E63: Fourth Quarter 2025 Client Letter - WealthHard Edition

Foreign. This podcast is brought to you by Ginsler Wealth. The information discussed today is meant to be general in nature and not tailored to your specific investing circumstances. This means that you should talk to your regular Gensler wealth advisor or your own advisor before acting on any information we discuss today. Nothing in this podcast is intended to be a solicitation, and past performance does not guarantee future returns. For those who think investing is easy after watching the last three years unfold, this episode might dispel that myth. Today on the unlimited podcast, I read my Q4 2025 letter to clients where I revisit the story of our firm's color palette. I explain why wealth management and investing is actually hard and introduce Gimzer Wealth's new wealth game. Let's go. Well, hey everybody. Happy New year. Welcome to 2026. It's already starting out to be a little wild with what's going on in the US and around the world. No surprise. Who would have predicted that? Nobody. And for those reading my letters and listening to my podcast, it's just a theme that continues to repeat. Nobody knows anything. Nobody knows what's going to happen. And I'm sure no one could have predicted what's already unfolded in the first seven days of 2020 26. So in that environment, let me read my Q4 2025 letter to clients, which I do every quarter so you can hear my voice as opposed to reading it yourself. If you don't want to read it yourself, I'll remind up front. The website has this letter in a slightly different format with all the multimedia, the pictures, the disclaimers, very importantly. So I encourage you to look at that if you want all the background and most importantly for the regulators, the disclaimers. So this is the 2025 fourth quarter client update. I call it the Wealth Hard Edition and you will soon see why. To Gensler Wells clients Back in my investment banking days, I spent a great deal of time working on prospectuses for companies going public or raising additional capital in the public markets. One principle govern that work above all others Full true and plain disclosure. The standard for communicating clearly with investors. So when I mentioned in my last quarterly letter that our firm's main colors are black and yellow because I am partially colorblind, that was true and plain disclosure, but admittedly not full disclosure. While no regulator or investor is looking for further disclosure on our firm's color palette, nonetheless, here is the full story. In 1986 I arrived in Algonquin park for my first summer as a camper at Camp Erawan where my Uncle Ellie was the camp director. Every morning after breakfast in the main lodge, with the entire camp gathered together, my uncle would begin the day's announcements the same way. Good morning campers and the entire camp, in unison would respond, and I'll do it for you because you can hear me, as opposed to me describing it in my letter. Good morning Uncle Ellie. As you can see with the E rising higher and higher until everyone ran out of breath. At nine years old on my very first morning at camp, I felt like a real big shot because Uncle Ellie was actually my Uncle Ellie. And by the way, Uncle Ellie was also partially colorblind. And every morning at breakfast, Uncle Ellie and many of the campers and staff would wear their iconic golden yellow Camp Erawan sweatshirts. The same Erawan Yellow in quotes painted on every canoe I paddled for hours each day as I trained to become a first class canoeist and eventual canoe instructor. The same Erewhon Yellow canoes that rest at my favorite place on earth, Erewhon's canoe dock, that I stare at every day. On the large photograph that hangs on the wall directly across from my office desk, I still have just one of those yellow sweatshirts, carefully stored and protected, the way you'd safeguard something irreplaceable. And so when it came to brand Gensler wealth, it felt natural. Beyond the fact that black and yellow work well for both mine and my Uncle Ellie's eyes to choose, a color introduced to me through him, and one that has long been a reminder of what results from discipline, perseverance, and hard work. So when Uncle Ellie passed away this past September, having pictured him in his yellow Camp Erewhon sweatshirts for all these years, I was surprised as executor of his estate to find no evidence of any Erewhon yellow in his closet. I suppose they are disappearing gems just like him. True, plain and now Full disclosure, Wealth is hard. Fast forward to the middle of this past quarter, the fourth quarter of 2025 and I'm on a plane headed to Montreal to see one of our multifamily office clients. At Gensler wealth, we work with families holistically across both investment management and the broader world of wealth management. Everything that isn't just investing. For some families, that means being deeply embedded in their financial lives, coordinating and overseeing virtually everything on a day to day basis. This is what we refer to as family office services. As I settled into my seat, waiting for the plane to take off, I pulled up the latest product reveal presentation by wealthsimple CEO Michael Katchen he's been doing these Steve Jobs like launches a few times a year now, as his firm, a genuinely impressive one, continues to roll out new banking and investing features at low or no cost for millions of Canadians. As his announcements unfolded, my mind drifted to what we had been doing for families over the past quarter and year. I had personally been acting as executor for Uncle Ellie's estate, with my team assisting a complex, time consuming responsibility that few people are prepared for when they're suddenly thrust into it. We had also experienced the passing of one of our dear clients and were helping her children navigate the same kinds of complications. At the same time, we were supporting several families going through divorces, particularly spouses who had never been responsible for managing the family's finances. These are not moments when wealth feels simple. One of those spouses texted me this past quarter and here's the text or the quote. I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your help and support. When I say I would have been lost without you, I mean it. Knowing you were and are looking out for me made all the difference. It allowed me to breathe and make an excruciating situation a little easier. You went so beyond the call of duty. I am very well aware of that and I will never forget that. And now if regulatory requirements require me to say the following, the testimonial shown is from a current client. No compensation was provide. Are not aware of any material conflicts of interest. There are many more examples like these. Too many to list here. Back on the plane now taxiing toward the Runway, it finally clicked. Watching a firm brilliantly promote how simple wealth can be for many Canadians, while thinking about the real world complexity we were helping families manage every day I thought to myself, wealth Simple? No, Wealth Hard. And as the plane lifted off the ground, I clicked Buy and secured the wealthhard.com domain name and you can see the full story of me explaining that in more detail. There's a link on the website and a video. To be clear, none of this detracts from the remarkable work wealthsimple is doing to democratize banking and investing in Canada. They are a great solution for most Canadians, just not for the families we serve. Wealth Hard is our way of naming a reality we see every day. It's a micro brand that highlights our family office services work many of you already experience in part and some of you experience in full and a recognition that as success grows, wealth rarely gets simpler, it gets harder. The interviewer becomes the interviewee. The Wealth Hard site also features several clips from a recent video interview I did with Ira Gluskin on the Unlimited podcast. I'm usually the one asking the questions, but this time the roles were reversed. Ira pressed me on my path through the investment and wealth management industries, my years at Gleskin Chef and the founding of Gensler wealth and the services we provide today. Having run his own family office alongside his partner Jerry Scheffler, Ira has a deep appreciation for the family office model and as always, he brings his own thoughtful color commentary to the conversation. So that was the previous episode prior to this, so you should definitely look or watch that the Wealth Hard Game can you beat the index? Play the Wealth Hard game to find out just how hard building wealth can be. That was the picture in the letter. Just for fun and to illustrate why wealth and investing is hard, I experimented with vibe coding, a term I never expected to apply to myself, and built a simple wealth management game using various AI tools. Conceiving, coding and publishing a fully functioning web game in just a few weeks was a mind blowing experience and a strong validation of the excitement surrounding AI right now. And hint, I don't think it's hype. While fun, I did this deliberately to ensure that our team at Gensler wealth continues to learn how to use the tools of the future. I'm not aware of any wealth management firm that has ever coded and released an online game, but then again, we've never been particularly interested in doing things the way everyone else does. So test your investing skill and see if you can make the leaderboard. You might discover that investing is much easier with hindsight and so there's links on in this letter, there's links on the website to the Wealth Hard game. You can go to wealthhard.com and that'll take you there as well. Go to our website ginserwealth.com there'll be a link there too. Anyways, you can't miss it. You'll find it Investing is easy. I can't write a Year end letter or I can't read a year end letter. I should say without addressing the investing environment and how we've been positioning portfolios. As the Wealth Hard Game illustrates, investing is easy when viewed in hindsight. You'll see what I mean when you try the game. And 2025 highlighted again that if you just held the leading technology companies or the US market more broadly and didn't flinch when trade wars and tariff threats resurfaced, markets sold off on fears of slowing growth. Inflation data surprised to the upside, interest rates stayed quote higher for longer, end quote. AI valuations were repeatedly called a bubble. Geopolitical conflicts escalated, tech stocks experienced sharp pullbacks, headlines warned of recessions, corrections or crashes, investors rotated out of risk assets and sentiment swung from euphoria to fear and back again. You would have experienced strong results in 2025. Of course, we know many investors did flinch, particularly around President Trump's Liberation day in March and April, because investing is easy in hindsight but very difficult in real time. Against that backdrop, and both leading into and throughout 2025, we've made several deliberate portfolio adjustments. We increased exposure to international and emerging markets, added new Canadian and US Equity mandates with a greater value value orientation, introduced a new quantitative fixed income strategy, and continued allocating to an alternative options income strategy. For various reasons, we also fully exited at least two of the strategies we had been allocating to for years for certain clients, where appropriate, we also invested in three venture capital funds focused on either AI, Israeli technology, or both. As in most years, some core holdings performed very well while others, particularly some of the value oriented equity managers, lagged. On a relative basis, though all remained positive. We like to remind both ourselves and our clients that if all holdings in your portfolios are moving up at the same time, they can do the same in the other direction. Consistent with that philosophy, as 2025 came to a close, and as we continue into early 2026, we have been adding to several of the recently underperforming strategies. If and when broader markets and growth oriented stocks falter, we expect these diversifying strategies to play a more important role. That work sits alongside our ongoing effort to identify additional high quality, durable and less correlated investments to add to our lineup. We are close on a few, but as always, our due diligence continues as we enter 2026. And like all previous years that came before it, nobody knows what the future holds. Or as Barry Ritholtz put it on the Unlimited podcast in October, nobody knows anything. Which is precisely why our approach has always been to stay diversified, disciplined and humble about what markets will do next. Because investing is only easy in hindsight. Looking back, becoming a camper at Uncle Ellie's camp did more than give me great memories. It shaped how I think about mastery. Learning to become a first class canoeist in those unmistakable Erewhon Yellow canoes required discipline, hard work and serious focus and commitment. There were no shortcuts, and it wasn't simple or easy. Years later, I see the same lessons reflected in our work at Gensler Wealth Managing investments is hard in Real Time Managing wealth across families, life events and generations is is even harder. Both demand clarity, organization, and the ability to remain disciplined when outcomes are uncertain. So as we welcome 2026, I'll wish you an easy year ahead and assure you that we will do our best to make your wealth management needs a little less hard. Perhaps that brings us back to where this letter began. I've always known that color as Erewhon Yellow, but my team now calls it Ginsler Wealth Yellow and I like the sound of that. Thank you for your continued trust, support and confidence. We are available 24. 7 should you need us. Sincerely, me, Brian Gensler, President and CEO so that was the Q4 2025 quarterly letter. Obviously a new theme. We're going to focus on a little bit more Wealth Hard or our family office services, but we like the sound of Wealth Hard. Go try the Wealth Hard game. See if you can make the leaderboard. And my plan as we are getting 2026 podcast guests organized is to have a little bit of a theme and focus around Wealth Hard and around some of the elements of wealth management that are not just investing and that folks need to navigate, of course, with our help. So again, Happy New Year. Wishing everyone all the best for 2026. Let's go. The unlimited podcast is hosted and produced by Brian Ginsler and is edited and mixed by myself, David McMillan. This podcast is not to be taken as investment advice. If you like what you heard, don't forget to rate the podcast and follow us on Social medianslerwealth. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Sam.