The Disciplined Investor · Nov 8, 2026 · 1h 4m · 54m saved
With Andrew Horowitz, President and Founder of Horowitz & Company
About two weeks before this episode, Horowitz & Company cut its emerging-markets allocation in half as the VIX spiked to roughly 26. Andrew Horowitz, President and Founder of the advisory firm, explained why on episode 998 of The Disciplined Investor podcast, after a long run of clips from Treasury, Commerce and the White House that he says investors should mostly ignore. Most market commentary treats cabinet officials as authorities on markets. Andrew grades them as salesmen and saves his attention for the Fed chair.
"There are people out there that are experts in the field of investing. There are people out there that are simply politicians... politicians from the political sense, but also politicians from the sense that they're just pushing their book." — Andrew Horowitz
Andrew manages client portfolios at his own registered investment advisor, and the second half of the episode is a mailbag of listener questions on dollar-cost averaging, retirement accounts, a condo foreclosure, estate documents and a tech position gone underwater.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 64 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 15 insights that matter.
Key Takeaways
Treasury Secretary Bessent's bond comments backfired: yields rose right after he spoke
Kevin Warsh is the one official Andrew listens to, because the Fed chair "can't be fired"
Horowitz & Company cut its emerging-markets allocation in half about two weeks ago
The midterms, slowing AI data-center borrowing and a 4.1% jobless rate drove the cut
The AI buildout rhymes with 2000 but is not identical, since adoption is slower than the internet's was
A portfolio of only US stocks, gold and REITs has no buffers and no international exposure
STRC is a bet on both Strategy and Bitcoin, and Andrew says to own Bitcoin directly instead
Walking away from a Colorado condo does not erase the debt: lenders have about six years to pursue the balance
1. Bessent's Talk Backfired
Andrew opened with a rule for whom to trust, and his first example was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. In September, Bessent floated expanding Treasury buybacks to "more than $4 billion per issue," and talked of going to "three billion, four billion, maybe more up to six billion."
Andrew Horowitz says Bessent tried to push bond markets and they pushed back
"What he did was attempt to... push the markets in a panic. The markets smelled it, and what did they do?... the interest rates came up higher." — Andrew Horowitz
Bessent also claimed to have "asymmetric information" on Bank of Japan policy. Andrew mocked that claim, and said the currency intervention it supported picked a fight with sovereign governments that use currency moves as a policy tool.
