In this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan welcomes Ramin Nakisa to the show. Ramin is the co-founder of PensionCraft, a service that's geared toward providing members with the tools and information needed to make their own informed investing decisions.

Ramin kicks things off by explaining his reason for switching from a global equity portfolio to a fixed equity 60/40 portfolio. He says that after spending years investing and building up to his retirement goal, he wanted to take as much risk and volatility off the table as possible and just coast off the fixed income. And while folks tend to paint fixed income with a broad stroke, he says that it's actually nuanced. With multiple facets and sectors within fixed equity, there are noteworthy investments to consider. Ramin also gives a deep dive on the purpose of PensionCraft and what he wants members to take away from his service...

What we [try] to do is... teach people how to invest. We don't tell them what to do. We show people... diversification, getting the risk level right – not too much, not too little for your circumstances... also how to keep your fees low, because that's incredibly important and it's something you can control... But mostly it's about teaching people to do it themselves. It's a DIY training platform. We don't give people stock tips. We don't give them model portfolios. We just give them the tools, the mental tools, and the accountability so that they can figure out how to do it themselves, which I think a lot of people like. They don't want to be patronized, they don't want to be told, "Do this, do that." They want to understand what they're doing and take accountability and responsibility for their own returns.

Next, Ramin details why folks should get the "big picture" of the financial news and reports rather than try to delve into every nitty-gritty detail. Then he has a deep discussion on the Federal Reserve. While the speeches might be technical, he thinks investors can glean some insight. He also finds it interesting from a British perspective that American investors are more willing to lend money to "dot-com businesses" than to the U.S. government (by buying government bonds). While at the moment they might have moats, eventually competitors will undercut them and take their positions. And he gives his take on "passive" investing, saying that while more passive investors are emerging, there's no need to be concerned about that hurting the market in the long term...

How [many] active [investors] do you need in order to kind of salt the pie, in order to keep the price discovery working? I think nobody really knows that... But the thing is, there's always such a huge incentive to have a go at stock picking. You get paid so well to do it... So I think there will always be active people because the incentive, again, is so high to do that asset gathering to convince people that you've got the secret sauce and that you can beat the market.

Finally, Ramin shares his thoughts on the hypothetical scenario of the S&P 500 Index crashing 50%. He says that despite the massive fear that it would bring, he sees that as a great buying opportunity. The markets will eventually correct, and anyone who bought during the discount will have made substantial returns. Then Ramin details why he formed his 90/10 core fund asset and his logic behind it...

So my core, about 60/40, makes up 90% of my investments that I hardly touch. I just put more money in. That's it. Occasional rebalancing... And then with [the] 10%, it's an absolute mess... It's like my toy box when I was 4 years old... All of the toxic stuff is in that 10%. And that's where I spend my time. I just play with that toy box. And that way I just leave the 90% to do what it has to do, which is compound... You keep control of the risk, and you learn. You get stuff right occasionally. Sometimes I do get it right by accident, probably. But I learn, and it's fun.

Click on the image below to watch the video interview with Ramin right now. For the audio version, click "Listen" above.

(Additional past episodes are located here.)

The transcript is coming soon.

This Week's Guest

Ramin Nakisa is the co-founder of PensionCraft. He worked in investment banking from 2001 to 2016. Before becoming a strategist, he spent two years teaching finance at an investment bank. He has also written two books about finance and investment: A Financial Bestiary, which is meant for professional investors, and Invest in Fear, which explains how to buy and sell volatility using exchange-traded products.

Ramin earned his PhD in physics at Imperial College London and conducted post-doctorate research in neural network models of language acquisition in the Experimental Psychology Department at Oxford University.