How Mezzi Uncovered Over $300,000 In Hidden Stock Exposure

This summer, my new AI investment advisor, Mezzi, discovered roughly $300,000 of hidden stock exposure in Google I didn't know I had. It sounds a little absurd, given the amount. But I've been investing in Google for over 15 years, and with a complicated net worth it's hard to track everything accurately when your mind anchors to old price points.

Weeks after I trimmed the position, Google sold off about 10%. I sidestepped over $20,000 in losses.

As an AI maximalist, I'm always hunting for new AI products that help build wealth, and for promising private AI companies to invest in. Mezzi turned out to be both. As a result, I became an investor in Mezzi and am also an affiliate.

How I Discovered Mezzi: The AI Investment Advisor

Before the summer began, I was introduced to Mezzi by Mark Goines, an old friend and former colleague from Personal Capital. Mark is a prolific angel investor who was also the CMO of Intuit and Personal Capital during part of my time consulting there. He knows the wealth management and personal finance space as well as anyone.

As a fellow Cal alum, Mark has always been kind and gracious to me. So when he emailed to introduce me to Manish Jain, co-founder and CEO of Mezzi, I gladly met up with Manish for lunch in West Portal to learn about his company.

We hit it off, and Manish even gave me a ride home, where he showed the self-driving capabilities of his Tesla. I was also excited to see if my home's built-in Tesla charger would actually work. I bought my home in 2023, had never tested the charger, and was in the middle of deciding whether to finally buy a new car. Ultimately, the charger worked, but I'll be keeping my old car for now.

What Is Mezzi?

Mezzi is an AI wealth advisor that brings together your entire net worth in one place, gets to know your goals and preferences, and then lets you actually interrogate your money. Ask it anything about your portfolio, your true stock weightings across every account, your fees, your tax situation, and it answers with your real numbers.

Most importantly, you walk away with a personalized recommendation. You can even give Mezzi standing instructions for things to monitor, analyze, and notify you about. This is huge given it's so easy to miss things with all that's going on in life.

Think of it as an always-on financial analyst that sees your entire net worth across every institution, not just a static dashboard that reports the score after the game is over.

In next week's comprehensive review, I'll walk through all of Mezzi's features in detail. For now, here's what happened when I put it to work on my own money.

Testing Mezzi Before Rebalancing And Investing

After our lunch, I downloaded the Mezzi app and uploaded most of my equity portfolios to see what it could do.

My biggest wish for all wealth management tools is that they be interactive. Getting a snapshot of your investments and asset allocation is important. But I've got a nonstop inquisitive brain that likes to think pro forma. I'm constantly thinking in two timelines to anticipate the future and build more wealth.

I was hoping Mezzi would be that convenient AI application layer for wealth management that could answer specific questions about my portfolio. It did. As I used it more, I added more portfolios, real estate investments, and even my bank accounts and credit cards. After several months of usage, I can say Mezzi is the AI wealth management solution I've been looking for.

So I asked Manish if I could invest. He said yes, and I did.

Part of what gives me comfort is that Mezzi didn't just launch this year to ride the AI wave. Manish and his team have been building the company and product for the past three years. That's plenty of time to absorb customer feedback and sharpen the product. Mezzi is also SEC-registered.

I've been approached by many companies to partner with in the past. And unless they've got at least two years under their belt, I say no because many disappear. I want staying power if I'm going to use a product and recommend it.

It also helped that I finally put two and two together.

With the rise of AI, distribution is one of the last moats. After 17 years of building Financial Samurai and being a limited partner in venture capital funds, I should have been investing directly in startups in my field of expertise all along, then using my platform to help them win. Better late than never.

With money left over from my Summer YOLO Fund, I committed capital to Mezzi and look forward to a long and prosperous partnership.

How Mezzi Saved Me Over $20,000

Getting a clear overview of your finances is vital so you know where to optimize. But taking action is the hard part because there are so many variables to consider. If you're like me, with a complicated net worth and over 40 financial accounts across four people, knowing where to act can be a headache.

So I did what any rational person would do and focused on my largest positions first. My largest individual public stock position at the time was Google.

My old firm was one of the book runners for Google's IPO back in 2004, and I've been nibbling on the stock ever since. When I left my job in 2012, I bought more. I had applied for several roles at Google as part of collecting unemployment and couldn't land one. So I invested $25,000 in Google stock and told myself that if I couldn't work for Google, Google would work for me as a shareholder.

Back then, I wasn't determined to find a job unless it was a great fit with excellent pay. I was running through the motions of applying to seven jobs a week and reporting them to the unemployment office to collect my $950 bi-weekly check. After 13 years in finance, I was burned out and needed a break. But I left the door open.

Fourteen years later, I figured my Google position had grown to somewhere between $900,000 and $1,000,000 across my rollover IRA, 401(k), SEP IRA, and taxable brokerage account.

Or so I thought.

ETF Overlap: My True Google Balance Revealed

After linking the last of my equity portfolios, I asked Mezzi to analyze my true individual stock weightings. It turns out my Google exposure was closer to $1.3 million. Google makes up roughly 6% of the S&P 500, and most of my public equities sit in S&P 500 ETFs. My index funds were quietly stacking Google on top of my direct holdings the entire time.

All this time, I thought I had less Google exposure than I actually did. That's dangerous, because every other asset allocation decision builds on that assumption. It's kind of like in the movie Memento.

Mezzi, powered by its Diversification X-ray, recommended I reduce my weighting by about $400,000, which felt a little extreme. But I followed its advice by selling $200,000 of Google in my tax-advantaged accounts. Twenty percent stayed in cash while the other eighty percent was reinvested in the S&P 500 over a month.

Within weeks, Google's Chief Scientist Jeff Dean and several senior colleagues left the company, and the shares sold off by roughly 10%. By acting on Mezzi's analysis, I avoided over $20,000 in losses. Nobody can predict the news. But you can control your exposure, and you can only control what you can see.

In retrospect, I should have sold more Google stock as the stock has sadly continued to decline. Funny enough, with AI regulation increasingly likely, I bought back into Google stock.

Your Mind Plays Tricks On You

I also used Mezzi to review my losers, and boy was I surprised.

In my mind, I had lost about $10,000 on my Nike position, a classic value trap. In reality, I'm down closer to $20,000. Perhaps if I had thought harder about when and how much I invested during the August 2024 Summer Olympics, I would have had a more accurate picture. But over time, it's easy to ignore your losers because they're unpleasant to watch.

Mezzi helped me face the truth. I sold enough Nike at a loss to offset long-term capital gains from other sales. Mezzi can even build you an entire investment sale plan to minimize capital gains taxes.

Mezzi As My Interactive Wealth Management Guide

I'll be using Mezzi as my interactive guide to stay honest about my investment performance and risk. It's too easy to believe we're better investors than we really are. As our investments grow in size and complexity, having an interactive AI wealth advisor becomes invaluable.

Give Mezzi a try and see what blind spots or opportunities it finds in your own portfolio.

It’s free to get started and if you have questions, email founder Manish Jain directly at manish@mezzi.com and tell him Sam sent you. He'll give you a guided tour, show you how to get the most out of it, and answer anything else on your mind. Not many founders offer that level of access.

He’s also offered my readers a 15% discount of the first year of Mezzi membership. Use code: FS30 to save 30% off an Advisory or Concierge membership. 

Disclosure: StockTalk Inc., doing business as Mezzi, is an SEC-registered investment adviser. I am an investor and affiliate promoter of StockTalk Inc. All opinions and portfolio figures are my own, and I only partner with companies whose products I personally use. This post is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as personalized investment advice, a securities recommendation, or an offer of advisory services. SEC registration does not imply any level of skill or training. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Any third-party ratings, reviews, rankings, testimonials, or endorsements may be unaffiliated, subjective, not representative of all client experiences, and not a guarantee of future performance.

For more information about Mezzi, check out my comprehensive Mezzi review where I highlight all its most powerful features.