 Welcome everybody back to the independent investor channel Ryan here when I roll these M1 finance videos out for you guys on a pretty frequent basis. I do so for a reason. The accounts have really changed my investing thesis and they've really helped to add to my overall strategy and my investing application because M1 finance really does bake in a lot of discipline with their platform. And I think it could be very beneficial to a lot of investors out there that maybe just getting started. They don't understand the importance of not reacting emotionally to all the injects in the market M1 finances for those. Invest it and forget it investors it's not meant to be traded in and out of it's not meant to work as a trading platform per se. And I think that's okay I think a lot of beginning investors can really benefit from just buying into the idea that becoming a passive investor first is the right entry to the market if you want to segue into those other opportunities. Some speculative investing some swing trading activity I do all that as well and I would encourage you to evolve in your investing opportunity and your investing knowledge. But I think 100% of investors out there really do need to entertain the prospects of passive investing. I have two M1 finance accounts one is a passive ETF portfolio. This one is passively invested in single stock dividend portfolio so it has more of a dividend growth element to it. So we're going to jump in here and do a progress update I haven't done it for a while this account is less than two years old. I fund this on a dollar cost average schedule with $50 every two weeks so nothing too crazy. I built this account to demonstrate for new investors really how quickly you can blow through investing barriers thresholds a 10,000 being that first threshold. And here we are on this account approaching that $25,000 milestone as we're creeping up on the $20,000 mark and we'll get there. We'll get there it's just a matter of time. So I roll these out to provide some you know some introduction to those individuals who may not be familiar with the M1 finance opportunity. Let's kick over and see how we're doing with the progress here. This is my dividend growth portfolio and you can see here contributions net cash flow into the account just over 10,000. We've got capital gains of about the same amount so the account is doubled. So can't complain there. It's been a very conducive market. You can see here the value over time. This was the pandemic low here end of March of last year. It's done well slightly increasing to the right as we want and you see these jump ups here. These are some incremental strategic buys and you might say well you're cheating Ryan. It's like that's not the message you want to get from my message instead take away the fact that I strategically buy the market where I see opportunity. In other words, this is a fund up here of probably a thousand fifteen hundred. I don't know I'd have to go back and look. And then I allow the count to work work work work and then here's another fund up here. So this hasn't been as a result of $50 every two weeks. Okay, this has been as a result of the 50 which is naturally flowing into the account every two weeks. But also the ability for me to monitor it fund it. I don't do a lot of changing. In other words, when I built this account in December of 2019, I built it to be passive in nature. So we've got 405 and dividends here couldn't be happier with a small account here. So we've got not only money flowing in the form of a capital gains, a capital appreciated dollars, but also the earned dividends here steadily increasing over time here. And as this account grows, this is going to do nothing but render some nice dividend income for me as the account gets up to a respectable amount here being about 20% of my goal. I'd like to get this account up to a six figure account and we will get there. There's no doubt in my mind. So for you guys that think that investing opportunity making money in the market is just an all elusive thing. I beg to differ for you guys that stand the test of time, deploy a strategy with discipline and funding the account over time. Chances are on your side that you will in fact succeed. The majority of the people who stay long in the stock market, if not the vast majority of investors who enjoy long capital appreciation in the market do quite well. So the way I've got this account split up here and I do share this account openly with my YouTube audience. It is available in the description below. Please be advised the independent investor channel is affiliated with M1 Finance and probably so. It is one of those companies that I absolutely 100% stand behind. They're doing some great things. The technology is cutting edge. Nobody else offers investing in this manner. A few have tried, but I think investing with M1 Finance is the pioneers of this portfolio distribution of wealth and how they segment wealth and how they make it so easy for investors to come on. They may not know how to start, but they can use my portfolio as a template and a benchmark to work from. Now the way that I strategically break up the market is indicated here with my 10 slices. Very, very simple. I've broken it down. There's traditionally 11 sectors in the S&P 500. So this is without real estate. If you guys were starting a Roth IRA account, you could throw that 11th slice in there and include real estate. Throw the real estate specialty ETF in there. Buy some realty income or some stag, whatever you would want in there, some Simon property group, etc. into your REIT section of the slice. But I leave that out of here as this is a taxable brokerage account and those are unqualified dividends. I'd rather have the REIT section within the Roth IRA account. So here's how I have it broken down. If I click into each of these respective slices, you'll see that the names under each of them reflect the representation of each of the sectors. So for example, real quick, we jump into technology here and the technology slice is represented by these names. MasterCard, AMD, Texas Instruments, IBM and Televago, Broadcom, VSensisco. You can build these portfolios in any way that you want. You can be asking yourself, where is Microsoft Ryan? Where is Apple? Have you lost your mind? No, I have not. Those companies are held in much larger amounts in my main Roth IRA accounts. This account is aimed at providing dividend growth, broader exposure to companies that I wouldn't choose to own in my larger accounts. Now, there are some exceptions to that rule, but hey, this is my money and I invest how I want. The real takeaway for you guys is to use this as a tutorial to maybe apply an M1 finance program for yourself to help you and your family build wealth. That's why I do what I do. It's not to come on and say, hey, whoa is me. Look at me. I'm awesome. I make all kinds of money. The idea is to come on, provide a tutorial of a successful investing application, which this is. I'm making dividends. I'm making capital appreciation. If we jump in here to the holdings, you can see here that the 71 holdings that we have here, and I'll just briefly scroll down, you will recognize the majority, if not the totality of the listing of holdings here within M1 Finance. It's impressive. No doubt about it. These companies are phenomenal. A lot of Dow components here. A lot of large cap, over $10 billion companies certainly within the makeup and out of the 71 holdings were down incrementally in 10. Amgen being the first here, down 25 bucks. No big deal diversified across the board here, but you can see how some of these, look at this. Just a position in Goldman Sachs with just a little over a share and a half of the company wore up 30% in the name. It's relative. Not a lot of money in this. I average basis at 300. Now the position is worth close to 500. Excuse me, 500, and the value now is 650. That's where the 150 comes from. As we scroll down here, I have no doubt that Amgen will come back. This was actually one of my winners for a while there as I thought I got a pretty good entry on it. Come down here, Eli Lilly, look at that. 166, 50% increase. That's insane. This is exactly what I wanted where I wanted to take some exposure and have lots of little wins. Lots of little wins. This is just the power of money. These $75, $40, $9, $45, these add up guys. They really do. For you guys that are thinking, hey, how far could my small portfolio go? You have to understand that you're going to render benefits like this. This account is worth around $20,000. Are you going to render benefits like this if you start the account with 500? Of course not, but that's not the idea. The idea is to start that baseline, start the framework. Could you start the account with 71 positions? Absolutely. You certainly could. The framework exists and the dollar amounts become relative to what you can afford on the onset to start the position. Dollar cost average, wealth build is conducive to wealth building. That is the whole key here. If you want to build wealth, this is the way to do it. This works for people. There are a lot of different ways to gain investing, profit, capital appreciation in the stock market. I can think of no better way that applies to the masses that gives you such a great head start. In other words, you could pull my portfolio, use it as a reference for yourself. It's not a secret that Costco exists, guys. I have less than one share of Costco in my M1 Finance account. I'm up $72. IBM, just over two and a quarter shares here, up $31. Nothing to shake a stick at. As I cruise down the list here, you can really start to focus in on some serious gains here. 12%, 20%, 18%, 14%. This is wealth building 101. These are the barriers to entry that we look to blow down for retail investors. Why? Because this can apply to all investors out there. I don't care what your experience level is. I don't care what you think you need to have for expertise. You can know nothing about the stock market and invest in the capacity that I'm demonstrating here. You really can. Wealth management. Sherwin Williams, Leggett and Platt. You guys have probably heard of a lot of these companies. You guys probably are involved with Verizon as your carrier. You're probably involved with T-Mobile US. Comcast, Lend, one of my favorite material sectors, play and on and on and on. Throw some dividend kings in there right away. This is why I don't understand why people don't resonate with the idea that investing is fun. Now, this has been a conducive market. Markets go up and they do go down. If this portfolio does digress on me and start to go down, what's my reaction to that? My reaction is to do nothing or fund it. I will be aggressively buying the market, increasing my dollar cost average contribution to this account, and I will continue to be an investor through up markets and down markets. It does not matter. You do not have to react to every inject that you get in the stock market. It's not necessary. M1 Finance bakes in the discipline for you. If you do start to contribute to this on a down market, the silver lining is that you're buying stocks for less at that point. Some of these stocks may become cheaper as you look to take advantage of that down market. That's really the key here to the M1 Finance opportunity here that I roll out and that's why it applies to all investors out there. It bakes in that discipline that I talked about. Use my portfolio as a benchmark. It's free of charge. I provide the information to you unabated. I'm not a financial planner. Know what I need to be. The technology exists nowadays to share good information, but ask yourself, is it really that big of a secret to the companies like Apple, Microsoft, Johnson and Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Home Depot, Walt Disney Company exist? Is it really that big of a secret? Do retail investors owe it to themselves to kind of step out of the darkness and into the light and start to recognize the value of becoming a participant in the stock market? I just showed you 71 reasons as to why and this is real money. This is not M1 monopoly. This is real money. Real money at work on behalf of a retail investor working on a blue-collar salary that takes time out of my day to come on and advocate for you as a retail investor. Show you what is possible in the investing arena no matter what your experience level is in investing. Hope you got some value out of the M1 finance tutorial. If you like the message coming through on the independent investor channel, want to make sure and subscribe to the channel. No doubt about it. If you're not subscribed, you are missing out. If you enjoy the content, make sure to share it with anybody out there that needs preliminary information on stock market investing. Bring them on to the opportunity. No doubt about it. We lay the path to financial wealth, security into your future and this applies to the masses. No doubt about that. Finally, leave your comments at the bottom of the video. Thank you so much for tuning in to the M1 finance dividend growth portfolio tutorial and good luck in your investment future.