 Welcome everybody to the fastest 60 minutes on YouTube. There's no doubt in my mind, like to welcome everybody to the Friday live stream. My name is Ryan. This is the independent investor. If not one of the originals or the original live stream for finances on YouTube. I'm proud to say this project has become a lot more about you guys and a lot less about me who administers this core investing message, stock market news, stock market pulse, where we are in the market. I share my testimonial on what I do in the stock market and seeking my exposure to financial markets. And I think that that helps a ton of people. If you're new to the live stream, you're gonna wanna stick around for the totality of the message, no doubt about it. Okay, I say that tongue in cheek. I think a lot of people are scared of success. They are, they're scared of that internal voice that says they can do it. I can't start the fire for you, but if you've got that fire smoldering inside you and you're looking for a little bit of life coaching, little bit of motivation, little bit of inspiration, you've come to the right place. I typically try to keep this message focused on the subscriber base, those folks that are coming in and checking out my message and watching me do my dirt. Nothing really too special about what I do. Okay, again, I typically try to turn back the focus on where the emphasis should be. And that is for the millions of people out there that need to hear an empowering message like mine, that's aimed at helping people, whether it be in a small degree or a large capacity. Okay, and I think I do a pretty good job. I validate this very impulse and core of the Independent Investor Channel daily when I engage with people who reach out to me and say, Ryan, thank you so much, I really appreciate it. And I sit back sometimes and it's like, well, there's nothing really that special about it. Other than the fact that I think people need to be reminded that you only have one shot at this deal. There's one shot. And there's people who make their way into my channel that have lived a phenomenal life in their 50, 60, 70s, 80s. I'm gonna be there someday, there's no doubt about it. And I will look back on my life as saying, wow, it was, you know, I was content, I did it hard, I took chances, I failed, I had successes. But if you're looking to move through life in a static type of arrangement and it hasn't really worked out for you, I think you'll find this is encouraging. It really is, it's wholesome, it's fulfilling. You get to hear it from somebody who doesn't come from a trust fund, which is kind of nice, right? You get to know that I started in the negative. I started from ground zero, just about as pulverizing a ground zero as you can possibly get. I share this all the time and, you know, my interactions and Hawk with the IRS twice, not once, but twice in my life, dug myself out of both holes, started my Roth IRA accounts, that of which all disclosed as part of the program. I do that every single week and I stand behind the results that are rolled out over social media, good on me, everybody's like, man, you can't do that, you're crazy, okay? I typically don't buy into what other people think that I need to do and I would employ you guys to do the same, all right? Wow, what a thumbnail, yeah, it was. It speaks to my frustration about what I observe on social media in that if I can clickbait your ass to come in and catch my message, that you can sit and waste 10 or 15 minutes of your time hearing about a bunch of shit that doesn't mean anything for your life, okay? And so that's the whole point to that. Furthermore, I think that I speak with a lot of people who are just like, God, I'm just bad shit, crazy, Ryan. I don't know what's going on with the stock market. The stock market's at all time highs. There are profits being rendered all over the market, okay? So if you're going bananas or bat shit crazy over this stock market, you really need to find your center or do something in this life to where if you can sit back, reevaluate your course in life and say, man, I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm angry. I'm angry all the time, man, I'm frustrated. I'm going nuts, I don't understand this thing. Why don't you consider changing your routine a little bit? You'd be so much more glad that you did. But absolutely every now and then I'll turn out something like that to show a little bit of frustration. And if it runs the weaklings off, I'm totally fine with that. As a matter of fact, I've got my view count going down which is lovely. I'd like it to get it down to people who are just core to the message anyway. And when we all enter into this stage of financial freedom that I wish upon anybody who visits the channel and says, yeah, I can do that too. Who's gonna have the last laugh, okay? I'm not here to entertain you, all right? There's nothing special about what I do. I've done this for about five years on the Independent Investor Channel. This project is invaluable to me. It's invaluable to me. And here's why. Each and every visitor that comes into the live stream, whether you're a frequent visitor to the channel every single Friday or you've caught my message or you've sat across from me on a Zoom tutorial meeting or you've just been the recipient of an email that I've responded to and I've helped you in a positive way, each of those interactions are a piece to this movement, okay? And I'd be hard-pressed to say that there's not a lot of that going on in the world right now where you can feel like you're part of something where the motive is pure and simple. The motive lies with individuals. It relies on self-evaluation. It relies on self-motivation, okay? It relies on changing, evolving. It relies on proper application. How do we do that? We do that by interacting with a group of like-minded people who don't mind staring down failure in the face and saying, you know what? I'm still here, mother. Yeah, all right? Get a little bit of intensity about this deal because let me tell you, man, life is worth being intense about. It is. And if you're doing it right, you're gonna find so much different satisfaction in all different facets of your life. And the stock market thingamajig that's making you go batshit crazy all the time, it's gonna make a whole lot more sense. And it's gonna come into perspective for you as a supplement to your life and not a definition of your life. All right, guys? So please stay tuned. We're gonna jump in here and welcome everybody to a live stream. It's great to have you guys with me on this Friday evening. We're gonna get into the dirt and rock this out. The big shout out to Ben. I really want you guys to take away from my message every single week, you know, a key nugget, all right? And perspective is something that I footstomp all the time. It's so amazing for me to tap into a day pool of social media personalities, the subscriber base specifically and really understand where people are coming from, both from a mental perspective, from a spiritual perspective, from a financial perspective, from a personal interactive perspective, right? Some people just seemingly have nothing but they have everything at the same time. What is the secret sauce that makes those people tick? You know, are they at a different place? How long does it take to get to that different place? How long does it, you know, is it a conscious effort? Is it a subconscious effort? Is it luck, right? So these are some of the questions that we deliberate and I find that these 60 minutes are some of the best 60 minutes that I invest in my time because I've always said that if you can teach this stuff, it means it's part of your core, right? So if you guys don't sense that I'm sincere enough or intense enough about this topic, you're free to leave. Absolutely hit the thumbs down button on the way out. I'd appreciate that, that's great. My message isn't for everybody, okay? But then again, there is no message out there like mine. So if you are astute to the channel, sit back enjoy, have your drink tonight. My drink of choice this evening is actually coffee. I'm actually standing a little bit of a work detail tonight. So double dip and you bet, absolutely. Guys like me don't stop working and I would encourage you guys to look at it the same. I actually don't like the word work. If you're doing what you love to do, it's not work at all. I'm very lucky, I'm very, very blessed in that capacity and I think a lot of the people that I find that are very blessed as well have found something outside the stock market investing game that really does supplement their lives. Now I'm talking about whether it be a day job or whether it be that you run a small business or whether or not you're happily retired. Those things, man, you've earned it. Don't apologize for those things, okay? There is no perfect life, there is just life. I say this all the time and it couldn't be more true. With that said, I think there's always room for personal improvement and evaluating what it is in your life you can do to improve. And man, alive, I tell you what, I get pretty aggressive with some of my folks who reach out to me and they're like, Ryan, you're phenomenal, man. You got it going on, man. Thank you for what you do. You're very motivating. It's great and blah, blah, and this and that. Although I appreciate that, I really do. It's crazy to me and frustrating to me sometimes how I can't get through to some people to just wake up, man. Stop doing the same damn thing over and over again. Radically change your life, okay? Where it was that you were gonna stay indoors one day, change your thinking, man, and walk the hell out the front door, man. Go do something. Take it in small steps. You'll be amazed at how your mind starts to open up and actually crave those things and you'll actually really find yourself looking forward to those things, okay? Identifying those things in your life that make you happy, identifying those things in your life that make you not so happy, okay? The only time I think of things in my life that get me down, that get me depressed, things that make me angry are when I'm hitting the bag. That's the only time I allow myself to think about those things. And it's amazing, at the beginning, it's very, very motivating, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I'm throwing left, right, boom, boom, boom. And it's like, this is just the week's activities, right? Boom, boom, boom, boom. And by the end of that, boom, boom, I have a harder and harder time allowing those negative thoughts to come into my head and those positive reinforced things that I love, those things that I can freaking taste, man, the things that I can smell, things that I can remember, happy places that I've ever been in my life, man. You know what I'm saying? And those are those times, and I know each and every one of you guys have experienced those things. Why do I tell you those things? It's because if you think you're gonna come onto YouTube and you're gonna find the answers for investing, once you save yourself some time and just go do something else, okay? It ain't gonna happen for you, it's not. And I think a lot of people come to YouTube and they expect a blah, blah, blah, and the thumbnail, you know, it'll scare you into investing, you know? It's much more simple than that. It's much more philosophical than that. Once you understand that, man, you'll be at a better place, you really will. I wanna jump into the portfolio here. Perspective is really the takeaway from that lesson. I'll continue to talk till I'm blue in the face to some of these folks that I just love. And, you know, I wish them all the best, but they don't see in themselves what I see. And sometimes that's really the strength of a life coach is that you can see potential in people that they don't see themselves. And it's there, man, it's there. As much as you've told yourself it's not there, I'm here to tell you it's there, okay? It's there, and it's a beautiful thing, it really is. So we're gonna jump into the portfolios real quick. I'm gonna do just a review and I see you Lydia there. I'll pop you on here to the live stream if you'd like. That's awesome. We got the old school in the house and the independent investor, very, very cool. Really appreciate it, but I hope you guys appreciate that opening because if you guys thought that you were gonna come into the I2 tonight and get a scare factor, it ain't gonna happen, man, it ain't. Man, in passing wherever I've been in my life, whether it be Alaska, whether it be working on the fishing boats, whether it be down in the port of LA, right Lydia? Down in the port of LA, you know, I meet people all over, man, and they've got it. And finances really doesn't have a whole lot to do with how rich they are in other departments, okay? So super, super important. We'll run down. I know this is of interest to a lot of people and you guys are gonna find that I am down big. I mean, we're down big. So brace yourself, Heffy, all right? We're down big. You guys are like, whoa, man, hold on a second, man, Ryan's never down big. What's going on? You'll understand. You'll stick around and you'll see how big I'm down when I do the total portfolio review at the very end, when I do the comprehensive, like where we are in the dollar amount, because that's really what everybody is interested in. So we'll kick in here. The real point and takeaway here is I've moved to a little bit more of a cash-rich position, okay? And I know there's gonna be some folks out there who completely disagree with this. I know it's against contrary thought. I know Peter Lynch would probably come on and just wanna punch me in the face. That's totally fine, I get it. The reason why I am where I am in my life is because I consider myself a free thinker, not subject to group think. It's something that irritates the hell out of me. I can't relate with it. And any success that I've ever had in my life, any failure that I've ever had that's been the most memorable, but really those successes in my life have been as a result of my own doing, okay? And if you guys reflect back on your life and maybe ask some of those questions, it's like when you had to fight yourself out of a hard situation, nobody was there to help you and you did it, right? Those are the most fulfilling things and this is the way I feel and this is the strategy that I have applied. Now we've done some liquidations, obviously. All of the liquidations came at a profit, okay? The obvious elephant in the room, the elephant is a neon green elephant named Hylion, okay? Hylion's been a drag of the portfolio so we've been buffering that position. Quite honestly, I'll have to go back and chronicle what I'm doing because this is like elite level shit that I'm doing here to buffer this trade. It's just, I'm pretty proud of myself. Obviously the stock is not cooperated, that's totally fine. Selling some cash secured puts on it, collecting some fat premium in the interim. I'm in the range of the nines and tens to get put to me, which is great. They can get put to me all day, I have no problem. Today I was like, yeah, put them to me, bring them. So I got impatient and bought some shares today. But nonetheless here, I wanna give you guys a total just over a quarter million still invested at 264.216, which represents 70% of my total net worth. I don't wanna get too granular, but the real key on the I2 is the amount of assets that I have protected in the Roth, okay? That's a big thing for me, that's just what makes sense. It doesn't need to make sense for everybody. That's just the way I deploy wealth. 183.511 on the cash side, which represents 30% of my wealth. All right, so a nice healthy 70-30 mix, very, very simple, very, very conservative application right here with the market hitting all time highs. Again, could I be wrong? This week I was wrong, okay? I had the liquidation starting as of Monday. I was totally fine with it. There was some strategic ideas that I had to not only buffer the highly on, but to put some profits away, really re-rack and really kind of settle the dust on what has been a phenomenal financial last year and a half. There's no doubt, I've been doing well, okay? Doing well. And if this highly on thing does what it does, if it goes to 100, I want somebody to just call me the goat one time, just once, just once, okay? I'm not gonna say it again, but for you guys that just heard me say that, if it does what I expected to do, I want to be called the goat just once, just once. Just kidding. I say all the time how normal of a fella I am and that's the God's honest truth, but I think it'd be funny anyway. All right, here's Roth one. Obviously, this is moved down below what I consider a cash rich position. So even a little bit more conservative than that, but 61.93 inequities, that goes into the 264 total exposed to the market, now let me just explain a few things about that. The passive aspect of the portfolio is carrying the lion's share right now, okay? The sparkline shows that we're down week over week. Totally fine, completely irrelevant from my investing lens and perspective, okay? But you're gonna see here when we get into the passive aspect that we did meet a milestone this week, the market's been bananas, et cetera, et cetera. So while other strategic buckets are working, these strategic buckets are doing fine and I digress, if you're coming to the channel and you're like, fuck, this is incredible, God dang, I'm 30 years old, I'll never get here. I actually started investing in the correct manner at about 34 years old, okay? I joined military service at 26. So that was the time when I started the $1,500 accounts, that of which you're looking at right now, okay? So when I was 26, I'm 43 now, I'll do the quick math, blah, blah, blah, 16 years later, look at this, we've got a couple $100,000 plus positions in there. Does investing work? I don't know, you be the judge for crying out loud. Before YouTube, we didn't have the opportunity to come on and share success stories. And I think that's a lot of the battle for a lot of people who think that they can't think and grow rich, okay? Because you've got a freaking peon like myself coming on that started from zero. Again, remember, I don't have silver spoons up my ass, okay? I'm not a trust fund baby. I've made this from zero. So it's gotta be motivating for people to come on and be like, okay, I can't really fault this guy. He was given nothing, which is the truth, all right? So there it is, 117.537, just down, just a touch anyway, week over week, and you'll see the total there, which is all that matters. Here's mine, again, taking a little step back, $670.30, equities to cash, not to get too crazy here. The longs that I wanted to remain long on, I still am, but I've trimmed a little bit of fat here and really just taken a beating on the SPACs, the SPAC warrant, the SOFI position, and finally the highly unpositioned, which is held in all three of my accounts. Actually, I bought a little dab for my kids this week. Why not? I bought them 10 shares. They just thought it was cool. So that's what we did. All right. We'll jump into the M1 Finance portfolio. If you guys did not pay attention or catch the fact that I did interview the CEO, Brian Barnes, with M1 Finance, it was a cool interview, man. He's a great, great guy, just some of the value that we're rolling through on the channel. Typically, the interview stuff doesn't really do that good unless you're really interested in the topic. I thought it was a good interview. I really enjoyed it. So please catch that. It rolled out this week, okay? But here we're actually up week over week. This is securely up over 15. This is my experimental specialty portfolio. I roll these out for your guys' perusal at a later time if you want, okay? And the 71 stock portfolio with M1, that's approaching 16. It's really good. Starting to get some compounding dividends in there. So good stuff. I'm satisfied with that. In a moment, I'm just gonna bring Lydia on here. She's been with the channel for years, eons since the beginning. I don't know what number subscriber she was, probably like number eight or 16. Kind of an OG on the independent investor channel. No doubt about it. So we'll bring her on tonight. Jason's declared to me that he's taken just a little bit of a leave because I think he's having the house built. So he's super busy, he hit me up this week and said, hey, no go for me. I was like, hell, it's an open door policy in my live stream, man. But very few people actually kick on. So I get pretty excited when somebody wants to come and chill, all right? So we did, yeah, we did the 71. This is the one that met the threshold. And this is what I'm talking about. These three accounts that I just declared to you are all passive, I don't touch them. And this is part of the discipline that I think a lot of people, when I say that shit crazy, a lot of people are going crazy in the market because they have too much exposure to active and they don't have the tolerance to do so. If you have the tolerance to do so and you understand the fluctuations of price fluctuation to engage in an active profile, great. Me personally, this buffer helps me accept the level of risk tolerance necessary to engage in what I'm doing right now. You guys think that I just willy-nilly entered into a highly on trade without having years and years of mental conditioning or years and years of understanding that the $1,900 a month that flow into my accounts, no matter what, kind of helps buffer the situation. Now, none of that matters. The stock is gonna do what it's gonna do. But my point is, it's not a willy-nilly thing. It's a well thought out thing and it requires a lot of discipline to be able to stomach what's going on right now. And trust me, I read the threads and people are hardly handling it right now. They're freaking freaking out and it's like, dude, you're in over your head. You do not deserve to engage in this level of speculation. You do not. You do not deserve it, okay? I mean, I've seen some comments that some things are getting yoloed into the, and it's the same idea with Bitcoin. Let's just yolo everything into Bitcoin at 60. Look, if that's your choice, you're a grown-ass adult, you can do what you want. I'm not gonna tell you one way or the other, okay? You'll get my drift by listening to what it is I say. I typically shy away from telling you what to do, okay? The calls, right? The cash-secured puts, I'm really excited about there on Hylian, so hopefully they get put to me. I don't know. Usually I've had them enter into range and the stock is so volatile that it'll get up above my strike anyway and they'll expire worthless, which is fine too, okay? We win in either market. And remember when I said I was down big? I said I was down big, like huge. Like seriously, I'm gonna be struggling to put some food on the table this weekend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're feeling for me, hit that 299 tip button. Yeah, so I can put food on. I'm just kidding, do not tip me. If one of you guys tip me, I'm gonna freaking refund it, okay? Do not tip me, I'm just kidding. But here's what we're working with, $474.74, week over week, we are down a whopping $3,000. Yeah, yeah, pretty crazy. There it is. I've thought nothing about this over the week. I only do the statistics and roll it out for you guys on the weekly updates, okay? So there were 25 minutes into the stream, man, for sure. Bring Lydia on real quick, say hello, get the pulse from her, what's going on in the beautiful California, I wish I was there. It'd be great. Lydia, how are you? Welcome to the Independent Investor Channel. Hey, Ryan, I'm always very happy to have, for you to have me here, always exciting speaking to you. And I'm glad I get to talk to someone about this box that they're actually interested in it. I'm a little too interested, you know that. What's going on with you? How are things, how are things with everything? I mean, it's been a while, the house is good, the profession's good, you got a lot going on, no doubt. Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, everything's going pretty well. I'm very lucky I have a very good tenant. So, you know, that rental income is helping me pay off my house a little bit quicker. That's one of the goals that I have. And I'm still investing, I still do the same thing. I do dollar-cost averaging. For a little bit, I think you've known, you know, my little story that, you know, sometimes in and out of the market, I don't plan to leave anymore. But I do think, you know, the stock market's a great tool. It could be used for many, many things. So I personally used it to get out of debt initially and to be able to buy my home for me and my daughter. And now that I have that, then I don't really have any reason to cash out. So I started backing the market again, September of last year. So I have about seven months. And you know, I stay consistent every time I get paid, I put in my $500. If I see the stock market going down a lot, then I get some of the money I have on the side, some cash, and then I kind of start buying shares and dollar-cost average down. So that's generally like what I do in my strategy. Yeah. And it's worked out very well for me. Every single time I've been in the market. So that's what works for me. I can handle the volatility, you know. I don't recommend to do what I do specifically. I think my portfolio is a lot more risky than the normal person specifically because I only have four companies that I invest in right now. And then my reasoning for that is, you know, my portfolio is still pretty small. So I mean, in the long term, I will have more companies in there. And I fully understand what I'm doing. You know, I think my risk tolerance is a little bit higher than most average person, I would think. I'm used to the market roller coaster. So when I see, you know, my portfolio drop so much, I don't get upset. I think I get happy. Like just a couple of months ago, I think my portfolio was up about 45 percent. And then when the stock market started going down, it went from 45% to 2, 3% return. And that obviously most people, they see that in their portfolio that it goes down 40%. They're gonna be like, oh my God, what's going on? But during that time, I was shoving money into my portfolio and adding more shares. And now I'm back to like 27% or so. So it hasn't fully recovered, but it's still performing very well. Something I've observed with you over the years, and I know I've known you a while and the strategic drawdowns haven't been to waste money. They've been to go into a home. They've been to pay off a nice truck, if I might say. I think it's interesting. And for viewers, a couple takeaways, you know, when you said that the market is a tool, it is. Like you owe it nothing and it owes you nothing. And if you approach it that way, it's really good. We have similarities that way and that I've kind of done that too. When I was in my younger years, if I would have just put it away, at least in some capacity, I probably would have been better off now, but I had those life issues come up, right? Like real stuff, good stuff that I just like, maybe I was a little over-allocated and didn't put a little bit, you know, enough to cash to kind of buffer these unforeseen injects is what they were for me. And I think people can relate to that. Like don't expect that you're just gonna be able to just invest every dollar that you have and you're gonna float through life and everything's gonna be hunky-dory. You know, I think that's real application. A lot of people don't invest. So I guess it's just not an issue, but for you, it was a tool to maybe hopefully leverage some house money into it. I think that's great. I actually wanna touch on what you just said because I think it's really important what you just mentioned. You know, some people see cash as like something you shouldn't have and you shouldn't even go to that, right? But it's super important to have cash because it's not even only for investing to put it into the stock market or to gather more assets is you never really know what's gonna happen, you know? Things happened in lives that you don't expect. We all saw that last year and I can actually give you a real-life example. I personally didn't go back into the market for a little bit when I first purchased my home because I wanted to build an emergency fund first. I'm the only one who pretty much brings in the money in my household. So, you know, it's very dependent on my income. And I actually had a medical situation, I'm only 29 and I ended up having to go to the hospital and I didn't work for over a week and I didn't have any sick time. So if it wasn't for me having that emergency fund, I would have been S.O.L. You know, like my bills don't care if I was sick or not or anything. Because I had that cushion and that emergency fund, I was able to rest that week fully concentrate on my health and not have to be stressed even more that I have a mortgage over my shoulders and I have all these bills that I have to pay. I was able to recover fully and be able to still pay my bills because not only my daughter depends on me, it's also my tenant, you know? So like, I didn't make sure I'm keeping up my mortgage and doing my part as a landlord because depending on how I do that, we'll affect her as well. So I do think cash is important and not only for an emergency, but just, you know, the market is like you were saying, it doesn't care about you. It doesn't care about your emotions or anything. It does whatever it wants, even if it's not logical. So it gives you those opportunities that like for example, Tesla is one of the companies I invested, it had a huge drop. It was about 30% or so was like from 900. It went down to like the 500s. So I'm a long-term investor. So that's why I'm like, this is a perfect opportunity for me to accumulate those shares. I don't have to pay $900, now it's at 500. And most people, yeah, they see something like that. They get scared. When the stocks are going up, everyone wants to keep buying them because they're going up. But when they're distressed, they don't look at them. They start panicking. I sleep perfect at night. I love my companies. I don't have that level of tolerance that you have. I've known you a while. You invest in high growth companies. And that's something that I've just now dabbled in with my CrowdStrike position, mysalesforce.com position. But typically I would look to take swing trading positions in those and swing trade them. I'm trying to take a page out of your playbook. Obviously the highly on position for me is on an island. It's on its own. I massage that with all care and I'm really applying everything in my ability to do what I need to do to get to the bottom line on that one. But it's pretty amazing what you do investing in those high growth companies. You love it. You know, I think Roku honestly taught me how to stomach market volatility because I invested in that company since they went IPO in 2017. And I have fully believed in that company since IPO in the 20s or so. Now I think it's around the 400s. I'm still a full believer of Roku. What did you see? What did you see? Yeah, so when I pick a company I wanna invest in something that I fully understand because I wanna be able to sleep at night and know what I'm doing. So Roku, I had actually bought a Roku hardware to create when smart TVs were barely a thing and Radio Shack existed. So I bought one and I realized it was really great quality because it lasted me for five, six years, never had any problems. So I really liked the quality of the product. And I saw that a lot of people were not wanting to pay for cable anymore. Like, why would you? We have YouTube now, you have Netflix, you have all these streaming options. So Roku provided those companies a platform for them to do their business and to gather more customers. So it's not just a hardware company, it was also making money from the subscription. So if you sign up on Roku for YouTube, et cetera, they would get a part of it. They also have, they're also an advertisement company. So they target, they have really good success with advertisement. I would listen to their earnings calls and they would have double digit growth, even more. And I understood that what I was investing in was in a sense of speculation because their numbers didn't show that this could be like a huge company. But I saw the quality of the company, I saw what they were doing. They weren't being crushed by Google, Amazon and Apple because they simply can crush them very easily. They have a lot of money. You've seen them buy out other companies. So I'm like, how is it that this little company is the number one streaming platform out of all these other people? So pretty much I just saw that and I saw it more as like a windows for like computers. So it could provide that. And it's gonna expand to other places. I think it already expanded in Canada and Mexico. So that's a lot of potential in my eyes. Since I saw it, that's why I was like, I'm just gonna invest in it. I know it's gonna be highly volatile. So go from 20s all the way to 60, I'll drop down to 30. And then I was a new investor. So when I would see that initially, I'd be like, oh my God, why am I doing this? Why am I investing? My mom was right. It is the gambling area. Like I shouldn't be here. But I realized that it would happen a lot. And then when logic would kick in, it would go back to its actual worth. So I realized those were opportunities and I would just buy the dips whenever I could. And if it was up or down every two weeks, I would still buy because I knew my goal was to accumulate as many shares as I possibly can. So that's generally my strategy. Accumulate as many shares as I possibly can by every two weeks. If you have opportunities, then put more money in there or I make excuses like on my birthday, I'm gonna buy myself some shares. That's good. That's awesome. So I think that's why I'm able to have such a high risk harnes because I invested in IPO, which is very dangerous already. And the whole ride has been a roller coaster and I just got used to it. Yeah, and your plans is to keep it longer term. There's no exit strategy. It's just boom, you're in it for the long term, which is if you can view that, that's really where the long-term profits are in any of those companies that have been around for a while. That's where the big four and five digit returns come from. If you can get in on the ground floor of a company like you have and it's got that staying power, I have Roku myself, I love it. I think it's a fabulous product. So I've never owned the stock and it's so funny to hear the insights of another investor because for a stock that you've had so much success in, where was I, you know? And it's just like, I'm looking at the market all the time and it just didn't fit my investor palette at the time. And I applaud you. That's a heck of an investment. It's all about money. Well, it's a speculation. So you know, it is high risk. So I did risk, I came in with the understanding that I could possibly lose this and I had to accept that. On the onset, on the onset, I think Lydia, right? For a cash flowing business, that's a subscription base. In other words, like they don't really need to advertise. People sign up for Roku because they're told about it or they hear about it or they know about it, right? There's no real secret sauce. They don't need to be on the phone selling and I like those business models. That's why Netflix is so attractive. I don't know if you feel the same about Netflix or if you would put those two in there. Sure, sure. And that's another product that I'm very bullish on for the long term. It's unfortunate, I don't own either company but I put that in that hyper growth category. I owned Netflix before and just made a crap ton of money and then I was out of it and it was like, I just can't hold them long. Maybe that's my learning objective for the next coming years and that's the cool part about it is you evolve in your different crafts of investing and I'd love to see you to get some value in the portfolio but it does speak to whether or not you have and you don't have to speak to it on a live stream but for a lot of people they have some sort of compensation package from their work or employment, right? Do you have something like that or are you all individual on your own? Yeah, I can definitely talk about that. That's not a problem. I've been in the legal world since I was 19 years old. I actually fell into it by accident. I was in a car accident and that attorney always kept offering me a job and at that time, my daughter, I had her when I was 18 so I was full-time in college and my daughter and I did that part-time. I ended up leaving school so I said, well, if I'm not gonna go to school it became too much for me. I said, this will be my school. So at that time I was thinking about $9 an hour. Now I make $40 an hour. So it did take me like a decade and now I actually worked for one of the, we're actually got rated number one personal injury law firm in California. So I'm very proud to be part of that. So you sleep easy and you're an investor and a homeowner. I can say so Cal on a live stream. Nobody's gonna look for you. It's so Cal, yeah, that's fine, that's fine. Everybody knows California exists, okay? Yeah, California exists. It's a controversial state but I'm very happy to be in California. I loved it. I loved it down there. It's a special place. It always will be for me. I get my hourly and we also have competitions every month. So if I outperform the other teams I can make bonuses anywhere from 500 and it can be up to 10,000. Really hard to get 10,000. Yeah. I won last month so I got 1,000. So I do, I get, that's my general income that I get from a W-2 job. I also get rental income from my tenant. You too, I don't really get much income there because I honestly, I just do it for fun. I just update my portfolio and- Me too. So yeah, but those are generally my sources of income just pretty much my job, which pays pretty well. And my tenant. That's amazing. I think if people heard what you just said you rolled out a lot of enterprising veins, you know. And I put out a video within the last couple of weeks about the importance of having that craft that you go do. I have it and it's a big part of my success. So it would certainly be misleading if I came onto YouTube and said that this is all because I'm a great investor. I would never want to hold myself to that standard. Does that make sense Lydia? In other words, I don't think I could just say I'm gonna become a day trader based on what I know about how hard that is to do, the stress necessary to engage in that. There's no way me personally, I can do that. And I think a lot of people can relate with that and say, okay, wow, here's a 29 year old in a very, very, it's expensive market, Lydia, let's be real. Yeah. And to be able to thrive, I'll be the first to just say, you're killing it. Congratulations. I mean, I'm just, I don't mean to sound condescending. You're just a friend through YouTube, but I'm proud of you. It's hard to make it in this life. Life does a lot to throw at you, and I don't wanna get all soppy on you, but I think you've picked a lot of different avenues to be like, you know what? This makes sense, boom, I'm going at it. This makes sense, boom, I'm going at it. I don't know what the payoff's gonna be. You didn't know it was gonna be $40 down the line. You just thought, this is right and life's happening right now, that's awesome. That's very inspiring. I think a lot of it's perspective, like a lot of people, like for example, that job that I had, I would volunteer to do extra stuff. Like I would help, I was a receptionist, so I would help the secretaries to do job and extra stuff, like extra work and extra things. And the majority of people from what I've seen is they would say, like, oh, I'm doing these extra tasks. So can you go ahead and give me a raise? And then they'll demand a raise and say, I'm not paid enough for the work I do, et cetera. But the way I viewed it, my perspective was, you know, knowledge, there is no price in knowledge. And I'm getting this knowledge for free here. So I'm gonna go ahead and gather as much knowledge as I possibly can. And if it doesn't work out here, I can always bring it at another law firm and show them what I can do. So that's how I've always been. Like all my raises that I've gotten, they have just been voluntarily given to me out of nowhere. Like the last raise I got, it was a $6 raise out of nowhere. And I was like, oh, okay, I even feel weird. Like, I don't know, I'm just like, oh, thank you. So it's just, you know, staying motivated, having that drive to do well. My drive is my daughter. I wanna be a good example for her and show her that, you know, things happen in life and get thrown at you and you can still succeed. Like most people would be like, I'm a team mom, I'm just gonna leave it there and I can't do anything. Cause people would tell me that, like you ruined your life, blah, blah, blah. And I just said, no, and now I'm where I am, I think because, you know, hard work. And I wanna show that to my child. And there's a lot of different opportunities for people to do well in life, you know? You just have to take that risk. And it's hard to do it, it's scary, it's scary. Like buying a house, that was so scary. When you told me, I was like, you gotta be kidding me because man, it's not like buying in North Carolina. Okay, this is the big fish market where you're at. Very, very tough. But in hindsight, wow. And the tenant piece to it is the real takeaway. That's a real key. A lot of people do that by necessity in the New York market. They'll have to have a split because it's just too insurmountable to carry on your own. But for you, I'm sure you don't mind as long as you've got a good Tennessee, that's huge because that in some capacity goes right to the bottom line. And property there is like, it's better than gold, you know? It's like... And I think, you know, finding a good tenant, like what I, like I was able to find my tenant in about a week or two after I purchased the house. And I used all three resources. Like I posted my listing on Zillow, it's free. And it puts it on hot path apartments. And I got over a hundred inquiries. So I decided to do an open house. The way I did that is I priced it a little bit lower than the general market. So I took off like 25 bucks, $50 than what most people would ask. So that way I can have an influx of potential people who want to rent and I can have more options of quality tenants. And then I didn't just look at, you know, what everyone, I feel like they always just look at high credit score and this and that. The tenant I got, she actually didn't have the most beautiful credit score. The credit score was like in 600 or so. But it wasn't any debts or anything, et cetera. So I was like, you know, sometimes people just need an opportunity and it was gonna be her first apartment. So I was like, someone gave me an opportunity, let me give her an opportunity. She had a steady job. I got a co-signer. And she literally has paid me my, she already paid next month's rent, this month's rent. She pays me, I have no issues. I'm like, wow. Dang. So I got lucky. Yeah. But the best things I do. That's the way I roll. No big deal. That's what I did, I don't know. Yeah, no noise complaints. And honestly, I know you mostly talk about stocks here, but I'm really a fan of real estate. It's like, for me to get my home, my down payment was only like $13,000. And my value, but when I bought it was at 465, it's been one year. Now it's at 516,000. Easy. So I have more- Easy. That seems pretty low. My initial investment. That seems pretty low. 465 to 516 in a year? Yeah. Yeah, things are bananas right now. And I know where you're at. If you own real estate in this country right now, I commend you. And I did. I came out with my for sale by owner video, my update this week. It did terrible. It did terrible. It's fine. I don't come out with videos to make them all go viral. What I wanted to say in that video is what I didn't say in the first one. And it helps a lot of people understand that process. And yeah, I'm huge into real estate. And I don't disclose on the channel very often, but the two biggest, most lucrative deals that I've had in my life have come by nature of real estate, not the stock market. And I've had some big swing trade opportunities. I hope Hylian takes the cake, whatever. I don't know if it'll be next week, probably not, but we'll see it ought to be getting interesting next year. But it's come through real estate. And I don't know. Again, I've known you a long time and I don't think you have any intention of leaving paradise, but that's what everybody says. That's all my friends ever said. One of my best friends, he's been in San Diego his whole life and it's just, he loves it. Why wouldn't he? He's not leaving. It's not going to hot Texas where Matt lives, you know? But- No, I have family in Texas. It's a very beautiful state. You know, I actually was talking to a client the other day. It was super random conversation. I'd rather not even, I really don't talk about this too much, but he had mentioned, he lives in Nevada and he's like, you know, everyone thinks Nevada is so great. But I'm like, well, don't they like it so much because there's no state tax. And he's like, well, you know, they deceive you because there's no state tax, but the sales tax, property tax is really high. Possibly the fee is low, like getting a home and stuff like that. But everything else is super expensive. So I thought that was pretty interesting. And I've seen that too in Texas, my uncle lives there and they also don't have a state tax. But property tax is really high there and sales tax I think is also as big. So I think it kind of evens out, I don't know, maybe California, they do have really high taxes. They tax me a lot. Yeah. But, you know, I live comfortable. I can go outside. The weather's always beautiful and- Every day. All kinds of people- Tell the truth. I mean, the weather's meeting interesting individuals. That's what I loved about it, man. I just, I remember vividly walking Venice Beach, one of my favorite places, you know, I used to kick down to Belmont and I loved it there, man. I loved the energy. I loved the people. I mean, shoot, they filmed Fear Factor on my boat twice down in the port. Lots of times where I would wake up, I used to sleep on the boat, right? And one cool story I've got is I woke up one morning and I pushed open the hatch and there was a bikini model standing on the bow of the boat just taking photographs on a random morning. That's LA for you. You know? And I was like, hey, good morning. She's like, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were doing this. Only in LA, man. It's like, it's crazy, you know? Yeah. You never cease to be amazed. There's all kinds of like, you're like, oh, okay. Yeah. I just learned to nod and smell good thing you are. Exactly. Exactly. But what else is going on, Lydia? Shoot, haven't had you on the channel for a while. I know, I know, yeah. I'm always happy to be here. Yeah, I just spend pretty much working. I work a lot. Still doing my investments. How do you feel about me having four companies? I only have four companies. I have Apple, Microsoft, Roku, and Tesla. I guess if I were gonna wish anything upon you, I, you know, that aligns. You're starting with the tip of the iceberg kind of, and I typically like to go the other direction and build that base. See, I can't argue with you because everything in the market in way of equities has been lucrative. I really has. I guess my old Foggy perspective is just to say, be somewhat cautious and understand that those companies are great. You can own them for the rest of your life, but I would wish upon you some value, right? I would wish upon you maybe an element of passive and you could come back and say, well, Ryan, you know, that's not the style of investor I am. Well, give yourself a chance. And what's 10% out of the total allocation? What's 25% in a hybrid mix to say, you know, Ryan got me thinking tonight. And hopefully I do because it's all aimed at making a more holistic investor. My passive aspect right now, Lydia, is carrying me, whereas my speculative aspect is crushing me and the two kind of mitigate each other a little bit and don't make the high growth aspect so jarring, you know? So, you know, don't underestimate, there's 11 sectors of the S&P and you're exposed to what, two of them? I know I'm mostly technology, it's really... That's right, I mean... It's pretty bad, I was planning to possibly, I'm gonna actually switch, I have TD Ameritrade, I was planning to switch brokerages because... Again? This is number three. This will be number three. Well, first I did Robinhood and we know that's not like the best platform. And then I was at TD Ameritrade and I do love the brokerage overall. The thing that gets me is I can't buy fractional shares and since I'm a Tesla investor, the shares are really expensive. They're like 700 and something. So it makes it really hard for me to do dollar cost averaging. So I found another brokerage that looks like Robinhood and I think you heard of it, it's called Public. So I'm checking, some might be transitioning over to them because I can buy fractional shares. I like the easy interface and it's insured. So I... It is. But I know I'm reducing the quality of brokerage from leaving TD Ameritrade with that. Yes. What about Fidelity? What about Fidelity, Lydia? I don't know, I think it has a... You could only do some companies. I think I had my little, or maybe I checked Schwab. Maybe I should check Fidelity. But yeah, I was thinking I just... I wanna be able to buy those fractional shares because then I can dollar cost average because I only do 500 every two weeks so I can do 100 Microsoft, 100 Apple, 100 Roku, 200 Tesla. And I was thinking possibly adding VOO and maybe I'll do 100 each. So I won't be such... Yes, I won't be so risky. Lydia says hello. That's probably my daughter. Okay, cool. Esmeralda, are you okay? So what do you think about M1 Finance? That could satisfy, do you not like M1? I like M1, I don't like how it looks. Yeah, the aesthetic. Yeah. That's a big piece. I say this all the time. Shop around, pick the broker that you really like because at the end of the day, it needs to kind of make you happy because you're staring at it when you're monitoring. So it kind of needs to aesthetically be pleasing. The people are like, that's crazy, Ryan. But I'm being real. M1 will provide you the same access as Robinhood to the market, right? It's just, it's a little fickle and you bring up a very interesting point in that you own high price securities. It does kind of prohibit your ability. $500 is a lot of money. Let's be real, a lot of people are DCA in with 50, 100, right? M1 Finance, you could drop that down and just say, hey, here's 50, set the allocation and boom, you're good to go. But yeah, if you're, you know, the aesthetics is part of it. It's got to make you happy, you know? Yeah, yeah. I like public. It's pretty cool. Like you can go into one of the stocks and then you can see what other investors in public are doing. Not that I'm gonna listen to them, but it's pretty interesting to see. You'll see a lot of sales like lost 10%, 20% held for three hours, held for a day. And I'm just like, why'd you invest in it if you're having it for three hours? But I mean, everyone has their own strategies, their own goals. So who am I to judge? But I mean, me at least, I plan to hold on to them for a while unless, you know, I get some random idea like, oh, my portfolio is 400,000, I'm gonna pay off my house. I'm just kidding, I'm not gonna do that. But yeah, I don't know what would make someone hold it so little, but yeah, that's my own strategy. So I'm not here to judge. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. I don't even think that way. Honestly, if you're engaged in wealth building or owning real estate or growing a family or whatever it is, I'm all about it. You're not gonna hear me say, hey, you need to be doing it this way. I don't pay attention to that. I'm paying, most of the attention goes on myself, trying to figure out most of those avenues because I don't have any one of them licked. So I'm good. That's what I do. That's how I take up the majority of my time. Yeah, and I think things change over time. Like maybe your strategy changes as you all over time. I know I've changed a little bit since I started and sometimes I'm trying to figure out, do I pay off my mortgage? But if I pay off my mortgage faster, I'm only saving 3.6%, which is the interest. If I put in the stock market, I'm averaging like 20, 25% a year. But I rather have peace of mind and I'll have to feel like I have a ball and chain on my foot and stuck at this job. And I can be free and I can work at bonds if I want to. Or so it's just sometimes I go back and forth, but ultimately I want to pay off the house. I need you to do me a favor. Take some of that Lydia power and send it Lori's way. She said she had a stroke on Good Friday. She's watching the live stream from the hospital. So all the best wishes from the community, absolutely. Get well, absolutely, you know. Best wishes. We'll have you back Lori, that's for sure man. We're sending our thoughts collectively and we're a heck of a lot more powerful collectively together. I've learned that over the years, there's no doubt about it. So, and Tim says the same. I got less than a minute left Lydia. You want to say cheers to the group and I'll do my classic in outro. I don't know what I'm going to say, but it ought to be interesting. Who knows? Thank you so much for coming on, man. You rock, keep on rocking it. Yeah, I'm your biggest advocate, okay? So just keep on killing it out there. You should be very proud of yourself. Very proud. Thank you. I just want to say thank you for having me on and for you to help all these people. I really love how YouTube unites all of us and what you tell people is super valuable. And I think it's really great what you're doing. I really support your message. And again, thank you for having me on. You rock, be well. Enjoy yourself out there, all right? Okay, bye everyone. Thanks, Lydia. Fantastic. Love to have those guests on the channel. That goes to show, and I'm going to throw an invite. I'm going to try to keep this to 60, so I don't overlap with the gents. I know they're going to run their live stream as well, but that'll be the last invite. If any of you guys want to kick on with me after the stream, it's an open invite. Just click on the link and follow the soft. I think it's pretty easy to jump in the studio with me. But a big thanks to Lydia. Appreciate that. She hasn't been on the channel for a long, long time. Makes for a good live stream. It's an open invite every single Friday. I don't schedule my invites on the live stream, okay? So if you have the inkling to come on and be like, you know what, Ryan's telling me I need to step out of my comfort zone a little bit. Maybe this is what I need to do, is come on and talk with Ryan. Now, whether it be during a live stream or after the fact, no problem. Just make that initiative. Because like I said, I can't start the fire for you. I really can't. What we can do is we can really get that smoldering that's going really lit inside you. And once it's lit, you'll be good to go for the rest of your life, man. Life can be so much more fulfilling when you get this stuff taken care of. So with that, guys, I'll kick you out. I did drop the invite. We'll be back again next Friday. I'm gonna keep the streak alive, baby. I'm gonna keep the streak alive. Want to thank each and every one of you guys for kicking into the Independent Investor channel live stream. And we'll catch you next week. Have a great weekend, guys. And be well.