We're going to do something a little different today. Instead of breaking down a stock or a macro story, we're pressure-testing three pieces of financial "wisdom" that most people accept without question. The kind of advice that gets passed around at dinner tables and from financial advisors who have a vested interest in you believing it.

We think all three are either wrong or dangerously oversimplified. And we have the data to back it up.

We'll also walk you through yesterday's Mag 7 earnings results and what happened when the market opened this morning, because four of the biggest companies on Earth just reported and the reactions were all over the place.

More below.

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.

You've probably heard this one. If you're 60, you should have 60% bonds and 40% stocks. If you're 40, it's 40% bonds and 60% stocks. It's neat. It's simple. And it was built for a world where people died at 72.

Life expectancy in the US is now pushing toward 80, and with AI accelerating medical research, we think that number keeps climbing. That means your retirement could last 25 or 30 years. Maybe longer! And a portfolio that's 60% bonds when you're 60 is going to have a very hard time keeping up with inflation over three decades.

Our take: stay invested in stocks for longer. Bonds are still useful (they stabilize your portfolio and generate income), but consider your age minus 20 or even 30 as your bond allocation. If you're 60, that means 30% to 40% bonds, not 60%. You still need growth. Probably more than you think.

The traditional rule was designed for people who retired at 65 and died at 75. That's not the world we live in anymore!

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This one is everywhere. Your parents said it. Your coworkers say it. The entire HGTV cinematic universe is built on it. And it's not completely wrong, it's just wildly overstated.

The S&P 500 has averaged roughly 10% annually since 1957. US home prices averaged about 4.2% annually between 1928-2023. That's not a small gap. Over 30 years, that difference compounds into a massive divergence in total wealth.

Real estate is a great option for building equity instead of throwing money into rent every month, and as an investment, it's better than doing nothing with your money. But it's not the insane, amazing investment that people seem to think it is. If you want to grow your portfolio as much as possible over the next couple of decades, the stock market is 100% where the data says you should put your money. Even just in VTI or VOO.

We covered this recently, but really want to drive it home again.

Let's be honest. Most financial advisors are putting your money into the same index funds and mutual funds you could buy yourself, and they're charging you 1% of your portfolio every year for the privilege.

On a $500,000 portfolio, that's $5,000 a year. But here's the part they don't tell you: it's not just $5,000 gone. It's $5,000 that would have been compounding for the next 20 or 30 years. Over a full career of investing, a 1% annual fee can cost you over half a million dollars on a million dollar portfolio when you account for lost compounding over 30 years. John Bogle (the founder of Vanguard) called it "the tyranny of compounding costs."

The information gap that used to justify those fees has shrunk dramatically. Between low-cost index funds, free brokerage platforms, and tools like our partners at AltIndex that give you the same alternative data signals institutions use, the average person has never been more equipped to manage their own money.

We're not saying advisors are useless. If you have a complex tax situation, an estate to plan, or you genuinely don't want to think about your money at all, a good advisor earns their fee. But the idea that you need one to invest properly? That's a lie. The tools exist. The data is accessible. And the 1% you save compounds in your favor for decades.

In partnership with Miso Robotics

That’s what NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang just said about the AI boom, even calling it “the largest infrastructure buildout in human history.”

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Already a first-mover in the $1T fast-food industry, Miso’s AI-powered Flippy Fry Station robots have worked 200K+ hours for leading brands like White Castle, just surpassing 5M+ baskets of fried food.

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US stocks finished mixed on Wednesday as investors digested a flood of Big Tech earnings and the Fed's latest policy decision.

Alphabet crushed it. The stock is up 5%. Google's parent company reported Q1 revenue of 109.9 billion dollars (beating the 107 billion dollar estimate) with EPS of $2.82 versus $2.63 expected. The star was Google Cloud, which grew 63% year over year to 20 billion dollars with a cloud backlog that nearly doubled to over 460 billion dollars. Alphabet is spending aggressively on AI, but the revenue is actually showing up. The market rewarded it.

Meta beat on everything and dropped 10%. Revenue hit 56.3 billion dollars (beat), EPS crushed estimates, and ad revenue growth accelerated. So why the sell-off? Meta raised its full-year capex guidance to 125 to 145 billion dollars, up from the already-huge 115 to 135 billion dollar range. That's the second consecutive guidance raise. Zuckerberg talked about building "personal superintelligence." The market heard "we're spending even more money we haven't proven we can earn back yet." Reality Labs is still burning over 4 billion dollars a quarter. The earnings were great. The spending scared people.

Microsoft beat and still dropped 5%. Revenue came in at 82.9 billion dollars (beat) with EPS of $4.27 versus $4.06 expected. The AI business is running at a 37 billion dollar annual run rate, up 123% year over year. But Microsoft also guided capex higher than analysts expected, and the stock was already down 12% on the year heading into the report. Same story as Meta: great numbers, but the spending is making investors nervous.

Amazon beat big and is down about 1%. Revenue hit 181.5 billion dollars with EPS of $2.78, absolutely smashing the $1.64 estimate. AWS grew 28% year over year to 37.6 billion dollars, its fastest growth in more than three years. Despite the strong results, the stock is barely moving as the market digests Amazon's 200 billion dollar capex commitment.

The Fed held rates steady at 3.5%-3.75% as expected, but Chair Jerome Powell stole the show by announcing he plans to stay on as a Fed governor past the end of his current term. Powell cited a "battering" from multiple legal battles against the central bank. He also called the US economy "quite resilient", pointing to solid consumer spending and apparently insatiable demand for data centers as reasons growth should top 2% this year.

Chipotle rose 4% after hours on a surprise same-store sales beat, with sales up 0.5% versus expectations for a 0.9% decline. The burrito chain credited its high-protein menu options and limited-time offerings like chicken al pastor. CEO Scott Boatwright said the company wants to "remain cautious" given the dynamic consumer environment.

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That’s all for today. Did we miss anything? Smash the reply button to let me know.

Cheers,
Brandon & Blake of Invested Inc