 Independent investor channel it is friday what's up everybody it is nine o'clock eastern standard time we keep the machine rolling oh my goodness how important is it for us to continue to keep the machine rolling why is that because evidently being an independent thinker something that escapes most people if you need to Understand what it is that you need to do about your investment strategy going forward just tune into CMBC they'll load your mind full of negative euphemisms that are aimed at getting your attention and somehow thinking that somehow long term you're going to be in a better place by second guessing what you're doing. Looking at the short to medium term and understanding that there is no hope and that the more you tune into them you need to understand that the experts will come in and they'll ball buy into the same dialogue now every now and then they'll inject with. Some sort of an investment firm that'll come in and they'll actually say we're not going to miss a 10 or 15% rally what are you talking about and they quickly shut them down and then they go back to the. You know all of the people who come in and think that the sky is falling and that they can talk about and draft and I look I can draft a narrative around anything I can disagree with. Anybody even though I know they're right some people can disagree with me even though that they may know I'm right and I know that they know that I know that I'm right we can just revolve around this. Talk and blah blah blah and shoot out a bunch of air from our freaking mouse we use human beings man we're funny. We're really funny people we really are we are funny. We have an uncanny knack for smelling other people's backsides all the time and it's something that just escapes me I just don't get it. I'm here to enlighten people and let them know that if you come into the independent investor channel and you want me to just tell you what it is that is the answer to life and you can take said answers and go and succeed. I'm here to tell you I'm full of shit too just like you are and everybody else out there in the world we're all full of shit. At least I'm one that come on and just actually admit the fact that if you can acknowledge that there are people out there that do not have your best interest in mind. And that the number one advocate for your own personal initiative your own personal objective in life your number one advocate that's going to look out for you and your family is not the pundits on CNBC. No my friends it's not even your good friend with Ryan with the independent investor channel although you'd be surprised at the level of my devotion. The very person that is going to have your best interest in minds my friends is you and I'm the only one who talks in the way that I talk in putting personal responsibility at the forefront. Okay you want to come on get some really good insights on what it is I deploy because I don't get it I don't give a shit what other people think I don't care I really don't care. I spend the majority of my time not looking at others and not judging what other people should do or what people are doing and and how what it is that I do makes more sense than what they do. And that if those people did what I did they would be happier in their life even though deep down inside I'm really not that happy. But if they did what I did because it appears as if I'm really really happy and I've got all the answers to life that somehow if you copy what I do you'll be good to go. Put that your pipe and smoke it. I like saying that it's kind of funny. But I tell you what you would be convinced if you were weak in the mind that you are it is in your best interest right now to become a bond investor. What should I do CMBC should I sell all my portfolio and just put it all into bonds because I have a guaranteed rate of return of 5%. Now mind you the 5% seems really really attractive and it's like juicy man people are frothing at the mouth after 2022 having a down year of what 20% people are frothing at the mouth they're like oh my God 5% Jesus Christ I have to fall all over myself to get that 5% not to realize that to actually realize that 5% rate of return over your bond portfolio they failed to mention that you actually have to own your portfolio for 365 days. Yeah you got to own it for a year. And in that meantime you're suggesting to me that in that 365 days from this date to then that markets don't have a chance to I don't know do something that they have been accustomed to doing to investors over the last 120 year 100 years. 100 years and that is proving us dipshit human beings wrong. We're really good at a lot of stuff we are horrible at investing or freaking horrible or horrible we're absolutely stupid. I don't know what it is about people that would have them think that somehow they need to live their investment thesis in the short and medium term. I don't know tell me I'm wrong I'm in a saucy mood tonight whip that ass mood. Tell me I'm wrong. I think the world would be a lot better off if people would just resonate with this idea that I have that standing on your own two feet is so much better than trusting the whims of others. Buying into certain philosophies that others might suggest even CNBC right interest rates are going up by bonds the housing market is crashing the labor markets are still strong and that's a bad thing. I can go figure. Everything is too expensive right now which means the S&P is too expensive. Okay the reality is if you take the top 25% off of the S&P 500 which is your Google your meta your Tesla right those companies make up the top 25% you take those off those P.E. ratios off the S&P 500. The remaining 75% in the S&P 500 is trading for 14 times forward earnings. And if you paid attention to financial markets the top 25% of the S&P 500 has come off in certain cases like Amazon north of 50%. Is the Nasdaq a buy? Well certainly it was a buy three years ago when it fit the narrative right when it was going sky high. There were people out there telling you to buy the Nasdaq all over the place not understanding that tech does this. It does this every now and then it usually doles out some humble pie every 10 years and reminds investors that being an investor in technology is not for the faint of heart. Now I invested in Nasdaq I think it's fantastic. I think it's one of the top five investments that you can actually make passively in this life 100%. But right now people who are invested in tech are just getting absolutely crushed and I'm not going to apologize for that. It's actually okay. I want to put a quote up here I want to talk about it a little bit it's going to drive a little bit of conversation tonight. It's something that was put on Twitter and it was actually put on by somebody that I actually really respect and I'm going to read it to you. I'd rather make a few which means a couple. Okay well informed concentrated investments and lose everything. This got my attention when it came through because again this was by somebody that produces content that I really really respect. And if you catch my tone from pushing this out there I want to drive some thought for you guys as well as to what you think. Okay don't be jaded by what it is that I'm going to interpret and share with you on my perspective on this. Derive your own opinion on what you actually think about this and again if you feel guilty about earning a living and going to your job every day. That's on you I certainly don't I went to work today I feel fine. Okay then the alternate diversify and guarantee a life of mediocrity. I don't know the source of where this comes from. I don't know if the individual comes from money or not. But I sure as I sure as hell know where I come from. Okay I don't come from money. Okay I don't come from money. Growing up without money doesn't mean that I'm somehow less than somebody with money. Let's just get that out of the way right now. There's some people in my group here that are millionaires. I love them to death. Money doesn't define the level of respect that I show to you or the level of reciprocity that we can share as human beings with regard to our specific approaches to life. Full well knowing that I've got Chris and the group here you know he's been with me for a long long time. He's a friend of the channel. He's a friend of mine I've never met him in person but he's a friend of the channel and he's a friend of mine. We have different thoughts and approaches on how we go about tackling this gig. Okay and this would seem to suggest somehow that I deserve to be judged because I have chosen a life of mediocrity. Now this isn't my words. This is my presumed sell out in life because I work a job. I'm at liberty to say I serve my country. That's about as detailed as I'll go this evening. But it gives you a little bit of insight in the fact that I take a little bit of pride and ownership over my job. I love my job. I search for minutes in my day because I don't have enough to complete the level of productivity at my job that I need with the minutes that I have. That's a sign of somebody who really really loves their job. Now let me put a little context around this. If you're growing up and you're 16 years old and you grow up and say my goodness my dream is to make $75,000 a year. That's my end all be all dream. I can understand how I would deem that somewhat realistic. However outside of the scope of what this new generation somehow seems is less than adequate. And there I would suggest in the realm of mediocrity by pursuing a regular job, a career, lots of careers out there. Engineering, electrical, truck driver, doctor, healthcare, whatever it is, lawyer, whatever it is that you choose accounting I could go on and on. Lots of really really cool professions out there. But when I read this I thought what a judgmental piece of shit. Do you do this to people? Do you do you as a group right since I challenge you and it's you know being part of the independent investor channel live stream isn't about just sitting back and not having me grab you by the ears and shake the shit out of you for a while. Okay, get your attention. Get your thinking right that this is part of the problem of where we are as a society now. I'm not truly understanding that there are people around this earth that would kill absolutely kill for the opportunity that we have here and we bastard eyes with this type of dialogue and would suggest somehow that somebody needs to be demoralized for choosing the individual path that they've chosen. The choosing of my profession came out of a place of fairly a fairly dark place. I always suggest that I opted into my profession half depressed. There's some truth to that. There really is. I often say that my profession saved my life, saved my life. And when you taste success, having come from a place like that, and then you read comments like this that somehow you can scoff at the very idea of pursuing a life of mediocrity. And again, this is a very big comment. I don't know if the threshold of mediocrity is less than $100,000. I don't know anything less than 100,000. You're a peon and a bad person and you don't need to even open your trap or talk to anybody or even enjoy life because you are in fact running in the minutia, which is the quicksand of your life. Only to die a lonely and feudal death at some point down the line because you make evidently a threshold that's not up to the standards of what society would say that you need to make to be considered happy in this life. Okay. Here's the next statement. This is the same tweet. A life of corporate slavery. Getting me. Like, as if we've just teleported ourselves back to 1863 in this very country, which isn't that long ago, my friends, where this was an actual reality. And so to use this as a comparative metric is irresponsible and probably shows the the attempt at intellectual communication. But lacks it. Here's the interesting part about it. Behold into the whims of others where retirement at 65 is assured might be even older by then. It gets into a little bit of like preachers mentality that that somehow me working for a salary is somehow something that needs to be frowned upon. I took some pretty good offense to this. I really did in a very, very calm way. Not as it reflects to me, but as it contrasts to the lack of awareness to the very criticism that this was pointed at and how off base it was with actually how happy I am and how full I am and how content I am. And how I can come on and do a Friday live stream and my motive is not anything that has anything to do with monetary. It has everything to do with my desire to give back. That's a very, very special, very, very powerful thing. And it is a very, very rare thing in this world anymore, my friends. It's very, very rare. Now I make money through social media, but it does not define the level of happiness that I have in life. You want to know what does? Stand by, I'll tell you. My spouse, my wife, my children, right there at the top. So while I'm living in this life of corporate slavery, I'm actually being able to provide them without a whole lot of worry. A life of opportunity and ensure that those opportunities are not necessarily open as far as the door, but remain open for them to walk through at their leisure. Family, friends, extended family, that type of thing, exercise. It's something that I did again five days a week, man. I was there every single day. I will go in tomorrow. I have some work obligation to take care of tomorrow because I'm a slave of corporate slavery beholden to the whims of others. I'm beholden to the whims of others. Absolutely. The irony in that is staunch and smelly. I run the independent investor channel and I am actually beholden to the whims of you guys every single Friday. Who forced me to come in here, chains bonded in slavery to provide you guys the very wisdom that I have bestowed upon me to bestow upon you as a sacred pact and oath of utter sanctity through the independent investor channel live stream. And I know that you sit around and just slobber yourself to come and listen to me drone on about how I have all this infinite wisdom and therefore you should take said wisdom and go and do great things for yourself. I enjoy rest and I enjoy vacations. The very opportunity that I have to take a vacation and oh, by the way, it's paid vacation. Okay. So I have plans this summer to skedaddle to Europe. Right. I'll be over in Croatia. Okay. Be going to Europe. Be going to Italy before Venice actually goes underwater. I did see the Notre Dame before it caught fire. And the beauty for me is that yes, I got to see it. See, I'm not a selfish person. My two young children who at the time were below 10 years old actually got to see it at a very young age. Provided by the very fact that I'm a corporate slave beholden to the whims of others. Right. Showing my kids Notre Dame before it burned down. I plan on having some of the same experience here coming into this summer. And oh, by the way, I'll be paid by these very slaves here while I'm on vacation sipping probably ruby red wine. Absolutely. It goes very, very well with the Mediterranean flow as well as some of the fresh fish and catch of the day that I'll probably be enjoying while I'm over there. I'm not a rich man, my friends. And I'm here to tell you that that's all right. It's the very appreciation. And I use that word a lot on the live stream and I hope it resonates with you. If it's the greatest gift that I could ever give you in one word on the independent investor channel. It is just that it is appreciation for the finer things in life. And let me tell you, my friends, it has very little to nothing to do with money. I often talk about disconnecting from your money and trying to resonate toward those things that truly matter. And if they matter to you because you've taken a conscious effort to identify those things in your life, your respective of what society would have you put value on. What it is they tell you you need to focus on in your life. Super, super important that you adhere to those things. Projects in the business. I love these things. I'm not really sure if I can earmark who the slaves are that own me on the independent investor channel. Again, the irony in that is very, very thick and real. But certainly if it's one of those things that I need to stop selling out to the man and shut down the project altogether. I hold the nuclear option to the independent investor channel and I can pull the plug at any time. The very cool portion about that is that I don't and I do it in the face of doing this project for the sheer desire of doing the project. All right. And the last thing is to provide and this is what a lot of people don't understand is that I would rather be broke. No, you wouldn't know you wouldn't. I often talk that financial security to avoid regret later on in your life is to succumb to a specific element or something that you cannot control. And I think some of these dipshits out there actually think that they control their heart beating or they can control the neurons that are firing in your brain constantly. And we're all human beings and so to unfortunately succumb to the whims of life. Unfortunately, and sometimes fortunately, at least for folks like myself and even more so for the people that I support can actually seek those remedies and do so with the comforts of having insurance provided. See, that's the shallow piece to the statement in understanding that I would rather be broke. Again, I don't know where the source of this came from. I don't know where the person came from if they actually come from a place of no money. But I tell you what, I have. I have. And I think there's a lot of people that can actually relate to that. And if you enjoy coming from a place of no money, let me know. Let me know. Say, hey, Ryan, I love being broke. Me. I'll never go back and to somehow throw that out there as a catchphrase to people to get people's attention to say that the best thing to do is to put it all on the line to not diversify your assets because you're going to live a life of mediocrity. My friends, I have a half a million dollars in the bank. So again, I would challenge the author of those statements to suggest what it is that I could reach as a threshold to somehow step into that upper echelon of people that are actually enjoying life, right? And break out of this society of lemmings that I live in here, this society of mud people that I dwell in every day and rub shoulders with. My brain dead brethren, right? That I rub shoulders with and then slave to the man. I'd like to know what those thresholds of success really are. I'm all ears, guys. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'll be back with you in just a moment. It's just so it's so negative all the time. Negative. Don't fight the Fed. There's a no landing scenario looming. That was the first one that I heard today. See, I watched CNBC for 10 minutes a day. It's my free preview and it's pretty good because I can catch the ticker tape, which is all I care about. I just can care less about the really, really smart morons that come on to CNBC and talk about the market. They're really, really smart people, but I tell you what, man, I could have like a bit really big rock in front of me. And I could spend my entire life staring at the rock and studying its composition and really getting down into the weeds about the shade of grey that the said rock is. And spend my life study in determining how old the rock is and write parables about the rock and come up with algorithms on the circumference of the rock and the diameter and the density of said rock. And I could write theories about the rock. And at the end of the day, it's still an effin rock. That's sometimes the way I feel brain dead after watching CNBC because, man, these people are really, really good at talking in circles. At the end of the day, you get to tune into me and I get the cut to the chase for you. Okay, nothing of what is said in the short to medium term or long term should have any impact whatsoever on your financial savings, your financial savvy, your discipline, your spending habits, none of it. You want to be a participant in the stock market? By all means floodgates are open. It's not some elusive paradise that only the few can enjoy anymore. It's not like that. We're going to have a soft landing. Are we going to have a soft landing or a hard landing? Or are you part of the no landing club? I heard that today. That was, that was rich. I'm thinking of myself. What is the no landing club? I have no idea. Are interest rates going to continue to go up? I don't know. Probably. Who cares? Who cares? We've come out of a decade where the interest rates were arbitrarily low. We gave everybody in this country free money. I said while that was going on that we would pay for it. We are paying for it now, my friends. If you want to pull the silver spoon back out of your ass, okay, realize, okay, that nothing is for free. Nothing is for free. I know you were all excited about those checks. I invested every one of them. I didn't need it. I didn't need pandemic relief. I didn't need it. I was happy. I didn't get sick and die. I didn't need relief. I'm good. I invested every dime I got from the government because I knew I was going to pay for it on the back end. And I have, I have 10 fold. What do they give me? 10 grand? I'm down 100 grand. Go figure. The second you can come full circle on this deal, man, and realize the people in general outside of your bubble need to be put in their place. You'll be, you'll be so much more happy. You'll own part of this community like no other. I shared the link up at the top here to my Patreon group. That is growing. I thank you for the support. That's fantastic. If you did want to drop in there and show some support to the channel, that'd be awesome. I sent out my first newsletter this week. I'm offering it to the live stream patrons. They can just send me their email. You'll be added to the distribution list and I'll include you on that. This week I provided the top seven brokers out there. Very useful because I linked everything into the newsletter. So all you have to do is just link over to what I feel are the top brokers out there. I've saved you a lot of homework. This is a data collection from my group of independent investors, part of the community here. And I've put it on a one page document. You can save it in your tools and you can use it. You can help others with that. Just send me your email. I'll fire you over the newsletter. I've been glad to do that. I've been hit up almost every single day for my portfolio from M1 Finance. That's a lot of fun too. Remember that offer is green. It's no problem. Instead of analyzing the rocks, I like to kick them over for you. And that's just another one. I know people are enjoying that as I am. I got paid a dividend this morning. I think it was I erased it. I erased those emails, but it's cool. I get a dividend email every single morning. I own 97 stocks in there. 97 times 4. A quarterly dividend per stock four times per year is about 400 dividend payments. The average salary in the world is $9,000 a year. I probably make $9,000 a year by doing absolutely nothing. But again, I'm a slave to the man, right? And I have beseeched the wisdom of said wisdom of the minds and the concepts, the depths and the breads. It's just like shut up. People are crazy, man. Proper 19s in the house, man. Max the IRA, that's very cool. That's a habit of the independent investor community. One of those things like appreciation that I talk about that you can adhere to spending discipline habits. You know, the very desire to want to just get ahead and say, hey, I'm going to put my foot down and I'm going to get ahead like right now. If you're one of those investors that are trying to pursue your first $10,000, great. If you're one of those investors that by nature of the motivation you get on the channel to pursue that first $10,000 and have made it, right, that's the key. Some of you have actually pursued the higher levels, $25,000, $50,000, $100,000, right? It's just a whole idea of breaking down these thresholds of wealth. This is one of those tried and true fundamentals of wealth building that cannot be overlooked because it is absolutely in line with one of our fundamental premises and that is to tax protect money from the government at all costs, right? Since I work for the man, okay, and I don't really care about money, but it certainly doesn't define my happiness and it certainly doesn't define my success in this life. I'm going to give my children a bunch of tax protected money and they can do whatever they want with it. They'll do good things with it. They'll do good things with the earth for the earth and for mankind and probably contribute to the world in such a good way that escapes a lot of people, right? And they'll do so on the back of the legacy that I create and that's the deeper, wiser perspective to go about this thing. Ryan, you're missing the point. Shoot for the stars. All right. Shoot for the stars. Go for the big box because you'll be happy if you do. Really? I've been happy ever since I can remember. Ever since I was a little kid, I still have the same brain. I'm 45 years old now and I have more fun the older I get. I mean, the more fun that I get, I will go out of this life kicking and screaming, having a blast. It's fun. It's fun for all the reasons that I talk about from morning until night. I can't tell you a whole lot about the restful rest that I get at night, but I'm pretty certain that that's pretty fun too because I wake up pretty well rested and I wake up at 4 or 45 every single morning. I don't know. That might be a secret of the pros. I don't know. Get up ultra early and start your day while others are sleeping it away. I don't care. You do whatever you want. I don't care. That's good to see it proper, man. Very cool stuff. Got some new comments at the bottom here, but like I said, I left that link, I think, in the top. Yeah, it's at the top of the thread here for the Patreon group. You guys can join that at your leisure for anybody who joins the Viper Group into this year. That is the new product is the newsletter. And it's going to be a compounding newsletter where I actually declare some of the 401k values, some of the specific accounts that I have and the values that are attached to that. I don't mind sharing that stuff. No problem. Since I'm a slave to the man, it doesn't matter anyway because I'm an unhappy bastard. So I might as well share that free of charge through my newsletter to anybody who joins my group and joins my newsletter subscription. If you go over to the independentinvestorgroup.com, that's independentinvestorgroup.com. If you don't want to remember that, just click into the YouTube channel and right there on the front page with the neon green subway. Right to the right. If you click over to the link to the website, go all the way to the bottom of the page. Add your email in there. I will add you to my distro group and you'll be pulsed in with the community. And we'd love to have you. It's just that simple kind of a cool initiative. There are all kinds of different feelers that I want to put out there for the channel, but there's only one of me. I don't have an empire working for me. Remember, I work for the slaves, right? I'm one of the slaves of the man, right? Being consumed by the system, the great system that's taken me in and provided me all this libation that you see around me. Boy, I tell you what, I'm suffering. What? Are you kidding me? I'm like a kid in a candy store. Good grief. I mean, I got to come on and act all intense, crazy, but deep down inside, I am one happy, I am one happy fella. And happiness is generated from a lot of different sources. That's for sure. Productivity, the value of the work that you feel like you do for people when they truly say, man, hey, thank you so much for the time. I spent this week actually in some training initiatives with some of my colleagues from another city, Philadelphia. And I think they appreciated it. I think I don't know. I just basing that decision on the feedback that I got personally. And some people might have hated it, but it's all good. And I did it willingly. I get a lot of appreciation out of doing that, a lot of real satisfaction from doing that on my job. Some of the things that I wish the younger generation would listen to me. At 45 years old, man, I can tell you, I'm right. And if you've been there before and you've been without opportunity and you feel like in your life, you're down to desperation because you don't have a lot of opportunity. Look at me. I'm a smart guy. I'm not. I'm not a stupid guy. I got straight A's in college. I didn't drop out of college. I had to leave because I didn't have the money to pay. Neither did my mom and dad. I had to leave. I got straight A's. I would have kicked that ass in college. No problem. So, man, do really well in college. You'll do well in life. No, you won't. That has nothing to do with anything. Nothing. Some of those people out there that just breeze their way through college because their mom and dads, they come from a trust fund and all they have to do is show up to class. That's easy. That doesn't mean you're going to be successful in life. I hate to break it to you. College is fun. I had a good time, but I kicked that ass. I got straight A's. I took lots of oligies. Sociology, psychology, philosophy, all kinds of cool stuff. What can I say? Look at me now. I'm a slave to the man. Damn brands in the house, man. Very cool. Very cool, Mr. Brad. Appreciate you. Welcome to the message. Please drop your email. I'll send you that subscriber group and everything. If you want to hit the website, you can register there. You don't have to even bother with the email, but the subscription on the Shopify site makes it easy for me to categorize, and that way people can kind of control what it is. If they want me barking up their tree with my newsletter, they can say, no, I don't want to, or they can opt out of it. I don't know. I don't control a whole lot. Remember, I'm a slave to the man, so it doesn't really matter anyway, right? Love the Friday Nights. I've been following for years. We've been doing the project a bit anyway. It's gone by quick. In retrospect, five years really isn't that long of a time, but look at how, when I started doing YouTube, my portfolio was around $79,000. When I started doing YouTube five years ago, $79,000. I've been sitting on getting close to $500,000. I've been in a little bit of a battle for the last couple of years with that $500,000 mark. I make it, and then I retract off of it. I'm in kind of no man's land right now, and if I'm going to play into that seven-figure mark, which I will, I will. And if I don't, I'm cool with that too. Again, because the very philosophies that I talked to you guys about when the decision is made to purchase a house in the capacity that I want to purchase the house, I will make it in the best decision in the moment when the opportunity exists for me to do so, right? But investing has set me up to make those decisions in the greatest capacity that I can, right? I'm not going to go out and be like, I have to have X number of square footage, 10,262 square feet, nine bedrooms, and six and a half baths at the minimum. Otherwise, you're a bitch-ass slave. No, I'm not going to draw any kind of thresholds. I would challenge the author of that comment to provide back to me those minimum thresholds so I can aspire to those limits and actually come on to YouTube and profess that I am indeed entered into and woke into the land of happiness. I have emerged from this depressed state of living as a slave. No, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. But the fact of the matter is I could go buy a house right now far, far nicer than what a lot of people think they can afford. But what are you suggesting? Are you suggesting I need that for happiness? I don't. I'm going to continue to work my project. Look at this, man. It's great, man. This is the very reason why I did the project, the appreciation from people like Dan who come on and express their appreciation for the project. And that's all cool because I try to give you guys what I would appreciate if I was in your shoes by watching the content and understanding that I'm trying to be received in the way that I want to be received if I was on the receiving end myself of the delivery of the message that I'm looking to deliver to the very patrons of the message. And that is to have some ownership, to understand that my way of approaching this is to find your own personal best in this life. You do have very, very unique things to offer. We have perspectives that we bring to the table that are very, very important. If you put me on a project individually, I will achieve X results. You put me and this guy on a project at the same time. We produce 3X the results even though there's two of us working on the project. Now, collectively, if we're all part of the same community and we start to really identify with this thing that CMBC does not have our best interest in mind. These dipshits that are on Twitter, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, do not have your best interest in mind. They don't. These little catchphrases that people are throwing out there. Dividend Scooter and Dividend Backseat Investor and Big Bitch Dividend. It's incredible. Dividends to the moon and dividends to the T and dividends to the core and dividends to the death. Now, look, you want to invest in some dividends, man, do it. Matt does it. Matt understands that you're probably going to underperform the S&P. Seeking out some dividend income doesn't mean it's wrong. You just have to make an informed decision. My life of mediocrity because I choose to diversify. The sheer irony in that is that I could trip and fall into my $100,000 Corvette on Monday if that's what I chose to do. Because evidently, that speaks to the fact that I'm not happy because I don't drive a sports car around. I drive a pretty nice Tacoma, 2019 Tacoma four-wheel drive, which I would choose over any vehicle out there. I absolutely love that vehicle. Just the little things about getting up in the morning and getting into my truck and driving a mile to the gym makes me happy. I'm happy about it. But yeah, I scoff at the idea. I think we need to be digging a little bit deeper in our philosophy and perspective about life in that maybe we need to be looking for things that make us happy. Instead of seeking some arbitrary level of success monetarily in our life. Thinking that somehow in the eyes of society, I can finally be deemed somebody that's not a slave to the man. And I can now go from being unhappy to now happy. Because some YouTuber that I have no idea who they even are, where they come from, what motivates them, or what type of wisdom they're truly working with is trying to put something catchphrase out there that's supposed to influence me. Or somehow get my attention about what I should be doing and point out what I'm not doing at the specific time and place in life. We're all lucky winners. We're all lucky. All of us. You're all living life, man. Cheers to you, man. Good evening. The second you can realize that the better off you'll be, man, we should just sell it all. Just sell it all, man. Just sell it all and you'll be happy that you did so. Okay. It will be like a release that you've never had before. All right. I'm making an analogy. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. For all you alpha males out there in the room, like myself. Yeah. Just sell it all. Good to see you, Matt. Thanks for coming. Matt's like VIP on the channel, man. He's been supporting the message an awful long time, man. Real cool. The network is very, very powerful. And like I said, that analogy of working together as a community to build those small pieces. See, for a lot of people that passive diversified base is what's going to allow them to build wealth over time and have a little bit of a nest egg put forward by reducing fees, tax protecting, doing all the stuff that I talk about that's not secret. It's not magic. It's not magic at all. Where people would have you believe that the magic recipe is some algorithmic, scientific, strategic formula that you put over investing and that to gain access to said formula, you've got to send thousands and thousands of dollars of your hard earned money to get access to this algorithm that you can plug into your portfolio and automatically guarantee outperformance for the rest of your life. The reality is that doesn't, it doesn't exist. Your access to the S&P 500. I mean, you could buy a no fee TF, very low fee index fund, you know, a product and exchange traded fund that's going to cost you 0.03%. I mean, I can't tell you it's free because it's not okay. Yeah, it's not free, Ryan. God dang it, I got you, son of a bitch. Misleading people to the VOO, you bastard, SPY, right? It's Matt's favorite. Missing the point before splitting hairs over why it is that we do what we do and why we continue to footstown. Hell, I don't care. Buy IVV for all I care. I don't care. It'll get you to the same end if you pick your horse and you identify the power of where that could put you in 20 or 30 years. If you do what I talk about with regard to infusing, I talk about nurturing your investment portfolio. I'm going to invest $500. I tell you what, okay, all right, Ryan, you're real motivating. You're a real motivating guy. You seem to be a complete dipshit that you said you got 500 grand. There's this moron. I'm the smartest guy in the shed, man. How does this moron get this net worth? And I can't do it. I'm doing it, Ryan. Monday, I'm in. I'm going to put $500 in the S&P 500 and I'm going to monitor that and I'm going to monitor it. And I tell you what, Ryan, if I don't have $500,000 by next year with that $500 investment, man, I'm coming after you, Ryan. I'm going to come in and I'm going to join your live stream and I'm going to badmouth you if you haven't turned my $500 into $500,000. Just back the truck up and truly understand that I'm here to tell you that the majority of an investor's career and Matt can back me up on this. Here, I'll throw this for your viewing pleasure. Matt will back me up on this. The very evolution of an investor is such that you'll look at your portfolio. I know me and Matt. We monitor the markets every single day. We're stewards of the market. We like it. We're dorks. We're fine. But there's not a time in the acute that you don't look at your investments and be like, I should be doing better or it doesn't feel like I'm doing as well as I should. Or what can I do to do better? Or am I not doing enough with the portfolio? Should I be pressing in some areas? Should I be taking often some areas, right? I'm going through this deliberation of maybe I'm not doing as good as I think. And then I step back and I'm like, hold on a second. Now, just like what this guy said, he said, I'm a dumb bastard, tunes into me every single Friday. And he's like, again, this blue collar moron, right? This slave to the man has got a pretty good sizable net worth. What gives? Okay. What is the deal? And the very fact of the matter is, and I disclose this every single Friday, building wealth is mental. It's mental. Where a lot of people will look at the surface level of the, the material of money. I haven't had cash in my wallet for months. I do that to prove a point. Yeah, today, today was an update in the market about $5,700 bill today. $5,700 bill. Would you like me to pad my wallet and stuff 800, 900, 1200, $1,800 in my wallet? So I can somehow, I can open it up at the supermarket and I can, I can show everybody in the line. Yeah, I can lean into it and show people how I've got some physical greenbacks in my, in my wallet. No, no. Come on. Separate from your money. Separate. The money's fine. And monitor the portfolio every single day, man, it'll feel like you're not getting ahead. But sometimes I have to step back and be like, all right, wow. You know, where have we come in five years and where is it that we could potentially go in five years? Now, that is the question. That's the question you got to be answering for yourself. If this motivates you great. Okay. But the idea to take 500 and do everything you can possibly do to pick your shots. Right now, nobody's investing in the stock market with any type of confidence away. Confidence is gone out of the market. Listen to CNBC. They'll tell you, you should be running for the hills and nose diving into your prepper bunkers and getting those MREs ready. Interest rates are going to go up another 75 basis points. So, so what? You should transition your portfolio. I tell you what, man, bonds have been the kicking post for the last five decades. Bonds have been the kicking post. Why? Because they've drastically underperformed. If people have entered bonds over the last 50 years, they have drastically underperformed the market by hundreds and hundreds of percent, hundreds and hundreds of percent. They would not have been aligned with the product necessary to reach financial goals for the vast majority of investors. And now in 2023, in this era of technological advancement, companies like Google, Tesla, on the forefront of revolutionizing what we do, cloud computing, AI. There's companies out there doing some fantastic things. And you want me to do what? So come to a 5% rate of return in fixed income? Who's with me? I'm with you, Ryan. I'm with you. Let's all just transition our portfolios into fixed income, and we will be slaves to the man. I can guarantee you we will regret that. I guarantee 20 years you'll be like, damn, you remember that year 2023 when all the dipshits on CNBC were saying, sell all your portfolio and invest in bonds to get your 5% rate of return per year. Yeah. Wow. That was really worked out. The S&P now is approaching 100,000, right? And I missed the boat. Boy, I tell you what, I sure wish I could go back in time to that 2023 when nobody in the right mind was talking about the investment opportunity. I talk about the investment opportunity. Yep. And I kind of put my money where my mouth is sometimes because I do, in fact, invest and I'm not selling my entire portfolio to opt into the bond opportunity. Okay. I'm not. I invest and I've been buying and I've been buying for the last 24 months. It's been fun. So what? I buy and buy the market. I got some cash. I had some cash. I'm earning cash. Remember, I'm a slave to the man. Right. Right. So, you know, if I can just continue to keep my back. Okay. Keep the whip off of it. I'll be all right. Still continuing to work for the man and buffering this incredible downturn in the market while I fortify my prepper bunker. Right. So funny. Oh my God. Here's a certified shareholder. Fantastic. Okay. It's nice to see a new Friday street going again about Canadian investing. Fantastic. All right. Welcome to the independent investor channel. Fantastic. Canadian investing. Yeah. At certified. Yep. No. All right. Ryan is on one pure facts. It's up to you. Awesome. Hey, great to see you, man. Thanks for coming in. In all actuality, man. I call this the fastest 60 minutes on YouTube and it sure does go fast for me, man. But if you pay attention, maybe it takes some nuggets away. You realize that, man, the quicker you come, I didn't know. Look, say maybe I'm self centered. The independent investor channel is an opportunity for me to give back for 60 minutes because I spend the majority, if not the vast majority of the time focused on me. Yeah, focused on me. I whip that ass all week. I come on. I whip some ass, give them back. Yeah, whip some ass. It's all good. Look at yourself in the mirror and whip that ass for you. Whip that ass. You don't get results tomorrow. Don't come and blame me. Keep whipping that ass until you start to identify that decisions that you made years ago start to materialize now. That's what the dividend to me. It's a, it's a bolt of, it's a bolt of dopamine right to the head to say at some point I bought that stock a while back and it just paid me a dividend. Wow. Right on. Thank you, Medtronic. Thank you, Coca-Cola. Thank you, Pepsi Home Depot. Fantastic. Thank you, Duke Energy. Thank you, Enbridge. Thank you, Exxon Mobil. Thank you. Right. It's just, it's a nice little piece of good news. It makes me a hell of a lot happier than the spam that I get. Ryan, collaboration efforts. I get that every single day now, my friends. Yeah. I swap flies for you. Okay. Now the dividend email makes me happy. I think it was like maybe a dollar, $1.97. I only got paid one dividend. Sometimes I get dividends that are like, yeah, you got $80 in dividends. One day. Well, one freaking day, baby. I remember when I was, I was 12, I got my first job. It was at a landscaping depot. I made $5. It was under the table too. Non-tax. So if the IRS ever comes back to me, I probably owe, I don't know, about $50,000 on that. I don't know, $125. I don't remember on picking weeds in the Nandinas, right? In the 110 degree weather, right? Now, might I remind you, I still am a slave to the man and I'm owned and I'm suppressed as a free individual in a free country to get paid that dividend almost on a daily basis. Remember, I'm on an average of a dividend a day, right? 400 dividends per year. It's humbling. Demonstrate the power of the stock market to people as we duplicate those efforts. And people hit me up and they're like, Ryan, can you send the dividend portfolio over to me? Now, not only am I rendering those dividends, but the 10 people who have asked me for the portfolio are rendering those same dividends. And the 50 people that have asked for that portfolio are also rendering those dividends. And the 100 people who have gained access to my portfolio are also being paid those dividends. From what? The philosophy of getting involved with a few speculative names. That if I just lost everything, I'd be okay with that. That somehow if I got onto YouTube and jumped up and down that this is the way, this is the way that Mandalorian was just released this week, guys catch it. It's pretty badass. But if I got on and I said, no, no, just pick a few stocks. If you end up just wiping your ass on the sidewalk because you have no money for toilet paper, it's your fault, right? Because remember, we were shooting for the stars and we didn't want to live a life of mediocrity. Okay, right? Now I take my program any day and twice on Sunday because I know that people out there are getting paid those J&J dividends. They're out there getting paid those proctor and gamble dividends. This is just the dividend aspect. The passive aspect. I know that over the long term, the S&P 500 is going to turn that rate of rate of return over foreign excess of 5%. Let me go out on a whim. That's the investing risk that we take. That is the very opportunity that you seek is to outperform the any other idea that you can get in a high interest savings account or a money market account or something of that nature. If you want to be passive with your program, investing isn't something that you have to fight your way into. Excuse me. Anybody can invest. That's the beauty of it, all right? You think I'm really smart because I have the ability to catch an email that pays me a dividend? No, no, no. I just have the savvy enough to align the stars in a way that puts the dollars in the place and the assets in the place and the capacity that I put it in place to render those dividends back to me. I put my money in a position to work for me and I go so far as to actually share it with people. And let me tell you what, I can be rest assured that those people are enjoying that success just like me. I can feel confident in sharing that opportunity with people. And I sleep easy at night knowing that we're making a difference as small as it might be for people. It gets people into that habitual idea of having their money work for them. And 400 shots of dopamine in the positive way. That's a gift that I'll give to my subscriber base anytime, all right? This is why we do what we do. This is why we do what we do, my friends. I've got about a minute left here. I use PSA to store my cash. Yields 48. That's awesome. And Tennis, great to see you, my friend. Very cool stuff. Quite a few comments in here, man. Holy smokes. Great stuff. Ryan's mother leaves the wife. We'll secretly just keep working. Very cool stuff, guys. It was an awesome live stream. There was quite a group in here tonight. Very cool. It's been a while. It's been a while. The stream is starting to catch a little fire. And that's good, man. I really appreciate that. You know, it means a lot to me. We go through these swoons in the market where not everybody's as excited about investing in the stock market. And I get it. I get it. People typically don't want to pay attention to something that's so negative all the time. But I tell you what, if you can really take this insight from me, that's the very time that you need to be paying attention to financial markets. You'll learn that over time. I'm right. I'm not asking you to absolutely resonate with that idea, but I'm right. And the quicker you can get to that end in really looking for opportunities in financial markets when they're out there, that is super key. I want to get to this comment at the very bottom. Thad's in the house. Sorry, you're getting a ninth inning call out, my friend, but I really appreciate you making your way in. Thanks, guys. I own SEHD as I do. YM is a very good product. I have owned it. I don't currently own it. And VIG I own in my Roth IRA. And Noble is also a phenomenal fund. And loading up on JEPI, JEPI is great too, because of the 12% dividend. Just wondering if it's too good to be true. No, it's not. That's a good fund. I know what their strategic angle is. I like it better than fixed income, which I think they're going after JEPI's, the short call. Matt knows more about this than I do. But I think it's pretty good. Haven't invested. I've owned it. I think I'm really going for it. Yeah, I think that's it. I think it's a good fund based on what I've heard. I've never owned it myself, but I appreciate you coming in and making your way to the live stream. Work our way up here. Becky's in the house. Becky's a viper, long-term viper. She has the power bestowed upon her. And she used to work for the man, but she doesn't work for the man anymore. She's retired now, sipping margaritas. And I'm sure if she had it all to do over again, she'd probably do it the same way. And she lives without regret, which is something that I want to share with you guys. And it's a little bit more deeper in my perspective and trying to achieve a little bit of wisdom on the channel and really understanding through conversing with beautiful people. Becky's a phenomenal person. Take it from me. We've talked and we've met, we've talked over Zoom and she's just a phenomenal person. Take little injects of success like that. And when I share it and I contrast it against a judgmental statement like that that catches my attention through Twitter, I go back to my base of a lot of people like Becky who are like, hold on a second. I'm fine. I'm happy. We worked hard. We worked hard as a couple. And here we are, man. We're enjoying our life. And that's really what it kind of comes down to. And I think to have that financial security, I don't want to speak for her. It is something that I would rather opt for and really put on a guaranteed path rather than just frivolously living my life and putting everything on a lottery ticket. I think that's probably in everybody's best interest. And I try to find those common themes in investing that are applicable to the masses. It doesn't do any good for me to come on and talk about the moon shots. I know that's what everybody wants. Everybody wants that. And that's totally fine. I have a very, very acute perspective that understands I'm going to give you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear all the time. And I know that there's masses out there who want me to tell them how to get to that $500,000 next week. I can't do that. What I can do is I can tell you how inevitably to get to that $500,000, and my friends, that's a hell of a lot more powerful than trying to rely on a moon shot for something as important as your own personal, financial health and personal, financial future. Guys, thank you so much. I really appreciate you tuning in to the fastest 60 minutes on YouTube. We'll wrap it down. Have a great rest of the weekend and we will catch you next week on the Independent Investor Channel Live. Thank you.