About this channel
Ben Felix examines personal finance through questions that often sound simpler than the choices behind them. Investing at market highs, deciding whether to rent or buy, and using money to improve…
Ben Felix examines personal finance through questions that often sound simpler than the choices behind them. Investing at market highs, deciding whether to rent or buy, and using money to improve happiness all appear in the episode selection. The channel connects investment products with the larger financial consequences of everyday life, including relationships and housing, giving viewers more than a narrow focus on portfolio performance.
Housing receives attention from multiple directions. One episode addresses common misunderstandings in the renting-versus-buying debate, while another considers the case for ownership. This pairing makes a familiar financial question a subject for examining arguments rather than assuming the answer is obvious. The same questioning approach appears in videos about personal finance myths and the possibility that compounding can work against someone.
On the investment side, topics include leveraged exchange-traded funds, Canadian ETFs described as evidence-based and the excitement surrounding large public offerings. A video on investing at all-time highs focuses on the unease that market conditions can create. The titles frequently promise to examine what people get wrong or what a popular story leaves out, signalling an explanatory and critical approach to financial ideas.
Viewers who like to test their assumptions about money can use the channel to explore the relationship between product choices, life decisions and expectations. Its particular appeal is the breadth of those connections: an investment question may lead into a discussion of behaviour, while a decision about a home or a partner is treated as having financial consequences worth considering.
Latest episode
The Truth About Leveraged ETFs
8:44 the chart title should have shown UPRO (3X), not SSO (2X) from the previous example.
9:12 the chart title should have shown EET (2X emerging markets).
Sorry about the editing hiccups in this…
8:44 the chart title should have shown UPRO (3X), not SSO (2X) from the previous example.
9:12 the chart title should have shown EET (2X emerging markets).
Sorry about the editing hiccups in this one!
$10,000 in a 3x leveraged S&P 500 ETF (UPRO) at launch in 2009 would be worth about $1.3 million today, more than 10x a regular S&P 500 ETF. So are leveraged ETFs a smart long-term tool or a disaster waiting to happen?
In this video, Ben Felix, Chief Investment Officer at PWL Capital, gives you a framework for deciding whether leverage makes sense for you, and whether leveraged ETFs are a good way to get it.
*Links*
Check out PWL’s Risk Profiling Tool: https://research-tools.pwlcapital.com/research/risk-profile?utm_source=content&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=benfelix_yt
_yt
See your own numbers with our app (based on Choi et al.): https://research-tools.pwlcapital.com/research/lifecycle-portfolio-choice?utm_source=content&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=benfelix_yt
------------------
*Timestamps*
00:00 - Intro
00:48 - When Leverage Makes Sense
07:56 - The Risk
10:00 - Leveraged ETFs
12:10 - Math Time.
17:05 - Hidden Costs
18:16 - Using Leverage Without Going All-In
19:47 - What You Need To Know
*References*
https://zbib.org/4cb11648b55b4c469b6d8b5137d18612
*Avoid Online Scams https://pwlcapital.com/stay-safe-online/
I will never reach out to you on social media platforms or WhatsApp to give financial advice. These are scammers trying to commit fraud.
*Check out the Rational Reminder Podcast*
YouTube channel @rationalreminder
Podcast website https://rationalreminder.ca/
Rational Reminder community (forum) https://community.rationalreminder.ca/
Apple Podcasts https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-rational-reminder-podcast/id1426530582?mt=2
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/6RHWTH9iW7hdnA7eAg7ukO?si=hjZNfLKuSjSeWX38GPqhVA
YouTube Shorts
Common Sense Investing Advice with Ben Felix
DIY Investing 101
Real Estate Investing Advice
Should You Rent or Buy?
uploads
More episodes from this channel
Who You Marry Is a Financial Decision
13.9.2026
Who you marry and how the two of you handle money together will shape your financial life as much as almost any investment decision you make. But finances are often an afterthought in a...
When Compounding Works Against You
16.8.2026
Most people save without knowing their real "why." Free exercise for Canadians to find it. https://research-tools.pwlcapital.com/research/goals?utm_source=research&utm_medium=planningtools&utm_campaign=ben_yt *Meet With PWL Capital* https://pages.pwlcapital.com/en-ca/contact-us?utm_source=content&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=benfelix_yt ------------------ *Timestamps* 00:00 - Intro 00:54 - My Cancer Diagnosis 02:04 - Lifespan,...
The Biggest Myths in Personal Finance
26.7.2026
Some of the most repeated advice in personal finance is wrong. Saving as much as you can when you're young to benefit from compounding sounds obvious, but it ignores what economists call the life-cycle...
Renting vs. Buying a Home: What People Get Wrong
13.7.2026
People tend to assume that homes are great investments - they’re not, that mortgages are a wealth building hack - they help, but as much as some people think, that paying off a mortgage...
Renting vs. Buying a Home: The Case for Owning
13.7.2026
*Check out the tools I used in the video:* *Risk Profiling Tool:* https://research-tools.pwlcapital.com/research/risk-profile?utm_source=research&utm_medium=planningtools&utm_campaign=benfelix_yt *Rent vs. Buy Calculator:* https://research-tools.pwlcapital.com/research/rent-vs-buy?utm_source=research&utm_medium=planningtools&utm_campaign=benfelix_yt *Goal-Setting Tool:* https://research-tools.pwlcapital.com/research/goals?utm_source=research&utm_medium=planningtools&utm_campaign=ben_yt *Timestamps* 00:00 - Housing: What People Get Wrong 01:48 - Hedging 04:15 -...
SpaceX IPO Situation is Crazy
11.6.2026
There are two things people keep asking me about the SpaceX IPO: will it get added to their index funds, and—if given the opportunity—should they invest directly in the SpaceX IPO? Many of the...
The Biggest Problem in Investing Right Now
31.5.2026
Financial product ads are often unconcerned with the truth, or in the words of philosopher Harry Frankfurt, they are full of bullshit. You’re probably susceptible to it. A 2022 study found that younger, high-income...
Using Your Money To Be Happier
3.5.2026
This is probably the most important video I’ll ever make. I hope it will change your life the same way that researching it changed mine. I used to think that working, saving, and investing...
Canada's New Evidence-Based ETFs
26.4.2026
Canada just got a new suite of ETFs that could change how a lot of Canadian investors build their portfolios. They have all the good aspects of index funds — low fees, low turnover,...
SpaceX and OpenAI: The Mega IPO Grift
5.4.2026
Some massive companies are set to go public very soon. Private companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic would rank among the largest public companies if they went public, and index funds would be forced...
This Paper Could Change How You Invest
22.3.2026
A 1993 paper in the Journal of Financial Economics with nearly 15,000 citations today changed financial economics and portfolio management forever. Eugene Fama and Kenneth French found that a group of three factors explained...
The Problem with Private Markets
8.3.2026
After many years of hiding behind mystique and illiquidity, private markets are being forced into the light. Private equity, private credit, and private real estate have been sold, hard, to investors on the premise...
Renting vs. Buying a Home: The Reckoning
22.2.2026
Canada is in the midst of what is (so far) the second-worst price decline for inflation-adjusted home prices going back to 1975. The worst was in the 1980’s with a peak to trough decline...
The Biggest Mistakes in Personal Finance
8.2.2026
In personal finance, it’s common for people to focus on things that they can’t control, like trying to pick a winning investment, while ignoring the things that they can control, like setting the right...
The Problem with Equal Weight Index Funds
25.1.2026
Market capitalization weighting, which is what typical index funds do, assign index weights based on each company’s size. An equal weighted index fund, as the name implies, equally weights all of the stocks in...
The Rise of ETF Slop
11.1.2026
ETFs are no longer synonymous with sensible investing. The fund management industry is launching hundreds of new actively managed ETFs every year, and, for the first time in U.S. market history, there are more...
2025 Was Nut(s): A Canadian CIO's Review
28.12.2025
This year was nuts both in markets and personally for me. I had testicular cancer. I had surgery on the same day in January that PWL Capital, the firm that I have worked for...
The "AI Bubble"
14.12.2025
The "AI bubble" has some investors worried. The U.S. market is more concentrated than it's ever been in modern times, and U.S. market valuations are reaching levels near the dot-com peak, which was followed...
The best introduction to personal finance I have ever read
7.12.2025
In this video I review the main lessons from The Wealthy Barber (2025), and explain why it's the best introduction to personal finance I have ever read. ------------------ *Meet with PWL Capital* https://pages.pwlcapital.com/en-ca/contact-us?utm_source=content&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=benfelix_yt *The...
Investing 101
9.11.2025
In this video I cover "Investing 101": why investing matters, what stocks and bonds are, what a sensible approach to investing looks like, and what tools you should consider using to implement these ideas....
Innohub TV
Watch this content also on Innohub TV
We picked clips from Innohub TV that continue the same topic.
