Patrick Adams - When Stock Crashes Matter for Long-Term Investors
4/2/20261 hr 4 min
What if your biggest investment risk isn't the stock market—but your own income?
In this episode, we are joined by Patrick Adams, a PhD candidate at MIT, for a fascinating deep dive into how income risk, spending commitments, and liquidity constraints reshape what "optimal" investing actually looks like. Drawing on large-scale administrative tax data, Patrick challenges the conventional wisdom that young investors should be heavily—or even fully—invested in equities.
We explore why stocks appear safe over long horizons but become risky when real-world constraints force investors to sell at the worst possible times...
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First 90 secondsBenjamin Felix· Host0:00
[upbeat music] This is the Rational Reminder Podcast, a weekly reality check on sensible investing and financial decision-making from two Canadians. We are hosted by me, Benjamin Felix, Chief Investment Officer, and Cameron Passmore, Chief Executive Officer at PWL Capital.
Cameron Passmore· Host0:16
Welcome to episode four hundred and three. Another super interesting episode. And, you know, you said a line at the end of this one, Ben, in our conversation with Patrick Adams, that people love research that supports a hundred percent equity. Well, today is not one of those days, which is kind of the point of the podcast, right? Just to get more information to help people make, as you've said four hundred and three times, better, smarter investment decisions. This one was particularly interesting from that standpoint because it is a different piece of research, which I'll let you describe. The second interesting piece I took away, because Patrick's a PhD candidate at MIT, and he talked about the impact of your work on the podcast on him and his cohort that are looking for subjects for their PhD work. So I thought that was really interesting. So with that, why don't you tell us more about Patrick, his work, and how you discovered him?
Benjamin Felix· Host1:17
He did say about the podcast that it, it sounds like a lot of PhD candidates listen. It's a medium where you can sit down and listen to a very accomplished researcher in many cases. In this case, Patrick, as