فصل 6 بخش 11

CHAPTER 6.11

CHARLES SCHWAB: TALKING TO CHUCK, THE PEOPLE’S BROKER

Founder and Chairman of Charles Schwab Corporation

You’ve seen the ads: a handsome, white-haired man looks directly at you through the camera and urges you to “own your tomorrow.” Or maybe you remember the ones where cartoon people ask questions about their investments, and a balloon pops up encouraging them to “Talk to Chuck.” That’s the style of personal engagement and openness that’s kept Charles Schwab at the pinnacle of the discount brokerage industry for the past 40 years, and has helped build a financial empire with $2.38 trillion in client assets under management, 9.3 million brokerage accounts, 1.4 million corporate retirement plan participants, 956,000 banking accounts, and a network serving 7,000 registered investment advisors.

Before Chuck Schwab came along, if you wanted to buy some stocks, you had to go through a cartel of traditional brokers or brokerage firms that charged exorbitant fees for every trade. But in 1975, when the Securities and Exchange Commission forced the industry to deregulate, Schwab created one of the first discount brokerages and pioneered a whole new way of doing business that shook Wall Street to its core. He led an investor revolution, where suddenly individuals could participate fully in the markets without costly middlemen. While clubby brokerages like Merrill Lynch raised their trading fees, Charles Schwab slashed—or even eliminated—his fees and offered an array of no-frills services that put the clients’ interests first and established the model for a new industry. Later he led the charge into electronic trading, and he continues to pioneer innovations that educate and empower investors to make their own decisions.

At age 76, Chuck Schwab comes across with tremendous humility and integrity. “People seem to have confidence in us,” he told me. “We try to treat everyone with the sense that we are trustworthy and we need to take care of their assets in a very cautious way.” It’s possible that Chuck’s modesty and quiet confidence come from a life spent overcoming a series of challenges, beginning with a struggle with dyslexia—a learning disability he shares with a surprising number of ultrasuccessful business leaders, from Richard Branson of the Virgin Group to John Chambers of Cisco Systems. Despite his reading difficulties, Chuck graduated from Stanford University and earned an MBA from Stanford Business School. He launched his career in finance in 1963 with an investment newsletter. Chuck embraced his status as a Wall Street outsider and planted his flag in his native California, establishing his brokerage firm in San Francisco in 1973. Since then, the Charles Schwab Corporation has ridden the wild bull and bear markets of the past four decades, bouncing back from the crashes of 1987, 2001, and 2008 that wiped out lesser firms, taking on the slew of copycat companies that eroded its market share, always finding ways to innovate and grow in every environment.

Although he turned over the reins as CEO in 2008, Chuck stays active in the company as its chairman and largest single shareholder. According to Forbes, Chuck Schwab has a personal fortune of $6.4 billion. With his wife and his daughter, Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, he’s been incredibly involved in the family’s private foundations, which support entrepreneurial organizations working in education, poverty prevention, human services, and health. He’s also chairman of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Chuck Schwab and I both have crazy schedules, but we were finally able to meet in his San Francisco offices just as this book was about to go to press. Here are some excerpts from that conversation: TR:

Everyone knows the name Charles Schwab. They know the institution. But most people don’t really know your story. I wonder if you would just share a few highlights? I understand you started becoming interested in investing as early as thirteen?

CS:

That’s right. When I was thirteen, it was right after World War II, and the world wasn’t too rich. My dad was a small-town lawyer in California’s Sacramento Valley, and certainly our family wasn’t very rich. I thought I’d be better off in life if I had more money, so I had to figure out how to make money. I talked to my dad about it, and he encouraged me to read biographies of the famous people in America. And they all seemed to do something about investing. So I said, “Man, that’s for me!” So when I was 13, I started a chicken company. Raised chickens and all that. And then I did a bunch of other little business kinds of things. So I knew a lot about business and started thinking about how businesses function and operate.

TR:

What was your original vision? And what were your first real practical steps? Give me highlights, if you would, to give people a sense of your journey.

CS:

Well, I was quite lucky early in the journey. I started out as a financial analyst, and I had some ups and downs along the way. I was about 35, and I had a lot of experience before I really started the company in 1973. And as a result, I knew some of the handicaps of the financial business. Including why they didn’t treat people well enough. It was because they were really focused on making themselves money—but not on giving the investor a fair shake. They always thought about their institution and making money first. I said, “Aha! There’s gonna be a different way!” TR:

What has been the competitive advantage at Charles Schwab over the years? I mean, if you look at the size of the North American investment market, I think it’s about $32 trillion. And you guys have to represent a sizeable amount.

CS:

We’re probably 5% to 10% of the retail market. Something like that. But you know, as I got into business, I wanted to look at every product, every service that we offer clients, through clients’ eyes. We would design a product like a no-load mutual fund. We did it in a big way. We made it free for people to buy no-load funds through us, years ago.

People would say, “Well, how are you gonna make money at that?” So we figured out a way to make some money at it. We worked with the mutual fund companies and convinced them to pay us a little fee out of their management fees. And our clients would benefit from it. And it flourished. So the individual got a great advantage by buying a plethora of no-load mutual funds for no fee. We did the same kind of analysis along the way for other things that we did. We looked at it first through the clients’ eyes.

But Wall Street did just the reverse. They always made a decision: “How much money can we make on this first? Okay, let’s do it. Let’s go sell it, boys.” That’s the way they made decisions. We were completely the opposite.

TR:

Has that shifted? Or is it still the same?

CS:

It’s still the same. And that’s why it’s a pretty interesting market for us. You know, we have sort of an unlimited destiny, I think, to continue to treat the client as the king. And make sure we do everything that’s in their interests first. Yes, we will make a little bit of money. Which we do, of course. We’re a profit-making organization. But first, we think about the client.

TR:

What do you think are the two or three myths that you try to point out to them to pay attention to so they don’t get sucked in when they think about investing?

CS:

Well, it’s so easy. I’ve watched it in Wall Street so many times. You see the abuses that come about. Some really fancy broker comes along and says, “Ma’am, would you like to make some money?” Of course, we all say, “Yes!” And then you get engaged in the conversation. “These guys have the best widget you’ve ever seen in your life. And it’s gonna be just like another Apple.” So we all, naturally, sort of listen to the story, then say, “Okay, I’ll put some money into that.” Well, the probability of that working out is about 1 in 10,000. It’s like, why don’t you just go to the horses? Or buy a lottery ticket that day? That’ll satisfy your speculative thing. Put the real money you have into an index fund, where you know the outcome is going to be highly predictable and returns will be really quite good.

TR:

So many people will get hurt because they don’t know things and they don’t ask questions. And you’re one of the first people to say, “Ask questions.” CS:

Right.

TR:

But very few people know the questions to ask. You know, they see a mutual fund, and they see its return. And they think that’s the return they receive. And as you and I both know, that’s just not true.

CS:

It’s just not true. It’s never. Anything of the past is never promised for the future. But there are reasons why we put out a pamphlet, a white paper on index funds. We talk about the reason why stocks are the greatest place, really, to have long-term investments. And the reason why is that companies are in business to grow. Every board I’ve ever been on—and I’ve done six or seven different Fortune 500 boards—every conversation at the board meeting is about growth. How can we grow this company? If you don’t grow, you fire the management. Get a new management team in.

Now, that building over there is a beautiful building. But you come back 100 years from now. That building would still be the same size. Or be knocked down. But it doesn’t grow. Only companies grow. And that’s why it’s a fantastic thing to go to stocks. And, of course, in our case, we try to encourage people to go into index funds, so they get a broad blend of industries and stocks and so forth. Then they have— TR:

—the lowest costs.

CS:

The lowest costs, and they get a high degree of certainty that they’re going to do as well as the index will do. And if you look at any industries over the last 100 years, they’ve done extraordinarily well over time and brought great returns to clients.

TR:

If you listen to Vanguard’s Jack Bogle or somebody like David Swensen from Yale, they all say passive management is the way to go. Because 96% of all mutual funds do not match the index over a ten-year period of time. But how do you feel about it for the average investor: passive versus active?

CS:

Well, I’m a mixed investor. I invest in a lot of individual stocks. But I have the time. I have the expertise. I have the education. But 98% of people don’t focus on that. They have other things in life to do, rather than fuss around with investments as I have done, or Warren Buffett has. You know, they are professionals, and they’re doctors. Or lawyers. They’re whatever. We need all those people to make a successful society. And maybe 2% of us really know about investing. So the rest of the people need some help and advice. That’s what I learned early on, and that’s what we do today. And the 98% should really predominantly go into index funds, in my view. They have the most predictable outcomes. Better than they would ever do by trying to pick different things, which is very difficult to do. And then do their other job too. You can’t do both.

TR:

The other part is, people just don’t realize what the cost is, as Jack Bogle points out. For every 1% over the lifetime of investing, it’s 20% of your money you’re giving up.

CS:

Yeah. It’s over.

TR:

Give up 2%, that’s 40%. Give up 3%, that’s 60%.

CS:

That’s a whole lot. And on an after-tax basis, it really mounts up.

TR:

Every major investor that I spoke to talks of the fact that asset allocation is the single most important investment decision a person can make. You deal with so many different types of investors. What philosophy do you try to have your team apply to help people understand what their asset allocation should be?

CS:

Well, it’s actually pretty easy today. It wasn’t that true 40 years ago. Now we have index funds that we mentioned. And ETFs. So you can get different slices of the market so you can have plenty of diversification. You want energy stocks? You can get an energy ETF. You want medical devices? You can do that. And, of course, I tend to believe you should be diversified among the very biggest and ten biggest industry groupings. And that’s what you generally get in a general index fund. You get all of them, because you never know. Sometimes electronic equipment will be going, zooming right up. Oil might not be doing so well. But next year? Oil is in demand, so oil prices are going up. And that does well. And so on and so forth. But it allows you to get the balance of the benefits of each of these sectors.

TR:

How do you feel about investing in America versus international, when you’re trying to create that asset allocation?

CS:

That’s another level of sophistication, which I think everybody should have in their portfolio. Some chunk devoted to international, because the very simple fact is, America is growing at about 2% to 3% per annum now. There are many other countries that are beginning to, from China to Indonesia to Japan, have better growth than America. So that’s where you’re gonna get your returns, where there is better growth, frankly.

But even though the American economy is only growing 2%, there are some parts of our economy that are really growing quite fast. So obviously you want to be attracted to them too.

TR:

Where do you see the world going in the next ten years? What do you think those opportunities and challenges are for investors?

CS:

I think there are enormous opportunities ahead of us still. Despite how slow things are going right now. It will explode once we get the kind of policies I think will eventually get back in. Because there’s no way you’re gonna take the growth component out of America. The innovation going on in this country is profound. I mean, I live in the San Francisco area, where it’s just going, busting at the seams wherever you walk. It’s there.

TR:

Are we in a market bubble with the Fed controlling rates the way they are? Where you would have to take significant risk to see rewards? The market seems to be the only place for the money to go. How long does that last?

CS:

Well, I’m not a great fan of the present policy of the Federal Reserve. I think manipulating rates, as long as they have, is really not the right decision. And I guess it does create the potential and the possibility of some kind of bubble. It won’t be forever. We will probably pay a price for it. But it’s not a permanent issue. And so there’ll be some high inflation or down markets. There will be a consequence for what we’re doing now. But we’ll get through it. As we do every time there’re bad decisions made by policymakers.

TR:

They all have a different language for it, but for every single major investor in the world, one of their competitive advantages is asymmetric risk/reward. They take a little risk to try to get a big reward. How does the average investor do that today? Is there any insight you can give them?

CS:

Well, I think it’s all coming back to the answer: Where can you get the best growth? Understanding the fundamentals of growth is crucially important to get long-term returns. Now, in the case of Warren Buffett, he learned that at a young age. He just buys companies, and he never sells. Why? Companies keep growing. They just keep growing. And he gets richer and richer.

TR:

He doesn’t pay taxes.

CS:

And he doesn’t pay taxes. If you don’t sell, you don’t pay taxes!

TR:

That’s pretty awesome.

CS:

That’s his mystery. The myth has been solved! He doesn’t sell!

TR:

I believe you have five children.

CS:

And twelve grandkids.

TR:

Twelve grandkids! Tell me: If you could leave none of your money to your children, but you could only leave a set of investment principles and maybe a portfolio, what would be your advice to them?

CS:

Well, I think it really starts with earning your own money. Having success in that. And the concept of putting some money aside.

• Make sure you get the right education. And hopefully it fits into the marketplace, where jobs are being created.

• You’ve got to have a well-paying job, which are not that plentiful today.

• And then putting the money aside in your 401(k) or IRA. It takes giving up things. Not buying that car. Giving up that vacation. Having something set aside.

• And then you could begin doing the proper investing.

It’s a pretty simple formula. Lots of people don’t realize it, but hopefully you can teach people to do that.

TR:

[Laughs.] Hopefully I can!

CS:

You know, I believe in leaving something. Making sure the kids are educated, but not sizeable sums of money. Don’t take away their sense of their own opportunity, their own ego development. Their own kinds of things that will fulfill them. You have to be a really curious person. Make sure every one of your kids is really curious. And it’s not necessarily about making money.

Having come from a background of no money and no wealth, I clearly know the difference. And of course, in the last 20 years, I’ve had the benefit of success, which allows me incredible choices. For my wife and me, we take a vacation without worrying about the cost of it. Having a good time. I enjoy my sports. I love my golf. And it goes on and on and on. And so we want to perpetuate this success. We want our next generations to have what we had, and then some.

TR:

You’ve dealt with so many successful people. You’ve studied successful companies and the individuals who drive their growth. What do you think is the single most important factor?

CS:

You know, maybe it’s 99% necessity. But lots of people out there in the world really do need more resources. But they don’t have the education. Somehow they didn’t have the motivation. Maybe they don’t sense opportunity in front of them. How to perceive the opportunity that is right there? You look around at these other guys who have been successful, and you think, “I can do that too.” How do you sense that? I don’t know.

TR:

You’re 76 now, and you didn’t find out you were dyslexic until you were in your 40s, right?

CS:

Right.

TR:

A lot of people think of that as a limit on their life. How come it was never a limit to you?

CS:

Maybe, thank God, that I didn’t know when I was a kid! But my son was just starting school when we took him for testing [and found out he was dyslexic]. I said, “Oh my God. All the things that I had to deal with at age seven, eight, and nine, he’s dealing with now!” And it was very clear that I was also dyslexic, so that solved a lot of my issues when I thought back about my early schooling. The alphabet was impossible for me. My reading—even to this day, I don’t read novels. I read nothing but nonfiction.

TR:

Wow. So what allowed you to succeed in the financial business, then?

CS:

Well, I was pretty good at math. And I was pretty good with people. I wasn’t a great writer, but I had people around me who were great writers. So you learn very quickly: you can’t do it all yourself. You need to have people around you who are better than you are at most other things. But you have to be able to inspire the people around you to work together for whatever your common purpose is. And that’s what I’ve been able to do all these years.

TR:

What’s your passion?

CS:

I’m totally passionate about the necessity for people to earn and save and grow because of the responsibility we all have for our own retirements. And goodness gracious, we’re gonna live, you know. I’m in my seventies. But the probability now is living to 90, 95. It’s a long time to be in retirement. And so you’ve got to put aside a lot of assets, I think, in order to live comfortably.

TR:

People I talked to who knew you 20 years ago say your passion is as great or greater than it ever was.

CS:

Probably greater. [Laughs.]

TR:

Wow. Why is that? How have you maintained that? How has that continued to expand?

CS:

Well, I have seen, for instance, what you can do with philanthropy. And how you can really help people. By being successful. Well, I couldn’t do it if I was not successful. I wouldn’t have the resources to do it with. But I can make things happen in different ways. Whether it’s issues around dyslexia. I can help kids. Or in charter schools, we can help kids. Or if it’s in museums, help build better and bigger places for people to come and see and view art.

I think one of the great fulfillments of achieving great success is being able to, in your lifetime, give back to things; that it really enhances many, many times, you know, what people can really enjoy, and yourself.

TR:

If someone was starting out brand new, what would be the advantage you would try to give them, looking to start a business? How do you go from the vision of a young man that you were, who said, “I want to really help people look out for the customer,” to building a multitrillion-dollar business? What would you tell people they should really focus on?

CS:

Well, getting all the education and the practical experience. And then having the patience to do it day in and day out. Day in and day out. It’s not easy, let me tell you that. It’s like the restaurateur serving great food every meal. It’s not easy. But that’s how you make a great restaurant. That’s how you make a great car dealership. Service every day. You can’t miss the ball. You’ve gotta hit the ball out of the park every day. With service. And the same with technology. In our lifetime, we’ve seen many companies go in the tank because they weren’t able to innovate. Or actually, they didn’t figure out a product or service that really served the customer well. They lost their customers. Never lose a customer. Figure that one out.

TR:

Last question. I’m sure it will be 20 or 30 years from now, because you’re taking care of yourself and your health, and you’re so passionate, but how do you want to be remembered? What’s your legacy for you and what you’ve built over this lifetime?

CS:

Well, I [have] a variety of them, of course. For my family and so forth. In terms of the professional side, I feel really proud about the fact that I really made a huge change to the practice of Wall Street. This is an institution that’s been around for a couple hundred years. And we, this little company on the West Coast, took them on in different ways. And really made a change in the character of how they treat clients. And they’re doing a much better job. Not as good as we are! But they’re doing a much better job and are much more thoughtful about how they treat their clients.

TR:

You led by example.

CS:

Thanks very much.

TR:

Blessings to you. Thank you for your time.