 think it's okay all right guys we are officially live all right in actually both YouTube and Facebook as well as TikTok right now all right if you can hear our voice very very smoothly that means you can still catch me all right here our voice please type V in the chat please type V all right because tonight we are going to have a very very amazing amazing investor and in fact he's sitting beside me right now Marvin he has 15 over 15 years of investing experience and I know lately a lot of people are very very scared all right because the market has been keep on coming down and down and down and they're wondering exactly how can they construct an all-weather portfolio and I believe right Marvin because has been through so many years of you know investing experience he definitely know what is the right way to construct a portfolio so that we can give you some advice all right to help you better all right but before that maybe let Marvin do an introduction of himself first okay first of all it's an honor to be part of your live I watch your videos a lot in TikTok and you give so much value and content to people that maybe are scared also to enter the markets right now so it's an honor to be here yeah just a quick background of myself I've been yeah I think so okay I will have to quit the tiktok then all right so guys we have to end the tiktok because there's feedback all right very bad echo so come and join us if you're on tiktok right now if you're on tiktok right now come and join us in our Facebook go to Aligato investor on YouTube are you on YouTube then you'll be able to find our life right now all right so I will we will see you there in YouTube see you okay so we were we were trying to test out our our tiktok tiktok live at the same time but it doesn't seem to be working because there's feedback so once again let's let's welcome Marvin to do an official introduction of myself first okay so yeah I've been I started investing in my early 20s when I when I graduated from college and then at that time I really wasn't keen on investing in the stock investing in the stock market yet I I was a big rubber kiosaki fan and I read a lot of his books when I started out and as I read a lot of his books I was more keen into starting businesses I one of my goals when I was starting out was I wanted to franchise a very small dim sum kiosk and then put it near an MRT station and that's near that was near my office but that was my that was my goal but while I was thinking about what business to start also I did some small side hustles where I started to earn money and I said as I started to earn money from those side hustles without knowing yet what very very expensive brick and mortar business to start I said why not just park it or invest it into something so that it's not losing money to inflation and I tried different things but one of my first investments was a equity fund mutual fund what's interesting about that was I was watching my mutual fund almost every day then I said that if I'm watching my mutual fund almost every day why not start investing and trying things on my own and when I started trying it on my own I felt it was something that was fascinating it gave me the ability to be able to do things at my own terms at my own time and I was working as an IT consultant SAP for Hewlett Packard and it was something that I could do while I was also an employee so I figured out this is something that's interesting this is something that's amazing because I get to open another stream of income while I'm employed already so I have one stream from my work then I have one stream from side hustles then the revenues from that I could put in and invest in equity funds and then eventually into the stock market and as I started to get into it the 2008 crash happened and I was a very very big fan of Warren Buffett and it at least for from the first exchange where I was investing in it didn't make any sense why did they crash 50 plus percent but I did I saw the business is something that how come they dropped a lot but they're not really affected from a revenue standpoint they were at least relatively good they still had customers and I said that this might be an opportunity for me especially right now that I was in my early 20s at that time I was already thinking long term that I said that if I make a mistake on this investment it doesn't really matter because I was planning that early 20s I would touch the I would touch my money when I'm 60 years old because my concept at that time when I was younger was retirement is 60 years old and of course that changed over time but I said that if I if another recession will come in the next decade or so I don't need the money yet because I will use it when I'm 60 years old so I just kept on accumulating also at that particular point in time and what gave me also the strength also during the 2008 crash was I was employed I had sources of income I was living with my parents I had savings that even though there's a potential that the market could still crash and go lower but it won't affect the way I live and then I just fell in love with it did the market recover then it was something that I felt that I really wanted to do over and over and over again so just a brief background I guess wow but I think like it's it's really not easy to stay the kind of a long-term mindset especially at your initial years of investing right at that time like did you feel any you know like fear at all when the market keep on dropping every single day during the old financial crisis which actually dropped like close to 50% right like was any fear like how do you overcome that of course it's how do I say this it's it's not it's not a happy moment when you put your money at a certain point and then it it goes down because at the back of your head you will always think I wish I would have I should have waited a bit more because I could have gotten it at a lower price and I could have gotten more shares but at that point also I was very young I was in my early 20s and I already had the mindset that this next few years what my focus is not to earn first my focus is to learn first and whatever I will learn if I earn from it it's the earning is just a benefit but I want my goal at that time was to build as much skills as possible so that in the next three four five years as I started to build the skills that's when I start leveraging it or scaling it and I guess I want to submit this to a lot of people when we are in elementary or when we are in grade school or high school wherever you are in the world we spent more we spent more than a decade to learn whatever course or whatever profession you want to be in when it comes to investing people are so hard on themselves that when they don't perform on the first three months of the first six months of the first year they're so down or they look at or other people also look down when you're not performing on the first year but if you look at it from a perspective of learning as a student or even if you're a fresh grad working in your first job no one expects you to be good in your first year no one really expects you also to be good right off the bat and that was my mindset also that I'll try to learn first then whatever I would earn will be a jackpot and my mindset of that I was this in school you pay for you to learn the stock market is so amazing in a way that where can you find something where you have the potential to earn but you're also learning at the same time and I was also thinking at the long view it I started investing 22 years old so I was thinking about what if nothing happens from 20 to 27 but when I hit 28 29 30 31 suddenly all of the learnings in the first five years would be better for me so I wasn't in it to get rich quick for the next eight minutes I was in it to build something that will that will benefit me also later on in life well I think that's a super super amazing mindset that you focus on learning rather than focus on earning because I think most of the time when people decide to go into the stock market because they actually want to get rich and if possible get rich quick right and that end up causing them to make a lot of emotional decisions that end up losing money so when you start with the mindset of learning that really give you a different you know give set you on a different lane right and you really become much more objective and and logical when it comes to investing is that right yeah and I was under the concept that so everyone everyone wants to invest always thinks about that this is gonna go up this is gonna be good yeah this will help my retirement but at the very onset already I already figured out that what if it doesn't what if this goes down so in everything that I do even up to businesses that I try to invest in right now or stocks that I try to invest in right now I always look at what would be my downside first how low could possibly go because I want to tell this to people that if you focus on the downside first the upside will be a bonus for you whereas everyone thinks that I buy at 10 now how much will my money be when it hits 20 I don't look at it that way I look at it what if I come in at 10 it goes to eight can I tolerate it can I sleep well at night will it be a good investment for me if it goes down to eight do I add more do I cut loss oh I think about scenarios first in the downside or on the contrary also as I got older I went into even more riskier investments that I would always ask myself what if this goes to zero am I okay am I exposing the right amount of money that if it goes to zero will it hit my entire portfolio if the answer is okay it might damage me then I try to lower it I try to lessen the exposure so it's more about looking at the downside first versus um the upside because this is my belief Chloe that uh if you focus on the downside you focus on building the skills first the upside um whatever whatever earnings you will get it will eventually happen and what people need to realize also it won't happen at the pace of what your friend is doing because some people might get it in the first three months some people might get it in the first year some might get it in four years we all have different learning curves so what's so important is you don't compare your performance with how everyone else is doing but what's important is you compare where you are based on what goals you have meaning if my goal was just to accumulate as much so that I could get this amount when I need it later on as long as I'm moving toward that direction it doesn't matter to me how other people are performing because my eyes are focused on where I need to go not where everyone else is going wow I think it just in the first 10 minutes you're already sharing so much golden wisdom how many will find that has been useful for you if I've been useful you can tap you in the chat right help us do share out these posts to your friends to really inspire them especially your investing friends right now I know a lot of them are very scared right now due to the stock market condition but I think such you know investing mindset it's very very important to start cultivate to really help them to go on the right track and in the meantime I also want to ask the audience here how many of you are very new to investing if you are new type new in the chat right and yesterday in fact I was just talking to two of my friends and they are very new to investing they started investing like since last year and this year the market dropped so much and their portfolio right now is in like I think 50 to 70 percent in losses and they were very scared and that's why they asked me for advice right and they say oh we are so unlucky the moment we start investing the market start dropping right but you can see the mindset between Marvin and them a very very different than Marvin he also the first I think the first year that you entered the market 2008 came right and then it was a huge rock for you but money focused on learning and in fact this is what I told my friends as well I focused on learning and you should consider yourself lucky to be able to experience this kind of crisis right now as a beginner because you don't want your portfolio to go into like a hundred thousand $200,000 then you're like then you experience this kind of drop right right now when your portfolio is still small as a beginner you should be happy that you experience this and you learn from it right so while I can see many people are very new all right so I think Marvin later on is going to share with us a lot more golden insights so talking about the downside just now you're talking about like you always think about what can really go wrong and from there you make an investment decision whether how much percentage allocate all this right so how do you protect your downside like what do you do with your portfolio so that you can better protect your portfolio and build a more well or weather portfolio okay that's a very good question but of course there's different people listening to this no and we all have different sizes different amounts that we're actually investing and the answer to that could be very very relative to people let me let me give you an example for example Chloe Arigato investor sets like a target I want to have like maybe a million dollars all in all total and then you are say at a hundred thousand right now so that actually means that even if the market goes up you double your position from 100 to 200,000 getting a hundred percent return is amazing 100 to 200,000 is amazing but when you look at it from the grand scheme of things your goal is it to double your portfolio your goal is totality to get a million US dollars or Singapore dollars whatever target you actually want want to get so the answer to that is this if you're if you're just also starting out and you are trying to put in amounts of money and then it's down and then maybe you just put in a smaller amount of money yet but you're putting money on a regular basis because some people when they have salary they allocate certain amounts for investing and that certain amount over time will be bigger than the loss that you have then I think it doesn't really it doesn't really hurt as much because the amount that you can put in can compensate for the amount that's currently there it's a different scenario when you have a larger amount already that's placed in then when it drops if you add more it doesn't really even if you average down it doesn't really change the percentage of it already because there's already more so to answer the ones that have bigger portfolio sizes already I think I think they should do it in a way that number one we all have different comfort levels so every time I would invest into something I always will there's a mental check in my head that if this drops by an x percentage or even if it goes to zero can I tolerate this that goes for asset class and that also goes for stock per crypto that I may want to buy so for example if I put give me an amount Chloe what's what's an amount that what's an amount that you want to talk about just an example for $100,000 okay $100,000 so say you put 100 you want to expose $100,000 in the stock market you ask yourself that question large drops 10 percent 20 percent 30 percent 40 percent 50 percent drops depending on what you can tolerate are you okay that your 100,000 would drop that much then you drill in deeper yeah you ask yourself the question that how many stocks would I want to expose myself to five stocks seven stocks 10 stocks but just for the sake of this video say you decide okay I just want to buy four stocks so 100,000 then you say you want to balance it out equally meaning 25,000 25,000 25,000 25,000 then you ask yourself this say for example you want to buy apple stock 25,000 on apple stock should that decline even further can you tolerate it if the answer to that is no that actually means a couple of things either number one you lessen your exposure from 100,000 you make it smaller or you from 100,000 instead of buying four stocks maybe buy six or seven or eight meaning your size has become smaller because people need to realize this it's not the percentage drop that makes people scared it's the amount of exposure that you have because your stock could drop 50 percent but if you only place say 10 dollars or 20 dollars then it's not life-changing it's not devastating 50 drop for someone with a million versus 50 drop with someone with 20 dollars are two different things so my rule of thumb is this if I feel that I'm exposed too much already that I feel uneasy with a certain amount I remove some of it already and then I transfer it so this is something that's interesting where do I transfer it my goal is so my goal in everything that I do in the market is if there's any gain I would use that gain to buy dividend stocks so the proceeds I don't use my capital appreciation and use it to be able to enjoy life or to buy whatever or if you watch Chloe's videos those expensive bags that she's showing and in her in her videos I don't use it to buy those stuff my goal is every time there's a winning trade or it feels that the position is bigger I'm uneasy take some of it off either buy dividend stocks preferred shares or bonds so so even if those stocks also those dividend stocks would go down it doesn't matter anymore because it came from the proceeds of the gains and I'm not in it to trade it I just want to get the cash flow from what the dividend stocks would give me wow okay like you can see that Marvin he focused a lot on actually really building up cash flow the kind of passive income because he knows that even with the stock market drop he still has the amount of cash flow coming in and he's not so worried and I think a lot of times when it comes to investing many people really focus on growth right like growth stocks but the problem with growth stock which lately I've been talking to one of my investing friends as well the problem with growth stock is they can grow a lot right but then they could be just paper gain but what if you know it started drop right right now for example what's happening to meta right now you can see that meta dropped to the price that was the exact same price four years ago so if you bought it as a growth stock which meta doesn't give dividends literally these four years of you holding onto it become nothing right and you literally gain nothing from it but if you invest certain part of your portfolio into dividend stocks despite of the drop well you still have dividend coming in every year right and that's how that is passive income that is real actual cash that you receive and I think that it's that can give you a piece of mind during this period of time and talking about expo exposure right like Marvin just now he talked about what is the maximum downside that you can take then you can allocate your portfolio accordingly so do you have any advice in terms of to beginners what is the number of thoughts that they should be looking at into their portfolio to manage the exposure um that's that's very subjective and very relative I so I've written I've written five books about the stock market and on my third book it's called stress free investing I I tackled something where I talked about portfolio allocation and what I did as part of that also is I interviewed different fund managers and I asked I asked them uh how many how much should people actually what how many stocks should they actually buy and then I gave different amounts and what's interesting about that I interviewed over 50 over 50 fund managers with different exposures they all gave they all gave different answers so it it came to a point that it's something that I think it's very relative but it also will go back to the size of what you have meaning if you feel that it's so people always say that you have to diversify but if you're starting with a very very small amount and a small amount also is relative uh it doesn't also make sense to diversify that it would be better maybe just to go all in say say a hundred a hundred dollars it doesn't make sense to split that into 10 different positions or five different stocks also it it doesn't make sense what what what you can do is this is so what I'll do is this I'll make a scenario uh if I'm just starting right now from scratch what would I do and I'm starting with a small amount of money what I do first is I would focus on one stock first maybe regardless if I trade off of that or accumulate off of that then say it comes to a point where it's something that I'm not comfortable with already exactly I'll just give an example so I'll start with a hundred a thousand dollars then it becomes two thousand dollars when it comes to a point that hey I I don't think I'm comfortable with uh two thousand dollars anymore in just one stock then maybe that's when I decide okay uh okay one stock one thousand dollars another stock one thousand dollars then it becomes it increases again it becomes five thousand dollars then you say already I'm not too comfortable five thousand dollars two stocks then maybe you could decide already okay um I'll split it maybe three stocks if you notice if you notice it it's there's no hard and fast rule it's all about what you can tolerate and what your uh gut feel is already and then just to just to speed things up if it becomes even bigger already and then it comes to a point that my entire portfolio I've already split it into 10 stocks or eight stocks I'm not comfortable already that's when you take money off by bonds by preferred shares by dividend stocks on a separate on a separate uh portfolio allocation already so that even if this drops you've taken money out but the money that you've taken out also is giving you ready cash flow and then that's where it becomes passive income also for life which flow almost a lot already guys comment below if you believe flow yes massive amounts of money type in the comment box below I'm pretty sure mommy has more money because he's investing for 15 years and he profited during the 2008 crisis and right now I think he's using the same approach to find more during this year of time and okay so I think very good question right in the meantime um I'm also very curious in terms of I think the listeners here are also very curious you know like what kind of mistakes do you think maybe just one or two gravest mistakes that you have made so that they can learn and prevent in their own investment journey okay I think you asked this question when you were in my channel yeah yeah oh by the way Marvin he has 300 000 like subscribers on youtube you can go to his youtube channel which is I put down the link below right just search for Marvin German you'll be able to find 300k subscribers wow amazing but congratulations to you Chloe at 200 000 tiktok Arigato investor congratulations that's amazing thank you so a lot of the so here's what's interesting um people always think that the longer you are investing the mistakes become lesser but for me I tend to experience different types of mistakes also sometimes it's also out of sheer carelessness I think I mentioned this in in the video that we did in my channel that one of the mistakes that I had was I forgot to change the leverage of a certain position so I was looking at it I was looking at it at that time um it was a couple this is recent and just this year a couple of a couple of months back and then it was a new platform that I did not use before I was used to certain platforms that the leverage default is one is to one so I assume that this platform also was one is one is to one and uh there I didn't take a look then after a few minutes I got a notification uh I got liquid I got liquidated only to find out that um the the leverage for that I think was 100 plus x already so just one one quick swing uh yeah I got I got liquidated also um I think that's I think that's one um then uh not being too careful in in those minute details um number two is number two is this um so this is this wasn't part of the questions yet but I I'm exposed into different asset classes uh stocks crypto bonds EDF rates etc the the problem with that also is if you're exposed to a lot um there will be sometimes also that you won't be able to watch everything or if there's one news that's happening here and then you and it's it's spread it's spread out because my my my strategy and I've been doing this uh even for stocks is I try to open different brokers different platforms so that it's not everything is in one account I'm just really paranoid that way that if this closes at least not everything is there and not just that from a tactical perspective also that or this one will be for growth this one will be for short-term trading this one will be for for dividends but the problem with that is um in I I'm not I'm not sure for people watching is if they've heard what happened to luna and usd um there was there was one I had some exposure in usd but it was split and I totally forgot that there was one in another platform that I totally forgot to to sell and then when I remembered when I remembered it it wasn't it didn't have any value uh it didn't have any value anymore so I guess I'm a lesson on my part there is it's okay to be diversified but when it's too much diversification already there will be some that will slip to slip through the and and and it's it you might also get hit and I can go I can go on and on and on even for even for trading um you you set you set a stop loss and then you set a stop loss it's already at the support and at the back of your head oh it's okay I'll remove the stop loss I'll remove the auto stop loss first because I think it might it might bounce it might bounce back already because it's already oversold looking at the RSI it's already oversold here but to find out also that it went down uh even more and then you end up losing more money so there's um there's there's a lot what I guess moral also from what I wanted to share to people is that um as long as you know how to set aside cash and you know how to diversify and you know how to separate into different asset classes no matter what mistakes you have as long as it doesn't cripple your finances I think it should be okay there's a learning attachment because people always say it's okay to have mistakes as long as you bounce back with it that's true but if the mistake also cripples you then then you lost a lot of opportunity also so I was okay making a lot of mistakes as long as those mistakes uh were not um devastating yeah devastating from a financial point of view that I'll still be able to eat I'll still be able to do whatever I could actually do does it it's not life altering or life changing something like that yeah yeah so it's always about once again like what Marvin said earlier it's about protecting the downside that he is able to foresee if this goes to zero is he able to to take it and he doesn't if doesn't then he will modify accordingly before making that investment decision right so it's always about protecting the downside can everybody type protect the downside in the chatting that is a very very important uh philosophy especially during uncertain times like this right so I mean like for yourself right I can see that you really have this capability to have multiple um you know investment instruments under under your portfolio right and I'm also very curious you know how is cash being part of your portfolio like do you put like certain amount of money as cash uh because I remember you do share with me uh that concept which I think is very important can you share with the the listeners here as well am I am I lagging or am I lagging or is Marvin lagging okay guys let me know all right if I'm lagging am I lagging am I lagging or are you lagging yeah I got this I'm back I got disconnected yeah sorry about that okay okay yeah so did you manage to hear my question did you hear uh no I heard you said cash I think you heard you so so I'm also very curious I think the followers here are also very curious in terms of like what is your cash position uh in in your in for example right now right with the market so down what is your cash position how do you manage cash with your investment portfolio oh okay um that's a good question so I set aside cash that's not totally related to my investment so my my decision point is every time I put something for an investment uh regardless if it's stocks or crypto uh that's pretty much I I have every intention to fully utilize it as long as outside that particular so for example this is stocks this is crypto or this is other assets if I have cash here it's totally unrelated anymore there will not be a point where I will get this cash to put in there the only time I would put in cash here in stocks or crypto is that if I or if I have new funds that I decided okay I'll add more to this particular asset so my cash from a total portfolio perspective is is totally separate from my investments that I what's very important for me is I have um number one cash that I could use for my operations um it started first before that I needed a few months then it started to increase that okay what if the market crashes nothing happens nothing comes in I I need to have at least X number of years also cash that could be actually stored then I tried to build emergency funds also then I'm pretty much I'm pretty much a planner in a way that everything I try to a lot cash for so even from a budgeting perspective I I would set aside cash for um I think I mentioned this when we did the video in my YouTube channel that I I would set aside cash ready for my child's future college education and I was doing that when I was in my early 20s already so I pretty much set aside cash for different facets and then whatever I put in for investing so the whole goal is to exercise that to the fullest extent now in this investing portfolio um it already it already depends on on what current position that I have meaning if before the crash I was already I was fully positioned already then the only time I would get cash if I would infuse capital but if I had like 20 or 30 cash available for me uh then the market would drop then the next viable thing that I would look at is if it's the stock market I would look at it from so from an investing in trading standpoint two different perspectives um if it's an investing position I would look at it already who are the list of companies that I really like and then I look at their P ratios which is the one that's cheaper and then based on the drop or the ones that I think that that are not affected as much the cash that I have I'll try to allocate uh into those that have dropped from a trading perspective normally when there's large drops I I'm very simple in trading support resistance moving averages MAC the RSI so when it drops also I just look at RSI the ones that the ones that are oversold near the support those are the ones that I try to prioritize and I try to uh a lot um specific amounts off of them so so there I don't I don't really have a specific percentage on uh what I will uh try to maintain in this investing uh portfolio but what I've learned also over the past years is that um before before I would try to okay I'll just buy in one go and then um you live and die based on off of your conviction and then I'll just buy in one go because I bought it at the support if I bought it at the support it's supposed to be somewhere where it's ideal also to start buying since it's at the support if it drops in I just cut losses what I've realized as I got older was there's still wisdom in trashing it that I'm I'm not here to get the exact uh bounce from the support but I could as long as I get it near the support somewhere around that area or even if I buy at the support and as it bounces I buy all the way up also I'm I'm I'm fine with that so uh yeah if I run out of cash if I earn more I'll try to infuse my investing portfolio with more cash if at the point that it drops and then I have cash I have cash still I'll focus on the ones that I could deploy capital on so um will I take money out from that not really that there's a reason why it's in my investing portfolio because it's there to be an investment for me that I plan to use and maximize as well I see so like you can see that Marvin always has a two like different separate accounts right and and cash to him is really for safety for his own expenses really they fund so it's very important that you don't invest everything right you really should have an emergency fund and that actually give Marvin that peace of mind right even despite all the drop that's happening right now he knows that he's next you know years few years ahead are well taken care of with just the cash that he has and he doesn't have to worry and make reckless investment decision because of that and I think there's also good questions coming from the floor uh the safe investor is asking why is the best indicator you have used and since we are more investors here maybe you can share with us investing indicator that you personally use yeah oh um so you mean invest technical analysis or your thought about fundamentally maybe like valuation let's talk about because right now I think the stocks are really good value right now like what kind of value the metrics do you use okay um so split portfolio for growth and then for for dividends for if let's focus on dividends first for dividends what's very important for me is is basically this uh I have a certain dividend yield in mind if it if if the stock drops and then the dividend yield is higher than what I wanted then that's automatic something that I would focus on already because even if the stock would drop and then the dividend yield is not at the price that I want at the percentage that I want I would still ignore it so that's from a dividend perspective and and just to note also that um very very important that the fundamentals of the company doesn't change while the price is also down because the ability for them to give dividends in the next years also talks about how good the company is uh today so or at least if they're not as affected so I'd look at also what's actually happening did they did the price drop because it was just something that was systemic around the world because of what's happening uh with with interest rates because generally now everything is down mainly because of the Fed mainly because of the water in Ukraine mainly because of inflation but there are companies that are really hit because inflation is higher because the dollar is stronger but there are companies also that they're not really as hit also even if inflation is higher so I'd like to focus on the companies that are not as affected uh with this and then the price is down and then as long as the dividend yield is good I'm okay with that then from the ones that are not in the dividends um I look at a couple of things and I look at as long as the sales and net income from a year on year basis is continually increasing and then there's no really threat from a quarterly perspective that the sales and the net income is lower I'm totally fine with it then I look at some metrics ROE I want it to be at least above 10 plus percent then I look at at some points in debt to equity ratio also I don't want them also to be overly leveraged then I look at also the quick ratio the current ratio I check how liquid they are especially in times like this where we have rising our rising interest rates I want them to have as much assets that could cover just in case other income also gets hit then when I look at all of that already to look at if the company's sound and all etc that's when I look at if it's cheap from a PE ratio perspective so there but just to say that also um sometimes when you're looking at tech stocks uh for example you're looking at Tesla there was a point that there were there weren't really making money yet I I still liked it even though they weren't making money because it was more of a macro bet also that everything's gonna go electric we're not gonna go backward anymore we're not gonna use fuel we're not gonna we're not gonna in 2050 the world's not gonna say okay let's go back using diesel and gasoline we're not gonna do that we're just gonna go uh we're just gonna go electric so it was a bet on that and second it's Tesla's a brand um people people buy like to buy Tesla now because it's cooler than um other cars that are out there so so there are some exceptions to the rules also so I hope that answers you definitely I mean like different companies there are different ways that you evaluate it as well so if we go back to the current market condition right like what do you think like what's your advice for for for investors right like like do you think that with the uncertainty uh what should investors be doing right now uh so this should be a time where this is what I believe a couple of things number one in uncertain times that's where there's a lot of opportunities but also in uncertain times you just don't throw money like you're throwing a dart blindly that's where your conviction gets tested and that's where also it will be more of conviction by meaning at this point you should spend a lot of time to study when I say you spend a lot of time to study that you have full conviction on what you want to allocate from if you're I'm sorry I'm talking to long-term investors here also because if you're trading you can just use technicals and it doesn't matter also because you can go long or you can go short but if you're um if you're a long-term investor um and you feel an easy right now because of what's going on then what what what what what actually you should do is you should spend time to research on one two three or four stocks that you really really like and build the conviction off of it and as you start studying it and then you actually see that okay whatever's happening right now from a business point of view it may just only be temporary for this company because maybe they have a very very strong brand or probably they just got hit right now because there's a logistical problem around the world that's why chips are harder to go from one area to another but when that gets fixed the company's so good it's gonna turn back up again if you study it from that perspective and you have full conviction you that's that's when you start to invest however if you're not yet fully convinced or you feel an easy or you don't think that um you don't think that positioning in these companies right now you can't put more especially when it's down then another alternative is just to go the s&p 500 route just to go uh the index fund route because at least for sure there um people need to realize this when you buy individual stocks there's a chance that the company that you bought could go bankrupt and your money could go to zero if you buy the s&p 500 they get recalibrated um x number of months in in a year in a year uh meaning at a certain point in time even if you go back to it 10 years after uh it won't go bankrupt because the companies that are there are are changed also on a regular basis and if you study it in history um it's normal for the s&p 500 to go down but if you study it also it always bounces back and it always goes back higher than where it was before so also you need to consider this if you're watching this and you're 20 years old 25 years old 30 years old and then you say i want to use my stock market money when i'm 40 45 50 55 years old investing at 25 for something that you will use at 55 whatever you do right now it actually doesn't matter even if the market drops because especially the s&p 500 because if it goes back up higher what you have right now you have you get to actually buy it at a very very low price so if you have more time build a conviction if you don't have time to build a conviction or s&p 500 accumulate and please remember this i always say this in a lot of the in when people ask me about it regardless if if it's in talks that i get invited to or even um the videos uh what's more important than the gains that you put in is the volume that you put in uh volume meaning the amount that you invest over a long period of time is more important that than the gains that you would get what does that mean um i would rather have 10 million earning 10 percent than 100 100 100 percent why because that 100 100 100 percent you can't do that every year but when you have volume 10 million at 10 percent at least that's something that you can repeat and the way you get to build volume is when times are scary when people don't want to invest because you get a lot of discounts and when you have that over time 25 30 to 55 years old that's a lot of that's a large amount of time that you can actually use to work for you yeah so i think once again like marvin is thinking super long term that uh if you are building a future for yourself like 20 30 30 years down the road why do you have to care about this short term authority right because long term yeah um just to just clarify not also if you're trading you could still manage the fluctuation so you could trade that day but what's interesting about that is if you earn more you just put it back in it because your base gets base gets bigger so from a thousand for example from a thousand dollars you earn 10 percent off of that it becomes one thousand one hundred the next time you make a trade already your basis is one thousand it's one thousand one hundred that suddenly there's a bigger multiplier effect also on that so i think it works even for longer time horizons or even for shorter time horizons as well i hope it it helps yeah i i think it totally is very helpful and that's what we always encourage our students to always fund that account right like their initial ten thousand dollar is not the end right it should be the beginning and every single month as they have active income coming in they should set a certain amount of money to continue to invest so that they have a bigger portfolio and uh when you have a bigger portfolio even though you do not achieve like like what marine say hundred percent right which is it's it's very hard to replicate every single time right even the just but 10 percent is so much more doable but you have a bigger portfolio that it's on a 10 return annual year it's a meaningful income uh for your retirement fund as well right i think that's a very good mindset now next thing is you know like i can see that you also diversify in different assets like crypto bonds uh stocks as well right like would you be okay to share with us you know like what is your allocation in each one of them and why do you choose to allocate such way that's a good question oh wow um i can't i can't specifically remember what the percentages is right now but um i i i i i i think right now um if i would put everything um latch together i think i have more crypto already right now than stocks um oh i'll start everything off when i was younger it was purely uh stocks um but as i started to get older um i started to get bonds not so not from a percentage standpoint but my goal for bonds was basically this um people need to have a number that they want to get from in terms of cash flow so it could be a thousand dollars five thousand dollars two thousand dollars and my goal was whatever i get as as cash flow from this it will it should ultimately uh it should ultimately get this sum of cash later on so i i wasn't intentionally trying to do a percentage in terms of uh what would what should be my number for stocks bonds and at that particular point in time my goal was whenever i would get something from the stock market i would shift it into something that would give me passive income bonds preferred shares and dividend paying stocks and ultimately what they would give me from a cash flow basis would be able to pay for expenses or at least be um a cash flow perspective so it started off of that um i i don't have an exact percent i i don't know the exact percentage right now um what's the total difference between my stocks that are purely for growth versus um for for dividends and for for bonds but um if i would put it top of my head maybe 60 60 for growth then 40 from a cash flow perspective if you add if you add crypto uh if you add crypto for it it started out before that i would like stocks more than crypto but as i started to learn crypto more i started to add uh into it um when when the market was higher for crypto last year um i i think i had much much more in crypto from a portfolio size perspective than the stocks but um because everything is also down right now i think they're almost the same so if i have a thousand dollars in in stocks i think i also have a thousand dollars in crypto top top of my head i i yeah so i i think i think that's that's the best way i could i could answer it as well uh uh so once again you can see that marvin is focusing on building that cash flow as well because at the end of the day that's what really give him the passive income to fund his lifestyles as well and and actually for marvin he's going to migrate to europe very soon next year you can see the power of increasing as like you can migrate anywhere you want no one i haven't told anyone yet i don't want to oh this one okay actually it's not true i was just joking no he's not migrating he's not he'll only be coming to sing a song all right so uh next question as you know like if you can uh okay now it's you didn't tell me it's over because i'm so sorry i will cut away this part okay but anyway um next question is you know uh if you can turn back time 10 years ago right what would you tell your younger self to do uh wow that i could tell a lot of things i would tell my younger self to buy bitcoin apple stocks but uh i i a couple of things i i don't regret um the life that i i experience right now also but what whatever scenario that you have um there will be always consequences and sacrifices um maybe one of the things that i would also try to think of was uh there were certain experiences that i i should have done when i was younger so i'll give an example i was in i was in india in 2010 i was in vangalore and i just i also said this in my youtube channel but i was in india in vangalore um i was there um and one of the things that i wanted to do at that time was i wanted to go to tarj mahal uh which was in agra which was i think you have to take an hour or two pain ride and then ride the train and then ride another um land trip to be able to see the tarj mahal but at that point um that was already 12 years ago i was in my 20s i said that oh it might be a waste it might be a waste of money because i could have i could save this money and invest it uh later on and then it would compound uh for me uh looking at it right now also 12 years later i don't know if i'm gonna visit india in the next five years or in the next 10 years and when i was there i should have i should have visited it um i i guess i i'm what i'm saying is this um we talk a lot about money talk a lot about investing but uh experiences and time when you lose that chance to experience it or when you lose time also you can never take it back so there there were certain things that i wish i should have done from an experiential point of view but i i said to myself i because i i followed are you gonna invest that that's why i i did not i just invest i just invested my money but looking at it from from it hindsight um the money that i could have spent on those experiences i could have earned back a couple of years down the road but there were certain things also that uh i i wasn't able to do and i don't know if i get to do it also again or i get to do in in the next in the next few years so uh i guess from that from that perspective i i wish i could have uh tried it so now um i'm 39 already um 34 next year uh i if there's a choice between experience experience in something and also um trading um money for time or time for money i would always pick trying to get more time because uh if you watch the vegers movie you can you you can't you can't manufacture more timely and that's the only thing that you can have that is very very finite that you cannot uh take take back also so there yeah so i think it's a very good reminder for everyone here like as much as we are uh you know focusing to grow our wealth but actually at the end they want it's the objective of trading their wealth it's the experience and the time that you want to create with your loved one or even for yourself to pursue the things that you want to do so during this pursuit this journey don't forget the the whole reason why we get started and and don't sacrifice those experience and and the time that we could have spent with you know our loved one while we are on this investing journey i think that's a very good reminder right so for yourself right like some of the students here are also asking you know may i know what's your key advice you know for newbie investors maybe you can give us one to two key advice that you want to give to these investors okay um that's a that's a good question Calvin uh so if i was starting right now also um i i keep on trying i would try all of the investments etf reads individual stocks mutual funds insurance uh crypto nfts i'd put small portions with it so that i'd gain experience so that what i know about it is not based on what people told me based on what i saw on youtube based on other people's opinions it's something that i've lived it's something that i tried and it's something that i will know if it fits me or not or if it's something that works for me or not because the only time you know if an investment is for you or not if you've actually tried it if you've actually allocated the it's it's it's different if you study it just by reading it it's different if you try to there's a lot of stock platforms right now that you can start to simulate but it's different when you put your real-life money there already and what's nice about it maybe with the exception of real estate or starting a franchise a lot of those things don't really need a large amount of money you can put small amounts so i would try everything and then as i try everything the ones that doesn't make sense to me i'll remove it that's why i'm not a forex trader that's why i'm not a commodity trader that's why i'm not also and chloe might hate me i'm not an options trader because i'm not really i'm not really good at it because it's not something uh that as i tried it it's not something that um made sense made sense for me as well so my suggestion try everything and if you as you try it you figure out oh and i'm actually good at trading forex i'm just good at just trading maybe just the euro just one currency i go long and i go short every time i do it and that works for you uh go go do that but the only time you get to know that that works for you is if you've tried different things and put smaller amounts of money in it number two is this two tips right um number two is this um you need to surround yourself with people that uh think as he think like you but not like think like you also um someone that will people that will challenge you but lastly this is so important to me i want that in the room that i am in i'm the poorest person in the room i want to be the poorest there because the people i'm surrounded with there's so much that i could learn from the biggest mistake of a lot of people is when they have a rich relative rich friend they want to be they want their friend to treat them they want their friend to give them good gifts or they want their friend to give them money or they have a rich relative they want a relative to give them money but if they give you money they're short changing you because if they give you money the potential ends there but if they teach you what they know what they have that's something that what they impart to you will be much much better than whatever monetary amount that they could give you so change your surrounding change the people that you're with they should be the one challenging you and you should be also getting as much unlearning from them as possible because if you're not learning anymore uh you're not growing you're not um you're you're not being a better version of yourself and if you're an investor also um that's why i i love traveling because i get a lot of ideas from traveling it allows me to see what's happening in different parts of the world and it allows me to see uh where where's the arbitrage uh in that this is already a technology that's here it's not yet available here but i know over the next three years it will catch up did i invest in this because i know as it catch up people will also use it people will also like it then the the stock price would also get get bigger so um learning is it just by reading or youtube it's more about experiencing it's more about trying it's more about um who you surround yourself with because there are a lot of things that that you can um people can teach with to you but most of the things that will be life changing are things that you catch by actual practitionership and learning it by yourself also wow and you can see that marvin is constantly testing like like he believed in the power of experience right he doesn't just rebuild and then then then never try it out it actually really go and make an effort to test it out to see whether does he is it really suitable for him if it's suitable then he will continue if it's not that at least he knows he knows it right and then before he decided to just really drop it and focus on something that he's really good at so it's always about the experience and most importantly he's always focused on improving himself and that's what makes him a very very good investor today with a lot of passive income that's able to sustain his lifestyle for his family as well and i think it's almost coming to the end of this interview i also want to ask what is your greatest takeaway you know we have listened for the past one hour time flies when you are learning right what is your greatest key takeaway that you learn from marvin for the past one hour in the meantime maybe marvin can share with us you know if followers want to continue to learn from you engage with you where can they learn from you um best place arigato investor in tiktok they don't know i follow arigato investor but uh yeah just search marvin germo um i'm in youtube tiktok uh facebook as well i i if if you try to dm i don't get to reply because there's a lot of people that uh uh would dm but i guess the best place if you're gonna dm uh twitter and linkedin because that has uh the least i think followers also but uh yeah i try to reply as much as i can but um if i if ever i don't get to reply i i do uh i do apologize already but yeah um just marvin germo uh tiktok youtube facebook or wherever you see fit also yeah and i think marvin shares a lot of valuable content not just on stocks itself also on crypto and everything so if you want to explore right just like what marvin say experiencing you know explore learn first i think he has a lot of amazing okay were you playing something just now i'm not sure i'm not sure exactly some something pop up all right so anyway all right that's almost an hour so i thanks marvin for coming here all the way just to share with us all your investing insights and your experience and i hope all of you learn a lot right i'm having said that it's it's very very useful sharing thanks so much marvin for coming here and remember to uh yeah just follow us on uh you know tiktok youtube follow my telegram channel as well so that you can keep your learning going all right and then most importantly is doing this volatile time never stop investing because if you stop then you're really going to you know like firstly stop your learning and secondly miss out a lot of future gains that the stock market can give you in the long term right so thanks everyone and have a good night and we will see you in our next sharing as well see you guys