Are you a dummy, Charlie?

Investors just don't get the 'Golden Ticket'

So, you’ve finally decided to stop spending your hard-earned cash on overpriced Mickey Mouse ears and instead are vacationing somewhere that won’t make you question your life choices. Maybe you’ve even told your kids that applying to a university outside the US is a great character-building exercise (because, let’s be honest, who needs student loans in USD?). All perfectly reasonable reactions to a regime that continues to "Make America Great Again" by making everyone else worse. The latest thinking from Washington would have a new ‘fun-in-the-sun’ destination in the Gaza Strip and a Munich-style appeasement of the shirtless Rambo wannabe.

Up here in Canada, we’ve decided to buy local Maple syrup, prep the Mounties for inevitable assault and win hockey games. All serious stuff, but one thing you’re not rethinking: your investments.

The Great Financial Inconvenient Truth

Why is it that we have no problem cutting emotional and consumer ties with the US but can’t seem to detach our capital from it? Simple: greed and tradition—two pillars of investing so rock-solid they make a Roman aqueduct seem flimsy.

For decades, investing in the US has been considered the Golden Ticket. After all, it’s the place where capital truly runs wild and free, completely untethered from trivial concerns like equality or nature. US market dominance tends to cycle in 8-year bursts, except this latest one has gone on for 13, so you’d be forgiven to think it might last forever. Since 2000, the tally is 590% for the US vs. 225% for the rest of the world for those of you keeping score.

Add to that the almighty US dollar, which has made investing stateside a no-brainer. The gap is so massive that even Americans struggle to grasp the concept of diversification—why look beyond the border when Wall Street tells you everything you need is right here?

But as Grandpa George could tell you, the Golden Ticket is a metaphor for something else.

Grandpa George: There's plenty of money out there. They print more every day. But this ticket, there's only five of them in the whole world, and that's all there's ever going to be. Only a dummy would give this up for something as common as money. Are you a dummy?

Charlie: No Sir

In other words, think of things like sovereignty, family, morality, or nature—stuff you shouldn’t trade for. Yet for fiduciaries—those managing other people’s money—the Golden Ticket in practice equates to hegemony in a US stock market wrapper. Each day you wake up and wonder how much of the Billionaire Bro Club BS (BBCBS for short🤣) you’ll have to buy. This tyranny keeps getting worse with big passive ETF flows fueling the inexorable rise of the trillion-dollar market cap US tickers. Companies whose real focus seems to be on accelerating the rate at which our species can consume hidden in a Trojan Horse of productivity on glistening wheels of connectivity.

But hey, this is how we do it, right? Why question it? I mean, talking like Grandpa George might get you placed on the newest version of an Un-American list.

Fiduciaries: Keeping It Safe

A fiduciary’s job is simple: act in the financial interest of their clients. Or, in plain English, be loyal—but only in a way that doesn’t rock the boat. Since it’s not your money, just stick to the Golden Ticket playbook and pretend that global events don’t matter.

This is all wrapped up in the neat little package of “prudent investing.” You know, making financial moves that a reasonable person would make—assuming that person’s definition of “reasonable” detaches their investments from reality. By this definition, Grandpa George seems more wise than ‘prudent.’

Sure, in the last few decades, we did make an effort to integrate some social and environmental criteria into investing—but these are being jettisoned like ballast in an overloaded blimp to make room when a proper bully shows up.

So… Now What?

Here’s a fun thought: If a prudent person in your society no longer considers the US a friend, an ally, or even a remotely stable influence on global markets, why are we still blindly investing in its economy at the same rate?

We’ve gone the other way before—dialing down exposure to problematic regimes that trample on human rights, trash the environment, or generally behave like the villain in a bad action movie. But cue the fiduciary theorists furiously waving their rulebooks and yelling, “That’s just not possible—it’s the US!”

Oh really? Money is money, isn’t it? Buying local and investing local are just opposite sides of the same shiny coin—it’s all money. If your beneficiaries are willing to rethink where they are spending their dollars, why not rethink where you park theirs? And please don’t start with thoughts of ‘engaging’ firms in the US to push on their new czars. There is a naughty list for that.

Investing locally (or with friends overseas) might not give you the instant gratification of keeping up with the Kardashians, but let’s zoom out for a second. There are plenty of long-term economic benefits to reinvesting in your own backyard—aside from the satisfaction of cutting ties with a financial overlord who wields an economic sledgehammer like a toddler on a sugar high.

Of course, this means we’d have to do something wildly different—like measure success using something other than a US-dominated benchmark. Shocking, I know. But believe it or not, there's an entire subindustry of impact investors who’ve been doing this for years—measuring things like jobs created, homes built, energy saved, and emissions reduced… you know, actual improvements to society instead of just how many zeros get added to a stock price.

Just Capital has been conducting surveys in the US for years, which basically confirm what any rational human already knows: people actually care about things like local jobs, community well-being, and not turning their environment into a dystopian wasteland. Groundbreaking, right?

Turns out, building better, more resilient communities isn’t some fringe concept—in the same way that recognizing GDP as a severely limited measure is nothing new. And let’s not forget the risk factor: Anyone paying attention to the current US context should probably be at least mildly concerned about just how haphazard and unpredictable things have become. Do you think attempted coups, assassination attempts, mass deportations, and Nazi salutes are signs of a ‘prudent’ place to invest? The place is deteriorating, but here’s the thing—the stock market will be the last to notice (once again). Besides, investing differently is a bit harder than picking local Maple Syrup isn’t it?

The primary reason is that professional investors, like myself, can summon decades of cognitive dissonance to keep doubling down on a country that could declare a trade war before lunch and an annexation plan by dinner. Because, hey—what’s a little hegemony, human rights abuse, and environmental degradation when the returns are good, right?

So I get it. Keeping your hand out of the honey pot is hard. And let’s be honest—easily measured returns will always Trump the hard-to-measure ones. But let’s call it what it is: continuing to insist that investing decisions should follow some mystical, detached logic while purchasing decisions are based on real-world values is just plain wacko. Seriously, take two seconds to think about it—why is it totally rational to boycott products but irrational to rethink where we park billions in capital?

And let’s not pretend this mindset exists in some sort of vacuum. It trickles all the way down—from the high-flying pros making billion-dollar bets to the pensioners just hoping their spend-it-at-home nest egg doesn’t get scrambled, and all the way to the retail investors trying to claim a tiny seat at the table.

For that matter—if you’re perfectly fine playing Mr. Roboto when it comes to investing, then why stop there? Might as well go full autopilot. Who cares where you send your kids to school or where you spend your money? And actually not caring might help with that cognitive dissonance…

The bottom line? The world has changed, and—surprise!—we’re not all in this together. One thing is for sure: what we do with money actually matters. Increasingly, the market is vibing less benevolent, invisible hand and more angry, clenched fist. Sure, believing it will all just work out might be profitable for now. But in the long run? It's not what Charlie would have done, is it?