Kris’ note: In yesterday’s Daily Cut, we highlighted why now is the best time to prepare for the next bull market…
…even though the current bull market may not be over.
As part of our explanation, we highlighted the work of colleague Teeka Tiwari. Specifically, his approach to risk management and asymmetric investing.
Well, today we share an essay directly from Teeka where he explains this idea in more detail and the near-catastrophic events he experienced that led him there.
Please read on, where Teeka will share his six steps to building wealth in 2024. But first…
Market Data
The S&P 500 closed down 0.3% to end the day at 4,688.68… the NASDAQ fell 0.6% to close at 14,510.30.
In commodities, West Texas Intermediate crude oil trades at $72.41 down 63 cents from yesterday…
Gold is $2,051.10 per troy ounce, up $2…
And bitcoin is $44,401, up $1,736 from yesterday.
Now, over to Teeka…
I made my first big haul in the early 1990s buying beaten-down junk bonds.
I was 19 years old, and before the year was out, my junk bond play would make me more than $250,000… That’s about $500,000 in today’s money. The year before, I had made just $8,000.
That began a wild ride of moneymaking that had me making $54,000 in one day by the time I was 22.
When the mid-’90s rolled around, I made money hand-over-fist in technology stocks. I was young and making a fortune while living my American Dream.
I would love to tell you I embraced my success with calm and sober-minded maturity.
I didn’t. I let the money make me an arrogant jackass.
And by late 1998, I’d lost it all. You see, I made a terrible mistake…
I took massive stakes instead of taking small bets on high-risk, high-reward ideas.
By the time the 1997 Asian financial crisis rolled around, I’d built up a substantial short position. A short position is when you bet on a stock or an index going lower.
I was 100% correct on my bearish call. The market tanked on the Asian crisis. But I stuck around too long and got too greedy.
And when the market went against me, I made bigger and riskier bets against the market. I lost all perspective and invested for my ego, not my bank account.
Within three weeks, I lost everything I’d made and more. I went from wealthy to poor in less than a month. And ultimately, I was compelled to file for personal bankruptcy.
It was a stunning reversal. Here I was, the golden boy who finally got his comeuppance.
My American Dream turned into a nightmare. I lost my career, my wife, my family, my self-respect, and for a brief moment, I even lost my will to live. It was a dark time in my life.
There were many lessons, but my biggest investment lesson was I couldn’t build all my investments solely on high-risk, high-reward plays.
The next thing I learned was I had to build multiple streams of safe income, so I’d always have a pool of self-sustaining assets from which to build wealth.
Here’s how that helped me get rich again…
After my bankruptcy, I started rebuilding my net worth. I worked like the devil was on my back. I took every available penny and invested it into safe income-generating investments.
I then moved the income generated from my safe investments into well-researched high-risk, high-reward plays. This approach magnified my wealth very quickly.
The best part was getting wealthier without putting my current lifestyle at risk.
I call this asymmetric risk investing. Think of it this way: Symmetrical risk is where you risk $1 to make $1. Asymmetric risk is where you risk $1 to make $100.
This type of investing allows you to take a small amount of money and greatly amplify it.
If you position size right, the potential gain far outweighs the risk. A recent example of this is when I made $75,000 from a $700 investment back in 2017. Another investment helped me grow my money by as much as $1.2 million from just $1,000.
The key lesson to remember is that you can’t build your whole portfolio on ideas like this because those types of investments can go to zero from time to time.
If that were to happen now, I wouldn’t sweat it because I only use the money generated from my safe investments.
That means if I blow all my safe income this year on risky asymmetric bets, 100% of that money gets replenished next year from the dividends and interest from my safe money.
This is the key to getting really rich, really quickly, without ever blowing yourself up.
Here’s the approach I took…
How to Start Building Your Wealth Now
To truly build long-lasting wealth, you need to generate multiple, reliable streams of income – so you can fund your higher-paying, riskier strategies without risking your financial health.
Here are the steps I recommend you take:
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Focus on increasing your ability to earn more money by improving your work ethic and work skills.
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Choose to live well below your means so you can save over 60% of your monthly income.
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Put no more than 5% (if you’re below 30, you can bump this up to as much as 20%) of your liquid net worth into asymmetric investments.
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Put the rest of your money into conservative, income-producing investments and strategies.
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Reinvest a portion of your safe income back into well-researched asymmetric investments.
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Repeat until you’re rich.
More Income = Faster Wealth
It may seem paradoxical…
But the more “safe” income you build, the more “free” income you’ll have to speculate on high-risk, high-reward plays that can change your life right now, not 20 years from now.
And one of the best high-risk, high-reward ideas I’ve come across over the years is cryptocurrency.
Since 2016, I’ve helped numerous people make an enormous amount of money in crypto.
Over that time, 27 of my crypto picks have jumped at least over 1,000%. No other newsletter editor comes close to that type of success.
And on January 10, our government has set a deadline that could trigger the biggest wealth-building opportunity in the history of crypto.
Friends, this event will only happen once. That’s why on Tuesday, January 9, at 8 p.m. ET, I’m holding an urgent briefing called Freedom 2024.
At this briefing, I’ll tell you what that unique event is… And why I believe 100 years from now, they’ll mark that date as the beginning of an entire new crypto industry.
We’ll see it as a time that allowed millions of everyday folks to live the life they want.
You should know this opportunity is open to everyone. But not everyone will take advantage of it. Unfortunately, most people will be too late.
Let me be clear: The biggest gains will happen in a tiny subsector of the crypto market.
And if you want a chance to achieve financial independence, you have to focus your “free” income on this subsector of the crypto market that accounts for less than 1% of all coins.
So click here to join me on Tuesday, January 9, at 8 p.m. ET.
It’s never too early or too late to begin building your wealth. The sands of time will continue to slip away regardless of your actions.
So why not make the choice today to do something different… Put yourself on the road to happiness and security in 2024 and live the dream life you want for yourself and your family.
Let the Game Come to You!
Big T
Unconnected Dots
Our main task at the Daily Cut is to try to “connect the dots.” That is, we help you figure out what events are about, what makes them important, what their consequences are, and what it all means for you.
But sometimes, we see the individual “dots,” but can’t yet figure out how they connect to anything. Maybe they never will connect to anything.
Regardless, if those unconnected dots feel as though they could be important, we’ll mention them here. And we’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
Today’s unconnected dots…
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A story from Bloomberg caught our eye today:
Ken Griffin’s Citadel posted a 15.3% return in its main Wellington hedge fund last year… beating some of its peers as money managers grappled with a challenging 2023.
Izzy Englander’s $61 billion firm Millenium Management gained about 10%… improving from low single-digit returns in the early part of the year. Eisler Capital, a London-based multi-strategy hedge fund, gained 9.8%.
As a reminder, the S&P 500 gained 23% last year. Considering the fees charged by hedge funds, we can’t imagine too many of their investors are impressed by those returns.
This is at the front of our mind right now, as we continue the groundwork for the inaugural Legacy Research Report Card, scheduled for release later this month.
Right now, we have our analysts compiling the numbers and looking at the performance. Because we don’t have the final numbers yet, we can’t tell you who (if anyone) beat the S&P… or who (if anyone) outperformed the big hedge fund managers.
Anyway, stay tuned.
More Markets
Today’s top gaining ETFs…
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VanEck BDC Income ETF (BIZD) +2.4%
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Global X MSCI Colombia ETF (GXG) +2.4%
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Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK) +2%
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iShares MSCI Turkey ETF (TUR) +2%
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Hull Tactical US ETF (HTUS) +1.5%
Today’s biggest losing ETFs…
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iShares U.S. Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (IEO) -2.5%
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Invesco Energy Exploration & Production ETF (PXE) -2.2%
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VanEck ChiNext ETF (CNXT) -2.2%
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SPDR Kensho Clean Power ETF (CNRG) -2.1%
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iShares MSCI Chile ETF (ECH) -2.1%
Mailbag
If you have any questions or comments for our experts here at Legacy Research, we’d love to hear from you.
Write to us at feedback@legacyresearch.com and just type “Daily Cut mailbag” in the subject line.
Cheers,
Kris Sayce
Editor, The Daily Cut