Fact of the day.

don't know enough about them and am not licensed to give them financial advice of any kind other than to tell them to invest 10% of their gross income in their future and the future of their country from every paycheck - as early in life as they start getting a pay check - by putting the money into an S&P Index fund like Vanguard VFIAX or and ETF like ishares IVV.  A 401 K where your company matches 3-4% it is perfect but otherwise in a Roth or traditional IRA.  As their wealth grows, they can then spread some into International, Emerging Markets, small caps and mid caps - about 10% each but still all Index funds or ETF index.  Anyone can become a millionaire by the time they retire if they do this.  It is the only sure fire way I know to become one too.  Oh to be young again .....and not as stupid as I was.......

I don't invest that way at all though and do not mind telling folks what I do and how I do it. In 1974 a man named Zahorchack was getting his MBA in finance from Harvard and his thesis was titled 'The Art of Low Risk Investing.'  I ran across it in 1978 and it changed my life forever.  Later he wrote a book with the same title that was not nearly as good, unnecessarily complicated, that became the basis of Quantitative Investing and had a storied Wall Street career at several firms and ended up running NASDAQ.  He also pretty much invented what hedge funds are sposed to do, but don't, and why they can't even beat any index for returns.  What financial advisers should tell folks is what I said above but they have people invest in high fee and cost mutual funds instead.   But what I do is what Zahorchack invented and I simplified and improved on over the years

My investments are divided into two main buckets.  75% are long term investments that are split into two parts. 75% is long stocks and 25% is some form of calls and or put options that are used to increase the performance of the portfolio.  If you choose your long stocks wisely.   l don't do much trading in these stocks.  My long stocks currently are:  JD, BABA, BAIDU, MSFT, CRM, WDAY, (the stocks I have added in the past 3 years), AMZN, FB, GOOG and AAPL that I have had for many years.  The portfolio is limited to the 10 stocks that I like the best at the time.

The other 25% is long triple ETF's only and include, SVXY, YINN, INDL, EDC, FAS, UBIO, ROM, SOXL and TECL.  I limit the holdings to 10 max but this fluctuates from a low of 5 - I currently only have 9.  This bucket is also split into 2 parts with 75% owning the ETF and 25% are options written to enhance the return of the portfolio.  This part, even though 1/4th the size, makes more money on a percentage basis every year than the long term one because of the tripling effect of the ETF's.  4 times a  year I re-balance the two buckets. 

Since the long stock and triple ETF holdings do not change much and the options are short term and very time sensitive, I spend my day trading options on these 19 stocks and ETF's.  It is about all I do from 7:30 AM to 2 PM but I probably only average a couple of trades a day. - hardly any work at all - just perfect for a retiree!

The great thing about these ETF's is that there are opposite, short inverse ETF's for each of them so when the market is bad and going south, like 2007-2008 or 2000-2001, you still make money by switching to them instead.  For the long stock fund, I can short my own stocks to break even in a down market and then use the 25% to buy puts and make money in the way down.  So I don't care if the market is going up or down ....what I don't want is for it do move sideways:-)

The other thing I do is put $1000 each into what are very, very risky, investments.   They have always been in very small companies in technology or biotechnology where you are trying to hit it big but will likely lose it all on 19 out of 20 of them over time.  But, every once in a very long while, your $2,000 dollars invested in bitcoin in 2014 becomes $80,000 plus the Bitcoin cash that split off from it.  But, you can't do this until you are comfortable losing 10 grand every year, year after year either.  I also invested a small amount in Etherem too, their coin us Ether,  and it is currently trading in the mid to upper $400's nothing like the return for Bitcoin - but it was over $500 today- yea!

my own Island somewhere and probably be dead!  I did buy one at $1000 in early 2014 and it promptly went down to $383 and I bought 3 more in late 2014.  So I have a whopping 4 bitcoin for an average of $537 each.  Bitcoin has lost 80% of its value on 5 separate occasions and will likely do so again several times:-)  The thing about the block chain is that it is the ultimate disruptor of every middleman between who is being paid and who is doing the paying.  The reason the banks are so against it is that it replaces everything that they do since they are the ultimate middleman in every transaction. 

The government isn't being  threatened doesn't care about block chain because they are either being paid by tax payers or paying tax money out to people or companies that sell it goods or services.  But many companies are besides banks.  Health insurance  companies between the patient and doctor or patient and hospital and drug middlemen like Walgreen's and CVS between people and drug companies.  Even the mighty Amazon stands between manufacturers and their customers is in mortal danger.  If you are a middle man then you better be worried but block chain will never cut your grass or fix something like broken plumbing or electricity in your house.