 Good day, fellow investor. I will start today with a quiz prepared by Warren Buffett himself. The first question. If you plan to eat hamburgers throughout your life and are not a cattle producer, should you wish for higher or lower prices for beef? Likewise, if you are going to buy a car from time to time, but are not an auto manufacturer, should you prefer higher or lower car prices? These questions, of course, answer themselves. And now the final exam. Please be ready. If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period? So, if we look at headlines, they are all negative in really putting panic into people's heads. They look at their portfolio. It's in the red. It's declining and people start to get nervous, itchy. However, the real answer, the real feeling should be one of, whoa, whoa, stocks are crashing. Yeah, you should be very happy and thankful that stocks are crashing. Now, are you convinced? I don't think so. So, let me show you a few examples of how things work because an investor and probably 99.9% of you want to accumulate wealth over the long term. You know that short-term trading, yes, might lead to something, but you burn out usually after two, three years and then you forget about investing. However, long-term wealth builders, those who really want to get something out of the stock market will really appreciate what I'm going to show you. I have created three scenarios. One where the stock market continues to go up, steadily up 4% per year, one where it stays flat and one where it crashes 70% and then it goes up by 10% per year, but ends after 10 years still below the current level. Under the assumption that we invest a constant amount of money per year, you will see which one would end up better. At the end, I will make the same calculation for those who already have, let's say, half a million dollars in stock now and how even for them, a stock market crash would be beneficial. Sounds crazy? Bear with me. The numbers don't lie. All right, if the SAP 500 grows linearly for the next 10 years at a rate of 4%, which is the current earnings yield in 2027, it would be at 3771 points. If we constantly invest 5500 per year, after 10 years, you would have accumulated 17.5 shares of the SAP 500. That would give you a wealth of 66,033 dollars, which is not bad as you have invested 55,000 over the last 10 years. Assuming the same dividend as the current for the SAP 500, your yearly dividend would be 839 per year. Scenario number two, the SAP remains flat for the next 10 years. 5500 per year would allow you to accumulate 20.75 shares of the SAP 500 and your yearly dividend after 10 years would be 995. I have excluded dividends from the calculations to keep things simple and increase the earnings yield. So at the end, it turns out the same. In the first scenario, let's assume the SAP 500 crashes 70% this year to a level of 795 points, which would imply a price earnings ratio of 7.42 and the earnings yield of 13.47. Assuming that the SAP 500 grows by 13.37% over the next 9 years, the value of it would be 2220 points in 2027, which is still 15% lower than current levels. So this would be the worst case scenario. If you are invested now, you would be underwater in the next 10 years. However, if you keep investing 5500 per year or whatever your monthly or yearly investment is, you would find yourself with 41.41 shares of the SAP 500 for a value of $91,955, which is the best result in these scenarios. And the dividend that is double the previous scenario of $1986 per year. So even if the SAP 500 would be lower than it is now, during the whole next 10 years and still end lower, if you are constantly investing your money over time, you would end up richer with a lower SAP 500. So it's very counterintuitive, difficult to explain to people, but low stock prices make you rich. Warren Buffett became rich in the 1960s and 70s when there were extreme bargains to buy and to deploy his capital. And he took advantage of low stock prices. He was buying like hell in 1982. And that's what gave him later the capital, the investment power to do what he has done. However, his return on investment have been lower, lower and lower as he grew, but also as normal investment returns, interest rates went lower. So something very important to keep in mind. You get rich when stocks are cheap, not when stocks are expensive. You might temporarily do good, feel excited, like cryptocurrencies of whatever, but at the end, after a year, two, five years, the story doesn't end well. Now you might say, okay, but I have already so much money invested. What if that goes away? Well, let's see a case where we invest 5,500 per year. We have already half a million in stocks. 1.81% is the dividend yield, which means that we get additional 9,000 per year in dividends and we reinvest that money. So in that case, we reinvest 14,100 per year and assuming the SAP 500 crashes 70% this year and then grows per 13.7% per year over the next 10 years, thus ends up at a lower level than now in 2027. You, thanks to your investments, you start with 188 shares of the SAP 500 as you have half a million dollars in it and you add another 106 shares. In total, you would end up with 294 shares, which would be valued at that point in time, 654,703. So you would still make money even in a downturn environment and the dividend would be 14,142 dollars with lower stock prices. However, if nothing changes, you still invest 14,100 per month, the SAP continues to go higher and ends up at 3,771, then you would end up with 233 shares of the SAP 500, thus about what, 60 less? The value would be higher, but the dividend would be lower. As you are expected to live off the dividend and you never know where the stock market will be in 2027, I would pick scenario number one, where stocks crash, even if I have half a million now. Mine sound crazy, but you want to invest, you want to create wealth, you want to create wealth that's not paper wealth, that's actual owning business, dividends, cash flows, passive income, wealth building over the long term. Therefore, look at the numbers, calculate them for yourself from where you are and rejoice when stock prices crash, because you can buy more of the good things you already own for a lower price. It's crazy that people panic when stock prices crash, but people get excited when there is a discount at that store or something like that, or when you're negotiating with your neighbor about that, I don't know, fire hose or whatever, you're so happy when you lower the price by 10. Why aren't you when you can buy cheaper stocks? When you learn that lower stock prices are better, you are an investor and you will do extremely well in your lifetime. Just to end on a personal note, my best investment returns came from buying when things were cheap, extremely cheap. I had the fortune to start investing in 2002 in a frontier market which was Croatia that was too easy. I ended up quintupling my money in the next five years. I lost some money in 2008 as I was invested. However, in 2009 and 2010, 11, I really invested heavily, continued to add money and then again in the next three, four years quintupled my money. 2015, 14, end of 2014, real estate prices in the Netherlands were very cheap. I could take a mortgage, I had some money, I put it in real estate prices and I didn't quintu... Well, if you don't calculate the mortgage, I again quintupled my money, but that's a different story as it's still a paper winning. So we are not planning to sell in the short term. So for now, it's a paper gain, but again, I bought when prices were really, really cheap and in the quarter that I bought my house in the Netherlands, there were only 1,700 transactions in the region. Now, the number is above 17,000 per quarter. So huge difference, I bought when nobody wanted houses, nobody wanted stocks when I was buying, everybody was selling and that did well for me. And even if I took a loss in 2008, even if I took losses when stock prices fell in 2009, 2010, 11, because I was constantly buying, buying, buying and stocks were volatile, let's say, I did well over the long term. So rejoice lower stock prices even if you are 50 and rich because when you will be 60, you will be happy. Thank you for watching, looking forward to comments and I'll see you in the next video.