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Paul Merriman, my today’s guest, is a worldwide recognized authority on index investing, asset allocation, buy-and-hold, and active management strategies. Paul began his career in the 1960s, working briefly as a broker for a major Wall Street firm. He concluded that Wall Street was burdened with too many conflicts of interest and decided to help small companies raise venture capital. He retired in 1982 to create his independent investment management firm.

Now retired from his company, he is dedicated to educating investors. In 2013 he created The Merriman Financial Education Foundation, dedicated to providing comprehensive financial education to investors, with information and tools to make informed decisions in their own best interest and successfully implement their retirement savings program.

Over the years, Paul has written many articles and books on investing. Paul’s weekly podcast, Sound Investing was named the best money podcast by Money magazine.

In this episode

📌 Who’s Paul, and what’s his career?
📌 How have markets changed over the years?
📌 Why is Paul a big fan of academic/scientific knowledge?
📌 What should we do to feel satisfied and have a happy life?
📌 How to adjust strategy so that it has an appropriate level of risk?
📌 Where’s the border between passive and active investing?
📌 A systematic approach to investing vs. discretionary
📌 The philosophy behind the Ultimate Buy & Hold portfolio?
📌 What does Paul think about holding a bit of cryptocurrency as another asset class?
📌 Gold and commodities

About Paul Merriman

(source: Paul’s website)

Paul Merriman is a nationally recognized authority on mutual funds, index investing, asset allocation and both buy-and-hold and active management strategies. Now retired from Merriman, the Seattle-based investment advisory firm he founded in 1983, he is dedicated to educating investors, young and old, through weekly articles at Marketwatch.com, and via free eBooks, podcasts, articles, recommendations for mutual funds, ETFs, 401(k) plans and more, at his website.

In 2013 he created The Merriman Financial Education Foundation, dedicated to providing comprehensive financial education to investors, with information and tools to make informed decisions in their own best interest and successfully implement their retirement savings program. A major project of the Foundation is funding the curriculum development and teaching of the 4-credit course, “Personal Investing” (for non-finance majors), at Paul’s alma mater, Western Washington University, which began Fall 2013.

In his retirement, Paul remains fervently committed to educating and empowering investors. In 2012, he wrote and published the “How To Invest” series, distilling his decades of expertise into concise investment books targeted to specific audiences – “First-Time Investor: Grow and Protect Your Money,” “101 Investment Decisions Guaranteed to Change Your Financial Future,” and “Get Smart or Get Screwed: How To Select The Best and Get The Most From Your Financial Advisor.”

Paul is also the author of four previous books on personal investing, including Financial Fitness Forever: 5 Steps To More Money, Less Risk and More Peace of Mind (McGraw Hill, Oct. 2011). The book was part of the “Financial Fitness Kit” offered on the TV show, “Financial Fitness After 50,” created exclusively to raise funds for local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations.

Paul’s book, Live It Up Without Outliving Your Money! Creating The Perfect Retirement, published by John Wiley & Sons, was released in an updated edition June 2008.

Over the years Paul has led more than 1,000 investor workshops, hosted a weekly radio program and has been a featured guest on local, regional and national television shows. Paul has written many articles for FundAdvice.com, a service of Merriman LLC. This website was identified by Forbes as one of the best online resources for investors.

Paul’s weekly podcast, “Sound Investing,” was named by Money magazine as the best money podcast. Paul has been widely quoted in national publications and has spoken to many local chapters of the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII). Twice he has been a featured guest speaker at Harvard University’s investor psychology conference.

Paul began his career in the 1960s, working briefly as a broker for a major Wall Street firm. He concluded that Wall Street was burdened with too many conflicts of interest and decided to help small companies raise venture capital. In 1979, he became president and chairman of a public manufacturing company in the Pacific Northwest. He retired in 1982 to create his independent investment management firm.

Paul is the recipient of a distinguished alumni award from Western Washington University’s School of Economics and is a founding member of the board of directors of Global HELP, a Seattle-based non-profit organization that produces medical publications and distributes them free to doctors and other health care workers in developing nations.

He lives part of the year in the Seattle area, and part in San Miguel de Allende, central Mexico.

Useful links

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