שוק המניות

00:02 This is Yigris. Today, we're looking at letters from all over the place to try to figure out the Rebbe's shita on investing in the stock market, on, uh, playing stocks, on speculation. That's a word the Rebbe uses a lot. Uh, it's hard to know. I, I need to give an intro to this, and the intro just is that it's really hard to know whether the Rebbe-- He's gonna say a lot of things, uh, that are negative about the stock market. The Rebbe's not gonna be an enormous fan of investing in stocks, and I think there's room to say that that does not extend to these real safe long-term investments that people use for retirement funds and the like. Although I'm not sure. I'm just saying that the letters-- in these letters that we're gonna look at, almost everybody's asking about relatively short-term investments. Uh, usually people are talking about what we would call retail investing. So, uh, this is more pres-- more specifically the Rebbe's take on day trading, on regularly investing in stocks and pulling out of stocks to make money. And I don't know exactly what the Rebbe thinks about, uh, about these long-term, put something in a very safe bond or a very safe, uh, group of index funds for many, many years. I don't know if the Rebbe has the same hostility to it. But in any event, if you wanna know what the Rebbe thinks about retail trading and day trading, uh, today's your day. The first letter that we're

01:03 looking at is Vav Samech Ches, and that's the label. It's from Tav Shin Yud Ches. And I wanna tell you going in, I wanna give away the ending, that, uh, I found two major themes in the letters, and if you watch carefully, maybe somebody at the end will tell me that I missed one and find another theme. Two major themes are, theme number one, the Rebbe does not like the stock market. The Rebbe doesn't trust the stock market. He doesn't want people investing in it. He wants people to get out of it and not get into it. That's theme one, is that in general, he's just not happy with it. Uh, never mind, there's three rules. Rule number two, uh, if you are involved in it, you need to be talking to, to Yadim Mivnim. You have to be talking to experts who understand the field well, and even then, the Rebbe is not comfortable with it. But he certainly doesn't want anybody, uh, thinking they know more than the market. He wants people to talk to people who are experts in this particular field. And finally, a theme you're gonna see that's a little bit surprising, 'cause it's a little discordant with the first half, is that, uh, if people have money in the stock market already, the Rebbe doesn't want them selling at a loss. Uh, so on one hand, the Rebbe doesn't want people getting themselves into this mess in the first place, but on the other hand, he doesn't want them

01:56 losing money. I know this isn't even remotely precise, but this reminds me very much of the Rebbe's position on college and the Rebbe's position on a lot of things. There's a bunch of things where the Rebbe says, "I don't want you getting into this in the first place, but once you're in, I don't want you to leave at a loss." It does seem that that's almost a, uh, a, uh, a theoretical theme by the Rebbe, that, uh, there's certain, there's certain amounts of trouble you shouldn't get into, but once you're in, in a lot of cases, the Rebbe will tell you to stay in that trouble until at least you don't come out behind. I think that's not unlike the Rebbe telling people who are already in college to finish their degrees. But in any event, that's a side point. Let's read the letters and let them speak for themselves, uh, 'cause I've spoken enough. Vav Samech Ches Tav Shin Yud Ches. The Rebbe says, uh, "Shalom u-bracha. gambling." Why would you even get yourself involved in gambling? So the way the Rebbe sees these particular stocks this person's writing about is as a gamble. There are many ways that Hashem can find to take care of your financial needs without upsetting your neshamah so much, kanah, as you've described. And what the Rebbe means here is that, um, is that, um, day trading is incredibly stressful. People are watching the stocks go up, watching them go down. It's breaking their souls apart. The Rebbe

03:06 says y- Hashem has more peaceful ways of giving you money. There's no reason for you to en- to enter into a way of making money that is so stressful. There's less stressful ways to make money. Down here, the Rebbe says, "Certainly you're keeping the Shirai Chomash Torah mintania. Keep-- Surely you keep mechitas and, uh, if you haven't up until now, you should start." So the Rebbe's advice is find a form of making money that doesn't stress you out so much. The stock market is incredibly stressful. We have another letter very similar to this. This is Ches Tav Lamed Ches. What we don't have from this last letter is, uh, the Rebbe's just telling this person not to get involved in stocks. We don't pull shitas from individual letters. What you're gonna see in the next two letters is the Rebbe's going to say, "In general, my shita is," which is the golden term for our shiur. We're always looking for things like that. So, uh, down here, this letter is Ches Tav Lamed Ches. It's from Tav Shin Chaf Beis. And here the Rebbe says, "Uvechlal yedua deiti." In general, my opinion on this is well known. I'm not happy with people purchasing shares in the stock market, shares in stocks. And when it comes to practically what you should do, you should speak to people who understand the field well. So the Rebbe is not telling this person no, but the Rebbe is saying, "People know already that I have a standing policy that

04:15 I don't want people involved in the stock market or in buying shares in anything, and if you are insisting that you are the exception to the rule, then as in all cases where somebody feels they're the exception to the rule, the Rebbe wants them going to Yadim Mivnim and people who understand the field well to tell them if indeed they are the exception to the Rebbe's go-to rule that we don't involve ourselves in the stock market." We have here this letter is, uh, Zion Reish Lamed Zion from Tav Shin Chaf. This one's in Yiddish, you know, my favorite language. The Rebbe says here that, uh, "Du ir shreibst mir vegen stocks." You wrote to me about stocks. Says, "In general, it's known that I don't deal-- I, I'm not, I'm not a fan of people dealing with stocks. I don't want speculation in stocks." So once again, the Rebbe says, "speculation." The Rebbe is saying that it is my general principle that I say I don't want you involved in speculation on stocks. And specifically, the Rebbe says, "especially since when it comes to these sorts of things, you need to involve yourself with a mumkha. You need to speak with somebody who's an expert in the field. So I don't want amateurs doing this, and I don't even really like it when professionals do it. But if you're gonna do it, at least seek a professional." So we have from the Rebbe a bunch of letters that are all saying, "This is

05:20 my general position. I'm not interested in the stock market." I wanna jump to some of our English letters for a minute, unless I got rid of them by mistake. Where are they? Where are my English letters? Hold on one second. I'm gonna pull my English letters back on the screen. I don't know where I put them. Sorry. Moment. I got you all these English letters, and they just disappeared. The supplement. Yeah, why isn't that on the screen? There we go. English letters. The Rebbe says the same thing in a bunch of English letters. This one is from, uh, nineteen sixty-six. The exact date is not included, but you can find it on the chabad.org website where they do the English Chabad letters. The Rebbe says, "Greeting and blessing. Regarding your question about investing in stocks, generally, I'm not in favor of it since this is largely a matter of speculation." Sound similar? "Indeed, a prominent businessman once said to me that he did not wish to engage in the kind of business where he and an ignoramus have the same chance." Anybody could do it. "It's particularly objectionable because the anxiety and nervous strain it creates in some people. Moreover, in these unsettled days, there's too great an element of specula- of speculation involved in the stock exchange. It is certainly possible to find more-- some more fitting investment opportunities if an investment is contemplated than the kind of thing that sends the investor scurrying for the first edition of the stock exchange report in

06:23 the morning newspaper." So we have a lot of themes coming out in that letter that we've seen built over the other letters. The Rebbe doesn't want people to, uh, pick up jobs that give them a lot of stress. There are more-- there are less stressful ways of making money. He doesn't like the fact that you need to consult experts on this sort of thing, and, uh, and generally, he's not in favor of it because it's largely a matter of speculation. Another similar letter was from the eleventh day of Kislev of chaf tes. That's nineteen sixty-eight. The Rebbe says, "I'm acknowledging receipt of your letter. In regard to your reference to investment in stocks or real estate, my general opinion in regard to stocks is that I'm not in favor of substantial commitment in the stock market." Now, here the Rebbe says substantial commitment. Can you throw a couple bucks there? Sure. But your entire life savings, he doesn't like it. One of the reasons is that it often creates a nervous strain because of the frequent and often substantial price fluctuations, which is not the case with other more secure and stable investments. So we're seeing, I guess, a fourth theme here on my list of themes, which is the reason why the Rebbe doesn't like the stock market so much. One of the big reasons is that it causes people a lot of stress, and there are less stressful ways of making money. Now, all of that said, if people are already in the

07:21 stock market, the Rebbe really doesn't want them to get out at a loss. He wants them to get out of the game, but then to get out fast. We have a letter in Yiddish here. This is wow tuf tuf kuf kuf beis. It's from the year tuf shin yud tes. And the Rebbe says, "Regarding your question about the shares, uh, since you've been holding onto them for such a long time, it doesn't make a lot of sense right now that you should sell them at half price. Instead, it would make a lot more sense if you would, uh, hold onto them until you make a-- until you make gains. And once you make those gains, then I'd like you to sell them." So here the person's not asking the Rebbe whether you should invest in the stock market. He's saying, "I've had shares in a company for a long time. I've been holding them for a while. They have not made money. I'm, I'm thinking maybe I should sell them at a loss rather than keeping them tied up. Maybe it's gonna get worse." The Rebbe says, "No, you have a responsibility." He tells them in the next line, "You have a responsibility to make sure that you spend your money wisely." And part of that means that if you do have shares in the stock market, you should hold onto them until there's at least some gain because you shouldn't sell at a loss. Right now, it looks like from this letter, his stuff

08:12 was, like, half price at the time. The Rebbe wanted him to hold for a little longer. There's another letter quite similar to this. Hey tuf reish mem daled from the year tuf shin yud zayin, and here the Rebbe writes, "Mu van Hashem karata shares shel stock she yesh lech. It's understood that selling the shares of the stock that you have right now, she mechir zu g'zura vehefsed, where you would take a loss, ein la'zman makom klal. There's no room at all to sell your stocks at a loss." And he says there's a chossid, zechavo shalem, mesias Lubavitch. This is a rich person who's, uh, who's part of-- who funds the mesias Lubavitch. He's involved in giving tzedakah to Lubavitcher causes. And the Rebbe says, "You need to make sure that God is able to fulfill the promise of aseh ha'beshvil she titash Asher, that, uh, that if you take maaser, you will become rich." So basically, you've given a lot of tzedakah. Hashem now needs to make you rich, and this means harchava parnassa. This means you're gonna make a big parnassa because of all the tzedakah that you've given. And so if you then take that and sell your shares at a loss, you're pushing back against God's urge to give you shares at a-- to give you money at a, at a gain. So you should wait until the shares go up and keep on holding because Hashem owes you, uh, in one form or another to a, a degree of Asheros because

09:07 of all the, uh, tzedakah that you've given. So we have here two examples of the Rebbe saying that if somebody's already in the stock market, he generally speaking doesn't want them to sell at a loss. There was a letter to Mrs. Sara Rivka Rosenblum from five Kislev of nineteen sixty-eight. This is also in English, and the Rebbe says very much the same thing. He says, "With regard to the question of stocks, my opinion is that they should not be sold if there would be a loss, God forbid." Similar theme. "Otherwise, stocks should be sold on the advice of an experienced broker at such time the broker thinks it's right for the particular stock." So don't sell at a loss. As to when to sell it again, again, yedidim uvinim, ask the experts. Uh, the Rebbe says, "Generally speaking, I have no right to withhold my general opinion that it's not a good idea to invest in stocks the major part of one's savings." So again, we have this theme from the Rebbe that the Rebbe really doesn't like the idea of investment in the first place. If we're talking about a loss, he wants you to hold, but he doesn't really want you in in the first place, certainly not the majority of your savings. In addition to the consideration that such an investment would be a question of financial prudence-- First of all, the Rebbe says, "I don't know if you're gonna make money." There's also the factor of the nervous strain that the

09:59 stock market fluctuation caused to the investor. So on one hand, it's not necessarily a good idea. You might lose money. And on the other hand, even if you make money, you're gonna get very nervous as you're making money, and there's stress-free ways or less stressful ways to make money. Also, because such a situation is completely independent of the investor's intelligence and judgment, or at any rate largely so, uh, that's another reason the Rebbe doesn't like it is because it really doesn't have to do with your good judgment. It's sort of, it's sort of random, sort of like a gamble. Now, of course, nothing's random. But at the same time, uh, you-- skilled labor, there's something to be said for that. There's not much to be said for a random gamble. Finally, the Rebbe says the present day and age is full of unpredictable developments. The market is highly sensitive to national and international events, so the Rebbe doesn't trust the stock market to stay stable at all. In view of all this, those who ask my advice with regard to the stock market, my usual advice is to rather forego a percentage of dividends and invest in more secure and suitable investments. So the Rebbe, generally speaking, is not a fan of the stock market. When he says to choose more secure and suitable investments, that was what I said at the beginning of the share. I think that a lot of the ways that people invest for, uh, in, in these long-term, very safe

10:55 investments, bonds or maybe the, uh, index funds or S&P, when, when they invest in things that are considered very safe long term, I'm not sure if the Rebbe's as upset about that because it looks like he just doesn't want them in, uh, in stocks that are volatile. So less volatile stocks, maybe the Rebbe's more interested. Uh, there are a couple stories of people meeting with the Rebbe and discussing the stock market, and the Rebbe telling them basically the same thing, and them actually having stories of gains and losses. Two very famous ones I have on the page in front of you, at least my notes on them. They're well-recorded stories, but they're worth telling. Uh, uh, the richest Jew in Argentina, Eduardo Elstein, met with the Rebbe in nineteen ninety-one. He had forty-five million dollars in the stock market, and he asked the Rebbe what to do with his forty-five million dollars. And the Rebbe said that the New York Stock Exchange deprives one of peace of mind and sleep. It certainly doesn't strengthen your soul. And if one doesn't sleep properly even for one night because of his investment in the stock market, he can't fulfill Hashem's mitzvahs. So sell all your shares slowly and buy property instead. And indeed, that year, he sold everything. He bought the prop-- he bought property in Argentina. At that, that year, the stock market went down sixty-five percent, and the value of all of his properties went up fifty percent. So the Rebbe's telling somebody to switch

11:57 from stocks to real estate saved him a lot of money and made him a lot of money. There was a well-known London furrier, means he selled furs. His name was Shlomo Perrin. Might still be Shlomo Perrin, I don't know. Uh, nineteen fifty-six, he heard that Shell was going to acquire another oil company. He wanted to invest in it. He thought he would take the proceeds and use it to build a Chabad girls school. He didn't have the money, so he was gonna take out a mortgage on his house to invest in this company, but he was sure the tip was solid. He went to the Rebbe, told him about his big idea, and the Rebbe said, "I don't trust the stock market, but if you wanna teach yourself a lesson, you wanna learn a lesson, put a thousand pounds in the stock market and, uh, and watch what happens. You'll see what I mean." So he took a thousand pounds, I don't know, two thousand dollars. He took a couple thousand dollars. We have real British people here who can tell me the actual conversions, um, or people who lived there anyway. So he puts a thousand pounds into the stock market, and the stock, uh, completely crashes. It really goes down. Now, Shell never bought the company, the Suez Crisis happens, and it goes down to two fifty. So his one thousand is now worth two fifty. He asked the Rebbe what to do, and the Rebbe says, "Wait till it goes back up

12:50 to five hundred." Remember, the Rebbe doesn't like when we sell at serious losses, and sell at half a loss. He sold at half a loss, and then the stock went down to nearly zero, so he would have lost everything. So in any event, we have people actually living this advice. The last thing I wanna show you before we're done for the day is a sicha from the Rebbe where he discusses, uh, one of the challenges of people who are investing in the stock market. The main challenge being, uh, what he's talked about a little bit earlier, that they lack menuchas nefesh. Those of us who come to the Thursday night Chaar Bitachon share know that menuchas nefesh is a synonym for another word, which is bitachon. And that is that when someone doesn't have menuchas nefesh, that usually means they have a lack of bitachon, uh, and that the sign of somebody with bitachon is the fact-- with trust in Hashem, is that they are always sort of relaxed about things. They take things in stride. They're not nervous. And what the Rebbe is gonna say in this sicha is that people who invest in the stock market find their bitachon, uh, challenged in ways that people-- that other people do not, which is another reason why the Rebbe would prefer you make money in a different way, because this is a way, this is a form of making money that challenges your bitachon. So this sicha is from, uh, other Rishon of-- I'm sorry,

13:47 other Rishon, that's not what I mean. Uh, Alef Doresh and, uh, it's in volume-- It's . They haven't rewritten these yet into volumes. So volume one, you'll find it on page three forty-six. And, uh, we're gonna read this part here. Here's a simple example of what the Rebbe's been talking about in the sicha. I don't have to give the background 'cause we'll see it play out on the page. Let's say that a Yid is involved in business. He, uh, makes good decisions. He makes clever decisions. He's real clever about his investing strategy. And then he ends up-- he, he makes a good stock investment, makes a good decision, and he ends up making a whole lot of money. Way more than he expected to make. Then it's actually easy for him to, uh, to say that really this came from Hashem. Person says that they were, uh, they were very clever, and they invested, and they thought they were gonna do well, and then they ended up doing twice as well. Even the says, "My came from Hashem." But . But when he doesn't really work hard at this, that he doesn't make a real clever decision, that is he just makes money, and it looks like it's not due to his great cleverness, but due to just being in the right place at the right time. That is that he buys a stock on Wall Street. And then the night goes by, he falls asleep at night, he wakes up in the morning, and

15:10 the stock went up. There, he doesn't think he did anything terribly clever. He put some money on a stock, he went to sleep, and he woke up, and he was rich. At that point, the asks a question, says, "Why would I thank Hashem for that? Uh, this-- the stock went up. This wasn't God doing something personally for me or making my plan work. I'm one of 100,000 people who are invested in this company, and obviously, Hashem is not making something happen just for me." So the says has a, uh, has a better foothold on somebody who's involved in the stock market than somebody who's making normal smart business decisions. I want to just repeat the idea now outside a little bit to make sure it's clear. When somebody's invested in other things besides the stock market where they're making smart business decisions, then, you know, before they go out to, uh, to seal a deal or to buy real estate or to do something like that, they ask Hashem for . They get . They go, "Okay, I pulled off a personal victory that nobody else did because Hashem had my back." But when somebody invests in a stock and the stock goes up, there's a yetzer hara to say, "Maybe I'm a Rasha and Hashem needed to give a benefit to the other people who are invested in the stock," or maybe Hashem wasn't involved in all of the nature of the world as the stocks go up and stocks go down. Of

16:15 course, that's not true. Everything's . But the yetzer hara has a much easier time convincing you that your money doesn't come from Hashem when it comes out of a stock doing well overnight than when it comes out of you putting in the work and seeing the yields. We're talking about a company now, says the Rebbe, where everybody-- there's millions of stocks and a small amount are . Only a f- only a Yidden only own a small amount of, I don't know, Google stock. He's just one of the Yidden who bought a stock in this company. When he sees the company's stock go up, the share price go up, he doesn't say, "Oh, look, Hashem made Google go up so that the Yidden would do well." 'Cause everybody benefited, the Yidden, the Goyim, everybody. And the fact, fact is the majority of people who got rich when the stock went up weren't Jewish at all. So the yetzer hara says, "You really think Hashem is looking out for the Yidden when he makes the stock market go up? They're mainly looking out for the Goyim." It's a small percentage that is the part that the Yidden owed-- own. And certainly, Hashem was not going to, if he wanted to punish the Yidden, God forbid, he wouldn't have made some miracle that Jewish shares don't go up and non-Jewish shares go up. He has to make the whole world stock go up, and we get dragged along. So the yetzer hara has a purchase here. Therefore, the

17:33 makes a claim. The animalistic soul makes a claim. Why should, uh, why should I be so excited? Why should I thank Hashem for my stock price going up? It's natural. It's in V-Wall Street. It's a Wall Street natural thing. On that we have to respond to the yetzer hara, to the nefesh habahamis. Every-- The entire world was created only for people to serve God. The entire stock market, the entire stock exchange, every one of these companies, why were they created in the first place? They were only created so that a Yid could make a little bit of money off of them and then give it to tzedakah. So in response to the nefesh habahamis that says, "How can you say that Hashem is intervening in the stock market to help a Yid make money when in fact thousands of people who are not Yid make money when the Yid make money, and, uh, there's not gonna be a miracle stopping the Yid from making money? How do you not say this is natural?" The answer is we tell our nefesh haba-haba-habahamis, "No, Hashem created Wall Street, created the stock market, and created shares, and created these companies so that Yid would make money." But that's the response that you have to give. The problem here is that when somebody enters into the stock market, they have a much stronger yetzer hara to not make that claim, to say, "Look, I'm part of the group, and when the group goes up, the group goes up. When

18:39 the group goes down, the group goes down. It has nothing to do with my mitzvahs and my averas." That yetzer hara is very unique to somebody who's part of a-- part of-- who has a share in a company that's part of a team of gain or loss. When a person makes this calculation . Um, when a person thinks about this and says, "The whole Wall Street and all of these things that are happening on Wall Street, the stocks going up and the stocks going down, are all there just so that a Yid might make some money and then give it to tzedakah," then they'll never have a question again about why they need to thank Hashem when they make money in the stock market. At the same time on the other hand, it's difficult for a person to reach that level of recognition in a real way. This is what it means in the Midrash when it says that a person needs to thank Hashem, praise Hashem for every breath they take. It's hard not to take breaths for granted. Everybody in the world breathes. It's, uh, strange that Hashem would suddenly make me not breathe. So it's difficult to thank Hashem for things that we think of as natural, and that's an enormous challenge. And that means the more that you put your money into stuff where it is unclear that Hashem's hand is, uh, the one guiding your success, the more likely you are to be a victim to this particular kind of

19:55 yetzer hara. Now, true, the Sikha tells you how to beat that yetzer hara, how to beat that nefesh habahamis, how to explain to the nefesh habahamis that every company in the stock market and Wall Street was created just for Yidden so that they can give tzedakah. But as the Rebbe says here, what are the odds you're gonna pull that off? It's difficult to do that. So entering into that suffolk in the first place is not a great idea. Much better to be involved in the kind of work where you use your own cleverness to make money. Because although that's also a challenge, you could say that's actually a lesser challenge than the challenge of seeing your success tied to so many other people. So perhaps this is part of the Rebbe's reservation. We see in a lot of these letters that we saw earlier that a big part of the Rebbe's reservation about the stock market is that it, uh, is that it, uh, it knocks down a person's mnuchas nefesh. It gets in the way of their relationship with God if they lose sleep even one night, he said in one of the letters, because they're worried about the stock market and they can't do their avodas Hashem, that would be a problem. This Sikha adds in another dimension, which is that the stock market propose-- uh, presents a unique yetzer hara that other forms of making money don't. And in the lashon that we saw in many of the letters, why make money

20:53 in a way that causes more stress, more yetzer hara, is more volatile, and requires expert input when there are many ways to make money, many ways for Hashem to make you money without you getting involved in things that are so risky and so unpleasant? Okay. That's it.