#88: Fiduciary Services & Investing Advice
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Stitcher | Spotify
Want to grab the transcript of this interview? Click here!
Today we welcome Gil Baumgarten, president of Segment wealth Management, Gil is a 36 year veteran of the investment industry. In 2010, he jumped off the Wall Street brokerage train to start Segment, a fiduciary firm where the interests of the client and the firm could align. He is a multi-year recipient of the Top 1,200 Financial Advisors in America distinction by Barron's and as a newly published author with his first book launching in May titled “Foolish”: How investors get worked up and worked over by the system. We'll talk about the game stop short squeeze and, and ugly truth: Wall Street still has a hidden agenda.
After 20 years of working in big brokerage firms, Gil escaped the shadows of Wall Street to start his own RIA fiduciary firm so he could advocate for his client’s best interests without a firm’s agenda breathing down his neck.
In this episode, we’re discussing…
[2:49] What a fiduciary means and what he does
[3:50] The difference between fiduciary and brokerage business and which entity regulates each of them.
[4:37] His experience working in Wall Street, the good, the bad, the ugly
[8:09] The Wall Street agenda and his advice about it
[9:19] The disadvantage of the brokerage industry vs. advantage of a fiduciary model for the client care
[11:01] How does a fiduciary get paid vs. Brokerage model
[14:47] About the book FOOLI$H and his advice on how should invest
[17:14] SEC regulations, about IRS and taxes advice
[21:30] Seven tips for better investment results
[24:16] His position, his advice about bitcoin investment and other kinds of currency like this
Gil’s Top Tip’s
“When you pay a fee to somebody like me, my business is built in such a way that legally I am required to look out for only the person who is hiring me and paying me to contrast that with the brokerage business that doesn't operate that way. They cut side deals with mutual funds and they're just not in a position to be a full fiduciary.”
“That being the case, you could walk into a brokerage firm and say, help me with my $100,000. They're going to provide a flurry of activity for commission's and they're going to get paid, and you're going to move on down the road. And they don't have any fiduciary responsibility, nor should they. And so, making the brokerages all adhere to a fiduciary standard is not the solution to this. I think trusting somebody to make sure that you get all of your needs accomplished, may not necessarily be best done on a brokerage platform. That's my personal opinion.”
“If it involves risk for the firm, and it doesn't pay them, you're not going to find it in the maze. So that doesn't necessarily mean that all the client’s goals and objectives are being considered. So, when they give you a recommendation, it's the best thing for you to do given their agenda, not necessarily given the client's agenda, and that those two are not in total opposition. It's just not perfect.”
“The brokerages operate in a system of suitability. They don't have to recommend the best thing for you. They only have to recommend things that are suitable for you. And what comes with that is that the client has to acknowledge yes or no over the phone verbally binding as to whether that's okay with them for you to move forward”.
“If I'm going to do something for a client, that might create a taxable event for them, I normally will call the client and discuss that taxable event and give them some say in the matter, but our business is fully discretionary. We can buy and sell whatever we want. And we think it is that way because we are required not to front-run the clients not to be cut inside deals with other providers”.
“Focus on the long term. Don't hop around, buy broad market exposure and let it sit by cheap market exposure, because the difference between an expensive mutual fund and a cheap mutual fund, as long as they're buying stocks is not going to be that dissimilar and normally dissimilar by the amount of the fee. So, cheap investment results and let it sit. I would recommend that people always bet that the market is going to rise. The market goes up in 81% of all circumstances. If you're playing on that, 19% you're the fool”.
“Don't be the guy or gal that plays that 19% for the same reasons that fish should avoid flashy objects. So, we should not go out and buy speculative things”
“Learn about taxes, primarily, we managed for unrealized gain, may unrealized gain be the gain that you've made in past years that you've never sold because taxes don't apply to increase in market value unless you sell it”.
“Another reason not to hop around from investment to investment, your money compounds a lot better when you sit tight, I would say avoid stock tips for on stocks trading under $10, you're not going to be able to build a quality portfolio of $5 stocks”.
“I would also encourage people to write down former tips that they wanted to act on and see how they do later, they tend to only notice the ones that they should have got bought because they went up so much. And then they feel like every tip I get is just my next opportunity. If you want to really have a fair evaluation of what you think you should do or should have done. Keep a listing of all that and research the losers just as well as the winners. So those would be my seven tips for better results”.
Resources from Gil
Segmentwm.com | segmentwm/blog
+ Read the transcript
Mike Stohler What if you could be doing something smarter with your money that creates income. Now, if you're wanting to get ahead financially, and enjoy greater freedom of choice, if you want a comfortable retirement, and you know you'll have more choices, if you can do more with your money. Now, if you've wondered who else is creating ways to make their money work for them, and you want actionable ideas, with honest pros and cons, and no fluff. Welcome to the richer geek podcast. We're here helping people find creative ways to build wealth and financial freedom. I'm Mike Stohler, and in this podcast, you'll hear from others who are already doing these things, and learn how you can too
Mike Stohler Welcome back to another episode with the Richer geek. Today we welcome Gil Baumgarten, president of segment wealth management, Gil's a 36 year veteran of the investment industry in 2010. He jumped off the wall street brokerage chain to start segment a fiduciary firm where the interests of the client and the firm could align his multi year recipient of the top 1200 financial advisors in America distinction by Barron's and as a newly published author with his first book launching in May titled foolish how investors get worked up and worked over by the system. We'll talk about the game stop short squeeze and, and ugly truth does Wall Street still have a hidden agenda?
Mike Stohler Alright, welcome back for another episode of the richer geek today we welcome Gil Baumgarten, of segment wealth management, how are you doing?
Gil Baumgarten I'm great. How are you?
Mike Stohler Pretty good. Yeah, it's uh, we're still under 100 degrees. I think you're in Scottsdale. So I'm happy,
Gil Baumgarten Beautiful, humid day here in Houston.
Isn't it always right? You know, I'm excited to bring in someone like yourself, because I even have questions. I see a lot of advertisements on TVs of these financial wealth managers, these guy in different companies. And then once in a while, I see some commercials about fiduciary. Yeah, and I think I know what they are, I think I know the difference. But you are the expert. And in saying that, I should ask you please tell us a little bit about yourself. And a little bit about segment.
Gil Baumgarten
So I was in the brokerage business for 25 years, and I've been a fee only fiduciary running a consulting type practice for almost the last 11 years. So 36 years of doing this, the last third of that time period, running my business only as a fiduciary. And that's a word that gets thrown around, a lot of people don't know what it means. You know, think about it, like a lawyer, it you would not want to hire a lawyer who was charging you a fee, and then going out and cut inside deals with the opposition. In whatever case it was that you were working on, you would expect that what you were paying him would buy his undivided allegiance to your interests. That's what a fiduciary does. When you pay a fee to somebody like me, my business is built in such a way that legally I am required to look out for only the person who is hiring me and paying me contrast that with the brokerage business that doesn't operate that way. They cut side deals with mutual funds and the like they're just not in a position to be a full fiduciary. So he's just a different way of operating your business and regulated differently. Broken businesses regulated by FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and the fiduciary businesses regulated by the SEC. So different sets of rules.
Mike Stohler
Now, you know, what? Seems like every four years Wall Street is one of the topics of discussion. Whether it's rightly so or not. So tell us about your personal experience walk working on Wall Street, whether all those rumors are good, but tell us a little bit about the good, the bad, the ugly.
Gil Baumgarten
Yeah. You know, I don't want to caricature Wall Street as this evil demon. It has some sides of that. And the majority of people that are brokers and in the brokers business are great people that are looking out for their clients. They're just embedded in a system that they don't have full control over and there's things that go on behind the scenes that keep them in a particular lane of the way they are required to do their business, and optimal outcomes for the client are just not a natural byproduct of doing it their way. So these are fine people and and there's a great place for a broker, you know, if you were know that the government is currently trying to make the brokerages all adhere to a fiduciary standard, as though that some magical panacea, that's not going to solve all problems. Because if you have a situation where you inherit $100,000 worth of securities from your grandpa, you're not going to be able to walk in my door and hire me to help you unwind his $100,000 estate, it's too little compensation for too much risk. And I'm gonna send you packing. That being the case, you could walk into a brokerage firm and say, Hey, help me with my $100,000. They're going to provide a flurry of activity for Commission's and they're going to get paid, and you're going to move on down the road. And they don't have any fiduciary responsibility, nor should they. And so making the brokerages all adhere to a fiduciary standard is not the solution to this. Yeah, I think trusting somebody to make sure that you get all of your needs accomplished, that may not necessarily be best done on a brokerage platform. That's my personal opinion.
Mike Stohler
Now, you know, to me, it seems like Wall Street is kind of like the dealer at a casino, you know, it's like, like the house. Yeah. And there's so much fine print. And there's so much that you see, it seems like the house is always going to win. I mean, you're you're, you're just going to go through and through and through. And if you really don't know that you give them $100,000. And bam, five percents already gone. before they even breathe. Yeah, on. Yeah, yeah. And it just is that true is it is that uh,
Gil Baumgarten
well, I like to look at it sort of like a maze. So you've seen a maze, and the brokerages will will build a maze. And they will allow their brokers to move around inside that maze and find any path that they want to get to the other side. But they just won't let you go straight through the maze, you have to be routed through, you have to touch all these various points where the firm is going to get an opportunity to make money, I mean, may or may not be paying the broker to do that there are certain parts within the maze that only the firm makes money on. And there are other parts within the maze, that they split the business with the broker and the firm, but they're going to keep the broker in the channels inside of the maze. I like to look at it like I'm kind of building a path right through the middle of the maze, and I get paid to have as few touch points as possible on the client's money, there's as few middlemen as possible in the way a fiduciary is going to run that business. And you're generally going to have better results, I think,
Mike Stohler
do they have a hidden agenda?
Gil Baumgarten
Well, their agenda is always to make money. There, the system is built to push things out of the maze that are not lucrative. And there's a the system is in place to push things out of the maze that are risky for the firm. So if it's if it involves risk for the firm, and it doesn't pay them, well, you're not going to find it in the maze. So that doesn't necessarily mean that all the clients goals and objectives are being considered. So when they give you a recommendation, it's the best thing for you to do given their agenda, not necessarily given the client's agenda, and that those two are not in total opposition. It's just not perfect.
Mike Stohler
And would you say that that's really the difference between the fiduciary and a broker is they're out there out for themselves. Okay, what can I want to switch you into something, okay, I get 5% on the front, I get whatever on the back. That's right. And then when that runs out, hey, they'll go they'll call you up. And I think I think it's best for you if you switch to this, because they just found out they get another point or something like that.
Gil Baumgarten
You make an interesting point, you make an interesting point that holding you up is part of the protocol. Because the brokerages operate in a system of suitability. They don't have to recommend the best thing for you. They only have to recommend things that are suitable for you. And what comes with that is that the client has to acknowledge yes or no over the phone verbally binding as to whether that's okay with them for you to move forward. When the client says yes, the client owns 100% of what happens from that point going forward. Zero returns zero pushback once the client says yes, you own it, baby. It is designed That way on purpose. That's the reason why I don't call clients up and say, Would it be okay with you, if I did this or that, we only do that out of courtesy, we don't get paid for those transactions. If I if I'm going to do something for a client, that might create a taxable event for them, I normally will call the client and discuss that taxable event and give them some say in the matter, but our business is fully discretionary. We can buy and sell whatever we want. And we think it is that way, because we are required not to front run the clients not to be cut inside deals with other providers, I can't do any other shenanigans that the brokerage industry survives on, and therefore the path to the loop to delivering that service to the client is a much more pure type of outcome.
Mike Stohler
And, okay, and so the difference, how does fiduciary get paid? You know, I've seen them the advertisements, based on the performance.
Gil Baumgarten
It can house, it can be that's not traditional. Traditionally, assets under management, how much money do you place under our care, and the more money it is, the smaller the fee is percentage wise the dollars go up. So we don't charge a $5 million account the same thing we charge a $25 million account, we ar$25 million account might pay two times the fee of a $5 million account, despite the fact that they've got five times as much money. So there's a that's how the our system is designed, we can also work by the hour, we can work on projects, we can do whatever and build the client, the interesting e distinction that you asked about is that every fee that we charge has to show up on the client statement.
Mike Stohler
No. So I know that's not true for the broker.
Gil Baumgarten
Absolutely, it's not true. So it's embedded in the transaction, meaning in many cases, you can buy a bond from them, they print what you paid for it, and you have no idea what they paid and how much less it was that they paid. That's not allowed on my system. Whatever I pay for a bond is the exact same price, it has to go into a client account. And my quarterly fee has to show on the client statement. The stock not allowed to obfuscate or hide anything. A lot of people also don't understand that the mutual fund industry and the brokerage industry are kind of in cahoots. They do business together in lots of different ways that brokerages provide marketing for the mutual funds and mutual funds, run trades across the trading desk of the brokerage firm. There's a 12 b one fee many times where you're sharing the internal expense ratio, there's all kinds of side deals that go on between the brokerage and, and the broker and the client. And the many clients perceive that if I can't see a fee, therefore it doesn't exist. And in my business model, Yes, that's true. But in the brokerage business model, no, that's not true.
Mike Stohler
So is it with the fiduciary? Do you have to have a certain amount of wealth or money that you put in before you say, you know what, I need to go from a broker to a fiduciary?
Gil Baumgarten
That's a good question. Yeah, that's a really good question. The fiduciary is tend to run the biggest books of business, the large client tends to want to hire a fiduciary, because the differences are more profound, the more money that's involved. So a client back to the example with grandpa's $100,000 estate, you're probably not going to see a whole lot of difference in cost or service between what you're going to get from a brokerage, a broker at a brokerage firm and a fiduciary advisor on $100,000, the fees are going to be relatively similar, you're probably going to see relative relatively similar types of strategies. But when the account gets to be 2 million 5,000,010 or 20 million, you see fewer and fewer of those on the brokerage platforms. And you see more and more of them on the fiduciary platforms. When I was at my last broker brokerage firm in tooth I left in October of 2010, I had a couple of 100 million dollars of client assets. We have a billion dollars of client money now. And I do business with essentially the same number of people with a billion dollars as I did with a couple of 100 million. So that's part and parcel to running a fiduciary business where we see $5, $10 $20 million accounts with some regularity.
Mike Stohler
Okay, no, no, that makes a lot of sense. And because there's a lot more brokerages out there. Absolutely. Then you see fiduciaries. So you have a you have a book,
Gil Baumgarten
I do have a book called foolish as called foolish. That's right. The subtitle is how investors get worked up and worked over by the system, because we've spent the last you know 50 After 20 minutes talking about the brokerage industry, well, that's only half of the problem that stands between a client and really good results. And the other half the problem are generally personality problems. We spend a whole lot more time as investors acting like a, like a jack rabbit. And we'll hop from investment to investment, we really should invest more like a turtle or a slot where we move super slow. That's really the much better way to invest your money, but we think we were doing ourselves by hopping around a lot. So investors tend to have a lot of mental baggage that causes them to make bad mistakes. They don't pay attention to taxes, they don't pay attention to cost because they don't understand it. And they don't understand taxes, also, and that's reason why they just tend to overlook it as though it doesn't matter. So there's just, it's just not the best way to run your money. When you're hopping around hoping to land on something that's gratifying.
Mike Stohler
Well, you know, we're in the fast food, business of life, right? instant gratification. That's right. You know, something else that I can't stand is you walk into a broker, you walk into the bank, and you know, the young 20 year old kid wants to come over. And it seems like you know, you'd need it didn't even look at my wall didn't even look at me, you need to be in fun 2042 he knows the pitch. Like, I'm tired of fun 2042 and then next year will be fun. 2041 you know?
Gil Baumgarten
Well, you know, if you see even more of that, where you're being pitched an annuity without understanding anything about your tax situation. And, but that's because annuities, generally, in the business have the highest commissions. So it doesn't take a rocket scientist as the 20 year old to say, you know, what, if I sell a million dollars with mutual funds, I make $10,000. And if I sell a million dollars with annuities, I make $40,000 I'm gonna sell annuities. That's what they say to themselves. So when people get pitched annuities, quite possibly What's going on?
Mike Stohler
Yeah, bet. So yeah, it's like whole life and annuity. So it just those two conditions are. So you mentioned a little bit about tax. And, you know, every four years, it's like, we never know, you know, the tax code and and and the SEC different stuff. And it seems crazy. So is there any changes that you're seeing as far as the SEC regulations? And I'm always I'm involved in the sec, because I do some syndications and things like that. But anything new that we should know about?
Gil Baumgarten
Well, there's two different questions there. The first was about the IRS and taxes. And the second would be about sec and regulation. I think. The SEC recently had some changes with passing reg bi, which is a sort of a comprehensive attempt to force the brokerages into a best interest standard, similar to fiduciary. But the 80 page regulation says right on page five, that they stopped short of that because the fiduciary or best interest standard was incompatible with the brokerage business model. Yeah, absolutely. And so any attempt to squeeze the brokers into a fiduciary standard, you're gonna run into some resistance. And like I said earlier, rightly so. So that being the case, they ended up on the side of disclosure. Well guess what the suitability standard that brokerages have had for decades, is already one of disclosure. So all the hoopla over reg bi somehow changing the brokerage industry to become a best interest standard for the client care ended up on the side of disclosure and disclosure. clients don't read disclosures. So that being the case, it's not it's not going to happen and nor should it. There's plenty of choices out there to get a fiduciary advisor, you're just not going to get one at a brokerage firm.
Mike Stohler
Yeah, it's it's interesting
Gil Baumgarten
the second part of your question was regarding the SEC. And, and or excuse me, the IRS and changes to our tax code. Those changes do seem to be gaining momentum. You know, tax the rich is a really easy thing to say. It's difficult for the rich to defend themselves because they're just not that numerous. And when it comes to the voting box, you know, the people who don't have as much money, always want the rich to pay more Never mind that the top 1% already paying nearly 50% of all taxes. It's already stacked on their shoulders. And many people say well, it should be so 75% are it okay? or whatever, it's that's just the way of the world. I do believe that the current onslaught of we want to eliminate the break for capital gains, we want to eliminate the lower tax on dividends, we want to eliminate the step up and basis rule, we want to eliminate the $11.7 million lifetime exemption, we want to take it down to 3.5 million we want we want we want. Well, a typical negotiating tool is to throw out the 15 things that you want in order to settle back on the three things that you really wanted. So you can seem highly reasonable and negotiable. So this is really just a ploy to get everything out on the table. And then something less than that is what we're going to settle upon. I'm highly confident. So whether they're definitely angling for more money.
Mike Stohler
Yeah, yeah, I hear that all the time. Yeah, I think it's Senator Warren that just came out with per thing about the new rich. Tax. Yeah. And it's, how much do you make send it in? How much do you make, but what it is it is on? Other things? It's like, Okay, if you have a yacht, you have to give us 3%. Every year, in order to have that yatch. You have every other home more than one, three, so it's on things that you own? Yep. Because it's not fair. Right. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we've been talking about a lot of things and a lot of great things. But give us seven tips for better investment results. Because I think that's really what here's money, but I don't know how to do exactly.
Gil Baumgarten
The first thing I would say is focus on the long term. Don't hop around, buy broad market exposure and let it sit by cheap market exposure, because the difference between an expensive mutual fund and a cheap mutual fund, as long as they're buying stocks is not going to be that dissimilar and normally dissimilar by the amount of the fee. So cheap investment results and let it sit. I would recommend that people always bet that the market is going to rise. The market goes up in 81% of all circumstances. If you're playing on that, 19% You're the fool. You're the Patsy at the table, if you're the one playing the likelihood that you can choose that tomorrow is going to be the day that the 19% applies. Yeah, you know what if you found a slot machine that paid off 81% of the time you get hired an armed guard when you went to the bathroom? So don't don't be the guy or gal that plays that 19% for the same reasons that fish should avoid flashy objects. So should you we should not go out and buy speculative things. And you know, what my shoeshine person told me about this or that, like what, you know, Mr. Kennedy made famous back in 1929, that he was getting tips from the shoeshine guy. So, learn about taxes, primarily, we managed for unrealized gain, may unrealized gain is the gain that you've made in past years that you've never sold, because taxes don't apply to increase in market value unless you sell it. Another reason not to hop around from investment to investment, your money compounds a lot better when you sit tight, I would say avoid stock tips for on stocks trading under $10, you're not going to be able to build a quality portfolio of $5 stocks. So I would also encourage people to write down former tips that they wanted to act on and see how they do later, they tend to only notice the ones that they should have got bought, because they went up so much. And then they feel like every tip I get is just my next opportunity. Well, you've also been told about a lot of dogs too, if you want to really have a fair evaluation of what you think you should do or should have done. Keep a listing of all that and research the losers just as well as the winners. So those would be my seven tips for better results.
Mike Stohler
Interesting. Now, what do you think about? Yeah, maybe I'm too old, even though people are always talking about this Dodge coin and Bitcoin and all these different, you know, there's there has to be some future. But I don't even know what those things are.
Gil Baumgarten
I think blockchain technology is a winner for sure. Yeah. The ability to keep irrefutable records over long time periods. And that's a winner. Real estate transactions, health records, think about the things you can use that for creating a currency. I don't know I i wouldn't view something that goes from zero to $5,000 to $1,000. To $10,000 to $1,000, to $63,000 to $55,000, in a relatively short time period, I would not consider that to be a kind of currency, I would not consider it to be fungible. It's only money because other people say it's money. And our government has both the rationale and the ability to squash it. At the point in which Bitcoin becomes worth a million dollars, or whatever it becomes worth, and it becomes some type of a reserve currency, the US government would have every reason to tax it into oblivion, to regulate it into oblivion. It's just not a significant amount, enough amount of money right now to be threatening, but if it were threatening, you can expect crushing blows from governments and governments. I'm not sure which government in the Middle East has already made it illegal to own Bitcoin, other countries will follow suit. So I'm just simply not a believer. I'm sorry.
Mike Stohler
It's okay. I don't have any. Yeah. Before we wrap up, something in the recent past is intrigued me. And it's that whole game stop. How it was on Reddit, and it was just like this little blog blurb and GameStop. And tell me a little bit about how that's happened. Or here's my second thing is, is it okay, that that happens? Because the billionaires of Wall Street do it all the time anyway?
Gil Baumgarten
No, no, I'm not going to say whether I think it's right or wrong. I will say that stock manipulation is a prosecutable offense. When it's done in large scale, it's normally just a couple of people that have colluded and those people tend to get prosecuted. When you have hundreds of 1000s of people that are colluding to do the same thing. And each one has $500 at stake, it becomes less enforceable, and the SEC becomes less inclined to enforce it. So I think it's an interesting phenomena, that the Reddit groups are engaging in some of the same behavior that the hedge funds, engage in the hedge funds get in trouble for it, but the Reddit group probably cannot get in trouble for it, just because they're so fragmented, and each person has so little money at stake, they're not going to be pursuing somebody for the $300 they made in you know, game stock, stop money, Game Stop stock manipulation of any, it is manipulation, but I think they're gonna get away with it. And, and I'm not so sure that it's necessarily a bad thing. And then, so
Mike Stohler
yeah, I can't you know, because the rest of us are like going, Oh, is that what brokers do? You know, they all
Gil Baumgarten
to some degree, yes. And, and shorting the people on short, stocks need to be very sophisticated. Because Yeah, they should be aware that their, their downside is unlimited. And so for your putting a stock is where you borrow it from another owner with the promise to return it in the future, you just hope to do so when the price is a lot cheaper. So if you sell a $60 stock, you want to buy it back at 20, and then just return the same chair shares, and you keep the $40. Well, if the stock goes to zero, the most money you can make is $60, the $60 that you shorted the stock for, if it goes to 200, you can lose three times your original investment. And so you have to buy it back in the open market, because ultimately you have to return those shares. And the higher the price goes, the riskier it gets. And that's the reason why short sellers cannot afford to let a stock run and they are prone to be manipulated, because they all get backed against the wall at the same time. And so it's it was an interesting recognition that the Reddit group decided to pile in on stocks that were heavily shorted. Taking a think GameStop went from five bucks to 300 and something dollars a share. Somebody is going to get hurt in that trade to the company doesn't become worth multiples of what it was worth yesterday, just simply because some generally amateur investors are buying a bunch of it.
Mike Stohler
And very nice, very interesting. can people find you
Gil Baumgarten
then go to my website, probably the best thing we also write a blog that writes a lot about all these topics that we're talking about taxes, fees, portfolio, efficiency, advocacy, and the like. They can go to segment wm.com zgntm.com for segment wealth management for slash blog. You can sign up for my blog. We send it out to 1000s of Every time we write one, and I go on there and poke around on my website and take a look
Mike Stohler
fantastic. And don't forget to buy my book on Amazon. There you go. It's called foolish. Don't be foolish. That's my book. Well, I appreciate it, Gil. You bet. And everybody, I hope you enjoy this one. There's a lot of information, a lot of good information to take care
Gil Baumgarten
Thanks a lot
Mike Stohler
Thanks for tuning in to the Richard King Podcast, where we're helping others find creative ways to build wealth, and financial freedom. For today's show notes, including all the links and resources from our show, and more information about our guests, visit us at www.therichergeek.com slash podcast. And don't forget to jump over to Apple podcasts, Google Play Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts and hit the subscribe button. share with others who can benefit from listening and leave a rating and review to get the podcast in front of your eyes. I appreciate you can thanks for listening
The information, statements, comments, views, and opinions (collectively, “Information”) provided in this podcast are not intended to be and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, accounting, tax or other advice. For our full disclosure, click here.
ABOUT GIL BAUMGARTEN
Is a 36-year veteran of the securities and investment industry. After beginning his career at the venerable EF Hutton in the early 1980s, Gil became a top producer for UBS and Smith Barney, what is today Morgan Stanley. However, Gil found Wall Street routinely emphasized its own interests over those of the client. By the time 2010 came about, Gil jumped off the brokerage train to start Segment, a fee-only firm where the interests of the client could align with the interests of the firm.
In 2021, Gil published his first book, FOOLISH: How Investors Get Worked Up and Worked Over by the System. The best-selling book highlights the hidden problems endemic among Wall Street brokerage firms, as well as the deeply rooted self-destructive tendencies of investors, and provides investors with an actionable path forward.