Timing the Market with Scott McBrien

Scott McBrien 0:31
Yeah, George, know for sure. Well, listen, I have three children. My oldest daughter is 25. And married, my son is 24. And then my youngest daughter is 12 going into seventh grade, just just won her basketball championships. So super proud of her and, and I also have a girlfriend that we’ve been together for over five years now. That’s dancing. In what position is the daughter on the basketball team?

george grombacher 0:02
Well, I’m left with this is George G. And the time is right. Welcome. Today’s guest strong upper office comic, brian scott, are you ready to do this?

Scott McBrien 0:09
Let’s do this. George. I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

george grombacher 0:12
I’m excited to have you on. Scott is the founder and chief investment officer at the laser. It’s an organization helping investors earn greater profits, with less risk through technology, tools and training. Scott, tell us a bit about your personal lives more about your work and why you do what you do.

Scott McBrien 1:01
She, she was a sixth grader that that made it with the seventh and eighth graders. So she went in wherever she could. And but yeah, she’s she’s pretty tall for her age. So she’s more of that power forward position. Okay,

george grombacher 1:14
perfect. I love it. So, tell us about tell us about your entrepreneurial story.

Scott McBrien 1:23
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, yeah, just to, you know, decide where you know, how far to go back. But essentially, I was working for an investment banking firm, in the early 90s. Right. And this is a time when we were, you know, coming out of the Kool Aid or, you know, the recession and kind of all that was going on, and it was a unique experience, you know, seeing really from the inside out how, how the financial services industry worked, you know, I remember is, you know, years prior to that, watching that movie, Wall Street, right, remember the original one with Michael Douglas and Charlie scene, right. Gordon Gekko? And, you know, you’re kind of thinking, Oh, that’s how it works, you know, and then you get on the inside, and you start realizing, well, it doesn’t actually work that way. But yeah, I learned a lot through that, you know, certainly through that adventure. But, you know, throughout that process, I would see how it worked from the inside in which stocks were being recommended, and, you know, which investment vehicles that, you know, the investment banking firm was kind of leaning people towards, and at the time, I, you know, we’re in this recession, and it was like, they were recommending these voting stocks. And I’m like, why are we recommending these voting stocks, you know, in a recession, and I started to really understood from the, you know, from the inside out, that’s, you know, these were secondary issues that were being underwritten. And in doing so, it was like, we were essentially salesmen, you know, to go out there and sell those shares of stock. And so, I quickly realized that I needed to really figure this out, you know, because I wanted to make sure that, you know, we were providing the proper advice and the right advice for our clients. And so from that point forward, making a long story short, I ended up becoming a trader in the futures markets in Chicago, and really developing or the beginning of developing, what today is now known as the laser. And, yeah, it’s been quite a journey, for sure to really develop this. It wasn’t something I was, you know, I was looking to really develop it more for my own personal use. And yeah, my, my co founder, I would share the information and kind of, you know, share the signals and the, you know, what we were doing and all of that with her. And he was, you know, she had a financial advisor that, you know, when the markets were down, her account was down, when the markets were up, her account was up, and it really wasn’t much more than that. And she’s like, wow, this is amazing. And she started getting really strong returns. And we decided to make this into a product that retail investors could really learn how to time the market. And, you know, George, I know, I’ve heard a lot of great things about you in terms of, you know, you’re, you know, being a financial adviser and helping clients. But we both know that there’s people out there that don’t always have necessarily the best interests and and, you know, of the clients and we want to help our clients to make sure that they have the tools and the resources necessary to be able to know when to get into positions when to get out of positions. And we show them how to do that literally down to the exact Penny.

george grombacher 4:45
Well, I appreciate the compliment Scott, and you’re 100% right, I am an excellent advisor. Anyway, moving on from that. So you saw the you were inside the belly of the beast and you realize okay, we are or sell an inventory of the firm here and not necessarily in the best interest to client, you go and actually become a futures trader in Chicago, which is, that’s, that’s pretty cool. Should we could talk for days just about that. And then you say, I want to develop something that’ll help me manage my portfolio better. And it turns out that through doing that, you figured out a way to help other people become more financially independent, and, and earn more money.

Scott McBrien 5:28
Exactly. And, you know, I mean, 2022 was, I think, a really good example of that, right, we saw where the markets were in 2022. And, you know, where most people’s, you know, returns ended up being and it was a unique year in the sense that, you know, not only did the equities markets, you know, we’re down depending on which, whether you’re looking at small growth or mid growth, large growth down anywhere from, you know, 20 to 33%. And, but also the bond markets were down anywhere from 13 to 18%, depending on which bond market you’re looking at. So it was really kind of a, a double whammy for, you know, the, the investors we’re dealing with. And, you know, here, we took a look at the laser 100, which we have published on our app, it’s all completely transparent. And in 2022, our returns on the laser 100 are up 83%. So it’s one of those things where if you’re just able to know when to get in and know when to get out, as opposed to really this buy and hold type strategy, that you really can take advantage of both sides of the market and, and have success doing that. And it actually limits your risk, because you don’t have those big drawdowns in your account, which we know that those can really eat it, eat it our, you know, investors returns.

george grombacher 6:47
So just to, as simplistically as possible, think that one of the reasons it’s hard to hard to make money, invest in individual stocks is because you have to be right when you get in and when you get out. And we emotionally, we know we’re supposed to buy low and sell high, but my brains, our brains tell us to do the opposite. So it sounds Yeah, it sounds easy when you say we just need to buy at the right time and sell at the right time. But how does, how did you figure that out? How did you figure out how to actually do that?

Scott McBrien 7:18
Yeah, it was a lot of trial and error and a lot of failure along the way, and really an obsession with the markets. You know, you talked about the things that that really take people out of the success that they’re looking for, right, and I’m in the process, Georgia writing a book right now, one of the chapters in there, the the three stock market, read, you know, investment return killers, right. And those are the things like noise, which can fall into the category of, you know, a hot tip or the commentary that we may hear, right, the second one is that emotion or that fear and greed. And then the third one is just logic. And that one really takes people for a ride sometimes where you hear, you know, man, the earnings are up and they’re up year over year, quarter, over quarter in the top line, revenue is increasing. And, you know, Warren Buffett just bought, you know, half a trillion shares or whatever, right in the stock. And we’re like, everything is pointing in the right direction and the stock drops by 25%. And you’re like, what? How do we How am I supposed to figure this out? And so it’s those things that the, you know, a plus b plus c doesn’t always equal D. And so you have to have all this data crunching that’s kind of going around going on in the background. And that’s what we were able to develop and come up with, with the algorithm so that we don’t have to try to figure out when is the right time or not? We, you know, I’m sure that you know, George, you probably have, you know, opinions about the market. And I have opinions about the market. But I never follow those opinions. I literally just do exactly what the laser tells me to do. It tells me exactly what price to get into the penny and it tells me exactly what price to get out to the penny and I follow that. And so yeah, you’re right, we’ve got us have a tool that removes those emotions away from our decisions, because it can really, really trip us up and we make emotional decisions instead of really the right decisions to you know, to be able to profit from the markets.

george grombacher 9:20
Thanks for nothing brain. Okay, nice. So, so I download the Laser App, the laser 100 app, and I can type in any, any company, I could type in Google or Apple or XYZ.

Scott McBrien 9:38
Yeah, us us exchanges. So whether it’s a NASDAQ or NYSE NYSE traded stock, and it gives you a buy signal, which is literally an arrow that’s pointing up and then it gives you the exact price of the buy signal signal and then it also gives you what exactly is your stock price for that stock. So we let the market take us in and then we let the market take us out. We don’t try to, you know, overpower the market. You know, we have this concept that we teach, you know, our clients that the market is the master. And we can’t argue with that we can’t disrupt that we can’t try to change that the market is the master. And as long as we know where the the master, if you will, is telling us we should go in terms of where is the money flowing into, where’s the money flowing out to out of, then we’re going in the same harmonious direction of the market, as opposed to, you know, trying to pick bottoms or trying to pick tops or things like that. And, yeah, you just download the laser, it’s two week free trial, you know, we want people to try it, experience it, we do trainings every single Sunday, that’s our Live Interactive, we have a two hour course that we have people go through first, it’s completely free. I mean, we’re not trying to, all we’re trying to do is help people to be successful, and whatever that takes to help them do that. So that they can be independent, and they can, you know, make the best choices for themselves. And that’s what we try to, you know, that’s what we try to do. So they just go to the, the laser.io. And they can go there and learn about us and all that, where they can find us on the App Store Google Play and just download the laser. And yeah, they get the free two week trial.

george grombacher 11:21
Nice. So it’s, it’s gonna give me the buy signal and the sell signal. And is this something I should just be consistently looking at? Do I get alerts?

Scott McBrien 11:35
Yeah, great question. So one of the things we wanted to do is, is really try to tailor this because you always have to try to figure out, okay, who is our market? Right? Who are we really trying to tailor our service to, and what we, what we kept circling back to was that we’re really looking for busy professionals, right, people that don’t have time, look, hey, nothing wrong with day trading, nothing wrong. Like I don’t have any, you know, everyone has their own thing that is important to them. But I don’t have time to sit in front of my computer all day, or, you know, even in the mornings or whatever, I don’t have time to do that. So our system is set up for people so that literally they set their positions on the weekend, when the markets closed, they the emotional, they’re kind of removing that emotion from it, because the market isn’t moving up and down and all that put their positions in for the week, they update their stops, and they don’t have to look at it for the rest of the week. And then when the weekend comes again, they have to update their stops, and, you know, look for any new opportunities that are in there. And so yeah, that’s kind of who we designed it for, as busy professionals don’t have a lot of time, but really want to get more than those, you know, five 10% annual returns and are willing to learn a system which takes a couple hours. And then from there, it’s literally about 15 minutes on the weekend. I love it.

george grombacher 13:01
I think that that is a wonderful and very logical sweet spot that you found.

Scott McBrien 13:06
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I’ve had a lot of folks take a look towards Go ahead. Oh, go ahead. I was just gonna say, you know, when you take a look at, you know, 2022 is just it’s kind of that model year, because you had so many great incredible companies that were just, you know, kind of pummeled in the market, right? Companies that you know, Costco, right, I mean, how many times you know, are we going to go into Costco and loading up two and three grocery carts. And you know, what they were down 19 and a half percent. But if you took the same exact stock, and just took the buy, and the sell signals with it, our return in 2022 is at point two 4% with Costco. You know, Netflix was down 51% in 2022. But if you took the exact buy signals in the sell signals, when it told you to with the laser, your return would have been 84%. And I can just go on and on and on. And again, we publish those in that that little tab in the app called the laser 100. So you can see real time we just believe in transparency. But there is a better way than just buy and hold that much. I can absolutely assure you that that, you know that is I think if there’s one thing that we’ve that we’ve shown is that there’s no question that you know, buy and hold when when that started GA think about you know, during Warren Buffett’s age and I love Warren, I think I just have so much incredible respect for that man. I think he’s a good man. I think he’s, you know, his character, all of those great things. But when he got started in the market that was in the 1950s, right 1950s You know, before even commercial aircraft, right? And it was just a whole different time. I think if we were to, you know, sit down and George have a beer or something. I think we would probably both to agree that there’s not a lot today that is exists, that is the same as it was in 1950. But we’re still many times using that same strategy before even computers and volatility, and all of those things came into play, you know. So I think that that’s, you know, that that’s something that we all need to take into consideration that we got to change our strategy for the different times that are happening.

george grombacher 15:26
I totally agree, I love it. And I’m just gonna say, find the sweet spot. One of the things that is hard for us human beings is just to find ways to find success that’s going to be sustainable, because it’s just, it needs to fit, it needs to fit into our lives. And I love the the offer training on Sundays. And I love that, it just takes 15 minutes to sit down and revisit and sort of look backwards and then look forwards and making sure that you’re updating very, very simple things based on what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. And I’m all about creating rituals of success. And this sounds like a pretty easy one. So it makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Scott McBrien 16:07
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. It’s it is it’s like an, you know, we’re, we’re into this. I mean, this is like our past, passion and everything else. But in the same token, we’ve got kids, and we’ve got activities, and they’ve got sports and you know, you’re running around, you know, doing the things just to just to keep your own, you know, life up and going and we just don’t have time to we I mean, there’s probably not anybody that we talked to that, we could ask and say, Hey, would you like better returns? In the market? I think probably everyone would say yes. But when it comes down to do we have time? The answer could be in the majority of situations, no, you know, we just don’t have a whole lot of extra time. And so that was really important to us to make sure that the everyday professional person who maybe has some capital or have some dollars, or were even would like to get into the market that they were able to do it around their schedule. And so this was kind of the that sweet spot that we felt which was going to be important for people.

george grombacher 17:11
Makes total sense. Well, Scott, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? Most importantly, where can they work? Where can they take advantage of the laser, give us the website again?

Scott McBrien 17:23
Yeah, they just go to the laser, and it’s Le s e r, so th e la s er.io. And they can learn about us, they can get access to the training there for two hours of training, they can go to the App Store or Google Play and just download the laser, get a free two week trial. And then they can certainly once they, we get their information, we’ll give them information about how they can plug into, you know, the live trainings that we do on Sunday, and we just do it for 30 minutes, you know, like, bring us you know, let’s take a look at some of the facts you’re looking at. Let’s look at the signals with it. Let’s answer their questions and so that we can get people acclimated to it. And, yeah, that’s a, that’s a place that they can they can go to for to getting more information. You know, it was interesting, just one thing real quick, George, that we had a gentleman that had been in the, you know, the financial services industry for years. And he sent this over to us. And it was just so I don’t know, we just really appreciate it because also of his background. And he had said and I won’t read his name, but but he said he goes on, I’m so glad that you posted your press release in the Phoenix Business Journal, I wasted seven years of my life previously not being as profitable as I could have. Even though I had my securities and insurance licenses. For a good number of years, I was trained to buy and hold and diversify across all asset classes. This system allows me to remove my money away from my asset managers, he mentioned those and I’m not going to mention that. And that don’t necessarily you know, share my interest previously laser I subscribe to any names of service over the past year, after they would release a stock it would tank it was a classic example of market performance doesn’t always follow the fundamentals. And he’s having great success. I you know, one of the stocks this weekend when he was on the call and Sunday and he’s like, yeah, he’s up 13.5%. And on that one particular stock, and he finally feels like he’s got a system that fits within his busy life, and that he can be successful with so just thought I’d share that with you. But, George, I’m really grateful to that you invited us on your podcast, or we’ve listened to many, many of your different podcasts. And you know, Michelle, who had introduced us always had such great things to say about you. So thanks so much for your time as well.

george grombacher 19:48
It was a pleasure. If you enjoyed this as much as I did show Scott your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to the laser dot i o th e la ser dot I Oh, and take advantage of that free training that Scott’s been referencing, go to the App Store or the Google Play Store and download the laser, get that free two week trial and see if it can become a great part of your financial situation just like the person who wrote that nice. Nice response to Scott’s article in the Business Journal. Thanks again, Scott.

Scott McBrien 20:25
Hey, thanks, George. I appreciate you have a great day.

george grombacher 20:28
You too. Till next time, remember, to your part, keep doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai