants To Be... I forget which game show it was, but they won $1 million. And I was one of the questions. Now they're on the Today Show to ask me what do I think that they should do with this money.
00:23:17
Suze: And the very first thing I said was if you're going to stay in your house forever and you don't care about the value of it, you are to pay off the mortgage on your home period.
00:23:32
Suze: And then it was like, don't go in the market, just municipal bonds, keep this money safe and sound okay.
00:23:40
Suze: I've never gotten so much hate mail sent to me via the Today show saying what does Suze Orman know?
00:23:48
Suze: That money should go in the stock market, look how the markets are going up, It's just crazy. They should they should be buying really the whole thing. Okay, I hope the person listened to me anyway...
00:24:02
Suze: Then in March of 2009,
00:24:06
Suze: she said that the equity bull market is going to start, we're going to have a reversal. I have to tell you, however, I was a little bit proud of myself because there was a contest at CNBC to call the bottom of the stock market using the S&P. And approximately when it would happen. And I called for it around 600 in May of 2009.
00:24:36
Suze: So, my own instincts and everything else that I was using, they were right on target, just so you know. Louise also called the top of gold in 2013 and the structural decline of energy everybody in 2014. Now,
00:24:58
Suze: why am I telling you about all this? Because the entire topic of this webinar,
00:25:07
Suze: which was all about the reversal of the inverted yield curve with 10 year Treasuries
00:25:16
Suze: and what direction are treasuries going to go is something that absolutely all of you are interested in. So, it's really, really important.
00:25:31
Suze: So, I thought I would tell you what Louise said, which, by the way, matches with everything I've been saying and I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back, but I most certainly just did. All right.
00:25:46
Suze: So Louise gets on, now there are very knowledgeable people on this call because they're all, you know, part of the services, they're all professionals. And the first thing she does is she does a chart going all the way back to 1700 to show the trends of interest rates in things such as Treasuries and blah, blah, blah. Even though I don't even know if Treasuries were back there at that time.
00:26:16
Suze: Then she focused on equities and talked about how stocks essentially went nowhere up and down from approximately 1966 to 1982.
00:26:32
Suze: They would go from about almost 1000 and 1966 or somewhere in the sixties there, you know, down to like 600. And then back up again. And in 1982, I'll never forget this. Although I can't remember when it happened, the Dow Jones industrial average crossed 1000.
00:26:54
Suze: And I remember the entire floor of Merrill Lynch, where I was erupted in this explosion of joy that here we go.
00:27:07
Suze: And it was fabulous. And truthfully after that date,
00:27:13
Suze: The Dow Jones never again looked back and saw 1000.
00:27:19
Suze: But what the point was is, during that time, truthfully from in the 60s to the 80s, interest rates had a lot to do with what the stock market was doing, in her opinion.
00:27:35
Suze: If you remember inflation was sky high back in the 70s, and so mortgages were at 16%. Treasuries were at 15%, you know, in 1981 or 82, you could get 20 or 21% in a money market account.
00:27:56
Suze: So interest rates were sky high and the markets were going up and down and finally started to go up in 1982.
00:28:09
Suze: But it was in that time
00:28:12
Suze: that Louise said, we started a 40 year trend of interest rates going down.
00:28:22
Suze: And because we started that trend of interest rates going down, that's when the market started to go up. So if we look now from 1982
00:28:38
Suze: to 2022, interest rates essentially for 40 years went down, not straight down, but the direction was down.
00:28:51
Suze: According to the technical analysis, you could see it very clearly on a chart.
00:28:57
Suze: But what Louise is saying is starting now,
00:29:02
Suze: we have an interest rate reversal where interest rates are going to start to go up and they very well could go up for another 40 years. It's not like they're going to go up over night. We don't, she doesn't know how long it will take, but the overall trend will be up.
00:29:27
Suze: Her advice to that therefore
00:29:30
Suze: is that she herself is only when it comes to Treasuries, is only buying three month and six-month Treasuries.
00:29:43
Suze: Because every time that it comes due, most likely you will get a higher interest rate if just doing two is too little for you and you want to do short terms and you want money coming due essentially maybe every month or as close to that as possible. Okay.
00:30:04
Suze: But she doesn't want you really to go out further than a year, two years if you are really pressed and you have to do that. For some reason, we can put a pin in that for a second here.
00:30:17
Suze: Do you remember how I would say to all of you, you know, only go out a few months, whatever and I'll let you know when it's time to go into 20 and 30 year bonds but do not do it until I tell you.
00:30:36
Suze: And you have been writing me saying, is it time is it time then you wrote me and you said we missed it. Can you see that interest rates are going down Suze.
00:30:46
Suze: So I just want to say two things here. I may never tell you to buy 20 or 30 year bonds. Believe it or not, it may be a long time before I do that. Depending
00:31:01
Suze: on what the charts say, technical analysis, the economy and everything like that. But it is not going to be for a long time. That's number one.
00:31:13
Suze: Number two going back to Louise,
00:31:16
Suze: Louise said, what we will see happening, according to her charts. And again, this is just her opinion. But I think it's opinion that all of you should listen to because by all means, I would tell you she is far more knowledgeable than any financial advisor, I am sure that any of you are dealing with, including any of the ones that I am dealing with as well when it comes to technical analysis.
00:31:43
Suze: So, Louise said that do not be surprised what you will see is that. And now she's talking about the 10 year only and this is all about the 10 year really. So the 10 year most likely will go down. Now we have seen the 10 year go down.
00:32:03
Suze: I personally told you that it will go to about three and a quarter, maybe 3.15, and then very possibly can turn and go back to 5%.
00:32:13
Suze: And Louise said that it is you know, very probable that it will go down like it's going down. You could even go down to 2.5 and then it will absolutely in her opinion turn around and start to go up and over time, what we will see is that when it does turn around and go down
00:32:37
Suze: it will go down not as far as it had the time before that
00:32:44
Suze: And when it turns around and goes up it will go up higher than where it was before the last turn around.
00:32:53
Suze: Now the way that's technically said
00:32:56
Suze: in analysis, is that we will see
00:33:01
Suze: higher lows and higher highs when something goes up and down.
00:33:08
Suze: And so that we should just stay calm when interest rates the 10 year again start to go down and just wait because it will turn around. But in the meantime
00:33:21
Suze: just do short term treasury bills, three months, six months, 17 weeks, whatever you want. But in an area where it makes sense. I'm personally only buying three month now and maybe six months. Just depends. But my favorite right now are three month treasury bills.
00:33:45
Suze: Now I understand that all of you
00:33:48
Suze: are having a really hard time and it's just too confusing for you to buy a treasury bill. No it is not. You can absolutely figure out how to do. So there is a woman on Youtube and I think oh God I haven't been on it in so long. What is her thing? I think its Diamond Nest Egg. I think that's it. 00:34:15
Suze: And she has videos on how to buy T bills at Vanguard, at Fidelity, at Schwab at all these places. She will educate you on those things using visuals that I can't do here on the podcast. Now. I'm not saying that I agree with many of her recommendations because I don't know what her recommendations are. I just know
00:34:42
Suze: that I have been told that yes, you know she will instruct you exactly how to do it. So again it is Diamond Nest Egg. I hope that is correct. You can do this. If you are working with a financial advisor, just ask your financial advisor to buy one for you. I don't care if it's on the secondary market. I don't care.
00:35:05
Suze: Right. Just that's how you can do it. It is not difficult on any level. She did also say believe it or not because somebody asked this question - that it is very possible over these coming years that interest rates could go up again even higher than they were
00:35:29
Suze: in the 70s. Can you believe that? Let's take a breath. Alright because we just have a little bit more to go.
00:35:37
Suze: Many of you are writing me and saying Suze, it's too difficult to buy T. Bills. Already yelled at all of you about that.
00:35:46
Suze: And you're just going to buy a short term E. T. F. You're just gonna buy E. T. F. s and do it that way.
00:35:53
Suze: I don't think I would want you to do that.
00:35:57
Suze: I would rather see you own the actual bill itself.
00:36:03
Suze: Please remember everybody in E. T. F. and a mutual fund does not have a maturity date.
00:36:12
Suze: So maybe new money is coming in. Who knows what they have to do with the new money that's coming in and the expense ratios to manage all of that money. And are you going to get back what you put in or are you not? In a Treasury Bill note or bond
00:36:29
Suze: there is a maturity date where you will get back the money that you put in.
00:36:36
Suze: So I don't want you to substitute the short term E. T. F. Treasuries for an actual Treasury bill at this point in time. And now I know that I said I would answer all of you that are asking that question on the podcast today and I just did
00:36:59
Suze: So that my loves, is your Suze School for today.
00:37:06
Suze: So until Thursday when Ms Travis joins us there's really one thing that I want you to remember if you have not yet become a member of Alliant Credit Union you need to do that right now because you have only four days left for the Suze holiday sweepstakes where one of you and another one of you that makes two of you will win $10,000. You go to My Alliant dot com and check it out
00:37:36
Suze: and of course I want you all to be smart, strong and secure. Now you stay safe. Bye bye.
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