Welcome to the Bogleheads Chapter Series. This episode was jointly hosted by the San Antonio Bogleheads and the Starting Out Lifestates chapter and recorded May 20th, 2021. It features Alan Roth, who's also a board member of the Bogle Center for Financial Literacy. Bogleheads are investors who follow John Bogle's investing philosophy for attaining financial independence. This recording is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. And we are now recording. Thank you, Alan, for joining us. A quick introduction of Alan Roth. He is the board member and treasurer of the Bogle Center for Financial Literacy. He's the founder of Wealth Logic. He's a certified financial accountant, a certified financial planner, and has his masters in business administration. He was a corporate finance director for multi billion dollar companies and author of the book, How a Second Greater Beats Wall Street. He's a big advocate for keeping it simple. And my favorite, he has a professional goal to never be confused with Jim Kramer. I always chuckled at that one. Thanks for joining us, Alan. My pleasure. And thank you guys. You're the ones that do so much work to help so many people across the world. And thank you. Thanks, Alan. So the first question is in regard to the Bogle Center. So what are the goals of the Bogle Center for Financial Literacy? And what can we expect to see going forward from that organization? Well, the pandemic, obviously, changed things a whole lot with conferences and the like. But we've been spending a lot of time on mission, vision, values, goals, etc. And what we want to do is first of all, more support to the chapters. And I think Gail is doing an amazing job spending an amazing amount of time on this. The conference, we want to get back into having in-person conferences again. It's not going to happen this year, but it will happen next year. And we are going to do more virtual conferences, the speaker series, etc. We would kind of a lofty goal. We want to develop some tools to help people in different modes of decision relating to the lifecycle, spending, saving, spending, etc. And then finally, just so we can get the word out more, more media exposure. So those are kind of the high level lofty goals that we would like to do more of. Great. All right. Bart has the next questions. Thank you again, Alan, for joining us tonight. John Bogle Principles brought us together this evening, so we appreciate that. So our question is, what do you consider the basic principles of Bogle Head investing?  I didn't realize how common this was, but I sent him a letter once saying, I'd love to meet you. And a week later, got a letter back. I'm coming to Colorado in a few weeks. Let's get together. So he has just been an amazing man and mentor. Meeting him was kind of like meeting my favorite rock star president, etc. But if I had to say what he taught me about investing, and these are my words, you know, investing in eight words are minimizing expenses and emotions, maximizing diversification and discipline. It's that simple. When people violate that, they usually do so with their own peril. So it really is that simple. And it was very easy, by the way, when my son was eight, because money didn't mean anything to him. You know, the older we get, the more money means to us. And the harder it is to behave right. But, you know, Jack Bogle, you know, I consider him, you know, a multi billion dollar man and how much he saved people, not just at Vanguard, but at other firms that had to copy Vanguard to stay competitive. Okay, thank you. In some of your writing, we've noticed that you've been highly critical with investment advertisers. Can you tell us a little bit about that? How your critical stance on investment advertising in general?  But the more the more one spins on advertising, the higher the fees they have to charge. And if you think about it, advertising is all about emotions, is all about wanting to get a better value than just the market, etc.  Jack Bogle wanted to do the right thing and people would come. A lot of other firms and the CFP board, in my opinion, are doing the advertising and saying, hey, once we get more people or more money, then we'll lower fees and do things differently. And then that's kind of like the 12B1 fee model that failed miserably. So I mean, investing should be boring. It really should. And that would make a really lousy ad. Thank you. Great. And Royce has our next questions. Hi, Alan. So my first questions, a multi part one. So before we officially started the meeting, Merriam had mentioned your your books, how you describe the second grader portfolio. Can you describe what that portfolio is and how someone goes about getting a proper stock bond allocation? And then also, is that different in different life stages?  Sure.   With just those two, you own over 10,000 companies across the planet. And then a total bond index fund where you own all investment grade taxable fixed rate US bonds. So it's pretty much that simple. You know, when my son was eight, we had him at 90% he's gotten a little bit more conservative now he's 23, living out on his own in Madison, Wisconsin. And he's starting to think about maybe someday buying a house inside so he wants to take a little risk off the table. You know, I'm not a believer in setting asset allocation. You know, there's a couple of, you know, 100 minus your age, I don't believe in that. You know, there's a risk profile questionnaire and Jason's why because one of the three people I blame the most for getting me into writing. He and I have a disagreement. He says those risk profile questionnaires are worthless. And I say, Jason, you're wrong. They're not that good. They're actually dangerous. If you think about it, you know, March 19 of last year, when stocks hit an all time high, we thought we could take a lot of risk. And suddenly, 33 days later, when the market fell 35% we are risk tolerance was very different. But the biggest factor is our need to take risk as Bill Bernstein put it so eloquently when you've won the game quit playing. So you could be very young and not have to take much risk, you could be very old and need to take some risk. So there's not a cookie cutter formula. And I used to say, if you can't be right, at least be consistent. But now I think consistency is even more important. You know, changing that asset allocation moving in and out. You know, I've seen people time the market poorly, far more often, probably 99 to one timing things poorly. Because our emotions fail us when it comes to investing. So I don't have a cookie cutter sort of answer. It's not 100 minus your age. It's not take this risk profile questionnaire. And again, somebody young that might want to be saving up for a house they want to buy in a couple of years, that they want to have some safer money. So it's it's it's not that simple setting the asset allocation, but consistency, consistency, consistency. Thanks. And you know, in today's market, obviously the markets change a little bit. And today, we have low interest rates. And so more people are thinking, Oh, let me add more go higher on my equities. And so what are you thoughts about bonds in a portfolio at the present time? I totally disagree.  And I prove her right daily. So I was once young. So when I graduated college, I was 22 years old. And I could get I think it was 12% on a CD. Now, I tell that to clients and people and they smile and I say, those actually weren't such good days. Because if you think about it, you invest 100,000, you got 12,000 interest, a third of it went to taxes. So you're left with about 8,000 and inflation was 1314%. So you lost a lot more of your spending power than you're losing today. So I change absolutely nothing. When it comes to fixed income, the purpose of fixed income, in my opinion, has never been income. It's been the shock absorber, the stable portion of one's portfolio. And I'm very much a believer, whether it's, you know, one of the alternative second greater strategies were to use CDs. And I especially like CDs that have easy early withdrawal penalties. Because if rates do rise, you don't suffer the loss that a bond fund would have. But always, always, always keep credit quality high when it comes to fixed income. Don't get greedy. Don't try to, you know, even a corporate bond fund, in my opinion, if you look what happened in March of last year, liquidity dried up. And yes, the government stopped stepped in and started buying both corporate bonds and muni bonds, which shocked me by the way, but there's no guarantee that they're going to do it next time. So trying to earn an extra, you know, 0.3, 0.5% and risking money, in my opinion, is not worth it. Great. Thanks, Alan. The next couple of questions will be coming from Donna. Hello, Alan, thank you for being here tonight. I have a question about asset allocation. Do you think that cryptocurrency can play a role in a diversified portfolio and if so, how? I actually just wrote about it for AARP yesterday. And people are kind of shocked, you know, Rick Ferries made fun of me in the Bogleheads meeting that I own Bitcoin. Yes, in 2017, I wrote about it.  So I bought a lousy $200 worth of Bitcoin, which even with the pullback is still about a 10x 1000% return. So I actually walked away with a little bit more respect for Bitcoin than I thought when I wrote that 2017 article, because number one, it really does disintermediate the banking system. I mean, people can transact with Bitcoin, avoiding the bank. When I buy something on Amazon, which you know, is one of the two largest retailers in the country, I get 2% cash back. So you know that Amazon is paying more than 2%. So to disintermediate that I think is a wonderful thing. And you know, finally, I love the fact that there's only a finite amount of Bitcoin out there. That's not true for all cryptocurrencies. Now, I certainly wouldn't tell anyone to even dream about putting more than 2% of their net worth in any cryptocurrency. And I think the odds are, in five or 10 years, it's going to be worth a lot less than it is today. But I could be totally wrong. And I am quite worried, by the way, with all the amount of money that we're printing the fiscal and monetary policy. But that doesn't necessarily Japan's been doing that for three decades and fighting deflation. I also wouldn't extrapolate, you know, one country's experience to what's going to happen here. So I am quite worried. And crypto is kind of the digital version of gold. Well, it's been quite volatile lately. Oh, yes. Yeah, it makes gold or a precious metals and mining fund is pretty volatile. But that even looks boring compared to crypto and Bitcoin. You know, one tweet from Elon Musk and things change. One more. Is there a difference between the S&P 500 index fund and the total stock market index fund? And do you prefer one over the other? Yeah, there is a difference. And actually, wrote a piece many years ago, the case against the S&P 500 index fund and Kevin Laughlin, who was Jack Bogle's, I like to call him chief operating officers rather than assistants. And by the way, could he pick some great COOs? I knew, you know, Kevin Laughlin very well and Mike Dolan very well. And they're just amazing people. But what I was writing, you know, the case against the S&P 500 index fund is that it doesn't own the other several thousand companies, few thousand companies that only makes up 20%, but owning everything is better. And what I wrote was, you know, not only do you have the more diversification, but whenever a company is admitted into the S&P 500, the stock typically goes up in after hours trading because people know that all the S&P 500 index funds have to buy it. And then I think this was fairly amazing, that if you look at what did better last year, a small cap index fund, a mid cap index fund, an S&P 500 index fund, which is large cap, or a total stock index fund, you know, one would think that one of the first three had to do better than the total, but actually the total beat all three by almost a couple of percentage points. Anyone know why? One company, Tesla, it wasn't in a small cap in a mid cap, and it didn't get admitted to the S&P 500 until December 21st, almost the end of the year. So owning everything is better. And of course, who brought us the, the total stock index fund, Jack Bogle, and of course, in the note that he wrote me, he said, of course, you're right, but the overall performance is pretty similar. And it's true, it is pretty similar.  So the S&P 500 is going to miss out on small and mid cap. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Alan. A couple other questions that we received from the Boglehoods. What is a safe spot for people to put large amounts of cash that they do not want to take investing risks with? I don't have a good answer. The, you know, that there's this general belief that cash is a riskless asset. But if you think about it, you know, cash is going to be eaten up by inflation year after year after year, especially if you're young and have many, many years, there's this old saying that I don't know if it's true. And I'm not going to find out that they say if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it jumps right out. But if you put it in nice cool room temperature water and slowly heated up, it burns to the boils to death. Like I said, I don't know if it's true. And no, I have not done that. But, you know, when stocks plunge, oh, that cash feels warm and cozy. But, you know, Lucas, just think if you leave it in cash earning 0.01% in the Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund, just think what that purchasing power is going to buy in 30 or 40 years. You know, the one exception might be if you're a federal employee, and have access to the thrift savings plan, and in particular, the G fund, which gives you a bond return without any risk of principal, you know, that's a wonderful thing. I've joked on federal news radio, well, somebody hire me, pay me $1, give me enough time to move my IRA money into the thrift savings plan, then you can fire me. It's that good. Great. Let's see. Next question. For the typical accumulator, say someone aged 20 to 45, with all or mostly all of their assets and tax advantaged accounts, what do you think will work best, the second grader portfolio, or low cost target date fund from Vanguard? Well, if all of the assets are in tax deferred, I think something like a low cost, you know, Vanguard target date retirement fund is fine. In fact, the target date funds used to have just the three funds in there. Now they've added international bonds and, you know, a couple of other tips and the like. But I think it's just fine for somebody to have a low cost target date retirement fund if they have all their assets and their tax deferred. I'm a believer in locating the assets. So, you know, for example, if you look just at my IRA and 401k accounts, you'd say, wow, not my traditional, not raw. You'd say, Roth is a weenie, he doesn't believe in stocks, he's all unfixed income. If you look just at my taxable account, you'd say, wow, Roth is a big risk taker, he's very heavily in stocks. So what I'm trying to do is locate the assets with more tax efficiency, which isn't important if you have everything in a traditional tax deferred IRA or 401k. However, if you have a Roth, that's a different matter. You'd rather put the stocks in the Roth portion of that tax advantaged account. As long as it's low cost, it's fine. And, you know, the target date funds harness, what I think is the most powerful force in the universe inertia is in my book, I said that Albert Einstein called the power of compounding the most powerful force in the universe. And Jason's wife told me that there's no way to know for sure, but that probably isn't true. Great, great. Let's see. Royce, I think you have the next couple of questions. You. So given the variables, such as generous employer contributions or the ability of the employee to maximize contributions that may influence the decision making process, how should an individual decide between traditional and Roth 401k contribution options? Yeah, well, I invented the Roth. You know, I think, you know, the reason to have a Roth, a traditional and taxable money, in my opinion, is diversification from what Congress may ultimately do with tax laws. So I'm a believer in all three. Now with that said, somebody who's starting out in a lower tax bracket, there, I tend to, you know, recommend the Roth. Now any employer contribution is going to go into a traditional.  I think tax rates will go up and I'm using logic and we're talking politics and I don't know why I keep making that mistake.  So you know, I'm a believer overall in having different tax wrappers. And that includes the Roth, the traditional and the taxable. Now the Roth is my smallest tax wrapper because it's the newest. Did that answer your question? Did you want to know more about the employer match or we can move on. And if people have questions on that at the end, we can address those. But so my second question is, with the many financial tools we have out there on the web and on elsewhere, what what tools do you typically recommend that accumulators use to determine how much to save and when they're able to retire? Yeah, you know, I've used a zillion different tools and Monte Carlo simulations. I even wrote one for Jack Bogle.  I think most of the online tools and such, especially the ones coming from the financial institutions are in la la land that they make certain assumptions on returns.  So I think a much simpler and better way to do it is think of wealth in terms of years instead of dollars. So in other words, if you need $50,000 a year to live on, and you have $200,000, you have four years worth of living expenses for four years worth of financial freedom. And that I think is a better framework, you know, maybe you can assume that it might grow after taxes and inflation, depending upon the allocation at one or two percent a year. But in my opinion, that's a much better way of framing it and thinking about the things. And boy, can those fees and taxes take from from those returns. But again, I think of wealth in terms of number of years of financial freedom, rather than dollars. So somebody, you know, with a million dollars that needs $50,000 a year to live on has 20 years of financial freedom, somebody with $10 million that has $5 million that they need to be happy, they're pretty poor. And you can get rich quick really, by living frugally. Because by changing that denominator, and try to figure out what makes you happy and what doesn't. And with all the mistakes I've made in my life, I should be brilliant. I still remember as a kid thinking that if I went to the movie, that would be over in two hours. But if I bought something with it, like a model airplane, I'd have it forever and ever. And boy, did I have it wrong, Jonathan Clements taught me that it's experiences that bring happiness, not stuff. All right, thanks, John. Bart has the next couple of questions. Okay, most of us mobile heads, you know, we've done a pretty good job of saving. But as we get closer to retirement, is what certain types, is there any spending and withdrawal strategies that we should be taking a look at? Yeah, I've always said that investing is simple, I never said taxes were. So there is no cookie cutter, you always spend down the taxable money for tax deferred. In general, the Roth is the last money you'd want to spend. That's your most valuable money under current tax law, of course. But there are many times, by the way, that especially if you have delayed Social Security, you haven't hit the RMD, you might want to take money out of the tax deferred account and use up that 12% marginal tax rate, or take some of it and convert it to a bra. And then finally, you might not want to do any of those because you might be at the 0% federal long term capital gains rate. So you might want to harvest a is Mike Piper eloquently puts the tax gain harvesting. You can by the way, you don't have to wait 31 days, you could sell VTI or VTSAX and then buy it back immediately and recognize that gain at a 0% federal tax rate. And for those of you in Texas, I say with envy in my eyes, you have a 0% state tax rate. Donna, is that why you moved? Yes, it was part of the reason. Yes, for sure. Yeah.  I would never let that I shouldn't say ever, but generally speaking, you don't want to let that 12% marginal tax rate federal tax rate go to waste. I think the odds are I reserve the right to be wrong yet again, that you know, tax rates aren't going to go any lower than that. And speaking of social security and stuff that's usually pretty complicated. How do you feel about the rule of thumb about postponing social security till you're 70 years old? Certainly. Number one, the best resource by far is Mike Piper's OpenSocialSecurity.com.  He gives it away, but it is absolutely brilliant.  But he's using actuarial tables and probabilities. So the answer to your question is the only reason, well, obviously, if you don't have the money and you're going to live under a bridge, yes, I would take the money at 62 in that case. But the high that we're talking about a couple, the person with the highest benefit should almost always wait till age 70. The only exception would be if both parties in the couple were in horrible health and had a very, very short life expectancy. But even if one was in horrible health and the other was healthy, you would wait till age 70. And it goes against our emotions, because our emotions tell us I've been paying this fight attacks for decades. I want to get my money now. So the emotions say to take it immediately. And when it comes to investing and finance, you know, our emotions are typically fail us. If something feels good, it's usually bad. If something feels bad, it's usually good. So yes, I totally agree. Wait till age 70 with the higher benefit of a couple, or if you're a single person in good health, wait till age 70. Obviously, if you have other assets elsewhere, and I tell people to go ahead, you know, Bart, let's say you had a $2,000 a month benefit. But if you waited, you know, five more years, it would grow significantly. I'd say go ahead and spend that $2,000 today, because what you're really doing is buying an inflation protected deferred annuity. And you used to be able to buy those on the open market. You can't anymore. But when I priced it, it was like buying it at about a 45% discount over what you could buy from an insurance company. And guess what? That insurance company is not backed by the US government. All right, Donna, you have the next couple of questions. Adding to your social security, the social security question and Mike Piper's calculator in particular, he uses the present value calculation. And I was just wondering if you had a recommendation for what interest rate should be used when we're doing the present value calculations for social security or for annuities to evaluate them? Well, what Mike uses is a real discount rate. And that is absolutely the thing to do. When I do a private pension analysis for somebody, then I use a nominal rate. And that rate can vary if the pension is from the federal government, I use a lower discount rate than if it's a private company, especially if the pension is above the pension benefit guarantee corp, or isn't backed by the pension benefit guarantee corp. So, you know, I use rates, you know, a very, very long term bond interest rates and doing the discounting. And then I actually, for conservatism, raise it just a little bit, because unlike a bond, you can't trade it. Once you've made that decision to take the pension, you can't diversify it and you can't then change your mind. New topic. Given the change of administration in the White House, has that changed any of your thoughts on long term financial planning? Perhaps the policy in particular? Yeah, first of all, investing not a bit.  So when it comes to investing, you have to know something the market doesn't already know.  And most of these are for those, you know, very, very wealthy, the the upper 1%. But I've seen more people make mistakes, trying to predict what politicians are going to do, you know, creating irrevocable trust. So the kids lose out on the step up basis, etc. You know, thinking that the exemption was going to be a million dollars. And, you know, they've created an expensive infrastructure that they they didn't need. So, and I've spoken to Mike Piper a lot about this, trying to make changes based upon what we think is going to happen is a hard thing to do. The only thing that I was sure of I forgot what euro was, that the the estate tax exemption became unlimited. I was absolutely sure Congress was not going to let that happen. But yet they did. So trying to predict politicians is a very difficult thing to do. And and neither party wants to work together these days. I wish they could do something to solve, you know, our healthcare where we spend, you know, more than twice per capita of any other country on healthcare with the shortest life expectancy of any developed country. Great. Thank you. So that's that concludes the questions from the San Antonio Bogleheads chapter. Next up, we'll have a few questions from the starting out life stage. And those will be asked by Miriam. Thank you, Alan. These are for people who are for kids, you know, young people who are starting out in their investing career, or investors of any age who are late starters, and realize they have to get going. My first question is, when young people get their first job, they often receive a big glossy 401k pamphlet. It has dozens of mutual funds. It has columns with 30 day returns, five year returns, 10 year returns, er percent. What, what should they do with all that information? How can they assess that information when all they really want to do is select something and move on with their life? And their HR department, the human resources department, can it help them? They don't really know anything about the funds or a portfolio. Good question. There's a whole lot of research that shows that when a company has dozens of funds in their 401k, that a large portion of the participants are going to throw up their hands and just say I'll put it in cash, which is that frog boiling. So they are getting better. There's a lot of default options now where, you know, if you don't pick anything, it will automatically go to a life cycle fund, a target date retirement fund based on your age, which I think is a wonderful thing as long as it's a low cost sort of plan. I think it was about seven, eight years ago, a Supreme Court ruling showed that fiduciary that the trustees of corporate 401k plans had a fiduciary duty to offer low cost good investments. So the 401ks have gotten so much better over over the period of time, you know, offering low cost sorts of things. So I would tell people just, you know, probably look for starting out a low cost target date retirement fund if they have that, pick that, ignore the rest of the stuff, make sure that ER, that expense ratio is low. Thank you. My next question is what is your advice for young investors who are so tempted to make more money and jump into GameStop and Robin Hood Adventures? I would tell them to try to get their excitement from some place else other than investing. And it's hard because you hear stories about how much your friend made and Bitcoin, how much your other friend made and in GameStop and the like and some of those may be true. Most of them probably aren't or they're not talking about where they lost money, etc. But yeah, I would tell them to try to avoid that, get their excitement elsewhere. Like I said, excitement has its place but not an investing. Investing needs to be boring. Thank you. And you know, this is coming from a guy who I knew I was going to get rich quick when I was 22 years old and put money in gold, which you know, over what 30 some odd years has barely kept up with inflation. So I doubled my $6,000 had I heard of Jack Bogle and his S&P 500 index fund, you know, instead of making 6000, any guess how much money I would have made? Over a million? Very close to a million, about 700,000. Like I said, I ought to be brilliant with as many mistakes as I've made. So yeah, I, there's always going to be a Bitcoin, a GameStop, a gold. And I would try to avoid those things, except for maybe a fun little gambling portfolio, that's fine to, you know, carve out a little bit of money to have fun with. Regarding the issue of paying off student loans versus using the money to invest in your retirement accounts. What are the factors you believe are important to consider? And what is your opinion about this? How would you make that decision? How would you advise young people to make that decision? Well, I guess the first thing I would say is never, ever, ever miss out on an employer match. That's free money. So do I like paying off debt? Absolutely. But never miss out on that free. But the one exception might be if you don't plan to stay at the job long enough for the employer match to become vested. So that's free money. Never miss out on that. Depending upon your tax situation, that debt may or may not be tax deductible. But I consider all debt the anniversary of a bond. Because a bond you're lending in a bank or total bond fund, you're lending money to the US government, you're lending money to corporations, etc. They're paying you principal and interest debt, whether it's the mortgage, car, student loan is just the opposite. So to the extent that you can earn greater than a bond return by paying down debt should go ahead and do that. So depending on how expensive the debt is, whether or not they're getting a tax deduction, and whether or not they've contributed enough to their 401k to get the employer match. My next question is, is there any real value? Or should a young investor seriously consider tilting their portfolio to value funds, and in particular small cap value, since they do have a longer investing lifetime ahead of them? In my opinion, no. You know, some people experimented with drugs when they were younger. I experimented with DFA, and I think DFA is an amazingly good fund family, dimensional fund advisors. But, you know, one reason I think they are so good, Fama and French, who really popularized the small cap value tilted portfolio and dimensional fund advisors and the like, they never said it was a free lunch. They said it was compensation for taking on more risk. And I also found that the DFA funds were far less tax efficient. So you know, on one hand, I don't believe in ignoring small cap. I don't believe in ignoring value. But I also don't believe in overwaiting it. And if you think of, you know, the second grader math or as Jack Boca would say, the, you know, the humble rules of arithmetic, I think that was his phrase. You know, if one part of the market does better, another part of the market has to underperform. And lately it has been in a small cap value until just recently. And we don't know how far that's going to continue. But the fees are forever.  So I, you know, I believe that, you know, for instance, if somebody picked a 60 40 DFA portfolio with a small cap value tilt, that that might be equivalent to a 65 35 market cap weighted vanguard type of portfolio. And you'd have lower costs and more tax efficiency. It's a viable active strategy. And if you do it, you've got to stick with it in my opinion. Moving back and forth is there's a recipe to do worse than both. Well, when young people look at those graphs and they see that when I look at those graphs, and I see small cap value just down at the bottom of the graph. For a long period of time for years at a time you wonder, well, when is it going to make the money? You know, you want to earn some have a return. And if it's not going to do it and then 10 years later you get out of it. Yeah, well, I mean, there's all there's going to be reversion to the mean it's not always going to underperform it's not always going to outperform. And, you know, all I could say is it was about seven years ago every conference I was at seemed like every 30 60 seconds I was hearing factor tilting smart beta small cap value et cetera and I think that was a warning sign and by the way, I told you I'm not nearly as nice as Mike Piper if I knew how to beat the market. The last thing I would do is tell you guys are right about it I would be rich. Because even if that small cap value and I think there was some logic to it, but the more that it's known, the less likely it is to work going forward. So I'm not going to small cap value tilt I'm not going to go with what's your name Kathy would didn't, you know, do the large cap growth, but either.  Great.  Thanks for those those responses. We have about 10 minutes left. So I'm going to we'll spend the next 10 minutes answering questions from the chat. And at this time, I will be stopping the recording. So thank you.


Jnanam Sukadham, Marnamka, Milanam, Smarnamka, Leveshadiha, Sakalam Karu, Samayadhipate, Akilamka Namaskaram to everyone. The nature of life is such, in the same package that we think is me. Life and death packed in the same package, not separately, same package. Love and hate, people can hold in the same heart. At the same time they can love and person and hate another person. Termoil and tranquility, also held in the same package, like this, whatever you thought or what you normally think as opposites of life, all packed in the same package. It's only a question of what you choose to pick. If you pick love, you're one way. If you pick hate, you're another way. If you pick joy one way, if you pick misery another way. Oh, Sadhguru, why couldn't they pack it in a separate packet? No, it's your choice. The creation is so compassionate. If you want to suffer, you have freedom to suffer. Yes. And a whole lot of people choose to cause pain and suffering to themselves and of course they will share it with people around them. It's just a question of choice, because everything is packed in the same package. If it was, you know, people have this right brain, left brain, right side, Eda, Pingala, everything, suppose it was like that, right side was all joy, left side was misery, right side was life, left side was death, that would be easy. But that's not how it is. It's all packed together. If you're conscious, you will choose what you want. If you're unconscious, randomly you're picking up whatever you pick up. And when you cannot explain why you're miserable, why a calamity has struck you, why things are going wrong, no, you're searching for God. Because you did not find God up there, you settle for stars and planets. I want you to understand. Next to God, people's choices, planets and stars, they decide. God decides, but it's too vague.  Your Saturn is spinning the wrong way.  Well, do other things have influences on us? Of course they have. But will you let them influence you or not? That is also your choice. Becoming vulnerable and becoming strong, both are in the same package.  That is the whole thing, you did not do anything, you did not wash your hands, you did not sanitize yourself, you did not take care, you got it. Well, this happened. This is in Tennessee. Why I keep talking about Tennessee again and again is because Isha Yoga Center or Isha Institute of Inner Sciences is located in Tennessee. Here also it's Tamil Nadu TN and there also Tennessee TN. Things are made a little easy for me like that. The postcode, the highway, everything, numbers also matching a little bit. Easy for me to remember. If I remember one, the other one is just a reflection. So this happened in Tennessee. A man who was standing for a minor office in the city was going door to door campaigning. So he knocked on a door, a lady opened the door for him and he said what all he intends to do for the town and she should elect him. She smiled at him and said, you are my second choice. Oh really? Who is your first choice? She said, well, just anybody. You need to pick. What is your first choice? So right now, life situations are confronting us in a certain way. Probably like never before for this generation. United States crossing 15,000 fatalities. Spain crossing 15,000. Italy nearing 18,000. France crossing 11,000. UK crossed 7,000. India nearing 200. Well, it's an exceptional job by the authorities in India. The doctors, the forces and the government decision makers, for as dense a population as we are, this is a phenomenal work. But still, in the next week to ten days it could ramp up simply by permutation. It will ramp up naturally. But still compared to how it's happening in some of the nations, we are way better that way because we acted little preemptive action. But about five hundred people who are infected because of a certain religious group, they've gone missing, they're searching for them, they're just not traceable. These five hundred people by themselves can infect probably a hundred thousand people in the next month or two, all by themselves.  So unfortunately, there are situations like that.  So this is where we are. At a time like this, what you pick, what is your choice is very important. It's always important. But most people do not understand the significance of their choices unless there are some stringent or very acute consequences. So this is a time where the choices we make, how we behave, is going to have acute consequences. While young people who are little strutting around saying that they won't die, only old people die, but it's getting them also. Now, a few young people have died, maybe it is because of other conditions that they had or maybe the virus is learning to work on them also or maybe there was not medical care, we don't know, but it's beginning to happen. But those people who got sick, some of them that we know, it's more than a month since they were infected. After ten, twelve days they came out of it. But after over a month, now almost thirty-five, thirty-seven days, they're still not able to breathe properly, young people. Their breath is very short, even if they walk one hundred and fifty feet, they will have to stop and rest. They are in that condition, though they are young and healthy and fever is gone, everything is gone, but their breathing capabilities have not come back, at least for the people that I know. I don't know, for all the other people who have recovered in the world, the situation is same, we do not know. They may be out of danger, but still there's a lot of work to be done in terms of health. There are complaints that I am not answering enough questions because so many questions have been sent from various quarters and I have not answered. So today we'll focus on answering some questions, please. This question is from Shekhar Reddy. Sadhguru, it seems like it is a time for prophecies. While many are referring to the foretelling of Putuluri, Vir Brahmam, a saint and seer from Andhra who wrote about corona in his Kaala Nyanam, others are referring to French apothecary, astrologer and seer, Michel de Nostradamus. What is your comment on such predictions? Wonderful. These predictions are wonderful, but they always happen after the event has occurred. So all these people who are reading all these prophecies, why couldn't they prevent it if they knew beforehand? If you know beforehand and if you do not prevent a pandemic, that's called a crime of the worst kind. So it is a human fad that they want to have a scope into the future. Isn't it wonderful? You don't know what will happen next. Otherwise, could you live?  So a human being is the peak of evolution on this planet. From the lowest level of creatures to as you come, you will see they become less and less available to the influences around them. Let us say there is an earthworm. If something changes here, he will die. He is not going to take a swim and go to Africa and live there. Or he is not even going to go ten miles away and live there.  If this terrain or if his habitat goes bad, there is nothing he can do. This is why we've been talking about rejuvenating the soil because these microbes and worms which are vital for our survival, they will not migrate somewhere else. They do not have the capability of a corona. Corona doesn't have the capability. It is just that you're providing free transport. Human beings, the most mobile creatures on the planet are providing transport. Our mobility, if we do not make it a little more conscious, nature will control it. See right now it's happened, we can't move. This happened. This was in Los Angeles. A hotshot corporate CEO had a pretty secretary. This is in early 20th century, since then much has changed. So he said, I'm going for a weekend in Palm Springs. Why don't you come with me? She said, I know I'm your typewriter but I'm not portable.  It is human mobility which has empowered the virus the way it has. If this had happened thousand years ago, if where there was no air travel, no much sea travel, all this, then it would have been just there, wherever it happened. One or wherever it happened, it would have been just around there, maybe adjacent villages, something and it would have died out. But because human beings have become so mobile, today they're in China, tomorrow morning they're in Italy, next day morning they're in United States or wherever. Because of this seamless mobility, suddenly Corona has taken on a huge form. By itself, it would not have because it needs you. So this urge to always predict something, there was a man, he is no more, there was a man like this in Tamil Nadu. He predicted 500 years later, there will be a big flood in Tamil Nadu. I said, that's wonderful. People came and asked me, said, Guru, what do you think, 500 years later there's going to be a major flood. I said, that is why I'm sitting at the foothills in case the flood comes, we will go up the mountain. You are in Chennai, you will go. So it is that so. I said, yes. But I can also make some predictions. 700 years later, this hill is going to become a volcano and blow. I said, what really? I said, see, 700 years later, I will not be there, you will not be there. We can predict whatever we want. Please tell me what is going to happen in the next five days. Not even five months. Next five days, tell me what's going to happen. This could be useful. Like a meteorological report, if you tell me what's going to happen in the next five days, it would be of some use. 500 years later, anything can happen. And of course, people have such a fad about these things, they will adjust the time and the prediction just about everything that can ever happen on this planet has already been said by Nostradamus. I'm not a French, you know, I'm not conversant with French, but I like the word damas in English language. I don't know what it means in French. So this will go on and on, people making predictions always of the past. Well, if you look at certain projection of how populations are growing, how things are happening, what kind of ecological damage is happening, you can make some calculation and predict something that even this trajectory, if you go, this is what you will hit. We can say that. But 500 years of trajectory is a different matter because we do not know what all forces will influence things. People say, you know, after the world war is over, they say, we knew this is going to happen.  What about the test explosions? You missed all of them, you don't know how many hundreds of tests have been done. Maybe human beings did not die, I'm sure a whole lot of creatures have died. So this is a wasteful thing.  There are two problems right now with coronavirus. Like somebody said, it is dense population and dense population. We are already a dense population. Don't also be dense up here. Let's do what best we can do.   How many people we will not let them die? This is important. Next question is from Karthik. Namaskaram, Sadhguru. Generally it is said that once you are on spiritual sadhana, you should not get involved in action. But you are making volunteers go out and serve, distribute materials to health professionals, raising funds for rural people's ration. Is all this worldly activity needed on spiritual path? No, no, it's not needed. It's definitely not needed. But morning, evening, is this very worldly? Hello? Is it very worldly or no? If you stop all that, then I will not ask you to volunteer. I will not ask you to serve. I will not ask you to do anything. If you simply sit like this, no food, no movement, no toilet, if you simply sit, I will also come and fall at your feet. You don't have to do anything, we will worship you every day. Yes, we will. I'm not joking. We definitely will. But you are very worldly, but when others eat, suddenly it is worldly. This is spiritual. You eating is spiritual, somebody eating is worldly. So, my meal is very spiritual meal. Your meal is worldly meal. No, no, no. We must decide. If you are oblivious to your own suffering, then you have a right to be oblivious to everybody's suffering. Absolutely nothing matters to you. But when this matters, everything matters. So, the reason why there is a certain amount of negativity against spiritual movements is because of this, because largely they have been perceived as irresponsible people, people who live on the society. It's very, very important. If society gives you ten rupees, you must do hundred rupees of work. Yes. Only then you have a right to close your eyes and simply sit like this, otherwise you have no right. So, when situations happen, like this, right now. Okay, this is a pandemic, but I hope this question is not from within the yoga center. Kartik. So, suppose we are here in the yoga center, two hundred, I mean two thousand, six hundred and forty-two people right now. Not a single infection. But they're all happy, peaceful, very wonderful. But I have offered the premises to the state government. Now they're examining how much space can we give them. So, the space that we give them, they will bring infected people. You need to understand infection is not going to just fly and get you. Infection will be there with them. We have to provide a protective atmosphere and some of them will be idiots. We have to lock them in, if necessary. All kinds of people are there.  Yes, all these things have happened. All this we have to manage, ensuring nobody here is infected. It's very important because your compassion is not about causing more problem. If you get infected, you're just multiplying the problem.  Compassion is a very intelligent process of life. When you're all inclusive, you will see what is the best thing to do. The best thing to do is not something that can be decided today just like this. This is the best thing to do. This is an evolving situation as life always is. In the given situation, what is the most sensible thing to do, we will decide accordingly. We are already clearing some premises and making it ready in case it just bursts out. Because Coimbatore city also has a few people who got infected in Delhi and they came here, I think a few of them are not traceable. We don't know where they are, how many people they're going to infect. It's come very close, just twenty-five kilometers away. I think Kovai Podur is segregated, is it today? They've started, you know, doing localized segregation. Wherever there is one or two infections, they're just segregating that little little societies so that it doesn't spread. That's exactly what we will also do if people come from outside. But we want to ensure, we want to keep this record by the time this virus is over. However long it takes, we don't want to see even one person here infected. So our Chinese volunteers, thanks to them have sent material for us. Just today, morning it has arrived. The gloves, the protective gear and various other things. So you will have protective gear to go on self. It's just that you have to maintain certain distance and certain sense. There was an artist. One day he got a female model to paint. So she sat there and he started painting. After some time he went and kissed her. She said, what? I'm sure you're doing this with every model who comes your way. He said, no, you're the first one. Then she asked, how many models have you had? He said, four. First one was a rose. Second was an onion. Third was a banana. You are the first female. So what you touch, what you don't touch, what kind of distance you keep, you just have to take care of this because this is serious business. This is life and death business. Your enemy is invisible. Don't know where it is. You don't know who is carrying it. There is no guarantee. If someone is young and sturdy, they may be carrying it, not showing a single sign. So you just have to treat everybody like an onion. So about to serve or not to serve. This is not even a question. This is not service. This is just basic expression of your humanity. If you think forsaking your humanity is your spirituality, I'm sorry I don't want such spirituality.  You simply tch, then we will not ask you to serve. You don't have to. As long as this is there, you must serve because for this to happen, behind this there are so many people. There are people out there still working in the field. The poor farmer may get it. The shopkeeper may get it. The one who brings it here may get it. Our volunteers who are going out to procure, they may get it. So when all of them are sticking out their life for you to eat, you not willing to do even a little bit doesn't sound like spirituality to me. This question is from Mimi. Namaskaram Sadhguru. In the last few weeks you have been speaking about making home a sweet home to live in. However home cannot be sweet for many who are victims of domestic violence and cannot escape anywhere. This is a man complaining or a woman? Mimi. Mimi, am I am I? Sounds like a woman. In Lebanon the number of victims have increased by 100% since March 2019 and the same is happening across the world after the lockdown. How can we help them in these difficult days and what can they do to survive this period? Domestic violence, I thought it could be a man because these days women are more fit than men. So I thought it's the man complaining but it's still a woman unfortunately. Well, see this is what we are trying to change. This is what the world is trying to change because, because a woman or a female human being has certain biological responsibilities in terms of bringing us all forth here. Because of that, there were certain social handicaps which evolved over a period of time. These handicaps have been exploited too harshly in many societies, almost everywhere. But not everybody, but everywhere it's happened. In some places it has religious backing. In some places it's free enterprise to dominate and exploit a woman. Individual people will always do. I want you to understand it's not just about a woman. Individual people have a tendency to exploit anybody who is little weaker than them. Well, people all over the world this used to happen, fortunately it's come down considerably now. When we were growing up also, every day at the school you can get beaten for something or the other almost every day. Why are you beating a child? Simply because they're smaller than you.  So you are not beating them because you know something better.  Simply they're smaller than you.  So similarly, they're not necessarily beating somebody because they are women. They're beating them because they're physically weaker compared to a man little smaller and weaker generally at least.  You know once I was... there was some kind of assembly near in Malanadu that's near Shivmagga in the western gods. There's some camp there and this way back I'm talking some little yoga thing going on and they wanted me to come there and spend a day with them. So I went naturally. My mode of transport was always a motorcycle at that time I went there. Those days the 250cc single stroke machine was a big motorcycle. Today when I park it next to what I have today, it looks like a joke but that day it was big motorcycle. On the road it was the fastest thing on the road. So I went there and some other people were there who were serving that place.    So he came and he was saying what happened and you know, because I didn't have power, he pushed me like this. On the road you must always have some power. I said not just road, just about anywhere. If you don't have power they'll push you around. Unfortunately the world has become like this. This is why, this is why a spiritual space is very important where people are not seen for their strength. People are not seen for their physical strength or financial strength or something else like that but people are valued just for what they are. We need to build a society like this. This violence within the house, I know a whole lot of people are trying to address it like it's a man-woman problem, it's not a man-woman problem, this is man versus anything problem.  Why do people, why did people go about just shooting whatever they saw wild animals and stuff like that. Not always for food. If they're just shot for food because of their survival that's a different matter. Most of the animals were shot simply for pleasure because they can't shoot back at you.  So this is on everywhere but today women have choices, it's time we must make those choices. We can't fix everything right away but all of you who have children, empowering. The girl child in your house is the most important thing. Empowerment does not mean she should become the exploiter from tomorrow. Empowerment is this that you have no need to exploit anybody, that is empowerment. A human being is truly empowered that if I sit here I feel wonderful by myself. I don't have to have ten people behind beneath me for me to feel great. This is empowerment. This empowerment has to happen means you have to look at the spiritual process, the whole world. Spiritual process does not mean looking up, looking down, it's about turning inward and getting in touch with the essential nature of who we are. If we don't touch that, we will be like every other animal. This happened one day. A lion was walking in the forest and he was feeling like this man in the domestic violence scene, little strutting around thinking like that. He saw a fox, he caught him and he said, hey, who is the king of the forest? Fox, you know how?  He felt little more, it got puffed up and then he was strutting around. Then he saw a leopard, caught him. Who is the king of the forest? He shivered because he is not a match for the lion. He said, no, no, you are definitely the king of the forest. There is no two ways about it. If I had two choices, it would be you and you. Then he was feeling really wonderful, even a leopard is shivering in front of him and he came to a little opening. There he saw a huge tusker standing and he rode. Who is the king of the forest? The tusker without a word put his trunk out, picked him up, twirled him around and thrashed him on the ground. With his back hurting very badly, you could have just told me. The tusker said, but I had to make my point.  It's okay for the animal kingdom, not okay for human beings.