Episode 382: Ted Cadsby - The Power of Index Funds, and Being Human

This is the Rational Reminder podcast, a weekly reality check on sensible investing and financial decision making from three Canadians. We are hosted by me, Benjamin Felix, CIO, Cameron Passmore, CEO and Dan Bortolotti, portfolio manager at PWL Capital. Welcome to episode three eighty two. Good to be with you guys again. Gonna kick out a little story going back to the olden days where some people seem to find entertaining at some level, but we had David Chilton on the pod recently and I talked about the impact that The Wealthy Barber had on me and my early career. And then, Ben, you and I were chatting. It's gotta be, I don't know, a couple months ago. And I'm like, remember that other book that was coming to mind, The Power of index funds that was written by Ted Casby? We just were riffing about that. And you said to me, why don't you see if you can find Ted and have him come on? So ended up I found Ted quite easily, reached out, and he responded almost immediately saying, you know, he had followed the podcast, would love to come on. So we connected and had a a prep call with Ted. It's just amazing to go back to that time of the late nineties when that book came out, and he was an executive at CIBC, large Canadian bank. And we were just kind of discovering the benefits and the impact of index funds. That revolution was just starting then and ETFs were just starting to come to market. And I remember us sitting around thinking back then like, wow, that could be the end of our growth plan because, you know, big Canadian bank was gonna dominate in this space. That was the narrative, at least in our world, maybe not in the Canadian marketplace, but that was our narrative. Clearly, that's not how the movie played out, but it was super fun to have Ted on today and have a conversation, you know, with you guys and Ted. Ted's a super interesting guy. I think you guys have a bit of history too. Right, Dan? You know, like, I can recall, like, I was working with MoneySense magazine back in 2000, which, you know, at the time it was sort of the biggest personal finance magazine in Canada. And that's right around the time that his book came out. And, you know, even MoneySense at the time, which later became a real sort of pioneering in bringing the couch potato strategy or index investing to Canada. Ted was even before that. He really was at the forefront of the movement in Canada, as we talk about in our discussion. So it was really interesting to get his perspective about what the landscape was like twenty five years ago. He talks about his roles with CIBC, which for non Canadians that don't know, it's the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, one of the big banks …