Hola compadres:

Kid #2 born this week, Andrés Eduardo Gudewill. Reminder to be grateful for all that women do. My wife Mj is a star!

Someone recently asked what it is I do. Good question!

Early career in sell side stock research at Raymond James, then 5 years on the buy side at Richardson Wealth as a portfolio manager. 4 years ago I pivoted into private equity real estate sydnications because I couldn’t handle texts like this:

But, what can I say. My passion for investing and helping others endures…

So, alongside the acquisition of a cumulative $75 mln in commercial real estate for our limited partner investors, I created this Journal to help people improve their investing by simplifying the unneccessarily complex world of wall street. SmartMoneyKids spawns from the same passion, aimed at our roots.

Much of what I have to say draws on the three capital market businesses I’ve experienced, the mentors I’ve learned from, and witnessing first hand the emotional roller coaster that different types of people experience, whether they have a $30,000 net worth or $30,000,000.

Hope you find it interesting, useful, actionable, and fun.

Thank you for reading and contributing as always.

Eddie

One thing I want to share today that constantly resonates is this piece of advice I got a few years ago:

Just because something is for sale, doesn’t mean it should be bought.

This applies to any purchase decision.

In commercial real estate, the nature of the business is that it’s opaque and transaction volumes are scant compared to the public markets where stocks get bought and sold every mili-second.

So when something does come up for sale - a rush of buyers go and evaluate the merits and sometimes deploy money only because it’s ‘been a while’ since their last investment. But that’s not an investing strategy. That’s a recipe for poor decision making. You need to work through the thesis, the numbers, all of it.

The same advice applies to stock market investments.

2026 has been a year full of incredible and fast paced world shaking news following the tumultuous 2025 trump tarriff tantrums. The extraction of a dictator. The bombing of iran. The volatility in Oil prices the likes of which we haven’t seen since pre-2008.

Things are moving at lightning speed but the crucial step for the pragmatic investor is to stay calm and invest on merit, not hype.

I’ll say it again: just because it’s for sale, doesn’t mean it should be bought.

Every day “Mr Market” - CNN/Fox/BNN'/Twitter/TikTok/Your Taxi Drive/Your Friends/Your Dog - will show you the prices to buy or sell thousands of the world’s major businesses and why YOU should take action. Doesn’t matter who is delivering the information, the emotion fueling it exudes from the pores like the sweat after a 5 set squash match.

And it is that very emtion that does a tremendous job of transfering money from the 98% who will forever end up destroying their capital, to the 2% who actually outperform the rest. And I’m not talking about alpha over the index - I’m talking about ‘alpha’ over the common wo/man.

The important thing is that you make your decisions based not on emotion but based on an objective assessment of what you calculate the investment is worth.

In fact, when thinking about buying a business (a stock), do your best to not even look at the price. Value it based on its financials first. Go to the company website, they have published financial data right there for you to see.

Think, what would you pay for this business based on its competitive advantage, market share, growth trajectory, financials and profits? Only when you’ve determined a fair price based on factual financial data and some conservative assumptions, then you go look at the price Mr Market is serving you with.

How does this relate to investing in market ETFs, especially when at elevated valuations and a society that seems on the verge of breakdown?

Well, with a long term time horizon to invest, the value of deploying today in a consistent and well defined manner far outweighs the short term price movements. This is not only my opinion but satisfied by +100 years of empirical data.

Long time readers of this journal understand the vagaries of trying to be a “stock market timer”. Whether the S&P500 is at $6,600 (today) or at $4,000, or at $8,000, there is great value in investing as early and as consistently as possible.

Value so great that it should be taken advantage of especially as the great responsiblity of securing your future becomes more important with each passing day.

The big challenge is, then, ignoring the roller coaster of emotions that dominates our news feeds or what is trending on TikTok.

Be reasonable, and keep it simple.

…What would you add?

“The investor's chief problem—and even his worst enemy—is likely to be himself."

—Benjamin Graham

What are your feelings on the stock market lately?

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