I have spent a lot of time with David Booth’s ideas over the years. Dimensional Fund Advisors has been a long-term partner of ours, and the principles David helped bring into the world have shaped how we think about investing for the families we serve. So when David agreed to join us on the Wealth and Purpose Podcast to talk about his first book, Stay Calm: Learn to Embrace Uncertainty in Investing and Life, I was genuinely humbled. He has been on CNBC and in the Wall Street Journal for this book. I joked with him that we are right up there with those outlets.
What struck me most as I read Stay Calm is that it is not a book about how to invest. It is a book about how to think about investing. And the more I read, the more I realized that the lessons David has learned over five decades, lessons about uncertainty, discipline, patience, and compounding, apply just as much to living a good life as they do to building a good portfolio.
What a Kansas Shoe Store Taught Him About Trust
Before Dimensional, before the University of Chicago, and before a trillion dollars in assets, David was a kid in Kansas selling shoes on commission. He admits people tend to chuckle when he says that job shaped his career. But the lesson he learned there was simple and lasting. When he went home at night, what mattered most was feeling good about himself, and selling someone shoes that did not fit was never going to give him that.
David told me that lesson actually made him a better salesman, because he ended up telling people what he believed to be true. It became foundational to how Dimensional operates. Later, working alongside Nobel Prize winners like Gene Fama, he saw the same principle in academia, where the fastest way to lose your reputation is to fudge the data. As David put it, your moral compass needs to point straight north all the time. I think that applies to every family business and every advisor relationship I know.
A Century of Markets and the Courage to Stay Put
One of the most powerful parts of our conversation was David’s reminder of what public markets have delivered. Over roughly a hundred years, through the Great Depression, World War II, high inflation, the Great Recession, and the pandemic, stocks have returned about 10% a year. US Treasury bonds have returned roughly four or five. That is a remarkable record, and David believes it deserves far more appreciation than it gets. He even suggested we should throw a ticker tape parade for public markets.
But there is a catch, and it is a simple one. To earn that return, you have to be there. David recalled the early days of the pandemic, when markets fell sharply and people asked him what was going to happen. His honest answer was that he did not know. What he did believe was that people and companies do not just sit there when bad things happen. They figure out how to get back on track. That human ingenuity, he said, is unpredictable, but it is always there. The recession that followed lasted less than one quarter.
Why Uncertainty Is the Price of Opportunity
Most of us spend a lot of energy trying to eliminate uncertainty. David’s perspective flipped that on its head for me. He pointed out that if there were no uncertainty in investing, every investment would be riskless, and every investment would earn the riskless rate of return. The opportunity exists precisely because the future is unknown. The same is true in life. None of us would have made the progress we have if everything had been determined in advance.
David’s advice is to eliminate the uncertainty you can and manage the rest. He sees that as the heart of what a good advisor does, helping people think through how much uncertainty they can live with. I have often said that most investing problems are not really investing problems. They are human problems. How we behaved in 2008 or during the pandemic matters more than any single stock pick. David reminded me that we cannot avoid uncertainty, but we can absolutely plan for it.
Every Generation Thinks This Time Is Different
Every generation seems to believe its challenges are unique. Today it is artificial intelligence, geopolitical conflict, and national debt, with plenty of advice available on social media about all of it. So I asked David what he says to someone who insists this time is different. His answer was refreshingly direct. Of course it is different. But do we really face more anxiety and uncertainty than people did during the Great Depression or World War II?
I shared with David a slide I saw recently. I am 48 years old, and over those 48 years, only eight were negative for the market. Forty were positive. David laughed and pointed out I was born right after the market downturn of 1973 and 1974. Then he made a point I keep coming back to. Because markets are full of sophisticated investors working constantly to set fair prices, you can relax a bit and let the market do the work for you. As he put it, why stay up late worrying when you could go play with your kids instead?
The Farmers Who Understood True Wealth
Toward the end of Stay Calm, David turns to a subject that sits at the heart of what we do at TFO. I asked him what true wealth means to him after a lifetime surrounded by successful people. He took me back to his second year in the PhD program at the University of Chicago, working as a research assistant for Gene Fama. He went home for Christmas to his grandparents’ house, surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins, most of them farmers. They were having a wonderful time. David was stressed about the research waiting for him back at the computer center.
That moment started him on a path to a different definition of wealth. His relatives had figured it out. He tells people his parents were wealthy, they just did not have much money. For them, wealth was family. They raised three great kids. David has also shared that his parents, shaped by the Depression, never trusted the stock market and kept a meaningful share of their savings in cash in a safe deposit box. He still thinks about what they missed. Part of why he wrote this book is so that other families do not have to miss it too.
Still Compounding After Five Decades
Compounding is a word we use often with our clients, and it applies to far more than money. Knowledge, relationships, and generosity all compound when we make good decisions and give them time. So I asked David whether, at this point in his life, he is still trying to compound anything. His answer came quickly. Yes. His greatest thrill is still educating people and watching them be transformed.
David described the shift he loves to see, from people going home stressed about markets and feeling left out, to people who have reason to be hopeful and confident about their investment experience. He told me his parents felt like outsiders, believing the insiders made all the money. He has spent his career proving that is not the case. When you understand how markets work, you could end up with more money over time, and you feel better along the way.
What This Means for the Families We Serve
The families we work with at TFO have built wealth, and with it come real questions about uncertainty. Markets will rise and fall. Headlines will insist this time is different. What David reminded me is that we do not have to predict the future to navigate it well. We need a sensible plan, the discipline to stay with it, and a genuine optimism grounded in a century of evidence about human ingenuity.
More than that, David’s story reinforces what we believe about wealth and purpose. True wealth is not measured only in a portfolio. It is measured in the family gathered around the table at Christmas, in the values we pass down, and in the peace of mind that comes from staying calm when others panic. David built a tremendous company, and this book is one more way he is connecting that success to a greater purpose. I hope it encourages your family to do the same.
