Masters in Business At The Money: Automate Your Investing
29 snips
Nov 6, 2025 
Jeffrey Ptak, managing director at Morningstar and expert in retirement plan behavior, shares insights on automating investments. He discusses how automation reduces emotional trading, enhances returns, and helps investors stick to their plans through features like auto-enrollment. Jeffrey highlights that younger and lower-earning participants benefit most from these strategies. He also explores the role of AI in automation and advises on choosing the right platforms for investing decisions. The discussion emphasizes that putting investments on autopilot can lead to significant financial gains.
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Automate Contributions And Defaults
- Set up automatic contributions and default investments to reduce emotional trading and capture more of your fund's returns.
- Use allocation or target-date funds as defaults so rebalancing and asset-mix adjustments happen without intervention.
Default Funds Narrow The Investor Gap
- Target-date and allocation funds show almost no investor return gap because they are often defaulted and funded via payroll.
- Sector and thematic funds show wide gaps due to discretionary, emotion-driven trading.
Prioritize Auto-Enrollment First
- Prefer auto-enrollment when possible because getting people into plans compounds wealth even if capture isn't perfect.
- Pair auto-enrollment with auto-escalation to steadily increase participation rates and savings totals.