Moneywise and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue through links in the content below. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has spent decades navigating financial markets, including a long career as a hedge fund manager. But when Mike Rowe asked him to boil all that experience down to one financial truth every American should understand, Bessent didn't recommend a hot stock, a complicated trading strategy or a shortcut to riches.
Jeff Bezos backs a platform that lets anyone invest in rental homes for as little as $100 — 6 ways to build wealth like a landlord without actually being one JPMorgan still sees gold hitting $5,000/oz by Q4 — and savvy investors are protecting their wealth with a tax-advantaged Gold IRA. Learn more with a free guide from Priority Gold The tax breaks in Trump's 'big beautiful bill' expire after 2028 — and experts say most people won't act in time. What to do before the window closes "Gauge your personal risk level," Bessent told Rowe during an episode of The Way I Heard It (1).
"So a young person should take more financial risk than somebody our age." "The worst thing you can do is to get out over your skis," he added. But Bessent's broader message was even simpler: Building wealth is a long game. "People used to come up to me and say, 'Well, how do I make money fast?' I said, 'Rob a bank,'" he recalled.
Because markets are unpredictable in the short run. "The market might go up, it might go down, it might stay the same, but over time it goes up." Then Bessent invoked perhaps the most famous long-term investor of all. "As Warren Buffett said, never bet against America," he said.
Buffett has indeed used that phrase repeatedly. In Berkshire Hathaway's 2021 shareholder letter (2), he pointed to America's extraordinary long-term economic progress, recalling that when he first dipped into the stock market in 1942, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at just 99. His takeaway: "Never bet against America." Part of what makes that advice stand out is how rarely it's framed this way today.
Much of the mainstream financial conversation revolves around what to buy, when to buy it and where markets are headed next. Bessent's message is almost the opposite: Stop obsessing over the next move, understand how much risk you can stomach and give your investments enough time to compound. It may not sound as exciting as the latest stock tip, but that patience is exactly what Buffett has spent decades preaching.
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