 to welcome everybody back to the Independent Investor Channel. How is it that we make sense of the big board buy and make the S&P 500? It's always a very difficult question to ask because every investor is different and how they seek exposure to the market in some capacity or another. Mark my words, if you own a mutual fund or you own an ETF or you own any type of passive product out there, you probably own in some capacity a lot of the names that are represented behind me on the S&P 500. But as a beginning investor, you say, well, how is it that I maximize my exposure? What is the best way to tackle this thing? And the sheer reality of it is that you're not going to own it all overnight. And I know that there's a lot of people that they want to get invested. They want to get invested quickly. I think the worst thing you can do is rush into the program. And I think really explaining how it is that I've evolved where I am now can kind of help you maybe pick one or two strategies and even maybe one can do to start as I outline. I was asked the other day, how many holdings I have? Well, I have 148 holdings. Okay, I started with my first two. Kraft at the time, it was Kraft Foods. It ended up being Kraft Heinz after that and AT&T. Those were the first two stocks that I ever owned a single stock. When I started investing, I dabbled in mutual funds. I did quite well. But you could count the assets that I had on one hand. It was, you know, I was getting my start. And everybody gets their start somehow. And the portfolio has grown into something that I'm very, very proud of. So I didn't ask. And the way I answered the question was, is it really that important to understand how many assets I have? I said it depends on what bucket you are talking about. Because I think you're going to understand that when I break down the structural element of the portfolio, I think you're going to find that it is involved. It is mature. It's evolved over 25 years of investing. Dollar cost averaging, what I can when I can. I invest a little over $2,000 a month to my program. This is what I do. Some can do significantly more than that. Some can't. They do less than that. Maybe they're at a starting amount. And that's totally fine too. I think the real takeaway from my message, man, is to understand the fundamentals of wealth building. And I think once you understand the fundamentals of wealth building, you don't look at this big board behind me as just a confusing board of red and green. You look at it from a perspective of, you know, what type of investor do I want to be? How is it that I can utilize these great companies behind me to seek out and align the strategy that I want by putting those products in place to get me the most bang for my buck, to get me off on the right foot, to get me off of that launching pad, to put my first $500 to work in the best capacity that I can for me and my family in starting on my journey, going from a non-investor to an investor. So 148 holdings is what I currently work. And you might think, well, wow, that seems like you're really spread out. I think if you look at it and you start to break it down fundamentally, I think you'll understand why it is I have that many assets. And when I say assets, they could be index funds. They could be ETFs. They could be single stock. And they could be options. So I do have 48 options contracts as well, which is another one of my strategic pillars. And the way I approach investing is I try to go after exposure in as many different categories as I possibly can. Now, before you start throwing tomatoes and you start thinking, you know what, you only need one index fund. You only need one product. You only need one this, that might I stress to you this, investing is individual to each and every person out there. And I'm not one of those investors that buy into the philosophy of having one index fund that's a total market ETF or a total market index fund, because I think putting all of your eggs in one basket really can be detrimental. Now, I do acknowledge the importance of passive investing. About 30% of my wealth is tied up in ETF and passive investing. I don't touch it. I let it go. It looks to match the market from year to year. And I'm good to go on that. But I do deploy other strategies that look to exploit pockets of hopefully outperformance while the passive is doing its thing. And I seek out my strategy in 10 different ways. See, imagine 148 different holdings spread out across 10 different strategies. And for a lot of people out there, man, I think when I review, I just read a statistic just at the start of the year here, going into 2022, that half of people not only are in debt, but they are drowning in debt, drowning in debt, which makes me think that the priority isn't on saving, it's on spending. And you need to ask yourself, are you a spender or are you a saver? My program is indicative of a saver. And that doesn't mean I'm right or wrong. It doesn't mean that at all. It's just my program. And I come on and I share my program openly through a tutorial for anybody else out there that may say, you know what, being a spender really hasn't got me ahead in life. Maybe I'll check this out a little bit, tune into the Independent Investor Channel and check out somebody who's done it and has some results to show what it is can be rendered as a saver using the stock market and the leverage and power of the stock market to pursue different strategies. Now, I'm going to go over these 10 strategies for you guys. Some may resonate with you, some for beginning investors you may not understand. There's no problem. The real takeaway in a 10 minute video when you come onto the Independent Investor Channel is to light that fire a little bit, kind of initiate that spark inside you to understand that it's more than just a savings and checking account, guys. It really is an attempt to set up your own personal brand for yourself and define for yourself, your own empire. You don't have to always give away the farm. And I think with home mortgages, we give away the farm to the bank for 30 years. We pay double what the house is worth over time on the amortized schedule. And then with our investments, we do the exact same thing, going through a financial planner, giving away 3% of our wealth. You know, by the time we end up retiring, we will have provided so much charity to the institutions that I aim to fight and in my quest to advocate for retail investors that if you knew the truth, you would probably have regret. And that's what we're trying to avoid here is to understand that by keeping the chips on your side of the table by deploying at least one or all of these strategies, it just puts you that much more on the right foot toward financial security into your future. So passive investing, I've already mentioned that. I've got my retirement accounts. And a lot of you guys, if you have that, that's just a layer. Think about each of these strategies as layers. And you can say, well, I'm not really interested in crypto investing. Okay, no problem. Think about these as layers to be added or taken away or omitted or not engaged in. As you look to build out your program and take yourself from a beginning applicator to a little bit more of an advanced applicator in seeking out some of these different strategies that the next is dividend growth investing. This is a fabulous way of putting a lot of blue chip companies into your portfolio and rendering that nice dividend over time. These become extremely attractive during a recessionary periods when the stock market from a passive and holistic perspective is not providing the results that we seek. And those dividend payers, those aristocrats and those dividend kings really do help to supplement that bottom line by paying us that 3% to 4% healthy dividend that we seek in a nice dividend growth investing portfolio. The next is growth investing. I do a little dab of this. This is 12% of my total overall portfolio. So one strategy and you might think, man, that's crazy. Ryan's doing growth investing. I control the level of involvement with the percentage that I declare to you. So keep that in mind. I know there's a lot of folks that have 100% in growth. That might be great for them. It's not good for me. That's just what I choose is right now I fall at about a 12% clip to growth and it works for me. The next is hyper growth. Hyper growth is some of the speculative place that I have and so far some of the stuff that's even some of the micro cap stocks that I have and then highly on being my dominant hyper growth type of avenue that I have right now in the portfolio. I think it's important. It's important for me to satisfy that palette that I have for going after kind of a hyper growth type of a strategy because I already have the dividend growth established. I already have the passive established, right? So you can kind of see how I've looked to take my arms and put my meat hooks into this red and green board behind me and how it makes sense for me. Does it have to make sense to you in the capacity that I'm declaring to you? Not at all. Not at all. But the idea is to show what is what is possible, what the potential is in investing. I do all this myself. This is self-directed investing. This is my program, okay? I give it to you open and free. You pay nothing. You want to click through the ads on YouTube by all means go ahead. I'm one of those YouTubers that doesn't give two shits about that type of thing in the first place. What I'm interested in is for you to take away the value in defining swim lanes within investing where a lot of people get really confused as to how to make sense of the big board behind me, okay? Bonds is a small element in my portfolio less than four tenths of a percent in the portfolio. So a very small piece, but it is a strategic piece. So I declare that to you now. Next is 529s and UTMAs for my kids. I have both. They're separate, okay? So how do I strategize that? That's a separate account in and of itself. I have two kids, two 529s, and two UTMA accounts. So this will come in the cumulative accounts when I declare that to you at the end of the video. And you're going to want to stick around for that because I think a lot of people have two accounts, okay? I'm going to declare to you at the end of the video and it's going to raise your eyebrows a little bit. You're going to be like, why? It makes sense to look at your own program as an empire, okay? Don't be satisfied for just a status quo, man. Don't be one of those investors that just saves to cash your entire life. Has an old school checking account. I write one or two checks a year. It's almost one of those things that are obsolete. But the reason why I declare my program is because it is independent. It is unique. And quite frankly, it is scalable to the masses. But until I start to see some more people take on a little bit more of an advanced type of method and an advanced type of approach for themselves, I'll keep foot stomping the message out there because my results speak for themselves. These are the swim lanes that I abide by to divvy up my half a million dollars worth of wealth that I have in my comprehensive portfolio. And I share them with you openly on the channel. The next is options. I mentioned the 48. Most of those are tied up right now in call options. I didn't even throw the remaining put options that I have actually. I have sold some premium on the put side. No big deal. So that probably rounds out to a nice even 50 options contracts. I love doing cash secured puts. I love doing leaps and long calls. And that's just one of my strategies that I do follow. A little bit down in that strategy right now. But nonetheless, it is a strategy out of the 10 that I'm declaring to you that I deploy. And then the final two crypto. I don't really put this in the investment category. I don't even put this in the speculation category. It just is in and of itself the crypto category. And keep in mind, guys, I have less than a quarter of a percent to my total portfolio in cryptocurrency right now, the big five, five is what I have. I've got some shib in there, some Bitcoin, some Ethereum, some Cardano and some litecoin in a Roth IRA. So that's one of the total accounts that I have to house this strategic pillar. And the last might surprise a lot of people. And I don't want to underpin the importance of cash. Cash is super important, man. As a self directed investor, I'm saving a grip of cash where most people through the status quo will justify paying 3% management fee to the man, which I think the word's getting out. And I think there's a lot of people out there that just absolutely love the idea of taking control of their own money. The availability of information is there for you, man. There's no reason to give away the form anymore. Take control of your own future, man. Don't subject yourself to a middleman for your entire life. You'll be just being called upon with the sheet in line with thousands of other investors that are equally and cumulatively selling out to the man, allowing these financial institutions, man, to engage in what I consider to be modern day highway robbery. It's nothing. And I will not be called upon with that community. I'm individual. My results speak for themselves. And I enjoy my results for me. I may come across as greedy, may come across as arrogant, but when is it that you're going to look out for yourself and stop giving away the farm? Look, if you do the analysis yourself and you understand the implication of the fees that are being rendered over your accounts and you're accepted of that, no problem. You're making an educated decision. But what I will not stand for is individuals out there that are naive to the fact that you end up paying a grip over time that are consumed by fees over time. Okay, so I cannot stress the amount of credence that I put on cash. It's one of the accounts that I'm going to declare to you now, but to house this 148 holdings, ETF stock index phones, et cetera, and down the line to initiate these 10 strategies that I have, I use 20 accounts, count them, 24 for the kids individually, three with M1 finance, three with Bank of America, two personal accounts. I've got two that are pending right now for the business actually to start for the independent investor channel, the crypto Roth IRA account, just to give you an idea of a 20 total on the aggregate to give you an idea. And you might think, wow, that's really overkill. Is it? What would you rather do? Would you rather prescribe to a channel like myself who's done all this on his own? I remember starting myself directed Roth IRA accounts. I had $1,500 in each account. I sold my Mustang convertible. Man, I love that car. I took the proceeds, $3,000. I split it. I put $1,500 in for my new spouse at the time and myself. And we have grown those accounts up. And a lot of these accounts I've started as of late as I've evolved. Everybody starts somewhere. And that's the whole idea here is that if we can understand not necessarily where we've been, but where we are going, I try to paint a picture for you guys on what is possible in investing. And 20 accounts for me makes perfect sense. Each of them have their own strategy. And that is the very bucket that I deploy sometimes in those buckets, multiple strategies out of the 10 that I've declared to you using the 148 equities or assets that I declared to you as well. So when I got hit with that question on the live stream last week, somebody said, well, how many stocks do you have? I said it depends. You have to look in each of my buckets. I may have two or three strategies deployed with 15, 18, 19 different products or equities deployed in each of those buckets or accounts. Bottom line, 20. It was great to get into this fundamental wealth building with you guys. Hopefully you paid attention, man, because these are the very swim lanes that I abide by. This is my program. Give away these strategies for free. A lot of people, man, they look at one or two strategies at most and that's what they have the rest of their life. Me, I'm a fighter. So I'm going to deploy as many strategies. I've got a couple strategies in mind that I did not declare to you. Sports cards and memorabilia, guns and ammo, precious medals. These are strategies as well that I did not declare to you that I'm equally as interested into because I think there's a mindset of the successful investor that never stops. Keeps on evolving. Keep on fighting. Keep on advocating for yourself, man. You are trying to beat the man because the man is trying to beat you. Make no mistake about it. The institutions are at war with retail right now. They're trying to take all your real estate. They're trying to take every single bit of your hope with taking your God given right to your individual retirement accounts and attaching all kinds of fees to them and doing it without you being a prety to it. And I think it's everything that I consider on the channel to be modern day highway robbery. And anytime we can declare ourselves as independent will meet our goal of empowering one investor at a time. Guys, if you appreciate the message, want to make sure and subscribe to the independent investor channel, man. Share the message with anybody out there that you know is looking for some introductory information on the markets. Leave your comments at the bottom of this video if I missed something, other strategies that perhaps I missed. Guys, thank you so much. Staying with me for the totality of this video. And good luck in your investment future.