Randy Kurtz, CFP®

How I wound up running a solo RIA with 120M in 7 years. A thread…

@chamath I will Produce something in two weeks that I have otherwise been working on with a tech team for five years. Massive roi.

Not a single meaningful company has yet to say that they are making at least 2x+ from all of this incremental money they are spending since even last Fall! When ROI?

@bryanhasling This is what you say when you are about to take everyones jobs.

DIY anons everywhere losing their minds.

I learned a lesson for the second time today... when updating your openclaw (today I was updating it to use a qwen local model as the default), don't use ChatGPT unless you want to waste copious amounts of tie. Use Grok. It nailed it in five minutes.

I have spent 80 hours setting up, using, and fighting with openclaw. Ask me anything. If you are not on this train, you are behind.

Both Goldman Sachs and Apollo are forecasting 3% annualized S&P 500 returns over the next decade. That's not a typo. Three percent. Meanwhile, most advisors are still building portfolios like it's 2012 — 60/40, set it and forget it, "stay the course." If your advisor's plan for the next 10 years looks identical to the last 10, that's not a plan. That's hope. Diversification isn't just owning 500 stocks instead of 50. It's owning things that don't move together — gold, alternatives, assets most advisors won't touch because they can't explain them in a quarterly letter. The next decade rewards the prepared, not the passive.

@leveragedbets Bro, I was once interviewed by the “dividend” guy at Barton’s. I said “I don’t get it, the whole dividend thing. When you get the dividend, the stock drops and I now owe taxes on the dividend”. Needless to say, that interview did not go well 😂

Just tried explaining to someone when a stock pays a 6% dividend that means the stock drops 6% a year and they make nothing. Didn’t go so well.

During COVID, the U.S. money supply grew 26% in less than a year and a half. Even in the decade prior, since the Global Financial Crisis, it grew at a brisk 6% per year. In total, the money supply has expanded by about 40% in the five years since COVID. You read that right: 40% of all dollars in existence have been printed since COVID. You can see this clearly in the first chart covering the long-term history of money supply. There are many reasons for gold’s recent rise: foreign government buying, geopolitical uncertainty, and shifting reserve preferences, among others. But historically, large expansions in the money supply have often coincided with major gold rallies. What This Means for Your Portfolio None of this is to suggest that gold will continue rising. 64% returns are rare. Gold’s role in a diversified portfolio is not to outperform; its role is merely to behave differently. It tends to respond well to monetary instability, currency debasement, and periods of uncertainty or volatility, often when other assets struggle. This is why we treat gold not as a speculation, but as a diversifier. The same philosophy applies across the entire portfolio. Rather than betting on any single asset, we spread exposure across assets that behave differently under different economic conditions. Some years, one area will dominate. Other years, something else will. Our job is not to guess which one will lead next; it is to ensure you are not overly dependent on any single outcome. 2025 was a reminder of why this approach matters. Returns were strong, leadership was broad, and diversification worked as intended. That is not an accident. It is the design. Randy Kurtz

Tensions came to a head when France began redeeming dollars for gold at $35 per ounce and shipping the gold back to Europe. By 1971, U.S. officials understood that continued conversions would exhaust the nation’s remaining gold. Rumor has it that in early August of 1971, a French warship was headed toward New York Harbor, ready to unload a battleship’s worth of paper currency for gold. On August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon announced that the United States would end the convertibility of dollars into gold, closing the gold window and ending the Bretton Woods system. The result was a fundamental shift in the global monetary order. Currencies began floating freely against one another, and the world entered the modern fiat currency era. No word on the fate of that French captain when he returned home with a ship full of paper. Following that change, gold rose 49% in 1972, 73% in 1973, and 66% in 1974. Printing vast sums of money meant that the value of the dollar declined relative to gold. Or was it that gold rose relative to the dollar? Fast-forward to today. Here’s what has happened to the money supply since 2000:

Every great year in markets tells a deeper story. This one was about money, gold, and why portfolios should never depend on a single bet. Below I discuss this in my recent quarterly letter to investors, highlighting why gold is not a bet on price increasing, but is a diversifier. Our Core portfolio delivered a 21.1% return last year, the highest annual return to date. Most assets were materially positive in 2025, led by gold (up 64%), international stocks (up 32%) and emerging market stocks (up 26%). Last year, we introduced a chart ranking ten asset classes by their performance in each of the past ten calendar years. The chart is grouped into sections—such as “Amazing, up 30%+”—with some years having no assets in a given category and others having several. Below is that chart, updated for 2025:

@MichaelKitces Risk scores are stupid. It’s like a doctor asking you “you need heart surgery but… wha is your pain tolerance? That will dictate my advice”. The amount of risk a client can take is dictated by their financial position. It is not a personal preference.

Beyond 'just' a score: Risk tolerance questionnaires don't necessarily capture the full range of risk dimensions and can sometimes create a false sense of accuracy. It helps to understand the multidimensionality of risk. Nick Carr, a graduate of Kansas State University's doctoral program, studied this concept in depth and found that risk is composed of at least 7 dimensions: kitc.es/4qoZqMf Questions Queen Meghaan Lurtz, leading expert on the psychology of financial planning and Professor of Practice at Kansas State University, shares how understanding risk's complexity is only the first step; the real work happens in the conversations that give that understanding shape, and shares 9 questions to better risk conversations with better questions - that can take a risk PROFILE to risk PARTNERSHIP. #advicers #risktolerance

@T_Gatzemeier You forgot to mention what happened to owning gold last year. #diversify

In other news… - Owning US stocks returned 17% - Owning international stocks returned 35%

@MichaelKitces I’ve been ending my plan presentations with a one page plan … the main takeaways and highlights. Clients really love it

Will Clients Really Pay For Just One Page? In the delivery of “the financial plan,” advisors have traditionally presented the thick, leather-bound, firm logo-embossed, three-inch binder to clients... but the one-page financial plan is about focusing clients on what matters most. bit.ly/3FM8qFJ

@kevinxu Obvious take bro. In the worst case paying taxes and fees to liquidate and then investing for 20 years still gets you over $10m liquid on paper.

Hot take but I would rather have $10M in a 401k at 30 than $10M liquid at 50.

@TheAlphaThought @jasonzweigwsj by not picking individual stocks, and instead diversifying, I am reducing my need for luck.

@MrUpperLeft @jasonzweigwsj Goodluck to you

Buy fewer, better companies. Hold longer than feels comfortable. Automate the contributions. It’s like a crockpot. Set it, let it simmer, and stop lifting the lid every 5 minutes.

@BogleBitcoiner @Bitcoin_Teej @grok Yes, but that does not seem to be what he is saying. In his situation, it is important to look at your tax rate when making these decisions.

Roth contribution limit is $7500 this year. 401k contribution is $24,500 this year. Maxing out these tax advantaged accounts every year is the easy way to get wealthy while working a 9-5 There are more 401k millionaires added every year then there are “traders” remember that.

@PeterMallouk Not sure how a 25% tax rate is appropriate for the brokerage account...

The power of tax-free compounding in one chart. Same contributions. Same returns. Nearly $900k more with a Roth IRA by age 65. Time and taxes matter more than most people realize.