I was expecting the markets to be higher before the FED meeting but they are not. That's why I prefer not to think too much about the short-term movements of the market. The $SPX500 is down by about 0.2%. As for our portfolio, it is moving around the zero line mainly because of $AAPL being up by 0.6%. Something interesting is happening. In recent days, $SWKS has been going down while Apple has been going up. That's unusual. The reason is because there has been some insider selling their shares. Someone sold $200 k of shares on a $13 B company. Not really something worrying. I took this opportunity to buy some shares. $OIL prices continue to fall and $CXO and $PE are also falling.
For today, I want to talk a little about my experience as a popular investor. Does this affect my investments?
MANAGING OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY - My Experience 💰
Where are the customers yacht? This is the title of a book written in 1940 by Fred Schwed. It means that Walls Street asset managers are usually rich but their customers are not. I am an asset manager currently managing assets worth about $100 k for more than 100 people. How do I manage other people's money? I am a popular investor on the leading social trading network eToro. eToro is just like any online broker but it also gives you the possibility of copying the trades of other people. For example, if a popular investor opens a trade for the $GBPUSD pair and you copy that person, a trade will be open automatically in your account too. Being a popular investor on eToro doesn't mean that you are like a hedge fund manager or mutual fund manager since you don't have access to the actual funds. The funds are only used if you use your own money first. But it is still a great responsibility knowing that there are people copying me with $10 000, which is a big sum of money.
How I became a popular investor? I was just providing value for free. I was analyzing companies, posting and helping people without expecting anything in return. I had, of course, the results to speak for themselves. When I started gaining popularity, more and more people started copying my trades. The cryptocurrency bubble also helped me. I bought Bitcoin $BTC at $900 and sold at $19000. This was 5% of my portfolio. Another 5% of my portfolio was in Ethereum $ETHEREUM which I bought at $28 and sold at $750. This made me very popular and at some point, I was managing $450 k. These copiers eventually left me and I got demoted from eToro. It is not really a disappointment since as long as I keep beating the market, the results will speak for themselves. I'm currently beating the S&P 500 $SPX500 by 13.6% since I started investing in March 2016.
Being an asset manager improved my salesmanship skills. When Warren Buffett $BRK.B started his partnership, he had a rule that the partners could only put money/withdraw money on the 31st of December. He had one year to manage that money and he only had to write them one or two letters every year. Unfortunately, I don't have this possibility and I need to constantly sell my skills as an investor. Fortunately, most of my copiers have been copying me for more than one year and they understand my mindset. They understand that I am a long-term investor and that the longer you copy someone(not just me), the better the results.
Many people believe that if you are managing other people's money, you would want to take more risks but for me the opposite happened. The first thing I look at on my phone every morning is how much money I made for my copiers. This is more important for me that knowing how much money, I made myself. With this responsibility, I have become a better investor since I need to do more research. I am not sacrificing reward even by lowering the risks.
Being an asset manager also requires leadership skills and transparency. I always say it when I make a mistake. I make a video about my bad investments. There are many people who will start a new portfolio every year to 'erase' the past losses. I could have done it and erased my first month where I lost 17%. I would be beating the market by a huge margin then. But I don't want to do this. If one day, I become a hedge fund manager, managing hundreds of millions of dollars, I will have the proof of my performance for every situation.
If you want to be an asset manager, the first question you should ask yourself is whether you are ready. If you have doubts, it means you are not ready because it is a big responsibility. The only way you can buy a yacht is by making sure your customers can afford a yacht. Always provide value first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENBg7J0vxMY&list=UUPO3uUyoXSaFWG-Ldq1mqEQ