87 - Lick's State of The TRAP Nation 2026 Address

In this latest pile of TRAP, Lick delivers a mesmerisingly sexy State of The TRAP Nation 2026 Address.

Show links: http://tiny.cc/traplinks

Sponsor Link: FundmentLive is happening Thursday 29th January 2026. Get your tickets here: https://fundmentlive.com/

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Unknown: 0:07

Matt, welcome to the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, trap. Please follow us and join in the conversation on Twitter at advisor podcast, where you can suggest ideas and themes you'd like the trap team to discuss. Also remember to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and leave a six out of five star review on iTunes. Doing all this really, really helps us, which means we can do more to help you. Now, let's head over to the studio for the latest pile of trap trappers.

Nick Lincoln: 0:42

Welcome back to what many people are calling episode 87 of the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P track. My name is Lincoln, Lincoln, and not joining me today in the studio of doom are the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse, ultra storyteller and della voci, the voice, they're having a Christmassy kind of break. We're in that dead period when we're recording this between Christmas and New Year. So I'm going to do a nice, short, punchy episode, a very, very short episode compared to what you normally get, just reflecting on the podcast last year and what plans we have in store for this year. For this year starts the day. 2026 starts the day. It's a briny, shiny, clean, brand new 2026 rolling off the showroom forecourt, no dinks, no rust, some strange stains on the backseat that no one can explain away. But apart from that, the only thing between us and a fantastic 2026 is mankind, and that's never gone wrong, has it? So this shows coming out on the first day of 2026 Happy New Year to you all. Hope you all survive the the experts, festivities, or, by the way, the software I used to record this doesn't allow you to pause. So there may be some ums and ahs and ers in this, because normally there are four of us. And you might have noticed TRAPPIST that one of us normally speaks at a time. Sometimes two of us speak at the same time. Sometimes three of us speak at the same time. Occasionally four of us speak at the same time. That won't be happening today is just me. Licks, state of the trap nation. Monolog. So where do we start? Well, 2025 amazing. We got a couple of sponsors. You might have noticed. You might wince when you hear their drops, but that's the price you pay. Asset Management is a murky world, and even the biggest and brightest, or most of the biggest and brightest have some things in their closets they'd rather not talk about with their fund management history. But I can think of few brands in that field who are as exemplary as Vanguard across the board in terms of what they've done for investors since the mid 1970s the God knows how much they've saved in fees through to their ongoing education of investors and their ongoing education of advisors such as you and I, just so happy To be associated with them. Want to shout out to Nicola Constantino, who's our point of contact at Vanguard. She's just totally embraced this idea of working the Trap Team and Vanguard working together full of enthusiasm. Great so far, Nicola, thank you. And in 2026 in this new year, there's a whole lot of content that will be coming out, co branded between Vanguard and the real advisor podcast, can't wait to start seeing that it should be coming out, actually, this month, hopefully. So thank you to Vanguard and second sponsor is the word disruptor is overused, especially by people like Andy, but I think fundament are a true disruptor in the platform space, a super slick online end to end online digital experience, very keenly costed. And they are our second sponsor, and we're super excited to be with them as well. Ola Abdul and Laurie Jacks at funman have been great so far to work with. We've got things lined up for them in this new year, not least of which is that three of the trap pack minus minus the voice. We're going to be at fundment Live, which I think is on the 29th of January, 2026 now there'll be a link to fundment live in the so called show notes. However, I do think it's sold out. So good luck with that. I know they weren't getting much interest in it at all, and then the trap pack became associated with it, and the whole thing sold out in like, 90 seconds. That's not a true story. So thank you to our sponsors, and thanks also TRAPPIST for accepting the fact that we bought sponsors. You know, I can't speak with the others, but I was kind of bracing for, oh, they've sold out. They're only in it for the money and so forth. And I have not seen any negative response to that. And I think that's maybe a testament to the fact that you guys and girls realize how much time and effort we put into this and how much value we know we have added over over the 87 episodes to date. So thank you for bearing with us on that and on that note, I want to say thank you to the Trappist. One of the things that for me and I can talk with the other chaps, it. Just the love we get from the TRAPPIST when we interact with you online, when we see you physically, you're so effusive in your praise. You're so grateful. It's just lovely. We really, really do appreciate it. And there's now actually a Testimonials page on the real advisor podcast, comm slash testimonials, if you go there and if you want to sponsor us, if you want to see the sort of the just the gratitude and respect that we're unbelievably given by our peers in this thing of ours. Go to that page and you'll see just loads of loads of quotes from people. So thank you. We do appreciate it. You know, we started this thing over a meal in a restaurant in Killarney. I believe it was in southwest Ireland a couple of years ago, Alan really had the kernel of the idea, and we took it from there. And even that was an argumentative meal, we couldn't agree on the name, but we came up with the real advisor podcast, and ever since then, it's just been an amazing journey, really fun most of the time. Sometimes it's hard work. I'm hard work. I won't I won't deny that symmetric. So we've had over 300,000 podcast downloads, which is amazing, given that we're niche, right? This is not a Joe public facing podcast. This is aimed at people in this thing of ours, okay? People in the in the advice chain, be they financial advisors, para panners, administrators, whatever you want to call it. That's That's pretty niche, and we average about three and a half 1000 downloads per episode, nudging up to 4000 the longer the episodes have been out. And that's amazing. That's 4000 sets of lug holes in this thing of ours listening to each episode. So we obviously found, we found a niche, and we've, we've, we've just got in there, you know, first mover advantage on YouTube, over 1400 subscribers, and YouTube is telling me that now we're own. We're accumulated 13 pounds, 28 in revenue. So we're like the youth. We've cracked the YouTube algorithm. 13 pounds, 28 is sitting in there, and they'll pay it out to us when we get to 100 quid or something. So that'll in London. That'll buy you a pint and a half and not much else. So what's going on? What went on last year in 2025 Well, AI, I know, is obviously in front of mind for a lot of us. Alan, you know, Mr. MAGpie, the shiny new thing. But even I've started using AI to do sort of horrible annual allowance tapered annual allowance calculations. I built a gem in Gemini. So I just put three numbers in clients overall income from all sources, employer percentage contribution, employee percentage contribution. And just putting those three numbers in that activates this gem in Gemini, which does all the figures for me, tells me whether the client is going to go over their annual allowance, how much head room there is. And then, if I want to, I can then do carry forward calculations, but just cutting and pasting in some other figures. And that's so much easier than using those awful bloody spreadsheets that you can get on the internet. And it works. I've tried to break it so that's my use of AI, very technical, but obviously it's going to become more and more prevalent this thing of ours. I don't think it's ever going to replace the advisor client relationship, the ability to look into someone's eyes. But I would say that, wouldn't I, so I might have a blind spot here. This might be my these might be my own biases coming into play. I'm sure the people that had horse and cart companies just said, I don't give a don't worry about that bloody Model T Ford. It'll never catch on. We're safe. And then, you know, we're not happened there, but my, I think the the this, this thing that we do, is so emotion driven, so human driven, I can't see AI replacing the delivery of empathetic behavioral counseling. But I might be wrong. I can certainly see it doing a lot of stuff on the technical side and the sort of more repetitive administrative side, but that'll free up time for people in those roles to do other stuff, is how I would look at it, this Malthusian concept that AI is going to end the world. Every new invention is going to end the world, and it never does. It just changes the world. Throughout the year on trap, we, as I certainly have banged on about this move to private equity that's been pushed from a small angles. It will be a disaster. I'm saying it here the first day of 2026 if you listen to this, in 2036 2046 we were saying it 20 years prior. This move to force pension funds and other people to invest in private equity will only end in tears. What else happened? The FTSE broke through 9000 in July. I haven't heard from Paul Lewis for a while about the lost decade. Must get on Twitter and see what he's doing with his cash accounts. He must be earning at least 3% on those interest rates are hovering now at 3.75% they were 5.25 in August. They're inflation is still sticky in the UK. You know, we'll see how long those interest rate cuts last the S and P delivered a total return, including dividends, of around 18% last year. 18% for just sitting there, pivoting to the right or the left and looking out of the window and doing nothing for the 12 months of 2025 and you've got 18% you know, you could have dick. Around with other stores of value, Bitcoin rose sharply, then dropped just as sharply. I think it's down around 12% on the year just gone now, given it's supposed to be a store of value in these turbulent times, a minus 12% return doesn't sound that factor to me. On the other hand, gold, shiny, inert and useless, went up by 55% in 2025 I still think with both Bitcoin and gold, it's the bigger fool theory, but I'll know to be proven wrong with one of those things. But gold is a is just don't do it. And Black Rock launched an exchange traded product. And you know, when Blackrock launch an exchange traded product that they launched an ETP in the Bitcoin field. And that, to me, is two, two forces coming together to cause mayhem for those that might try and pursue returns via that. But however, going with your eyes open highlights of the I asked the Track Pack what their highlights of the year were, so I'll read these for you. Alan said my highlight of the year was the impromptu curry, hastily arranged after trap live, 35 Trappists walking into an Indian restaurant just as it was closing, completely taking over the place and drinking them dry into the wasteful hours, plenty of fun and good natured banter, priceless. And it was, it was, and that's where we had roo joined us, and she was just marshaling us all and getting it all done, and she now works for a good firm as well in this thing of ours. Carl's highlight, my highlight, is the review readings from Andrew Usain heart on a bi weekly basis. It gives me encouragement to continue with the work we are doing when we hear the impact it is having on some advisors and amen to that. Please do keep the reviews coming in. It might sound shallow and vain. It might sound that we're really needy, but the truth is that we are shallow and vain and really needy. So please do keep the reviews coming in. It gives us a shot in the arm, and we do appreciate them when they do come in. And his highlight, Andy Ultra, his highlight, my trap highlight this year was the epic lunch in Lisbon after a three hour walk up the coast to clean the restaurant out of rose a wine. Now, those of you that know Andy know he's like a it's a whippet. He's an ultra, ultra skinny fit, does lots of running, looks after himself with all kinds of potions and lotions and tonics and whatever else. You get that guy to try and walk anywhere, and it's like, Are we there yet? Dad, we went to Lisbon. We got a train at this place called Cash case, or cash car. I think it's cash case. Portuguese is a really hard language. About half an hour train journey from Lisbon, and then we had about a half an hour walk from cash case train station along the coast, along this bluff, looking out at the Atlantic, until we came to this fantastic restaurant. And my god, the whinging from ultra in that short journey where that was a that was a great meal. Was a great day. Love that. So what's happening in this new shiny year of ours that's just rolled off the the forecourt? Well, we've got trap live tickets for that go on sale on the 15th of January. So please do head over to the real advisor podcast, calm and leave your details in the bleeding obvious sign up box, because on the 15th of Jan, there'll be an email going out to all of you with the link where you can purchase your tickets. There might even be, imagine an early bird discount coupon. Who'd have thought that's coming up. The actual live event will be in May. Can't wait for that. Amelia Powell, honorary member of the trap pack around trap live events. She'll be there emceeing us, trying to corral us into some sort of shape? It'll be great. We've got a new venue. We think it's going to be a great venue with a bar as part of the auditorium, so you can sit there. Have a drink. Get up, have a drink. Go outside, have a cigarette. Come back in. When we stopped, whatever floats your boat, saying goodbye in 2026 to the Royal College of Physicians, where Ultra for many years, ran his very successful humans under management conference. Not so last year. Didn't do it. We did a trap live last year at the Royal College of Physicians. But I don't think we'll be going back there now, but a great place, and it certainly served Andy. Andy really well. He's got a new venue now, if you went to humans under management last year, oh, the name of it escapes me, but it was between Euston and St Pancras stations on the Euston stations on the Euston road. Really good venue, really good humans in the management world and ultra for that. What else am I supposed to be saying? I don't know, really. Yeah, I'll come back to fun my life. There are things to look forward to. 29th of January. So two weeks today, trap live tickets go on sale on the 15th and on the 29th two weeks after that, which, by my math, means four weeks from today, on January 29 there is this fundment Live event. They've got some great speakers. I mean, Daniel Priestley is there. He's worth going to to listen to on his own. But knowing fundment, knowing Ola, knowing Laurie, they don't dick around with these things, it'll be a great day, and three of the traffic will be there, and you can come and stand near us and just inhale some greatness to get your year off to a flying start. I do have one culture corner as we wrap up this, I said it would be short 15 minutes. Let's do a quick culture corner. And this one, I'm bringing this one up because this is what we do, and this kind of just sums up the year, the year. Years of advising that the trap pack have done that you Trappists are doing, because this was a what was it as ft behind the money podcast with Richard Thaler. Now, Richard Thaler, like Danny Kahneman, the late Danny Kahneman, is a behavioral economist. These are the guys who look at human beings not as they should act in a rational world. But what are they? What are human beings actually do when faced with financial decisions, and I find their books a bit dry. I couldn't I couldn't read Thinking Fast and Slow. I couldn't finish it. I hadn't finished any of Thalers works and anything. But in interviews, they were both engaging. Richard Thaler is still an engaging interviewee. So listen to this podcast he took. He reminds us about the sunk cost fallacy. He talks about game theory. Really, really interesting. And they'll be linked to that in the so called Show note, I guess. As I wrap up this trap, state of the nation, monolog, I should just say a quick thank you to the trap pack. Alan, Carl Andy, 333, better guys in this thing of as you couldn't help, you couldn't want, want to meet or work with. I know I can be demanding at times and disagreeable, but they're no angels. We're all three hard headed individuals, or four of us, sorry, are hard headed individuals, but I am extremely grateful for their for all of us being making trap bigger than that. You know that we are bigger than our parts. The sum of the sum of trap is way bigger than the parts, and it's down to those three. So let's, let's hope we keep going, hope we don't fall out too much. We are cantankerous. You might think trap is a little bit vicious. Sometimes you want to see what goes on. I mean, there's blood and tears, and then we kiss and make up, often, quite literally, kissing and making up. So thanks to the trap pack in 2026 What would I say to you, dear TRAPPIST, taking, taking this shiny, brand new New Year and driving it into the cesspit that is mankind for the next 12 months? Well, by the way, if you're taking life advice from me, you need to have a stern word with yourself. But here we go. These are two things. Firstly, tell the people that you love that you love them, and do it on a regular basis. Don't assume they know. And the people that do know already that you love them will love to hear you tell them, say it. Say it. Second thing, and this is something that we Trappists all do all do all the time anyway, because it's in our DNA. It's how we work. Keep on doing the right thing every time when no one is looking, there we go some depth in the real advisor podcast episode 87 I think I'll sign off there. I don't know much else to say, I hope this year is fantastic for you. I look forward. We look forward the trap pack. Look forward to seeing as many as you can. Keep the reviews coming in, like and subscribe, blah, blah, blah, but this episode is sliding down the U Bender Father Time. Let's flush it away and see you soon in the flesh at the various events that are coming up. Thank you for your time. Thank you from the trap pack. Thank you from Nick Lincoln.

Unknown: 18:13

Woman, where's that cup of tea?