Talking Billions · Sep 28, 2026 · 1h 6m · 45m saved
With Peter Lazaroff, CIO of Plancorp and author of The Perfect Portfolio
Peter Lazaroff oversees more than $10 billion for other people and does not manage his own money. All of his investable assets sit in a single globally diversified fund. He has a financial adviser, but not for the investments.
Most investors judge a portfolio by its return against the S&P 500. Lazaroff said the portfolio with the highest expected return is often one that clients cannot hold through a crash, and that a portfolio they abandon never delivers what it was designed to.
"So like what's the best guard rail? It's to not do it yourself."
Peter Lazaroff, CIO at Plancorp, on Talking Billions, started his career as a stock analyst, then advised clients, and now chairs the investment committee of a registered investment adviser with more than $10 billion under management. He hosts the podcast The Long-Term Investor and wrote Making Money Simple before his new book, The Perfect Portfolio.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 66 minutes of audio, 21 minutes of reading.
Here are the 11 lessons that matter.
Key Takeaways
Bond index funds lend the most to the most indebted borrowers, which Lazaroff said makes them easier to beat than stock indexes
Central banks, insurers and other financial institutions, which are not trying to maximize return, hold over half the bond market
The portfolio with the highest expected return is not the one most investors can hold through a crash
A market timer has to be right twice, and by a wide margin when a sale triggers capital gains tax
The S&P 500 falls 10% roughly every 12 months on average, and he said plans should assume that rather than try to predict it
In his experience, the story behind a loss scares investors more than its size
Just 90 of about 26,000 stocks since 1926 produced more than half the market's return
Bonds are held to reduce a portfolio's swings, not for yield, and no chapter of his book changed more in drafting
A benchmark that matters is whether the investor is still on track, not whether they beat the S&P 500
His most controversial view is that people should read books for 20 minutes a day
1. A $1 Nike Dividend
The host asked about the share of Nike that Lazaroff's grandmother gave him on his 12th birthday.
He was disappointed by the gift until the dividend arrived
Lazaroff said his birthday is December 20th, in a family that celebrates both Hanukkah and Christmas, so a piece of paper with Nike on it did not impress a 12-year-old. His grandmother explained that he now owned part of the company that made his shoes, shirt and hat, and the gear Michael Jordan wore.
"But here's what really got me was maybe a week or two later, a dividend check came in the mail for $1." — Peter Lazaroff
"But I remember getting these $1 checks in the mail and being like, I didn't even have to work for this. This is amazing." — Peter Lazaroff
A Peter Lynch book for teenagers settled his career by 13
He asked his parents to take him to a bookstore and picked a book on investing that Peter Lynch wrote for teenagers. He said he cannot remember its title. By about 13 he knew he wanted to work with stocks. He started as a stock analyst, became an adviser to clients and is now chief investment officer, a role that focuses only on investments and involves no client relationships.
He gave his own children a share of Nike, as a symbol
He said he did it to get them interested in investing, not because he rated the company.
"In fact, Nike stock has done quite poorly since I've gifted it to my children to get them going." — Peter Lazaroff
The host said Lynch's book was also the first to open his eyes to investing, and that his own grandmother taught him about price and value while they shopped for groceries.
