Welcome back to the show, my fellow extraordinary Americans. 

For today’s guest, we have Dan Calandro as an entrepreneur and see if CFO Dan has a long track record of operational success and improving performance to sound management and smart investment, including transforming a failing CPG company into the undisputed leader of its nation, increasing sales by 700%. Margin by 60% and shareholder value by 525%. 

As a private equity investor, Dan has invested more than a million in developing his proprietary 15/51 method, which combines science and common sense to deliver a winning system that eliminates the need for corrupt Wall Street operators. 

As a consultant to Fortune 500 executives, Dan participated in high-level investment meetings with the well-known Wall Street. For firms such as Goldman Sachs, Marilyn Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Smith Barney, to name a few, what he discovered was both shocking and disturbing. Since 1995, the dance portfolio has grown by an incredible 3600%, thriving to four major booms and busts and delivering an impressive average annual gain of 135%, with less risk.

His groundbreaking book Lose Your Broker, Not Your Money, unmasking Wall Street’s secrets, untangles the mystery of successful investing. By providing a market-based solution that is easy to understand, simple to use, and produces superior performance to any method currently on the market, Dan is an extraordinary American. I’m glad and honored to have him on the show. Dan, are you there?

Yeah, I’m here. Good to see you, Cosmos. Good. Thanks for having me.

Dan, thank you so much for taking the time to do this podcast for me. I’m truly honored to have you on the show. Can you tell me and the audience more about yourself, your background, and how you got started?

Sure. Thanks. Well, you know I’m a finance person. I grew up poor in the inner city of Cosmo. And you learn the value of a dollar down. Right. My hopes and dreams always were getting out of there, and I ran away from the city to college. Right. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Math came easy to me. 

So, I wanted to make a lot of money. So, I got into business finance. I always wanted to be a CFO and was lucky. I want to have done that a few times over in my career. But as a hobby. And it started in college because of Black Monday, October 19th, 1987. Still, to this day, the single biggest drop in Dow Jones Industrial Average history happened, which grabbed my attention. 

I’ve been doing stock market research and analysis since then. About 15 years ago, about 20 years ago, I picked up a wealthy client who owned an investment company. He said, do you have any advice? And I said, yeah, you own too much, right?

And you have to get smaller and tighter and have more power. My method is my philosophy, which came from a Graduate School project. It kind of became a vocation for my life, and it’s encapsulated in my book. Lose your broker, not your money: my method, 15/51. So now you know, I’m just trying to help people understand and make more from their investment dollars because, if you look around what’s going on, the government’s doing everything they can to bankrupt the middle class. And my vocation. My goal in life is to take my God-given talents in math and science and financial expertise and help the middle class overcome the challenges they have right now.

What you’re doing is amazing because extraordinary America is about people and helping people understand how finances, banking systems, monetary systems, business work, and even the mindset of getting there. 

After all, many people need to realize that money works in a certain way. And we know a lot of the rules we don’t know—all the rules of the game, and when the bankers and the people in power know all the rules, and if we don’t know them, we cannot play. 

And the part of that is when it is like the inflation that’s happening right now, but before I get there, dad, I want to ask, like, what was your strategic goal regarding like your vision and career and vision like regarding your career when it came to business and finance like what got you to the point where you became like an analyst and all of that stuff?

Well. Right. You know, I’ve always been creative. Cosmo, right? You know, I’m a writer. I’d like to write novels and screenplays if I could, right? But I’ve always been creative. 

And so, I took that in business, looking at standard financial statements and asking how I could get it. If, say, marketing and sales have a different look at the business, how can I give them some information that isn’t just standard off, you know, the page, and how can I help them do their job better, better ROIs? I also started doing different kinds of analyses for upper-level managers in sales. Marketing, you know, whatever my boss is, and there I have it. Right. Oh, take it differently. Different. They like different. Right? 

And that’s what I did with the stock market. I have always been interested since college. If, what if what? They’re saying it isn’t correct, right? That’s science questioning the standard. Right, well, what if so? Think about this for a second. Cosmo, 115 million Americans own mutual funds, and those 115 million Americans own, on average, for mutual funds.

Well, why would they do that? If investing was simple and easy to do, like I say, it is, right? I could teach anybody how to invest successfully. I say that not just in that book, but you and I speak for a couple of hours off-camera. I could teach you my method in 2-3 hours off-camera, right? Why would they do that? Well, Wall Street makes it complicated. 

You can’t do it, so you have to give them your money, right? The average mutual fund has 1015 hundred stocks in it, and they’re all trying to outperform this market, which is the UN quote market. What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average? For most people, the Dow Jones Industrial average is 30 stocks. How are you going to beat 30 stocks with the portfolio? Of four mutual funds that own 1015 hundred stocks each, it’s impossible, right? 

Again, they sell mutual funds. Because they make a lot of money, right? They make investing complicated because they could sell you 5000 stocks if it is. If it’s simple like me, my 1551 method, you know, is all centered around 15 stocks, right? Everybody knows 15 stocks, right? Wall Street can’t get rich if they tell you to buy. 15 stocks, right? But I tell you, it’s not about Wall Street’s about you, right?

So the only way you can outperform is to build a portfolio that can outperform because, as you said, inflation is now 8%, 6%, 10%—whatever you want. The government doesn’t include food and energy, which shows its corruption. Because we all need both, right? We all need to drive to the market to buy food, right? 

And if inflation continues, it will be because of what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, right? It would help if you had more in retirement. Social Security can’t keep up, right? It’s all. It’ll be broken in 2034. Then what? Right, then they reset, right? They revalue every right. You need to put as much money as possible away for the future and make as much of that money because there are only two ways to make money, right? You go to work every day and exchange your labor for money. That’s one way to make money, right? 

And then save money and put that money to work so that money is working while you’re working to earn more money, right? There are only two ways, right? You go Labour or have your money work for you. You got to do both right. And you need to make as much money as possible to stay ahead of inflation and the cost of healthcare—everything else that goes along with it.

This is such an important topic, and I cannot stress to the audience more how important it is to beat inflation. 

So, a lot of people in the middle class are now disappearing at a rapid rate, right? And like most Americans, they like their natural tendency to put all their savings into a savings account. And then just like they’re, they believe in Social Security and all that, and their retirement plans is to work till 65, and then basically after that, they retire, like work on their savings. But you and I both know that that’s in today’s world with the rate at which. Patients feel that their purchasing power is being destroyed. 

So, in your opinion, what should most Americans do to combat inflation so they can retire properly?

Yeah, and me, you know, in my book, there are only eight chapters in the later chapters, six and seven. It’s very easy to read. It is very easy to understand, and it works right. You have to have cash. People should understand that cash is a non-earning asset on the best and worst days. Inflationary times, right? If you get 1% interest on your money in a savings account, nobody gets that anymore, right? But if you did and inflation is at 5%, let’s say you lose 4% purchasing power year over year, right? But you need money and cash in an emergency, and your car breaks down, right? 

And strategically long-term. Right. You need cash because you can’t buy low without it, right? All investment. Buying low and selling high is the only way to make money with investment. That’s it. That’s how you make money. You wake up in the morning. God gives you time. It’s free, right? You have to clock a little, though. You got rent, lights, and everything else, right?

So, it’s a cost of living, right? Call it whatever you want. You need to earn more money than that cost to live, too. Earn money to save and invest, right? Right. You have to have cash. 

So, if that’s the first thing you have in your portfolio, and I preach a multiple asset class portfolio, cash would be one of them, right? A hedge to your cash. What’s your hedge to your cash? You know, you and I spoke a little bit off-camera. You know, metals gold. I believe in that. Right. And Gold’s dynamic to cash has changed a little bit since it got securitized back in 04 or whatever. But still, gold is a hedge to your cash balance, no doubt, right? 

But they should go in inverse relationships, which you want from the head. Which? And everybody’s. The third component should be some high-growth component, whatever that is. For some people, it’s real estate. For me, it’s stocks, right? It’s equities, right? So that’s where you want your growth, and you know that growth. You need to cover your inflation short-term and long-term, right? 

So, it’s got to be a potent component of your portfolio goals. You hedge both of them right because the gold message doesn’t always go up with stocks and should. And it should go to the, you know, inverse of stocks to some extent and the inverse of cash to some extent. So that’s what a portfolio should do, right? One should go up when the other goes down. 

And your big growth component, that’s where it’s at, and for me, it’s stocked and using my method, and again, you know, 115 million Americans on average for mutual funds, My Portfolio outperforms them all. And it does start with less risk and less volatility and more because it’s stronger, it’s built stronger. It’s built with my method, my system 1551 again, which is easy to understand, right, and for people. My Portfolio started 27 years ago with five grand. And now it’s over 300,000, right? 

And so, I still have 10/15/20 years before I retire, right? That’s six or 700,005. You started with five grand. You sold it to us. I didn’t add to it. It doesn’t include dividends, right? I show people how I built that portfolio in my book, and it’s easy to beat that word. I beat that. I could beat that portfolio with 15, the same 15 stocks, or trade them out if I want. You know, 

I’m the engineer. I built it, and I preach to people if you want. Build your portfolio. You can generate any return you want with less risk using my method. And that’s what needs to be done, right? You need to be able to diversify yourself, but you need to have a speedboat when you’re heading for an iceberg. You don’t want the Titanic, and the average American is built like the Titanic. It has four giant mutual funds. And it’s heading right now towards an iceberg. This whole economy and the currency market are heading towards an iceberg. I’m comfortable because I’m in the speed. Most people are scared, so they don’t know what they have, but they’re in the Titanic, and that’s the scary part.

I think now, like most people, understand that there’s a storm coming in the future. Still, they don’t know how bad it is because of what happened in 2007 and 2008, like the way the bank, the way the Central Bank dealt with it, or the Federal Reserve and the government was that they print, they use quantitative easing, and they just put interest rates to zero. They just printed a lot of money, and then what? What it did is it. Just put it off and set it off for a future date. So, it just gets worse and worse. 

So, when this bubble finally pops, they can’t keep printing money forever. You know, at some point, it’s going to pop. And then what are people going to do? And this is.

Right. That’s why you need cash, right? It would be best if you bought low. It’s all about buying. Low, and it’s. Again, Cosmos, right? They’re creating and manufacturing a crisis like the COVID or DOA crises. They do that. That’s what the establishment does. And they’re doing it now. And they’ve been doing it for the last 10 or 15 years. And think about this for an SEC. Right. And this is what most people don’t get. Inflation is a monetary condition, right? 

Now, we’ve been printing money for a long time that didn’t create inflation for a long time, and there’s a reason for that because that money through quantitative easing that you brought up stays mostly at the institutional level. OK, it stayed with Wall Street. It stayed with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. It stayed there, and then they funneled it through hedge funds and everything else like that. That’s how they do it right. COVID-19 was. COVID-19, they injected $6 trillion of new currency. They went into a $20 trillion economy in 10 months and sent that money to everybody and their sister people, businesses, big, small, and medium-sized everywhere. They gave it to everybody, including foreign countries or whatever, right?

They did that all in 10 months. They had no choice but to create big-time inflation, even though the people who printed the money, the Federal Reserve, said it was transitory and short-term and wouldn’t be around for long. Right though, of course, they lied because that’s what they do, right? This is the same Federal Reserve.

Right, Right

I ran out of money in ‘08. I don’t know about you, Cosmos, but I’m telling you, if I owned the printing press in American dollars, I’d never run out.

They ran out of the Federal Reserve. That just tells you how little you can trust them, right? So that same Federal Reserve, different guy, just doesn’t matter. Same structure, same organizations, same agenda, right to print and finance big governments, you know, encroachment on the free market—that’s what’s happening. Right. So they did that $6 trillion in 10 months. It had to create long-term inflation because it added too much currency. 

So, you said, you know, at some point, the bubbles got to burst. I agree with you all. Bubbles do right; it’s just a fact of life. Right, and the reason is that they need to take. A lot of that currency is out. To put it in, and they put it in through Wall Street. The money center banks, and they take it out through them. Well, you’ve seen this giant stock market run-up from that money that QE money because, remember, 50% of that money is for every dollar they inject. Right. $0.50 of that dollar had to go to buying the federal government.

Because that’s how they financed the debt, the other $0.50 Wall Street could do whatever they wanted with it, right? What do they do? They buy stocks. They’re the market makers. They make the market; they buy stocks. They funnel the rest through hedge funds. That’s what they invest in through hedge funds. That’s what they do. They’re investment banks. Right. 

So, they have to take some of that money out. Where are they going to take that money out of your retirement account? Your retirement again. The Dow Jones Industrial average is 30 stocks. The S&P 500 is 504 stocks, OK. The top 25 stocks in the S&P 500 are half the portfolio, half the worth of the whole portfolio. 

So, for the Wall Street establishment. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, all these big boys, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bank of America, all those people, right, those companies to manufacture a huge stock market sell-off, you have just to sell 1015 stocks in abundance. Boom down goes the indexes, and then program trading is the right program trading. What are they? They’re the ones that control your mutual funds. They start selling, and boom, there’s a crisis, right? There’s a crisis. People start to panic.

So, the individual, these people, your customer, my customer, to people that follow you, the people that follow me get scared. They’re retired. They’re going to retire. They don’t want to lose at all. So they sell low, right? They sell low. That’s not the way it works. You have to sell high. It’s high now, 39,000. My goodness. Right. And they’re baiting people into putting more money in because I don’t want to miss it. Right.

Yeah.

They manufacture their products, and people sell low-priced products. Wall Street, the market maker, buys low. When no one else will buy low, they do. And when is the perfect time to buy Cosmos? I’ll tell everybody, your audience and mine, when is the perfect time to buy. When Wall Street runs out of money, it gets really bad, right? Because they make the market, because at that point, you know, to save the system. The Federal Reserve will start printing money and giving it to them again.

They always bail out. They’re just rewarding bad behavior and cannot last forever. And this is the reason. What you’re saying is relevant because I think that within this decade, there will be a massive crisis where it will pop, you know, and then.

I’d be shocked if it wasn’t until this year that we would get a big reset. I’d be shot. I mean, it’s right for it. The world is at war. Trump, Biden. There’s no way Biden’s going to be on the ticket. Who is it? I don’t know. Right. They’re going to go to the convention. They’re going to remove him. Put somebody else in there. That’ll be a surprise. Right? If they put Trump in jail? 

I mean, think about that. Biden’s leaving. War everywhere: Middle East, Europe, right? We just had this AT&T, you know, just lost coverage. You know, last week. What does that mean? Is that the beginning of something? Who knows? Right. 

But it’s going to be ugly inflation. Are we going to be going into a recession? It’s perfect. Presidential elections are the big ones. Generally, it happens during presidential election years, right? Because they need that. They need that smokescreen, right? And again, it’s about buying low. It would be best if you had some power. But before that, you need to know what you will do, right? 

So I’m out there, talking to people like you, letting people like you who don’t know what to do. If you want to learn what to do, join in, and come on—build a platform to help independent investors navigate this wild world.

It’s a wild world. Again, they must remove some currency from this market to stop inflation. They can’t take it all out of your wallet, but they need to remove some from your retirement account because you don’t need that money right now. They’ll figure that out later, you know.

Many people say a massive recession is around the corner because this state of affairs cannot exist forever, right?

So, from your perspective, how will it play out because different people have different opinions? Where there are experts on all sides, saying oh, you’ll eventually there’ll be an equilibrium. Other people are saying that the banks will just print more money and then make an even bigger bubble, and some are saying that this is how they can create a central digital currency. So, in your opinion, how do you think it will play out once a massive recession hits?

They will print more money because that’s what they always do. They’re going to say, well, think about how long we printed money. Without it causing inflation, think about how long we could do that again, right? We just can’t give it to the people. Right. And if we give the people money, we have to give them such a small amount that it doesn’t create more inflation. That’s why that’s their toolbox, right? That’s their bag of tricks. Printing money, they and they’ll have to do that. Because they’ll have to bail out Wall Street, right? 

So they’re going to try them again as they did during, you know, the aftermath of the away crisis. They will try to keep the money at the institutional level so as not to create broader market inflation. They’re going to try to do that. But I think they want a digital currency just like every other government.

Europe is doing China’s doing it, you know, Russia’s doing it, you know, they do want a central bank digital currency to control yours. Ending. Right. And that’s the death of freedom, right? We’re losing freedom. And I tell my kids this is all the time. Time. I’m sorry, I’m lost. We’re losing the war that we thought we had won a couple of 100 years ago, but as Reagan says, you know, freedom is never more than a generation away from distinction and extinction. 

And we’re there. We’re knocking at the door. That, you know, the Communists are inside the wire. They’re taking control of all industry, and they do it. The same way throughout history, I mean, read the Communist Manifesto. I mean, you know, the five pillars of communism, the ten pillars of communal, you know, education, you know, housing, healthcare, you know, they the one by energy, you know, they’re doing it one by 1. And in America, they got to be clever. Right.

 So, they took over the banking system in O 8. And it looks like we’re still a free private market because there’s Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. However, all the money goes through the Fed, and they can only do what the Fed tells them to do with it. I mean. If that’s not the nationalization of banking, I don’t know what they’re doing with healthcare. We all had to get the vaccine. We all had to wear masks; otherwise, we couldn’t get service right. What is that again? You read the Affordable Care Act and knew what they would do. You knew it was going to shake down. 

So with currency, you know, they need to reset it. Right. We have $34 trillion in debt. We have this high inflationary issue.

Are we going to pay for that? That’s not even possible like.

It’s especially when they are doing nothing to solve it right, Cosmos. How do you fix it right again? Inflation is a monetary condition, and only one causes it: excess growth in the monetary supply versus growth in IT GDP activity, the economy, and right market activity. You can’t have an economy growing at 2% and increasing the money supply by five by ten without causing inflation. 

You just can’t right some monetary condition. They will have to reset it, so they want to develop a new currency. This digital currency. It’s going to make this. It’s going to make that right. And they’re stuck to physical currency out of the inner cities. Hey, trading your dollars, your hard dollars, for this credit card that has all this, you know, digital currency on it, and its great right now, you know, Social Security was great in the beginning, right it, and it’s just to make it worse. That’s what the government does. They make it worse over time. The more control they have, the more they can control you. Give up your four-on-one case; give up your stocks. You don’t need them. The government will pay you. Right. We’ll do that. We’ll take control of it. Just we’ll just catch him more. Right?

So instead of putting money into your 401K, you put more into the Social Security Fund, and I’ll devise a new name for it and revalue that. But the bottom line is stocks are never going away. There will always be there, right? Equities will always be there. And that’s how they fund the government, right? The donor class funds the government. And I say that people take control. Start learning how the game is played because it’s their world. Cosmo.

Great.

It’s their world. We just live in it, right? You have to play their game. You have to buy low. You can’t sell high. You can’t. I mean, you can’t buy high. You can’t do that. They’re just goading everybody into buying right now. It’s great, you know, buying will win, Bob or whatever, right? You got to. You have to see what it is for. And you got to get out of politics. Forget about Democrats and. Republicans. They’re both bad, right? They’re both the poison of us, right? We, the people, have to understand what they’re saying, and in doing so, we can play that game because that’s the only way you can stay ahead of it. Inflation, the moves, everything else to go. OK.

Dan, one of the reasons I started extraordinary America was because American identity was about freedom. But when it comes to the financial world, most Americans are facing enslavement right now like we’ve never seen, especially with this digital currency they’re talking about. Like when they took us off the gold standard, as Nixon took us off the Gold Star as if we had sound. It’s some sort of sound money but with Fiat money. It just gradually took away the purchasing power, which takes away your freedom cause to now pay for a family, you have to have two people working instead of one, and you are going into debt just to maintain the lifestyle. 

So, financially, we’re not living this ideal of freedom. And that’s why we’re losing American freedom. America is achieved through this financial system and not. We need to get more people aware of it because we don’t know how money works. We’re just going to be enslaved, and we’re not going to live out the American ideals.

Without a doubt, Cosmos, you know, is the first investment. It is in you, right? You got. You got to learn, right? You got to, and you know, in America today, you know everybody wants you to know to press a button, and it is done, you know, give me a pill, and I’ll lose my weight, and you know it’s that quick fix to everything and it’s not the answer right. Hey, I say it in my book: a mutual fund is. Wall Street’s answer to the community is complicated. They, you know, are the plastics of investment that they created, the monster that they created, and Wall Street makes it, so you can’t understand this. 

They tell you Edward Jones’s ad campaign said investing on your own isn’t so smart a few years ago. You can’t do this. It would be best if you had a team of people. You need the best, the brightest, or the best education. That’s all ********. It’s all a lie. 

So you give them your money, and they do it with what they want, right? It’s like you have to learn, right? And it’s very basic. Listen, then, the investment is so basic. It doesn’t get more complicated than this. The best businesses? Offer the best products and services to market at the best value, right? And because of that, customers in mass demand them right, buy them right, and they turn out to be. 

The best investments every year, day in and day out, and the best companies deliver the best goods. And services to markets every year consistently. Those are the stops you want. Where do you get them? Look in your garage, your cabinets, and your kitchen cabinets. That’s how I find my stuff. I show people how I do it in my book, and I’m in my course because it’s not that hard. It’s not that hard, right?

That one thing that came to my mind, right?

This is connected to Wall Street, and, you know, in 2011, many people were Occupy Wall Street. And they thought that they were going to do something by basically sitting over there. But the real way you fight Wall Street is by understanding. 

By doing what you’re doing, understanding how the game is played, and investing right. It brought me back to that level, and I liked it; it made me realize that people have so many different ways of thinking about Wall Street, like it’s a myth or a legend. They almost look at Wall Street people as gods.

So, from your perspective, what was? What has it been throughout your entire years that you’ve been doing investor-like work? What is your perception of Wall Street? What do you think is the reality? Behind this, like, what’s the MIT? What is the reality behind MIT?

They complicate the investment world to confuse people, and that’s what they do. And now, on my book cover, it has me standing on it—my book cover. On the corner of Wall Street and Broad, you know, the center of their action, with a couple of brokers, you know, that’s what they call themselves. Financial advisors these days have clown noses on their faces. Right. And I was on my sleeve. It says in white. Why would you trust these clowns again? Right? Because they do the same things and always play dumb. You know, they’re the experts. They’re white-collar salespeople who are trained to the nth degree.

So, they have big words that you can’t understand. If you can’t understand these words, you’re too dumb to do it. So please give me your money. Right. That’s who they are. That’s what they are. And I’m not that guy. I say, hey, I’m just like you are. And look how easy this is. Right. Look how simple it is. And then what are you? Are you a financial advisor? No. No, I’m not. And why? Because I’m not a crook. I did that somehow badly, you know? And they say, oh, yeah, you think they’re all like, no, I don’t think they’re all tricks. I also don’t think they’re all liars. I just think they don’t know any better. Right. I studied for that exam a couple of times. This series 65 to take these people, all people always ask me if I can’t. I will just give you my money, and you will do it. 

And I said no, I don’t do that. I don’t want to get licensed. Why don’t you want to get your license back right? You could make a ton of money. Who cares? Right? Right. I don’t want to. Then. What do you mean? Well, I don’t want to lie. First of all, series 65 is not a finance exam. I got my master’s, and I earned a Ph.D. I just don’t have it cause I’m not paying an institution to give it to me. 

You know, it’s a law exam. That’s what it is. It’s a legal exam because they want you to know what you can say, what you can’t say, what you can do, what you can’t do. Right. And let me tell you. In my book, I wrote this White paper to get me into Ph.D. school because I flirted with that for a little while, and it’s called risk and reward. Less is more. I can prove mathematically and scientifically that you don’t have to take greater risks for greater rewards. But that’s what everybody says. Wall Street because they have. Say that that that’s the law. Believe it or not, you know, you, you, you, you hear these commercials say all the time. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Right. 

Right now, I know it’s a lie. And I’m not saying every financial advisor knows it’s a lie. And I don’t think every financial advisor out there knows that you. You don’t have to take greater. Risk getting greater rewards, but they just don’t know any better. I do.

 So, if I get licensed, I will know more. I have to lie because I can’t say that because that would be against the law. How stupid is it? That, but it’s their world. It’s their world, right? You know, I have my method, my philosophy. I’m anti-establishment, you know, I’m an independent free market capitalist, and there’s no party for me in America. And I just want to help people. You know, not my corporate sponsor, let’s.

Say, Dan, you reminded me of that movie. The big, short. They’re like a couple of movies that beat Wall Street about the 2008 crisis, and you’re right.

Yeah. You have a great book.

They use the most complicated words for these terms, like third-level derivatives. Even I’m like, what are they talking about? There’s just a bunch of mumbo jumbo, and then I realize they’re creating debt. It’s like they’re selling things that don’t exist.

Derivatives. Yeah. And again, the big, short break book, too. You take the big shot, which is also a very interesting movie. What did those guys do that Wall Street didn’t do? Because those guys fleeced the Wall Street establishment, they. The Wall Street. You know, shorting.

So, what’s shorting? OK. I told people there’s only one way to make money. To buy low and sell high, right? A short sale. In-stock investing is the same thing but in the opposite order.

So, you sell first high, and then you buy low second. It’s just a change in the order, right? But it’s still buy low, sell high. You just don’t do it in that order. Buy low; you sell high first, and then you buy low. 

So, what was happening with the big short is. These guys, a group of hedge fund people, were shorting the market. On Wall Street, Goldman Sachs was buying the market at that time. And you say, well, we’ll. How did these people with, you know, these people? They read what the derivatives were all about. And when they read all the paperwork, they realized it’s kind of clapped, just can’t work. Right. This cannot work.

So, they beat the establishment at their own game, and it’s because they did more due diligence, right? They questioned. They questioned the conventional way of doing it. I mean, me too, right? No difference. But I’m questioning everything the conventional wisdom is on investment. They haven’t even been who? Who can, who can beat my argument? You can’t beat my argument. I’m right. Right. I prove it. Year in and year out. Right. It’s impossible to win doing it their way. But they make a lot of money doing it. So why would they say anything else?

No, when I saw that movie, I realized that they’re making money out of things that won’t exist in the future. There, it’s just like a mind-boggling cause. It’s just deeply immoral. The current financial system is not based on sound money. It’s based on deep immorality as if they lack money. The banks don’t have the money. Even the fractional reserve concept. They don’t have the money.

Crazy Fractional reserve system. No kidding. But again, they’re a casino. And that’s what scares a lot of people about it. It, you know, when you think about it.

So, options, you know, go back to the GameStop situation, the GameStop situation, you know, that shows you. And I wrote a blog on it, right? Why did the game stop? The lesson is important to all of us because through. Options create the opportunity for you to sell more stock than is outstanding. They created options to the point where you can short 140% of the stock. Well, you can’t sell more than 100% of anything, but because it’s a casino, they did that, and that’s how the whole GameStop thing happened. And again, what did you have? You had a couple of investors that coalesced around Reddit, right? And they said, dude, too many shares are sold.

So, at some point, you’ll have to close off. And when they do, the price is going to go. Up so we. They should just buy them and when they have to close those shorts. That’s when we make money, and that’s what happened. And again, this is just the little guy doing more due diligence and questioning what the establishment was doing because, you know, the establishment hated that stock.

So, what do you do right? Do you create a mechanism to force the price down? And how do you do that? Create more opportunities to sell than there are. That’s how corrupt the system is. But I don’t play those games. And I don’t recommend people play those games unless they’re going to spend their life at it. And I. It’s just not my thing, you know? And Gamestop’s not a stock that I would buy. And I give people criteria in my book, or you know why I wouldn’t own—a thing like that.

This leads me to my next question. I want my audience to understand how the system, money, and everything else work. 

So, can you tell me and the audience a little bit more about your book, Lose Your Broker, Not Your Money, and the premise of how it got started?

Yeah, and absolutely. You can find the book on my books website, looseyourbroker.com. From there, you can find out more about me if you want to book an appointment to hear more, learn more about what I do, and see how I could help you and your financial future. You can visit those websites, and it’s an interesting, quick story. As I said, Cosmos became interested in the stock market on October 19th, 1980.

I got a project for my graduate thesis when I got to graduate school. You have to create a real product, a real product that can compete in the marketplace, and write a marketing and business plan to launch it to market, right? And it was important for me, and it’s a long story, and I don’t want to get into it. I know we’re short on time, so. When October 19th happened, I had three professors, an old broker who was retired, and an old former Reserve Federal Reserve banker. And corporate executive who was working at Pratt Whitney in Hartford, CT. They all had three completely different views on mutual funds, and the former broker thought that was the way to go. You need big diversification to kind of minimize your risk and stabilize your returns. 

The former Federal Reserve banker was like … this is a completely different world than 1929 because they were discussing 1929 all over again. And it was like, no, this would. Be. A blip on the radar screen of the banking system means the economy is strong. It was Reagan’s last year in office. You know, they always happen at the end for some reason. And Reagan wasn’t worried about it, so I wasn’t worried. But I was worried about getting a job that may, you know because I was a senior in college at that time. 

The corporate executive came skipping. It was Monday night, and it was a night class. So that happened during the day, and he came in there, and I didn’t think this guy Cosmos could smile without his face breaking. 

Before this day, he was just so monotone. Dr. He came in and skipped in with this giant smile on my face. Face it’s the greatest—you of your Wife, tell your parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and friends. Now is the time to buy stock. This is the greatest opportunity in your life, and he starts right off stock after stock after stock. And I’m like, what is going on? And because if you could only buy one stock, buy Walmart, buy one in Walmart, I’m in Connecticut, Upstate Connecticut, you know, the Northeast Walmart, and never came north. 

It was Kmart up there. Sears, Bradleys, Calders, and all these other Walmarts were South of the Mason-Dixon Line, and there was no Internet back then, you know? So, you didn’t know Walmart unless you drove to Bentonville, AR, right? That’s when you found it, right? 

So buy Walmart, and I and I have a footnote in my book. From that moment to the day my book was published, Walmart was up 1,451.

So I asked that guy how mutual funds are, and he said mutual funds. They suck. Mutual funds are socialized investment products. And yeah, what’s socialism? What social? What does that mean, you know? And again, I wanted Corporate America corporate finance. I want it to be CFO. I was interested in the stock market, but. But. But you know, it’s just like a hobby then in the hobby now. Now, I want to make it my own. Life. 

So, I leave there. I’m in Graduate School, and I have this project and must create a fund. Well, if those three guys—one thought they were good ones that could be used for, one thought they stunk—what’s the answer there?

So, I go out and say so. If they stink, there’s room for a better one. And how am I going to compete with the Wall Street establishment? Well, it has to be lean and easy to manage, right? So I can make money at a lower price.

So, I thought, OK, if I could create the perfect mutual fund, right? And the plan’s name was Super Funds, America’s first micro mutual fund. Right. If I can improve it, then I’ll be out of something. Because then I could say it’s better, cheaper, and why would you own theirs? Right. So, back then, it took me a long time to get there.

I discovered only 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and I think that 509 stocks had to be 500 then. 

So I said, well, forget about the SP 500. That’s why it’s impossible to figure out. But if it does, only 30, I’ll own a smaller number and better companies, right? My mutual fund. It’ll be just as easy to calculate, blah, blah, blah. And so that’s what it was. So that’s what I did. I created this land, and it was micro; back then, it was 525 my method. But now it’s 1551. And I figured out that, you know if you’re smaller. And better diversified and better structured, you can outperform them long term, short term, whatever’s up markets, down markets, crisis markets, you know, expansion markets, right? So why would anyone do this?

So I handed it in; I had never been so certain of an A, and the teacher was an Eastern European. The guy who did this worldwide spoke in broken English, and I needed DA in this project and everything else, and he told me he goes, Mr. Calandra, let me just tell you some. This is the greatest business plan I’ve seen in my life, and I’ve seen them from all over the world. It’s smart. It’s this is it. The product works. The method says. He says it’s so smart. It’s stupid. It’s so smart that blah, blah, blah. 

And then he goes. There’s only one problem. One problem: What’s the problem? It’s too simple. It’s too easy to do, you know, because once you go to the prospectus, you have to lay out what you do in your philosophy strategy, and people will read the perspective. I don’t need him. I don’t need to pay him to do it. I’ll do it myself. As great as it is, it deserves an F. There’s no business here, and this is Business School. Great idea. But it’s not an ideal school. But you know what? It’s so good that I gave you an 8 for effort. Of course. I was ****** about that. You know, I wanted the real a. I don’t want the A for effort stuff. Right? So, as I was walking out of his office, he told me. Hey, hey, Mr. Calandra. Well, you should write a book. It’s a great book. Did you make money off the book? It’s a great book. 

And so I wrote the book, and I think there’s a business around it that I’m going to. Launch. You know, finally, you know that I got done with my CFO career. Helping people, you know, coaching people, helping them build their perfect portfolio, helping them understand what’s happening today, what’s happening tomorrow when it happens, where can they go to get some real, legitimate, unbiased. You know, paid advice and coaching without, you know, being connected to that. You know. Establishment finance, I mean, which I’m just down on, you know, but that’s how it all began. 

And that’s like I say to people, it’s, you know, I wrote that book, and when I was writing that book, I was predicting the old-way crisis to crash. I thought I was going to be like the tech boom. Crash or bust, whatever you want to call it, but once I got to the end of the book, it happened. So now I had to cut out all the prediction stuff and just, you know, talk about it as a historical moment. 

And I did that; it took me another year or two to cut it down from 180,000 words to 50,000. And it’s a short tight. Book I call it The Mice and Men of Investment because it’s around the same number of words above. Mice and men have a lot of charts and pictures and everything, and it works. It can’t not work. It’s mathematically. Right on, you know, it’s not complicated math; it’s multiplying, adding, dividing, subtracting, and so on.

I would recommend that my audience buy your book because I think it is relevant to the current time. Yeah, the crisis is coming. We need as many people as possible to be informed, but are there any other projects you’re doing that you want the audience to see?

Yeah, you know, I’m. I am putting together an online course right now because many people, you know, feel the need to be coached through it. So. So, I’m doing an online course, and it’s all updated. The book is all updated. The portfolio has changed since the book came out. So that update will be there. And then I’m building a support platform, you know, where people could go and ask questions, where people could go and set up meetings. 

People can join my podcast. Someday, I’ll start once this course is up and running: study groups, support groups, and anything else they would need to manage their own successfully—maybe SEAL team, I say—their small group of winning stocks. You know, we’ll do stock selection seminars as well. So that’s coming. 

But, as I said, you can always get started by going to the book’s website, connecting with me on LinkedIn, or through e-mail because they’re. You know.

Which brought me to the next question: How can the audience connect with you and get to know more about you, your work, your book, and all of that?

Yeah. They could learn more about me by visiting the About Dan Tab at loseyourbroker.com. They could also book an appointment on both of those websites. That’s my business website; both will allow you to e-mail me and open a dialogue. Then, we can have a short 15-20-minute session to get to know each other and discuss how I could help your session. 

But yeah, that’s the easiest way. I am on LinkedIn, so they can search for my name, connect with me, and message me there. I do that stuff. I don’t outsource that to anybody. So yeah, that’s the easiest, best way.

Dan, I am so grateful you joined this podcast and shared your wisdom with me and the audience. This is so important that I want everybody to know, and I am. I want you to join this podcast and share your wisdom again.

At any time, Cosmos is a big event coming, so you know anytime you know you have my, you know how to connect with me. Just reach out, no problem, anytime.

Thank you, Dan. I appreciate it. I want to conclude this episode by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that, hey, look, there’s an extraordinary within every one of us. We must awaken it and unleash it until next time. Bye for now.