CNBC's Mike Santoli unveils the 'Mystery Broker': Journey 1 Advisor's David Snyder

2025-12-30_20-41 • 4m 18s
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The suspense ends now after 16 years. The man who came to be known as the mystery broker has been a source of mind since 2009 when I was a columnist at Barron's. He gained a devoted following through my columns and social media posts updating his sometimes provocative and often
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prescient market calls. His extensive strategy memos combined deep knowledge of economic history and market patterns with an utter lack of interest in publicity until now. Joining me now is David Snyder, who is founder of Journey One Advisors, a financial advisor since the 1980s
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as well at other firms. And yes, the mystery broker Dave. It's great to see you and actually it's great to finally meet you because one thing we have to mention is we've never actually met in person. Exactly. Um and I I'd love for you to just really introduce yourself in terms
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of, you know, where you're from. All I know is you you were from the Philadelphia area, worked at all these different uh brokerage firms and wrote these very very thorough uh investment strategy pieces. So, where did you come from? How did you come by your process? Uh
David Snyder (Managing Principal, CIO) 01:00.040
Um, so I am from Delco, born in Bred, which is about 15 miles southwest of Philly. Yep. You know, we home of Wow Wow the Hoggies and of course we say water. Sure. You know, Kate Winslet had in a movie in 2021 could not get the um Delco accent Yeah and she had to go for training
David Snyder (Managing Principal, CIO) 01:22.200
for weeks at a time. But anyhow, yes, yes, she Um, so anyhow, yeah, so I've been in the business for 40 years. Um, you know, I was with several different brokerage firms and then and started my own uh you know investment advisor as a RIA Yeah. uh two years ago Um so I always I
David Snyder (Managing Principal, CIO) 01:39.000
went to law school and then I became um I practiced law for a couple years. Sure I was always interested in the investment field. So I went and got my CFA designation. Um and so I've been uh you know I've been writing a lot of research reports. Um and uh you know all the way
David Snyder (Managing Principal, CIO) 01:55.720
back to 1986. I was going
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to say so you entered the business in 86 kind of a fast fascinating moment to get into it, right? Raging bull market crash, all the rest of it. And, we started to correspond. You sort of initially sort of sent your thoughts to me in '09, but also referring back to pieces you've
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done at '07, the top right before the financial crisis that you were kind of anticipating. And in '09, I think why it took hold was because you had high conviction that the market low in March of that year was real. Probably wasn't going to be tested. The rally was off off and
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running and I think it was very contrarian at the time. So how did you come by a lot of those conclusions? I mean, I'm not going to make it like it's always been the correct call at every turn, but what are you combining in your research? Well,
David Snyder (Managing Principal, CIO) 02:44.160
I mean, first of all, before that I called the exact top in October of 07. Yeah. Um, so basically in in March of 09, just everything from valuation um from just about every metric on valuation was really at a generational lows. I do use technicals as well and so we had a really
David Snyder (Managing Principal, CIO) 03:12.440
strong rally off that rally was unlike the other rallies were like 15% 20% off the lows. That was like 30% within a 3-month period. This is very interesting fact nobody knows but one of the safest times to invest in the stock market is when the S&P advance is 30% within a
David Snyder (Managing Principal, CIO) 03:31.200
3-month period. Um, anytime within that 3-month period. The next 9 months um you get very positive returns. So, the rally technically was completely different. Um, it just um also there are a lot of the the leading economic indicators started to turn. Um, you had a lot of
David Snyder (Managing Principal, CIO) 03:50.040
coincident indicators that were starting to turn. Um, sentiment was completely washed out. I mean, if you look at the AI investments sentiment in late February or early in March. It was literally at all time lows. Right. Um, so there there were just there was a multiple of
David Snyder (Managing Principal, CIO) 04:07.440
technical fundamental reasons. We had the the the tax act that was going to, you know, stimulate the economy. Um, so yeah, there were multiple multiple reasons.