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    A poor man is not the one without a cent. A poor man is the one without a dream. - Henry Ford
    Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. - Warren Buffett
    Warren is telling you to buy low sell high in the dangerous opportunities. Dangerous-Opportunity

It does not matter how much money you have, your behavior builds legacy.

  • 1) Money cannot buy you happiness. Happiness is from within.
  • 2) Having no money at all guarantees a miserable life.
  • 3) Money grows on money. Gardening your money growth is the key.
  • 4) I made every penny myself to build a top X percentile net-worth in USA.

    The four pillars of successful wealth management are: knowledge, intelligence, independent-thinking and discipline. Historically the people who managed to rise up above crowd are A) has the ability, B) sees the opportunity and effectively uses it, C) plus a little luck of the time and destiny.
    Be bold, be right, be careful, execute!, like Microsoft Executive says. You will have a good result.

    True success is not measured by wealth, status, or personal achievements, but by how those achievements impact others, promote greater good. It emphasizes purpose over possession beyond self-centered toxic traits. The real value of success is in uplifting people, inspiring growth, and creating positive change in society. It reminds us that generosity, kindness, and contribution define a meaningful life. Ultimately, what matters most is the legacy we leave behind.

    		• I am grateful I came to Rice U. with 1st-year full scholarship tuition-free and stepend, 2nd-year on as on gradute studant stipend working for Dept. professors. My full-time engineering-jobs companies paid for tuition with my own full effort to earn a MBA degree from Univ. of Houston University-Park.
    I am now giving back my free service to the local society.
    Volunteer free service for the underprivileged:
     Tennis advisor
     Health advisor
     Financial management advisor
     Career advisor

    A minister told the following story: A pastor in a church experienced a 500-years flood. He believed God will save him and his church. He did not leave. Police came ordering evacuation, he did not leave. Firemen came to rescue, he did not leave. Even Army came with a boat, he did not leave. He was drowned.
    When he met with God face-to-face, he asked: "God, why did you abandon me?" God said: "I did not abandon you. I sent Police, Firemen, and Army. You never listened".

    Wealth_Percentile AliceWonderland Joffre_Middle_Lake Joffre_Lake_Upper Callaghan_Lake Narin_Falls Joffre_Upper_Lake

    Behavior

  • When you are young, get into a good school gives you the opportunity for a good first job and wage. When you first start working, control your spending. Don't buy fancy high-end goods. The high-end goods charge high profit margin that is most inefficient spending for you and most profitable for the seller. Have self-control! (That reminds me when I bought my first new car on my first job.) If you can buy the same goods at discount price, why not? Your dollar goes bigger.

  • Spend on what you need, not what you want. Stop having low self-esteem moment that you need expensive goods to prove yourself. You should be confident with yourself, you do not need external materilistic superficial approval from flashy goods. For example, wearing a million-dollars diamond chain on your neck, that $1-Mill is not making you income, only incurs opportunity cost. Super-rich people can afford doing that but not middle-class. Middle-class should put money to good use and thrive to move upwards. Warren Buffet (once the world's richest man) lived in the original house he bought and did not have new furniture. When prompted, he bought "Star Furniture" enterprise business. Standing inline waiting for Starbuck coffee you waste time and money that you can make a cup of super tasty healthy coffee at home with same amount of time and a fraction of cost. Same goes with restaurants.

  • Associate with good people, friends, mentors, coleagues. Good associates lift you up and encourage you, help you to go on great path. I was lucky to encounter a few good people and recognize the opportunities of my life. Stop wasting time. Yes, everybody needs off-time, me-time, for relaxation but the outcome can be totally different. Do you really need beer-buddies for a rowdy night to drain energy and damage your health or can you use the time for exercise to boost your melatonin that makes your smarter and healthier next day?

  • Once you have surplus from your saving, learn where to invest, how to invest, how to grow and harvest investments. Learn the world of finance, learn public stock market. Get a mentor to explain to you. It will be good for your lifetime. Understand the power of investing. Education is investment. Use money to make money is easier than wage of labor. Equity ownership is investment and wealth. Own shares of public companies is equity owning, you earn income or growth from your investments.

  • When financial advisor told you they can "minimize risk, maximize return" - it is a lie, a sale pitch. High risk is associated with high return, low risk is associated with low return, by nature. How do you determine your risk? Simply put, it is largely associated with economy risk. (In other words, at high-risk, you could win big in good economy or lose it all in bad economy. This is the first rule many people do not understand.) Risk-reward forms a balance-board in the continuum spectrum. Of the investment instruments you can choose the position where you feel comfortable, be it a mix of the Treasury-bill, bank deposit, bonds, stocks, high-tech stocks, mutual funds, index funds, ETFs, even venture capital. You are free to choose a position of allocation, and the reward!

  • Stock market equity is a net positive sum game with calculated risk. Casino is a net negative sum game with random risk. Stock market's up-down is event driven. Before the event there is possibility of information leak so you could see a little sign. After event, most retail investors just realized the event hindsight and take reaction, hence you could see a lag.

  • When others are greedy, you use caution. When others are fearful, you remain calm. When market is hot, a lot of speculations rush in, institutional or retail investors, including margin, long, short, swap, option etc. When market crashes (due to a piece component failing-falling like an avalanche), speculators stampede to the exit to minimize loss. The embeded risk speculators discharged, such as in swap, is to be loaded by others, be banks or private credit or government eventually economy. (We all remember "too big to fail" in 2009 subprime crisis), aside from investors loss.

    Strategy

    The purpose of diversification is to make sure when you need money you don't incur too much loss "sell low" or "wiped-out" at down turn. Diversification of risk/reward mitagates up-n-down impacts. Diversification means you choose a targeted allocation by your realistic goal on a balanced risk-reward investment structure. Diversification is an equalizer.

    If your foreseeable expenses are covered by liquid asset, fixed income, savings, stable commodities etc., your untouched long-term investment should be in technology. We saw tech booms, like PCs in the 80's, Internet in the 90's, eCommerce, mobile in the 2000+'s, social media, cloud, streaming during and after lost decade tech bubble burst and subprime mortgage crash, then the fruits of eComm and now AI budding. In the long run, if you can hold out investment equity, it will gain for you. It is just the timing we do not know. If you enjoy the thrill, you can have a small portion X percent on the ultra risky instruments - you could be lucky to hit 10+ baggers or lose the high risk investment all.

    Just a disclaimer here, Warren Buffet did not invest in technology. He worked-hard with his super value-buying ability and happened to be the richest person because of the lost decade. Peter Lynch had non-technology investment but he worked hard and had the super-ability to pick good companies.

    It is too hard to pick a particular company, even pro cannot predict future. It is wise to hold a few non-leveraged ETF baskets (depends on your realistic goals, strategy and appetite - too greedy can drown you, too unambitious can starve you). You can use my 80-20 allocation strategy at below the bottom of this page. When the market eventually back to equilibrium (be after boom or crash) ETF is a balanced collection of equity that is not too crazy, diversified with multiple company stocks usually in one sector or total market, low expense, fee and tax. If you have covered immediate living expense thru up-n-down, you can hold on bust cycles and enjoy spending on boom periods.

    • I don't invest on risky asset such as swap at all but to show you an Example: Equity index swap

  • Agreement: Investor A, who holds a portfolio of bonds, enters into an equity index swap with a counterparty, Bank B.
  • Exchange: Investor A agrees to pay Bank B a fixed rate based on a notional amount. In return, Bank B agrees to pay Investor A the total return of the S&P 500 index on the same notional amount.
  • Outcome: If the S&P 500 performs well, Bank B pays Investor A the positive return. If the S&P 500 performs poorly, Investor A pays Bank B the negative return. This allows Investor A to participate in the S&P 500's performance without selling their bonds.

    (Let me explain here:
    in a down-turn crash, investor could be belly-up fast having to pay fixed contract rate + index negative return. In the case of below USD example, it is 2 times faster due to 2X leverage effect.)
    • Example of Proshares:
    The ProShares Ultra Semiconductors ETF (USD) is a leveraged exchange-traded fund that uses swaps and other derivatives to achieve its investment objective, it uses index rate in contract but is not an index fund. The fund seeks daily investment results that correspond to two times (2x) the daily performance of its underlying benchmark, the Dow Jones U.S. Semiconductors Index.

    How the Swap Mechanism Works Underlying Index: The ETF tracks the Dow Jones U.S. Semiconductors Index, which includes major chipmakers like NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and others. A total return swap is a contract with a bank or financial institution. The ETF pays the bank a financing rate (interest). In return, the bank pays the ETF the daily performance of the semiconductor index multiplied by 2. By the multiplier, in an up market bank keeps losing money, speculators keep pouring in money to buy shares; in a down market ETF will lose all equity. Somebody has to pay for the risk - I assume this is the arm of investment banks that regulations allow more risky operations. That is why so dangerous. The bank or ETF can be bankruptted due to the realized risk to a level. Since USD only has about half in underline stock market security, SIPC is not protecting the other half.

    1st chart Bull-Bear 80-20 analysis and 2nd chart Bull market 80-20 for a number of years: