A friend of mine sold American Express at $5 a share during the financial crisis. Six months later it was $120. Panic turned a temporary loss into a permanent one, and that story is this entire episode in miniature.

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I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

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Jim Lebenthal is a Partner and Chief Equity Strategist at Cerity Partners and a regular on CNBC's Halftime Report. Before markets, he was a Navy nuclear engineer who drove submarines. He thinks in systems and decades, and his core truth is simple: stay in the market. Jim ran the numbers on the last five crises. Invest the day before each crash, stay in, and your annualized return is about 10%. The people who got destroyed sold low and chased the market back up.

We get into why your emotions aren't the enemy, denial is. FOMO? Scratch the itch with a small buy and keep dry powder. Fear? Find the data. We cover diversification, why 80% of the portfolio he runs sits in tried and true companies, when an ETF beats stock picking, and what he found hiding inside ESG funds.

Then the big stuff: crypto, gold, and private markets (liquidity first), why he tells clients not to borrow to speculate, and why patience is the biggest investment virtue. He closes with a story he's never told before, about a client's financial autopsy, and the line I can't shake: your portfolio is a fingerprint of your personality.

Stay in. Size it right. Write it down.

This is the way.

Hanley.

Connect with Jim Lebenthal

Website: https://ceritypartners.com/team/james-lebenthal/
X: https://x.com/jlebenthal
CNBC: Halftime Report, two to three times a week, noon to 1pm Eastern
Book: How to Ride the Subway: Getting Around on Wall Street and in Life (Regalo Press, 2026): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FVMJFJXL?tag=findingpeak-20

Follow Ryan

Website: https://ryanhanley.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

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Your Portfolio Is a Fingerprint of Your Personality | Jim Lebenthal