1) Make a budget I like the 50/30/20 50% Housing / utilities / living costs 30% wants / clothing / entertainment/ hobbies / Etc 20% Saving / investing 2) starting investing / paying of debit / emergency fund 3) Get to 10k invested ASAP Why are more people not doing this ? 👇read more
I am currently 47 years old. Unfortunately in that time frame I have lost a lot of family members. Some (most) were accidents, some to age, some to cancer, and one to suicide. That’s 11 deaths total. Only 1 person out of 11 had a will. When you are grieving the last thing you want to do is close an estate up. It’s even harder if nothing has been prepared in advance. After the initial shock of the death settles (the phase where everyone is usually nice), greed comes through in a most alarming manner. I’ve watched people turn into monsters. Make sure you have a will!!!! or people will fight.  I know most people hate thinking about their death or their spouses death but honestly it’s just a fact of life. I’ve personally been the executor of 2 estates now. This is my advice: 1. If your young get life insurance. If you’re retired it’s not worth it. 2. Make sure you have a will. 3. Make sure you have a personal directive. 4. Make sure you have a power of attorney set up. 5. If your married make your spouse the beneficiary of your TFSA and RRSP(has to be done through the account not the will), they will roll into the spouses account without taxation. 6. If you’re married, and you own a house, make sure both names are on the title, joint tenant, NOT tenant in common. This activates right of survivorship on property and doesn’t have to go through the estate. 7. If you’re married, both people should have their name on all the vehicles, joint, otherwise it’s a headache after death. 8. Buy a file folding system. I have a plastic one that has a clasp and handle. 9. Put EVERYTHING in this file folder that would be needed if you died tomorrow. a) all land titles B) information on house insurance so it can either be eventually canceled or name changed over. C) your will (or the location of your will),  power of attorney, and personal directive D) the information for your car, car insurance, and registration on vehicles. E) information on life insurance. F) all current year papers needed for filing your taxes. Because the survivor will have to do it and will need that information. G) where your household bills are. ALL OF THEM, electricity, gas, Netflix, magazine, subscriptions everything you can think of that is in their name. Because you are going to have to cancel them. H) their credit card information where to contact to cancel the cards I) birth certificate, SIN numbers, marriage, license, etc. J) information on all your investments accounts, bank accounts, etc. K) anything else you can think of for your situation If you’re married, I’d have one box per person. When you die, the funeral home will issue many death certificates. And your lawyer will give you copies of the will. These will be needed to change over any accounts. Everything else goes through the estate which is taxed and the lawyers take their fees so I’d avoid this as much as possible especially if you’re married. This is why having property in both people‘s names is so important because it doesn’t have to go through probate. I am widowed now and I have my black file folder and my two remaining children know if something happens to me, all they have to do is grab the folder. Everything they need to take care of my estate will be located in this folder. At the beginning of every year, I open this file up and go through everything to make sure it’s up-to-date. If you are young and do not own much or can’t afford a will, you can draft one up but it must be handwritten to be classified as a legal document. You cannot type it out!! If you’re not worth much, everything will most likely be sold to pay your bills and cover your funeral expenses. But you can state who your executor will be in your handwritten will.  Disclaimer I’m not a lawyer or an accountant and this is not legal advice. Talk to a lawyer and talk to an accountant. Make sure everything is set up for you and your situation. These are situations that I personally ran into. Good luck Also I’ll add in. IF you have a lot of assets make an appointment with your accountant first. They will tell you how to properly set things up. Then take that information to your lawyer. read more
Bitcoin is testing major resistance at $65K- $69K as of Aug 18th 2026. Some investors think it is a dangerous spot to buy blindly but a great setup for patient traders. Some investors say that a safe strategies involve waiting for a high-volume breakout above $69K or buying the dip at $61K- $63K support. My decision is to stick with Dollar-Cost Averaging. $BTC
I’ve been running a very boring and conservative Balanced portfolio with a variety of ETFs (Index, Factor & a bit of CC) for the last few years. 😴 Since markets have been strong the past few years it’s given me more than enough to cover our expenses. 🙌 But with the popularity of CC/High Yield ETFs and so many finfluencer videos to learn from I thought I’d check a few out and see if it makes sense to jump on the ‘yield train’ to take advantage of these big monthly pay days! Before pulling the trigger though I thought I’d run the theory through a few scenarios using @karyungtom Retirement Spending Calcultor to gauge the probability of my money lasting 30yrs. https://karyungtom.com/retirement-spending-calculator/ We can’t know future return paths but we can run various assumptions based on past market performance and other tools like a Monte Carlo simulator. So let’s see what happens… CURRENT PORTFOLIO/APPROACH Plugging in my hypothetical $2M and setting my spending strategy to ‘Fixed Inflation Adjusted’ with the Withdrawal Rate = 4% starts me off with $80k for spending. Not bad! 👍 Let’s say my time horizon is 30yrs and Inflation = 2.5%. Using the ‘Historic Backtesting’ option (which pulls full history of SP500 data) I can see this Model was a near 100% SUCCESS RATE through all time periods (5-30yrs). [pic#1]✅✅ But… Unfortunately I’m not comfortable running a 100% equity portfolio. Since im running a 60/40 portfolio I need to see what that looks like. THE BALANCED MODEL ⚖️😴 The only way to see the 60/40 Model using the tool is to change my simulation model to the Monte Carlo option. From there - I can keep the 100% equity option or change to a Global, 60/40, Conservative or even a Custom option by entering my own Return/Volatility assumptions. Before moving to my current 60/40 model I hit ‘Run Simulation’ on the SP500 (all equity) just to get a BASELINE result to compare other Models against. This showed a probability of 90-100% for the shorter timeframes but 88%-84% for the 25/30yr periods [pic#2]. Still - odds would be in my favour that our money would last! ✅ Moving to my Balanced (60/40) option I expected a lower success rate due to being more conservative but surprisingly the 25/30yr success rate jumped to 95-90% [pic#3]. A bit surprising - but I’ll take it!!👍👍 That said - I WANT A CASHFLOW MACHINE! 🏧 Even though above result showed that bonds improve my probability of success one PI Finfluencer suggested ‘bonds are useless’ and from all the CC ETF portfolios I see on Blossom I have to assume that 100% equity is much better for the CC ETF approach. Another Finfluencer suggest I need to ‘create a yield at least 3x bigger than my spending needs’. This would let me receive big monthly paydays to cover my expenses and the excess could simply be reinvested! I would ‘never have to sell a share’. Sounds great! Luckily - @karyungtom calculator lets me model all of this out and link to Return/Volatility assumptions based on the preferred asset allocation. So let’s take a look at… THE CASHFLOW MODEL 💰💰 Following the guidance of the Finfluencers I switched the model back to 100% Equity/SP500. This showed Expected Return = 10.5% and Volatility = 19.7% (both seem reasonable and inline). I guess I’ll just have to accept more volatility if I want to benefit from the high yields. 🤔 I referred back to the ‘Rules/Guidance’ I saw online for CC ETFs and saw I should have a mix of 15%+ and 30%+ yielding products. Based on that I set my models Distribution Yield = 25%. YES!!! On the Model’s $2M value a 25% distribution would mean a $500k per year PAYDAY! Now we’re talking! 🤑🤑 Let’s run it! …… WTF! The SUCCESS RATE stayed the SAME. 🤷♂️🤷♂️ The 25yr = 88% and 30yr = 84% is same as baseline [pic#2&4]. So no advantage. The portfolio generated way more cashflow but since I only need 4% to cover my spending I now have to reinvest the excess to make sure I get the same result. Hmm. I guess Distribution Yields don’t influence actual longevity. ‼️ What’s nice is the calculator actually shows this in the ‘Portfolio Path Table’. It even shows a hypothetical share count if you’re interested. Under this approach I guess I at least don’t have to ‘sell my shares’ right away since I’m receiving such big distribution. I guess that’s a bit of a convenience - but kind of offset by fact I have to figure out my reinvestments. 🙃 And wait - CC ETFs have much HIGHER FEES than the Tradtional Index/Factor ETFs I was using for my Balanced Model. 🤔 My model has a total cost of 0.5%. When I calculated the MER/TER of a CC ETF Model it was closer to 1.7%. I wonder if I should lower my Return to reflect the higher cost? I wonder if that makes a difference over 30 years? After all - 0.5% on $2M is $10k per year in fees and 1.7% is $34k per year in fees. Whatever 🤷♂️ - so I’m paying a bit higher in fees ($24k/yr). I can go check out @smallbird.financial website later for his Fee Calculator to see total impact. Let’s ignore fees for now and get back to my options for boosting my MONTHLY CASHFLOW… So far I have the same expected success rate and I’m just receiving cash instead of having to sell my shares but I’m paying a $24k/yr more fees and have to make sure I reinvest all the excess cash that’s coming in. That hardly seems like much of a benefit but since I’ve seen these CC/High Yield investors pay for vacations, kitchen renos and new hot tubs with distributions I can probably afford to take a bit more out for spending right? So let’s see what happens… HIGH SPEND MODEL 🏧🏦 With $500k per year or over $40k per month coming in and a $2M portfolio I can probably just reinvest 50% and take 50% or $250k for extra spending. An extra $250k of spending buys a lot of living!! Let’s go!!! Since my Yield = 25% I can set my Withdrawal Spend Rate = 12.5%. After all - I got some ‘juicers’ now! I’m not sure what a ‘juicer’ is (seems like a made up term for higher risk products) - but I’ll buy them anyway if it means I get an extra $250k! Let’s run it ….. AGAIN - WTF??? My first 5-10yrs looks fine - but by year 15 (when I’m only 65) it shows I’d have a 70%+ chance of hitting $0!! Year 25 = 88% and Year 30 = 90% chance of running out of money [pic#5]. ‼️🤬 So based on this success/longevity is NOT ‘impossible’ it just seems to be a lot ‘less probable’. Especially since this result is the exact OPPOSITE of my Balanced Model and 4% withdrawal that had a 90% SUCCESS RATE. So if I change - I get big paydays each month and don’t have to sell units but I have to take on more risk, pay higher fees, reinvest all the excess cashflow and accept that there’s only a 10% chance that my portfolio may still have some money by the time I’m 80?? Geesh - this is getting to be a lot to swallow. ⚠️😬 Maybe I missed something. Maybe this is better for SMALLER ACCOUNTS. I can change the portfolio value from $2M to $500k and maybe we can use it for our smaller accounts? Let’s run that… FML!! Changing the portfolio value did nothing. That’s also just a 10% chance of our money lasting 30yrs and a 90% chance that it runs out [pic#5]. ⚠️⚠️ Honestly - What’s going on? Ohhhh! You know what - this tool and calculator is probably wrong and just more ‘FUD’ because @karyungtom is one of those ‘growth’ investors. Maybe I should do what the other PI guys do and just block these growth guys. 😂 Then again - I guess the Finfluencers that I watched - despite their videos, spreadsheets, followers & sponsorships - may also just be learning and trying to figure this stuff out. So maybe I should take what they’re telling me with a grain of salt? 🤔 Either way - I get that these tools and calculators are all based on historic data (since future returns are unkown) - and they rely on a variety of assumptions and inputs - but just to be on the safe side and in case this analysis/approach is NOT totally wrong - I better take some more time to think and learn about portfolio construction, distributions and withdrawal strategies before I make a change to my actual portfolio. 🎯CONCLUSION As tempting as $40k / mth looks - given the trade offs seem to lead to a less certain/positive outcome I’m going to stick to my boring Balanced Model with 4% withdrawals because this data shows it has a higher probability of creating more sustainable longterm wealth. ✅✅✅ From these results - distribution yields DONT impact longevity. Only returns and withdrawal rates do. Letting high distributions lure you into bigger spending that is unsustainable is a real risk. 💡💡💡 MY TAKEAWAY ‼️ Despite everything I’ve seen online about the high yield strategies I’ve always seen distributions as a ‘feature’ of a portfolio - not an actual strategy on their own or a reflection of quality or indicator of future returns. This exercise more or less would support that view. 🤷♂️ I can see the use case for some CC ETFs in certain situations but it’s important to consider all aspects. Currently I’m happy with the small % that I own (more as a way to capture volatility vs for the yield) so maybe I don’t need to ‘go all in’ on them and take more risk or pay the high fees across my entire portfolio? 🤔 Since we can’t control markets or returns - withdrawing too much too fast seems like one of the surest way to damage a portfolio’s longevity and we’re probably better to control what we can - asset allocation, strategy selection, fees and withdrawals/spending. ✅ Still happy to have gone through the exercise. Hope this helps and you consider doing the same type of analysis for your portfolio. 🤓 Perspective ≠ Prediction Stay open to learning and do what’s best for you! 😉👍 ————- PS. Whether you agree with my take away and analysis or not - it’s worth exploring @karyungtom tool and entering your own models/assumptions. It’s a good one! 🤓 . read more
Some people say I do not reply to their DMs. They are right. I ignore direct messages that ask basic questions, try to start arguments or test my knowledge and I know its not going anywhere. You can find basic answers by using Google or asking Beevis on this app
$RKLB built 8 satellites under contract by $MDA for the $GSAT constellation and they have been deployed by $SPCX today. It’s easy to see where the money flows in the space industry!!!
The market is showing some serious heat early. Here’s where we stand: 🟢 $PFSA — Breakout above $8.10 worked beautifully, pushing as high as $12.79. Holding the remainder with S/L under $8.65. 🟢 $XOS — Dip zone around $3.40–$3.20 got tagged, followed by a move into the $3.90s. S/L on the remainder under $3.30. 🟢 $EJH — No position, but the 4AM move from $2.20+ into the $3.80s was impressive. ⚠️ $IPST — Staying out. Structure broke down on extremely low volume, so there’s no setup for me here. Still early, but momentum is definitely there. Stay selective and manage risk. See you guys later.read more
Okay, so I’ve added these positions here (the two 73 lot trades). This adds an additional 30K of risk (so now 130K total risk if these all go to stops) for a potential increase of 88K in profit (total profit thus is now 188K if all trades go to the profit target) I have placed the stops for these new entries at the shown level, just above the recent zone that was created today, and I have left the original stops for the upper initial entries at the same location. Same TP levels for all trades right now. Let’s see what EU does over London session 👌
It's all relative indeed! 😂 Just returned from our whale watching expedition. 🐚🐋🐳 It was exhausting! 😵🥱Wish you were there! 😍😘 But did you see what's REALLY going on amongst the whales? You really should.....because every picture tells a story, don't it? They are talking to us and we need to listen to what they say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOkcvGPHsgk We just rolled out how to interpret what they are telling us and how to position NOW for what's to come. 😂👍 This is the Way! 🏄♀️🌊🏄♂️🌊🏄🌊
Just hit a cool little milestone in my portfolio: $90 in dividend income every single week. 💰 Although I'm not going to retire off that, I was thinking about all the different things $90 can pay for, and it's a pretty long list. To name a few: - A couple tanks of gas - 2 trips to Juan's Flamin' Fajitas with my wife - Most of our weekly groceries (those usually end up between $80-$100 per week) It's cool to see the list of things my passive income can pay for continue to expand. It won't be long (hopefully) until this portfolio is averaging $400 per month, and soon after that, $100 per week. That milestone is going to be VERY cool. How much dividend income are you averaging every week? Let me know in the comments! 👇read more
Let's start with a verdict, because yesterday I told you a planning board in New Jersey was the day's most important market event. Last night it voted. Vineland's board backed the Nebius expansion 9 to 1, clearing construction to continue and locking in 300 megawatts at the site, this after Hunterbrook's own photos showed crews ramping work before the vote, which in hindsight was the tell. Now the story that should be getting more attention than it is. Nvidia did not just make another investment yesterday. It agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion in financing for an 8 gigawatt AI campus in Ohio that OpenAI will lease for 20 years, alongside a $1.5 billion equity stake in SB Energy, which will build and run the site starting in phases from 2028. Follow the progression, because it is the whole AI credit story in three steps. Two weeks ago Nvidia organized other people's money, half a trillion of it, into financing platforms. Yesterday it put its own name on the guarantee. The seller of the shovels is now co-signing the mine. And on the very same day, Ray Dalio said the market shows the classic signs of a bubble, comparing the setup to 1929 and 2000. The bulls have an answer, they cite Citadel's arguement that the hyperscalers can actually monetize this spending, and Google Cloud growing 82% year over year is another receipt they point to. Productive infrastructure or unnatural credit. That is the argument, and yesterday both sides raised the stakes. The demand side keeps producing evidence too. Anthropic's revenue run rate reportedly crossed $65 billion in July, up from $47 billion in May and $9 billion at the end of last year, with its latest quarter near $11.5 billion against $787 million a year ago, and positive adjusted operating income. The company has confidentially filed to go public and could list this fall. Whatever you believe about the financing structures, a business going from under a billion to eleven and a half in four quarters, profitably, is the reason the leverage keeps finding lenders. The IPO, if it lands this fall, will be the single biggest test of public appetite for the AI trade since SpaceX listed. The market leaned red on Monday, and the reason was not stocks. Oil rose as the US and Iran traded fresh barbs over Hormuz, and the bond market kept clearing its throat, the 30 year yield touched its highest level since 2007 and the 10 year held above 4.7. Put that beside the number making the rounds, a record $1.4 trillion of annual interest on the national debt, tripled since 2020 and on pace to pass Social Security as the government's largest expense. The equity market parties. The bond market keeps sending the bill. Two internals worth carrying into the week. This year has produced zero days where 80% of NYSE volume came from declining stocks, something no calendar year has done in at least three decades, the average is 21 such days as highlighted on X by Kobeissi Letter. At the same time, 121 S&P stocks now trade with negative beta to the index, the most since the dot-com unwind. Read together, it's resilience and rotation at once. Evercore's Julian Emanuel looks at that and sees a possible melt-up to 9,000 alongside his 7,750 base case, which tells you even the bulls are quoting ranges now. Housekeeping worth knowing: Nasdaq is launching an evening session from 9 pm to 4 am starting December and is talking to regulators about 23 hour trading, five days a week. Between that and yesterday's premarket options debut, the market is becoming a place that never closes. Sleep is becoming a position. Meanwhile China's credit data went the other way, with net loans contracting for only the third time this century and record repayments from the real economy. The two largest economies are running opposite experiments, one borrowing to build intelligence, one refusing to borrow at all. Retail earnings start today with Home Depot ($HD), Target($TGT) and Walmart($WMT) through the week, testing that ugly retail sales print. Fabrinet's record optics quarter last night says the AI supply chain has not blinked. And UBS is already previewing Nvidia at $94 to $95 billion for next Tuesday, which is the day this entire month has been rehearsing for. Eight days to Nvidia ($NVDA). The show accelerates.read more
📊 Long-Term Investing: The Power of Thorough Analysis When it comes to long-term investing, understanding the fundamentals of a stock is crucial. It’s not just about jumping on trends; it’s about making informed decisions based on solid data. This chart breaks down the essential financial statements—Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Cash Flow Statement—that every investor should analyze before committing to a stock. 🔍 Balance Sheet: This tells you about the company’s financial health, specifically its assets, liabilities, and equity. A healthy balance sheet is a sign of stability and resilience. 💸 Income Statement: This shows the company’s profitability by detailing revenue, expenses, and profits. A strong income statement indicates a company that’s generating profits, a key factor for long-term growth. 💰 Cash Flow Statement: This reveals how the company manages its cash, from operations to investments and financing. Positive cash flow is essential for sustaining operations and fueling future growth. By mastering these fundamentals, you can make smarter investment choices that stand the test of time. Remember, successful long-term investing isn’t about timing the market; it’s about time in the market, supported by thorough analysis. $VGT$TXN$QQQ$AAPL$META #InvestSmart #LongTermInvesting #FinancialLiteracy #StockMarketAnalysisread more
Starting December 6, 2026, Nasdaq plans to launch a new overnight trading session 🕘🌙 ⏰ New hours: 9 PM – 4 AM ET 📅 Starting: Dec. 6, 2026 💡 More flexibility for investors 🌎 Better access to global market-moving news 📊 Trade beyond regular U.S. market hours The stock market is getting closer to 24-hour trading! 🔥 Would you trade overnight? 👀👇read more
During the AMA for our podcast, we were asked about holding TQQQ and TECL as long-term investments. Both have delivered massive returns, but I wanted to explain why an underlying investment simply going up may not be enough. The attached chart shows one counterexample. From December 2008 through December 2025, EEM gained about 218%, while the 3× daily ETF EDC lost about 6%. A positive underlying return is not enough. The return must be strong enough relative to the volatility and costs for a 3× daily ETF to outperform over time. https://karyungtom.com/2026/08/17/how-3x-leveraged-etfs-work
Hey guys, new investor here! I just recently started contributing to my fhsa, giving myself a 5 year timeline until I would like to purchase a home. In my FHSA, I have 60% of my money put into ZMMK and 40% into XBAL. I’ve read mixed reviews for XBAL for a 5 year timeline. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!
Ouch! Decent day of red in the portfolio to kick off the new week. Looks like the whole market is down though. What were your best and worst performing stocks today? Let me know in the comments! 👇
Closed off all my positions before close. Project and prompt found in comments YTD performance +46.64% Last 3 months +22.21% Grok definitely outperforming $SPY and $QQQ Restarting next week with an optimized instruction set and a plan to increase the volatility. Might bench mark this against Claude + MooMoo connection.read more
Unlike many who will read this, I think we're in an 'AI bubble' and see similarities in the buildup to the "DotCom Crash". I recently read something Vitaliy Katsenelson wrote that really got me thinking... What if the AI bubble has elements of not only the 'DotCom Bubble', but also the '2008 Financial Crisis'? In simple terms... DotCom bubble was an overvaluation of certain market segments (tech, some retail, telecom, etc.), caused by irrational exuberance and an over-investment in internet infrastructure. You might not see similarities here, but I do... Financial Crisis was essentially caused by a collapse of 'opaque housing-linked financial instruments'. Much of today's AI CAPEX is being funded through closed loop circular financing, which I'd say are ''opaque financial vehicles' in their own right. Much like the Financial Crisis, the trillions being spent on AI will have implications far and wide 'IF' things go awry. To be clear, bubbles can last a long time and I'm not suggesting it'll pop this week. Who knows? To be doubly clear, maybe there is no AI bubble at all and I'll be proven wrong. Time will tell... I'm not trying to be an alarmist as that's not my thing... In fact I'm still heavily invested in AI related names. AI is going to transform our way of life forever, much like the Internet's done over the past few decades. Doesn't mean there can't be a bubble tho'. While I'm not an alarmist, I'm also not one to keep my head in the sand and think this is at least worth thinking about, which is why I'm sharing. If you made it this far, thank you for reading... Whether you think this has any merit or not. Happy investing!read more
I am selling all my $VEQT and switching to Wealthsimple direct indexing because it allows you to exclude certain stocks from your Index. Blackrock and Vanguard have separated us from thinking about how our investments can sometimes negatively impact the world without us knowing, because it’s all tucked away out of our sight. I strongly believe that if everyone stopped simply buying the index without considering business ethics we would have a much better world. I know everyone just wants to make money,the good news is that if we all started doing this then the more ethical companies values would go up gaining more of the pie as these unethical companies fall out of the index. I switched to direct indexing for all my Canadian and US index funds , essentially building my own ETF that is similar to VEQT, but I have carefully went through and exluded all Gambling Companies, any Oil & energy companies that don’t invest in renewables ($XOM Exxon Mobil, $CVX Chevron etc.) , as well as anything else that is obviously contributing to the degradation of our society and making us sick here in North America with processed garbage. ($MCD, $COLA, $PEP etc…) If there are any other companies you find that are hurting our people, please let me know in the comments and why they don’t deserve our investment. I know $PLTR seems like a troublesome one I may have to exclude. Together we can make the world a little bit better. read more
The advice I keep seeing on Blossom for young investors is that when you're young you can afford to take more risk, and in general I agree with that. Where it goes sideways is in how people put it into practice. Increasing risk usually turns into increasing concentration, and lately that means a few AI names or bitcoin/crypto. What concentration does is widen the range of what could happen to you, without paying you anything extra for it. You might hit it big and you might lose 80 or 90 percent of it, and both of those are very real possibilities. You could take your whole paycheque to a roulette table and put it on red. You have definitely increased your risk. But run that a million times and your expected return is negative, because the wheel has a green zero on it. Run a diversified basket of stocks a million times and your expected return is positive. Both are risky. Only one of them has something paying you to take the risk. Hendrik Bessembinder looked at 25,967 US stocks from 1926 to 2016 and found that only 42.6% of them beat one-month treasury bills over their lifetime, with just 4.3% of stocks accounting for all the net wealth created above T-bills. The median stock lost money. So when you concentrate, you're betting you're holding some of that 4.3%. The usual argument is that a 20 year old can afford to lose it, because there's plenty of time to recover. Personally I'd argue the opposite. If you're 20 and you lose $10,000, at 8% over 40 years that's about $217,000 you don't have at 60. That's the price tag on the bet, not ten grand. And most people are placing this bet inside a TFSA, which makes it worse. If you put $10,000 in and it falls to $1,000, you only get $1,000 of room back when you withdraw it. The other $9,000 of contribution room is gone for good. You can't claim the loss against anything either, since capital losses inside a TFSA can't be used to offset capital gains. I understand the appeal of treating it as bonus money and hoping you picked right. But if you buy something diversified and keep contributing, you put yourself in a good position without ever needing the home run.read more
It’s officially been one month since I made my first post about starting my investing journey. When I made that post, I had just over $10,000 invested. Now I’m sitting at $11,575, which is about +$815 / +7.58% over the past month alongside my weekly investing. Obviously I’m happy to see the portfolio up, but honestly, the return isn’t even the biggest thing for me. I’m still learning a ton every week. I’m trying to get better at actually understanding the businesses I own, figuring out what their competitive advantages are, looking at the risks, and not just buying something because the stock is going up. I’m also realizing how easy it is to get caught up in the next stock everyone is talking about. Some days everything is green and I feel like I’m doing great. Other days the portfolio gets smashed and suddenly I’m questioning everything 😂 I’m slowly learning that one bad day doesn’t mean the company suddenly became a bad investment. A few things I’ve learned this month: • A green portfolio doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing. • A red day doesn’t automatically mean my thesis is wrong. • Stock prices can move WAY faster than the actual businesses. • Conviction means a lot more when you actually understand what you own. • There will always be another stock that looks exciting. • Trying to perfectly time everything is probably a losing game. • Consistency is going to matter way more over the next 20–30 years than what happens this month. I’m still making mistakes, changing my mind, researching new companies and questioning some of my positions. And that’s honestly why I’m documenting all of this. I’m 25 years old. I’m not trying to pretend I’m some investing expert or stock guru. I’m just trying to learn how to build a portfolio that I can hopefully hold for decades and see where it takes me. Current core holdings: TSMC Broadcom Amazon ServiceNow NVIDIA QQQM XEQT I’ve also started building some smaller positions in companies I’m still researching and figuring out whether they deserve a bigger spot in the portfolio. One month down. $11,575 invested. Let’s see where this thing is in another month. 📈 Not financial advice — just documenting my own investing journey.read more
