When you spend most of your life being unremarkable, you’re lacking the experience of what it’s like to have people be jealous and act out against you. Imagine a girl who grows up as “the pretty one” from a young age. By the time she’s an adult, she’s already lived through a lifetime of other girls hating her, picking on her, gossiping about her and being mean every chance they get. I’ve witnessed this with my own kid. At a young age she couldn’t always understand why other kids - not just any kids, her friends - were doing and saying some of the things they were about her. “What did I ever do to deserve that?”

So I would say things like “You didn’t do anything. Just by existing you’re going to find yourself in these situations everywhere you go. You didn’t hurt this girl and she doesn’t actually dislike you. But you’re a constant reminder of her own insecurities. The things she doesn’t like about herself. She also doesn’t like you getting attention that she’s not getting. It doesn’t matter what you say or do, you can’t change the effect you’re having on her. It’s not your fault. Try to be nice regardless.”

I didn’t experience anyone being jealous or embittered by my presence for most of my life. I was entirely unremarkable. Not particularly good looking, not a great athlete, not the valedictorian, not the most popular kid at school. I could write and I could win arguments and I could make people laugh. Nobody cared. So I didn’t experience what my kid experienced as a child, a teen or a young adult. No negative attention. Most of the time, no attention at all.

It wasn’t until the last ten years when the bitter old men started being mean to me. At first I was like “What the f***? I’m cool with everyone! I have friends everywhere I go on Wall Street…” It made no sense that someone could have a problem with me. Eventually I talked to a person who is very wise in the ways of the world. He explained it to me:

“Josh, these are seventy year old day-traders. Failed hedge fund managers. Guys who sold their businesses without making a lot of money. Guys who never had the career they think they deserved. Guys that flamed out early and have been doing twitter bullshit ever since. All losers. Nobody who is winning has a problem with you because winners don’t have a problem with anyone. They’re too busy to pick fights over petty jealousy.”

And then I looked around and realized how right he was. Someone whose RIA didn’t make it. Someone who is thirsty for attention to sell a newsletter. Someone whose column is no longer grabbing any readers. Someone who used to be on TV. Someone who used to sell books. Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. And then I got the chills. “Am I doing this stuff to anyone, even if inadvertently? I hope not.”

That was probably around 2019. I’m paraphrasing how it was explained but it really stuck with me. A year later I removed myself from the scene entirely to avoid these types of pointless interactions. I recognized the power of only showing up in places when I wanted to, not rolling around in the mud all day. For a few years after my graduation from the online slap-fighting pits, people would take it upon themselves to email and let me know if some has-been or pseudonymous weirdo was talking about me, just in case I might have missed it. Thanks for that.

The feeling of having some nasty old man lashing out over his own personal and professional failings was so strange to me. No one had ever been envious or jealous of anything I had ever done up until I got into my forties. So I had no experience with this sort of thing. No natural defense mechanisms or internal scripts to run through. I was dealing with it for the first time. “I get why they’re unhappy, but what do I have to do with it?”

Nothing. I just exist and it triggers them. It’s not a lot of people fortunately because I never engage. Engagement is what fuels this sort of thing. There are people on the internet who spend their whole day courting this sort of negative attention, for one reason or another. They thrive on it. I think that’s a personality flaw. I can’t imagine it being helpful for their business. I have gone in the opposite direction.

The triggering is impossible to completely avoid. Even the Pope has people talking shit about him on the internet. I appear on TV or one of my articles gets attention or my podcast does big numbers and it’s like a slap in the face for some older guys who, despite all their time in the market, are facing near-complete apathy from investors and the industry. Imagine pining away for a media mention or a TV hit and then I pop up on the channel you can’t seem to turn off, despite your professed hatred of it? Imagine battling it out on the internet for newsletter subs after thirty or forty years of “professional” trading and the subs just stop subbing? Imagine running an old fashioned conference business and then you see thousands of people register for and post about Future Proof for weeks and weeks on end? I get it. Maybe I’d hate me too.

One thing worth pointing out is that many would-be bullies don’t even realize why they’re so angry. They’re not introspective about it at all, they just get triggered and attack. It’s like they can’t help themselves. These are figures worthy of pity rather than scorn, no matter what they say. Punching back down is going to look unattractive to the outside observer. The self-satisfaction in having done so will also underwhelm. You can’t win by making someone who feels bad feel even worse. That’s not a victory.

So you don’t see me fighting back. Or getting into flame wars with people. I don’t even respond privately anymore. I’ve bumped into people in person who’ve tried to antagonize me online and they act like it never happened. Like it’s just a game or why should I be mad everything’s going okay for me so what’s the big deal. People are so f***ed up. I’ve learned, after a long time, to laugh it off or ignore it. I get a little better at this every year.

The world is full of bitter old men who’ve been disappointed by how their own lives turned out. By how their careers turned out. By how their investments turned out. By how their kids turned out. By how their marriages turned out. We can’t change that. Life is hard. What we can do is avoid turning out this way ourselves. I hope I never become someone else’s seventy year old bully. I can’t imagine it happening but I suppose it could.

So I’ve come up with a Good Guys list of people who have reached sustained success in their careers and don’t seem to be bitter about anything or jealous of anyone. People who just seem happy to be alive and doing what they love. People who go out of their way to encourage the younger professionals in their midst to carry on to even greater heights. These are the men and women I look up to. They’re further along in life than I am and have a lot more money and success under their belts. Concrete achievements that don’t require any additional explanation. Awards, accolades, titles, the sale of a business or two, claims to fame, relationships, etc. You already know they made it, they don’t have to tell you themselves. Most importantly, the Good Guys I am talking about use their wisdom, influence and experience to inspire the next generations behind them. I want to grow up to be just like them. I like how they carry themselves. I appreciate how they find their joy and purpose in helping younger people.

One thing you’ll never see the Good Guys do is spend the time they have left sitting on social media, sniping at their imagined “rivals” like a jealous old bitch with nothing better to do. If you end up as an old man yelling at the TV or fighting with the internet, then basically you lost. I don’t know how else to put it. And you’re advertising it to everyone else - not a great look.

I think you want to have examples in front of you in terms of how you want to turn out. And examples of how you don’t. And, most importantly, you want to be able to say at all times that you’re headed in the direction of being a Good Guy.

Who are your Good Guys? Who are the men and women that have shown you the path you want to follow? If you don’t have a list yet, start making one.

Here are some names from my Good Guys list: James O’Shaughnessy, Jan van Eck, Guy Spier, Rich Bernstein, Jurrien Timmer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Stephanie Link, Nick Colas, Ric Edelman, Chris Davis, Jenny Johnson, Dr. David Kelly, Savita Subramanian, Joe Terranova, Jeff deGraaf, Kunal Kapoor, Peter Boockvar. There are others. You will never see these people talking badly to or about others, picking fights, creating drama or tearing their peers down to make themselves look better. They remain focused on positivity and progress. They mentor younger people and are happy to witness the accomplishments of their colleagues. They can disagree in a respectful manner without making it personal. They don’t throw bombs. They don’t troll. They don’t seek to enrage people for clicks or out of spite. They have all had successful careers in finance and investing. They’ve all had their struggles to overcome too. And they’ve come through with their character intact. Their humanity intact. These are the people I want to emulate as I move forward.

In an attention-based economy, the shortcut is to start fights and stir up a tornado. That gains you followers and renown today but it stunts your growth over time and turns people off in the long-run. It’s a bad trade. While that sort of behavior may generate the most attention, there are also Good Guys everywhere. They may be quieter, but they exist. You just have to look around and watch how people carry themselves.

Jimmy Lebenthal is one of the Good Guys. He’s a from a family of Good Guys who established a brand in the municipal bond market generations ago. When he left the Navy, he joined the family business and learned from the previous generation before blazing a trail of his own in wealth management. I’ve seen him operate as a market commentator, a professional investor and a corporate leader over the last thirteen years and everything he does is gentlemanly. I wish I could say that about myself but I haven’t always carried myself this way. Jim has and, as a result, his reputation on Wall Street is solid gold. He’s an example worth following.

Jim isn’t right about every stock he recommends. He doesn’t always get the W. None of us can. It’s not a profession of being right all the time. What we do in this world boils down to how well can you capitalize on being right and how quickly can you recover from being wrong. Jim can run this obstacle course with the best of them. I have seen him do it.

You can get a copy of his new book, How To Ride The Subway, right here.

Plus! You can listen to him on an all new edition of The Compound and Friends at the links below. Jimmy is buying the fear right now, pointing to the fact that so far in 2026 we’ve gotten nothing but earnings revisions higher plus the valuation reset in large cap stocks that everyone claimed they wanted to wait for. Well, here it is. As earnings rise and prices fall, starting valuations have become less challenging for new-money buys. He also makes the case for Amazon, Citigroup and Oracle, three of his favorite stocks right now.

Of all the things that happened this week, the S&P 500 losing its 200-day moving average is the most notable. For the first time in ten months the market has fallen out of an uptrend. This could reverse itself, so it’s important not to turn immediately bearish. Whipsaws above and below the 200-day are common and confusing. But we can’t ignore it entirely.

There’s more. The Russell 2000 is the furthest gone of the major stock averages, now in an official correction (down more than ten percent) and well below both its 50 and 200-day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed just above correction territory but is testing its own 200-day.

Some other details…

Dell, ONEOK, Fedex and Chevron were four of the top five stocks in the S&P 500 this week while the rest of the market struggled in the wake of persistently high oil prices, a reticent Federal Reserve statement and the usual concerns about SaaS disruption and private credit woes. All four names have been featured by Sean and I in our Best Stocks in the Market research at CNBC Pro and in my related TV appearances. One of the central tenets of what we do is to try to show readers where the strength in the market actually is. These stocks worked this week and have been working all year so far. It’s worth being aware of.

But I want to point your attention to the stocks that fell. Micron had a blockbuster earnings report. They shot the lights out last quarter and guidance was better than expected for the full year. The stock fell anyway, similar to the way Nvidia was treated after their recent blowout quarter. This is never a good sign. Micron (and the other memory chip stocks) are all still up a lot on virtually any timeframe you want to use, but we don’t like seeing stocks top on great news. It’s the converse of something we like a lot - stocks trading higher on bad news, which is a great buying signal. It remains to be seen whether or not the lack of enthusiasm is mainly macro-driven in the context of the war or if it’s a larger signal about risk appetite in the data center trade.

You can ignore the Super Micro crash - turns out it’s a fraud and some of the executives of the company got busted for disguising servers, deceiving auditors and violating US trade policy while smuggling Nvidia GPUs into China. What a f***ing shitshow, but not a market signal for tech investors.

THE COMPOUND & FRIENDS

Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Downtown Josh Brown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ are joined by ⁠Jim Lebenthal⁠ to discuss: stock market volatility, who's winning the AI race, risks and opportunities in private credit, Jim's favorite stocks, and much more!