JADEN STERLING | Sterling Stock Picker

Jaden Sterling started his finance career on Wall Street but became disillusioned with the money-making machine that didn't look after investors. He noticed that most of the wealthy people that came to him had something in common. They owned a handful of stocks, no more than four to six, but on average about four different holdings. It was contrary to his Wall Street training that emphasised the importance of diversification.

Jaden’s point of view is that the large brokerage firms and investment advisors are set up to make their own firms wealthier - NOT the clients. He worked for 2 large investment banking firms in his 20s including holding a leadership position in the Asset Management division of Citigroup in Southern California where he increased sales from $105 million to over $300 million in just over 2 years.

At age 26, Jaden became a top 1% earner in the US due to the financial markets. But in his early retirement he pivoted and went on to develop 125 affordable housing projects over 7 years in South Florida valued in excess of 12.5 million dollars. He has gone on record to share that he learned more about growing his wealth through his wealthy clients than through the firms that held their assets.

Jaden is big on individual stocks NOT mutual funds. And he sees so many people struggling to find winning stocks that could ultimately lead to financial freedom. That is why he recently assembled a team to create Patent pending software that investors can use to invest like experts without needing to become a CFA or other certified professional in finance.

The software is called Sterling Stock Picker and it takes key indicators and creates their ‘NorthStar Ranking’ for each stock… Recently, their utility patent was filed with the USPTO for their technology. What many of the current users are excited about is the fact that there is the ability to filter stocks that fit their risk tolerance, personal values, interests and much more with over 28 different filters available.

TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS AFTER THIS BRIEF MESSAGE

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hi, and welcome back to Stocks for Beginners, I'm Phil Muscatello. What does spirituality and investing have in common? And is there a correlation between your soul and your wallet. To explain I'm joined by my guest, Jaden Sterling. Hello, Jaden.

Jaden (36s):
Hello, Phil. Thanks so much for having me on your show.

Phil (38s):
Thanks very much for coming on. Jaden's the founder of Sterling stock picker, which takes key indicators to create their North Star ranking for stocks. Their Utility Patent was recently filed with the USPTO for their technology, which allows users to filter stocks that fit their risk tolerance, personal values, interests, and much more with over 28 different filters available. Jaden you had a dark past on Wall Street. Tell us about that.

Jaden (1m 4s):
I did, I, I had a 11 year stint on wall street. I worked for Merrill Lynch starting with Merrill Lynch and in my career with City Group and learned a lot, but mostly learn from my clients, my wealthy clients, who came into the brokerage firm with millions of dollars in their stock portfolio. And I asked each and every one of them, you know, what did you do to create this wealth? And I heard basically one of three things. Some people said they actually inherited their stocks, which makes sense, right? That's a customary practice. Other people told me that they started a company. So they owned a business.

Jaden (1m 45s):
And the, the third group just basically said that they worked a normal job and saved money invested on a regular basis, but what they had in common Phil, which was, which was very surprising to me because of my training on Wall Street, what they had in common was they had just a handful of stocks, you know, no more than four to six, no more than six companies, but on average, about four different holdings. And that was interesting because it was really contrary into my training on Wall Street, because I was told, you know, a customer needs to diversify their assets, right? That's a, that's a myth that we have been told.

Jaden (2m 25s):
That's been, you know, given to us our whole entire life. And it's absolutely not true. The contrary to that is, you know, to really focus your money in a direction. And when you add individual companies, quality companies and diverse sectors, and that is, it provides the biggest leverage because you're able to have more shares of a stock rather than in a mutual fund, which is over diversified. Every on average, you know, mutual funds have 125 holdings, stock holdings and a portfolio, which is, I think, way too many Warren uffet says that as well, that diversification is a tax for those who don't know what they're doing.

Jaden (3m 12s):
So, you know, it just opened my eyes. And when I working for Merrill Lynch and Citi Group, they all had the same agenda, which was to make money off their clients, not for their clients. And it was clear based on the products they were wanting me to sell, which was packaged products. You know, unit investment trusts, mutual funds, managed money again, way, way too many stocks in these holdings and positions. So that was my big education. It wasn't from the firms that I worked with. It was from my clients, my wealthy clients who brought their portfolios into the front

Phil (3m 49s):
With those wealthy clients. They've obviously got an idea of how to invest and not to over diversify. What was the reaction when they were suddenly presented with these kind of products that as you say are a bit over diversified?

Jaden (4m 4s):
Yeah, well, some of them were, were surprised and some were confused because, you know, they, they had, they saw their money grow incredibly, fairly quickly over the years and decades that they invested. So a lot of them, you know, weren't really sure about that strategy. And there was a time when I noticed that when I compared portfolios for my clients, the ones that maintain their individual equities, their individual stocks in their portfolio far outperform the ones that we had liquidated those stocks and bought other packaged products. So when I realized that Phil, I said, holy smokes, you know, I'm going to start investing like my clients.

Jaden (4m 47s):
And that allowed me to actually retire from the business at 31 by buying individual stocks.

Phil (4m 54s):
So tell us about that process. What was it like leaving Eall Street? Was it a bit scary?

Jaden (4m 58s):
You know, it wasn't at all. And it was interesting. A lot of my family was like, what do you mean? You're making a lot of money and, you know, you have this dream career that you've created for 11 years. Like, what are you thinking? And my thought was simple. I'm noticing how corrupt the industry is. I could see it firsthand and I could no longer participate in that. I didn't feel good about what I was doing. And you know, you personally, I couldn't continue on that path. I knew there was more for me. And so that's why it was pretty easy to leave the industry.

Phil (5m 33s):
Then just, just a little note on a diversification. A lot of people buy ATFs these days because they are naturally diversified products because the phase, you know, it's not like mutual funds where there's a lot of phase that we'll be going to the Wall Street types, but you don't even believe ETFs need to be part of a portfolio.

Jaden (5m 52s):
You know, Phil, if, if there was two things I would recommend for, especially for an investor who may not be as comfortable picking individual stocks, ETF, some select few ETFs are great because they're actually not as divert. Like you said, not as diversified as a mutual fund. And if you look at a sector that might, for example, I'm just thinking of we're up here in Canada and they legalize the cannabis sector a few years ago. So that ETF there's, there's an ETF that invests in the top 20 cannabis companies. And that I think is great. You're right. The fees are low.

Jaden (6m 33s):
It still gives a little bit of tolerance for risk because it's

Phil (6m 38s):
Comfort.

Jaden (6m 38s):
There you go. That's the word. The only other thing too, would be index funds, right? Funds that actually mirror the index at which the stocks trade and that every index has an index fund. Typically those are not actively managed as much as a mutual fund. So fees are less. Performance is better, but I would absolutely our motto at our company is: friends don't let friends buy mutual funds, steer clear.

Phil (7m 8s):
So you're known by many of your coaching students as the Spiritual Money guy. How did that awakening come about? Tell us about that process.

Jaden (7m 15s):
When I was 14, I had an epiphany and you know what I refer to when an epiphany it's like, time stands still in an that type of moment. You just have a clear knowing. And I had a very clear knowing. I'll never forget it. I was in my mother's town home and I came down the stairs and on her dining room table was a big boom box. I remember back in the day, fill the big boom boxes.

Phil (7m 37s):
I never carried one on my shoulder. It was never that strong.

Jaden (7m 40s):
Yeah, that's right. You've seen them. And inside this boombox was something even more archaic, which was a cassette. And the cassette was a recording of Wayne Dyer speaking from stage. And it was odd because it was playing, but no one else was in the house. It was just me. And I thought, oh, this is so it got my attention. I walked up to it and I just felt transfixed. And in that moment, I had a clear understanding. I don't know if I was told or if I just knew, but I've always been kind of different. And I've always been, I've always had the ability to, to know certain things or have certain gut feelings.

Jaden (8m 20s):
And this was no different at this time. I knew clearly three things I was told. I'd be speaking on stages around the world. I was told that I would speaking about money specifically, how people can get money to work for them rather than be enslaved by it. And the third thing that I knew was that I would be teaching from personal experience, not from a book I read or course that I took. So can you imagine at 14, like your whole life purpose gets downloaded to you, right. And

Phil (8m 55s):
That's, did you have an interest in money at that stage?

Jaden (8m 57s):
Not at all. Not at all. I mean, I was probably like any kid, you know, interested at like curious about it and you know, I'm in my mid fifties. So back then, you know, it was a little different economy back then. And, but I wasn't money motivated at all. I wasn't from a wealthy family, we were comfortable. And my father's side was very different than my mother's side. My father's father was actually president of Maryland National Bank in Baltimore, Maryland. And so my father grew up in that world. Whereas my mother didn't, she grew up, you know, her father worked for Westinghouse his entire life and so very different mixed messages about money, but had the clear understanding of what my path would be.

Jaden (9m 42s):
And that got me started

Phil (9m 47s):
You raised 500,000 in capital for your software business privately with current users of the platform itself. Tell us about that process. So you it's just the users of the platform that helped to fund the business. Is that the case?

Jaden (10m 1s):
Well, yeah, that's been an interesting process. We knew we wanted to build the software. We knew that we wanted to get past the beta testing. We knew we wanted to have something of value that worked really well before we went to the market to raise capital. And so we spent three years just head down every weekend, working three nights a week on it with my partners and we created something pretty spectacular. And I just started to get a sense and a feeling, okay, it's time to take this company to the next level. Stocks are in my background, it's in my blood. My ultimate goal is to take the company public within a few years. So we, we knew we had to get to a certain level before we asked people for money.

Jaden (10m 44s):
I didn't want to just go out to the marketplace on an idea or a whim, you know, not having anything behind it. I wanted to make sure

Phil (10m 52s):
Nothing to show for it.

Jaden (10m 54s):
Yeah, exactly, exactly. I didn't want that. So we held back and then I looked at all the different options out there. I looked at crowdfunding. I even hired a crowdfunding coach to coach me through the process. And then we were like into month two and we had, we had done everything he told us to do. And then he said to us, he said, okay, now is the time to write your begging letter? And I said, excuse me, I didn't hear you correctly. What did you just say? And he said, yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna craft a letter that is going to basically beg for money from family and friends. And I said, we are done with this process. I'm like, oh no, I have no interest in that.

Jaden (11m 35s):
We're not beggars. We have something pretty spectacular. And how do we benefit more and more people. We didn't want handouts basically. So it occurred to me. I think it was just through the course of a day, shortly after that process was, make sure this benefits, everyone benefit your friends and family as they contribute to your growth, make sure they get richly rewarded. That was the message that I heard. And I thought, okay, the way to do that is to file. Do a Regulation A offering file for private equity, raise capital raise. And that's exactly what we did.

Phil (12m 12s):
Yeah. I always call that the Reggae process, nothing to do with Jamaica, those colorful hats.

Jaden (12m 20s):
So

Phil (12m 20s):
Tell us about the investing process. I'm just interested when I was just looking at the website before, and that's a mixture of fundamental and technical analysis. Can you just give us a little bit of an overview of that process, please?

Jaden (12m 31s):
Sure. Happy to. So as a professional investor for over 30 years, I recognize that there are many, many metrics out there that we could look at us investment,

Phil (12m 40s):
Any confusing metrics, many

Jaden (12m 44s):
Confusing man. So crazy. I personally have bought software tens of thousands of dollars. It confused the heck out of me. And I'm like, if I'm confused, I don't know how anyone can really use this software. Right? So my mandate was clear. I said to my partners, I said, if we create software that a novice, ver someone very new at investing can find winning stocks in three clicks or less, we've really got something. So that was what we always had in the back of our mind to simplify the process. But more importantly, to take the key indicators, you know, there's thousands of them out there, but we've identified certain technical indicators and we overweight them in our strategy to show subscribers, you know, when to buy, when to sell, when to hold or when to avoid a stock.

Jaden (13m 40s):
So we put a lot more emphasis on the technical indicators, as you know, as a, as an investor that, you know, charts mean pretty much everything. We also look at money flow index. That's the other big indicator that we consider. So we analyze the financial metrics as well. We look at, you know, how effective is a company utilizing the cash on their balance sheet. And we give that a ranking. And then we look at what are the insiders doing for their other stock? Are they buying, are they selling, you know, what's happening in that respect. And then we look at how, what percentage of the shares outstanding are actually being shorted because that's going to impact the stock in the short run. So we just look at everything.

Jaden (14m 21s):
We also look at relationships, the SMA to the EMA, to the stock price. You know, as you know, when you look at a chart, when you have a stock price on a chart, it's, there's not, it's not really telling a story about what's next for the company, but when you overlay the short term averages, and then we get into the intermediate, long-term it really tells a complete picture of what to do with a certain stuff.

Phil (14m 49s):
Can you just give us a little bit of an overview of the difference, technical and fundamental because this program is aimed at beginners. So the technical side is those charts where we see all those nice lines moving up and down and people draw lines on them. And then fundamental is basically looking at the company financials. Is that a simple enough explanation? And how would you, how would you explain?

Jaden (15m 12s):
Yeah. To a certain extent, we look at the fundamentals, but we also look at the financial. So we separate those out. And the fundamentals is, I think I've mentioned a few already. It's simple enough. It's like, you know, what's going on with the insiders of this company. I've noticed Phil, you probably have to over the last 33 years that I've done this insiders are not the best buyers of their stock, but they're almost the perfect sellers for some reason, those insiders get it right when it comes to get out of their stock. Right? So, so we track that. We look at that we also track, but we don't put a lot of weight or emphasis on this, but we look at what analysts are saying about the company.

Jaden (15m 52s):
So we look at all of our sources and we see what banks, what brokerage firms, what analysts are saying, their opinion about the stock. And then we give that a ranking as well. And then the other big indicator that we, that we track and analyze is the percent shares that are outstanding, that are shorted. We noticed that if a stock has a low percentage shares that are being shorted, it really helps in the short term that, you know, there's not a lot of headwind. Although we recognize that at some point, those shorts have to go into the marketplace and buy those shares. But there's no real indication of when they'll do that. So we track stocks based on that as well.

Phil (16m 34s):
So in essence, you've got a checklist and a, this is a checklist you run across how many sectors are you talking about? Large caps, small caps, or the whole of the market.

Jaden (16m 45s):
Yeah. Good question. So we track over 16,000 companies that trade on various exchanges, and then we also are tracking crypto now as well. We realize that our, everything that we brought into tracking and, and looking at stocks, evaluating stocks can be applied to crypto. So I think we're attracting and evaluating over 400 different types of cryptocurrencies. And that's been a really powerful addition to the software, but, you know, I was thinking about your folks here, who might be listening, especially since we're talking about stocks for beginners. That's why I want to be really transparent.

Jaden (17m 25s):
That's why I started out saying, you know, when I was in the business and what we were forced to sell, or what we were told to sell is still happening today. In fact, I always tell my clients two things. The biggest question I get is, you know, when's the best time to invest. My answer is always the same when you have money to invest, right? Whatever, you've got money, start putting it in the marketplace. But the second thing is really looking at what types of investments are key to, to building wealth. Most firms, you know, like I said earlier are about, they even call it, they have a name for it's called velocity and they track how much a broker or a banker is earning off of their client's portfolio.

Jaden (18m 10s):
What I learned was the biggest thing is to start taking personal responsibility for your investments and for your, for your wealth going forward. No one's going to do it for you. You've got to really start educating yourself because we don't get this education in school. It's not, I've had plenty of teachers, Phil go through our programs and become subscribers in the software. And ultimately investors, people have to start understanding the market is telling you expect low returns, you know, but that's kind of crazy making because the, the reality is every day there are stocks in the marketplace that double or triple in value.

Jaden (18m 52s):
And it's just a matter of getting in the flow of these ideas and these companies that you can really start making an impact in your wealth wall street doesn't want to empower people. They don't want people to be wealthy. They want people to be reliant on them. That's why all of the it's all jargon. It's all, it's all. Yes, it is. It is. And it's confusing for people that's intentional. I think we have to open our minds up here and ask if we really want to start making a difference in it. It's it's equities. There's no question about it. And, and you know, I also, after I retired from city group, I parlayed some of my equity holdings into real estate.

Jaden (19m 38s):
And I build a company at 12 and a half million dollar company in real estate, but I did it from my stocks. I mean, I use strategies. Like I put my IRA up as collateral with the bank, wants to buy an eight unit apartment building. And I said, you know, I have a vision. This is what I'm going to do with the building. I'm going to improve it, make capital improvements, raise the rents. And then what I do that when you give me my IRA back and they said, sure, no problem. And they did

Phil (20m 4s):
With your process. And when users are coming on board, because previously you mentioned the, the perils of I have a diversification. Does your service also help in terms of the construction of a user's portfolio as well?

Jaden (20m 18s):
Yeah. Great question. We have, what's called portfolio assistant that we rolled out August of last year. So we built all of the infrastructure, all, everything behind it to track and find the right stocks. And then we said for our folks, okay, now here's the section. You can go to tell us what's in your portfolio. We'll make sure that it's, that it's in conjunction with your risk tolerance ability, you know, in alignment with that in alignment with your values as well, because many people have holdings that are not in alignment with their values. So it'll, it'll go through an analysis of that as well, and then make recommendations on three categories that we recommend.

Jaden (21m 0s):
First, we start right with the base. I see a lot of investors you probably do too early on that, get excited and say, oh, you know, I got this hot tip and I want to put my money in this little company. And I think

Phil (21m 11s):
Investing in the story

Jaden (21m 13s):
And investing in the story I've made that mistake Have. And it's partly why I created the software is that I needed help being a better investor because I get, I get way caught up in the stories and hook line and sinker. And it certainly helped me do that a lot better. So yeah, we look at what someone's objectives are. We look at the holdings that they have their risk level, and then we make recommendations based on that.

Phil (21m 41s):
And it seems important for users to understand, like you say, what their values are. And I guess this is part of where the spirituality comes into it as well. What it is, what is good for your investing in what's good for your soul?

Jaden (21m 55s):
That's it? It's in perfect alignment. Isn't it? I mean, if we look at the word prosperity, the Latin derivative of that word is pro spare, which actually means for spirit. So, you know, you're not here, we're none of us are here to be worried about money. We're here for a much larger purpose. We're starting to definitely recognize that now in the last few years. And when you have the abundance and cashflow in your life, you're able to step into what you're really here to do. And we're not here to worry about money period.

Phil (22m 27s):
So tell us about the stock picking service. It's called Sterling stock picker. Isn't it?

Jaden (22m 31s):
It is it's Sterling stock picker. It's, it's what my legacy is, will be on earth is that we've created this and developed it for people who have zero experience in investing. And in order to, you know, build knowledge and information, every single Monday, I'm in there. I, I broadcast live. It's a live stream that I do. And just sharing with people, my thoughts about the market, you know, what I'm seeing certain industries and sectors that I personally am investing in and the reasons why, so I like to share that information too, and basically to empower people, you know, we've got, people have got to start taking responsibility for their retirement, for their wealth, for, you know, everything that has to do with finances and start educating themselves about,

Phil (23m 20s):
Do you find there's a process when people start thinking about this and using your service that they're actually learning at the same time as well, because you know, you are offering stock picks, but people who are investing really should be taking control and ownership of what they're doing

Jaden (23m 36s):
A hundred percent. I mean, again, I'll give you an example. Last week's live stream. Last Monday, I was talking about the week before that I was, I was considering buying shares of Tesla and the stock was about $1,200 a share. And then I said to the, you know, I said on the live stream, I pulled up the chart and I said, now you can see the stock is a really good position because it was above all of the technical indicators. But I said, this is the reason I didn't buy it. And I went down to the MFI and the MFI had been at like high eighties, high nineties for five days in a row. And I've noticed for the last 30 some years of doing this, that the MFI is almost perfectly correlated with the next movement in the price stock.

Jaden (24m 20s):
So the MFI was, it was clear. It was overbought. The stock was clearly over bought and anytime a company is over bought, the next move is down. So I showed on this live stream, you know, this is why I'm staying away from it today. It's well, below 1200. In fact, it's like hovering around the thousand dollar mark, us mark. And so, yeah, I teach through the process for showing our subscribers, you know, what to look out for and what my thinking is behind every deal.

Phil (24m 48s):
So tell us what is the MFI that's money flow index? What it, it's a, just a measure of the volume of the white of cash that's flowing through the system. Where how does, how does it work?

Jaden (24m 58s):
Yeah. Great question. It's similar to the RSI, the relative strength index.

Phil (25m 1s):
That's a much, much more common one, isn't it? Yeah. The people know about

Jaden (25m 4s):
It is. Yeah, but we like to track, you know, what money is going into the stock versus what's coming out of it. And then we show on a graphically on a bar chart, green or red graphs for the money flow index. So it shows exactly, you know, how many big days there were of sellers versus buyers. And then it gives a clear number and indicator. I start to notice when a stock tips over. So the money flow index ranges zero to a hundred when a stock tips over to the 70 to 90 plus range, that's getting a little toppy and that would be the time to start taking profits. And then conversely, when it's low, like between zero and 20, the stock is definitely over sold way too many sellers in there.

Jaden (25m 52s):
It might be the time to start looking at it, to buy.

Phil (25m 55s):
So getting back to Sterling stock picker software, what are the main things that users can expect to achieve from it?

Jaden (26m 1s):
They're going to clearly get indications about what our recommendation is for the 16,000 plus companies. So they're going to know right away based on our, what we call the north star guidance system, which is what you had mentioned. We filed our utility patent for that's basically our entire system algorithm showing whether a company is time to buy, sell, hold, or avoid. We give it a ranking in terms of one to five. And so as soon as someone comes to the site, they're going to have the ability to pick stocks. First of all, this is one of our step first steps in it, after they are clear about their risk tolerance. So if someone doesn't know their risk tolerance level, they'll take our quick questionnaire, figure that out fairly quickly.

Jaden (26m 46s):
And then there, they get a score for that. So then they go to our pick stocks feature and that's when they put in their personal values, they put in what region of the world. They want to look at stocks like Australia, or, you know, the United Kingdom, north America. What have you? We track companies from all over the world. And then they look at their interests. Do they want to buy stocks that pay dividends? Do they only want to buy growth stocks? They want to look at a combination of the two they hit enter. And then all of a sudden, based on what they, what their input was, the output is the stocks that we recommend for them. Another feature is that portfolio assistant that I mentioned, because we had all these great aspects of the software, but I, one day I realized, you know, we don't really have something that brings all of it together.

Jaden (27m 36s):
Like our analytical side, our stock recommendation, our, you know, portfolio mix. I wanted something that gave more holding for people as they learn through the process. And that's, what's the portfolio assistant. Does it literally hold someone's hand through the process of building a solid portfolio. We make the recommendations right there on the screen for them, how many stocks to buy in the base and then the growth portion, and then the acceleration portion of the portfolio, because all three are important. We have a super comprehensive platform that I also have hundreds of videos in there, teaching videos, instructional videos on stocks, and they're clearly labeled.

Jaden (28m 19s):
So someone could go back and look at, oh yeah, I want to know what a stock is. I want to know what, you know, depending on whatever their level of knowledge is. I think we've done a pretty good job of addressing that through the software.

Phil (28m 33s):
And I think that's so important that people have to come in knowing what their level of knowledge is, and then to learn through the process.

Jaden (28m 43s):
No question about it. We can, no one can rely on someone else. In fact, the only person who's probably more interested in your money might be your heirs, Right? Like, that's it, it's it's you your money and what your goals are. And as long as you're get a little clear, some clarity around what your financial goals are, will help you achieve them through the software for sure.

Phil (29m 8s):
And give us some contact details, please.

Jaden (29m 10s):
Yes. So please feel free to reach out to me through our website, Sterling stock, picker.com. It's my last name is Sterling stock picker.com. You can find me there. Yes. With any S T E R L I N G, right? Like Sterling silver. Absolutely. And we have a Facebook page. We're on Twitter, Sterling stock picker. Yeah. Just reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you. If you have any questions or anything, please feel free to reach out. I'll personally give back to you.

Phil (29m 42s):
Jayden Sterling. Thank you very much for your time today.

Jaden (29m 44s):
My pleasure, Phil. Thank you.

Stocks for Beginners is for information and educational purposes only. It isn’t financial advice, and you shouldn’t buy or sell any investments based on what you’ve heard here. Any opinion or commentary is the view of the speaker only not Stocks for Beginners. This podcast doesn’t replace professional advice regarding your personal financial needs, circumstances or current situation.