About this site

Now Know This began as the title of a podcast created by Juan Carlos Herrera and Cole Conkling during the quarantine days of Covid-19. Juan Carlos and Cole created the Now Know This podcast as a way to reach their clients and non-clients alike during those isolating times. It was, and still is, meant to be a place where Juan Carlos, Cole, and their occasional guests, including Julio, could discuss investing, economics, and investor behavior. It became a tool to educate their clients and others about these important topics, and as well as a space to discuss recent events.

Along with the podcast, Cole, Julio, and Juan Carlos are also active in writing white papers and investment blogs, which have, until now, mainly resided on their company websites, or through social media posts, but never in one place. Therefore, this site will be a one-stop-shop for all of their writings, past and future. In addition, the three are co-authors of an upcoming book about investing, entitled Close the Gap & Get Your Share, which is available for purchase (hardcover, e-book, and audiobook) via Amazon.

This site is intended to be a repository of information from our continual study of investing, financial markets, economics, investor behavior and more. Here you’ll find blog posts about such topics as the benefits of investing with patience, passive versus active investing, public versus private markets, the efficient market hypothesis, retirement planning, and more. We also hope to provide you with some lighter fare, like interesting articles we’ve found (investing or otherwise), books we’ve read (same), and even shows or music we think you might enjoy. We also hope reader feedback and questions will shape our future research and writing endeavors. So, if you have a question or topic of interest that you’d like for me to explore, please let us know! 

One thing we’ll be doing is researching, curating, synthesizing, and presenting complex information in an easy-to-digest way. So, if investing and markets seem complicated to you, we hope this site will help. The investment industry is, unfortunately, littered with a lot of faux complexity and jargon. The purpose, it seems to us, is to make finance and investing seem complicated so that normal, everyday savers cannot understand what’s best for their longterm success. The sad result is forever relegating investors toward chasing returns, overtrading, and investing in ways that are usually not right for the investor, but that make the pushers of these products and services a lot of money. And we mean, a lot of money.

That’s not to say that investing is easy. Far from it. Sticking with even a simple investment strategy over the many years and decades that you’ll need to be invested to experience the miracle of compound interest is not easy. You’ll need to have an investment plan tailored to your needs and risk tolerance. And, most importantly, you’ll need to stick with it through thick and thin. That means through the ups of the markets, where you’ll inevitably get greedy and will want to take on too much risk. It also includes, of course, navigating market downturns, where you’ll likely get fearful and will want to skirt risk altogether. Both swings, different as they may be, will kill your longterm investment returns. One reason, lost on many investors, is that future expected returns are highest when markets look bleakest; and, conversely, future returns are lowest when markets are euphoric. Again, nobody said it was easy. Of course, the Wall Street peddlers are not ignorant of these human emotional swings and will use them against you to further line their already deep pockets. It’s your job, then, to learn how to control your emotions that we all experience in the markets to one degree or another.

Our experiences as advisors has taught us that the more clients know about investing, the better off they are. This might sound obvious, but many investors are shockingly ignorant of the investment basics and end up trusting their advisors to “handle their finances” in total. While trusting your advisor is surely necessary, it is usually insufficient. That’s because blind trust will only lead to ignorance and bad decisions when it matters most—during times of euphoria and despair.

On the other hand, having some basic knowledge will do wondrous things for your investment journey. We liken it to driving a car. While you don’t need to know all the intricacies of how the engine works like a mechanic would, you do need to know some basics. Things like when oil changes are needed and how to put air in the tires. You also need to know the rules of the road so you can safely get to your destination. It’s the same with investing. While you don’t have to be an expert (that’s the advisor’s job), you do need to have some basic knowledge. That’s the point of this site: To teach you the “rules of the road.” To provide you with fact-based resources you can rely on and refer to when needed. To give you some perspective during the good times and the bad. And to give you somewhere to ask questions and get straight answers. Thanks for reading.