I am back...

Good morning or good afternoon or good evening. I don't know where you are. It has been long time, I know a few months since I uploaded the last video. And I wanted to make this video to quickly explain to you why I stopped uploading video in the past months and what is the plan for the future because this channel is not dead. I didn't stop uploading video because I'm not interested anymore in trading or in financial education. No, the reason is because I may have said something about that in the past. I was basically stuck in the US In March I could not come back to Singapore where I live. So I had to go back to Italy. And from there the Internet connection I got was very bad. So I was not really able to upload any significant video because it would have taken too long. This is reason number one. But there is a second reason I realize, and you may have experienced that as well, that during this, or rather last year there was a lot of emotional stress to deal with because of the situation that was affecting people in different ways. But definitely emotional impact of COVID related issues was very, very big. And you already know if you watch my videos, that mindset is very important when you do trading and investing. In other words, it would have been very risky to do trades and to invest if you are not there with your mind because you are worried by the COVID you are worried by the job, you are worried by the situation, the laws and all the things that you are doing and all the things that are changing in your life. That's why I was reflecting. I took some time to reflect and to see what would be a useful way to develop this channel in order to make it more useful, especially when we have to deal with situation like last year. And so I was experiencing some kind of new investing strategies that are not really requiring you to interact too much. In other words, something that is going to the passive way while giving you decent return, giving you some kind of peace of mind because the result you get will be quite safe on the downside so you will not be having huge drawdowns. And on the other hand, you don't have to spend much time in checking your portfolio every day or looking at your trades every day to move the stop loss check if you have to take profit, and so on. And in particular I was testing one strategy that I didn't invent. I took from someone else that is much better than me in investing in finance. And he is Ray Dalio. You may not know him, or maybe you know, he was the head of the Bridgewater Fund, one of the largest funds hedge fund. And in a book there was an interview to him and he was asked to give a strategy for people to create a portfolio that was quite good in terms of performance during the different situations that you can have. You can have inflation deflation, you can have expansion of the economy or not, and something that performed decently in every scenario. And it so happened that I started this strategy in October 2019. After doing a few months of research, I create my portfolio and I implemented the strategy with real money. It's not just, oh, I tried, I test. No, I say, okay, I need to put some money to see the results. And then what happened? The COVID and the market drawdown. And then it was perfect to test this strategy. Let's see what this guy says is actually true. Because they say this portfolio, the drawdown is not so big, the results are good, the return is decent. And I say, okay, let's see now is the proof I want to see. And I saw and the results were quite good. Because I tell you, it didn't go more than 5, 6% down. While the market, if you look at the U.S. you know, it went down a lot. And at the same time, I didn't have anything to do once I started with the portfolio in October. The only thing I had to do is to rebalance one year later. And that's all, nothing else. So even if emotionally you are under stress, this will not affect your performance. Why? Because this particular investing strategy does not require you to do anything for one year. And the results were good. Because now the portfolio, I didn't check the recent numbers, but is around 10 to 15% up. Of course, you can find outside people that claim they made 50%. Hundred percent. Yes, thank you. Now it's easy. But what happens when you have the big drawdown? Are you able really to deal with that? Because this is the question. It's easy to say everything is good when it's good. But what happens when you are through the bad periods? How are you able to deal with that, not just financially, but emotionally? Because if managing your portfolio is making your life really miserable and you have a lot of stress because you see the drawdown and things going down, then you should ask yourself, is it really worth it? Yes. Maybe one year later you say, look, yeah, I am smart, I made 50%. Yeah, great. But what went you were in those difficult times, would you rather have a portfolio that performs a little less in terms of performance, but then you have the peace of mind of not Having to worry. And I'm not saying is 100% safe. Nothing is 100% safe. But if there was research showing that this strategy was doing well Even considering the 2000, 2001, the dot com crisis, the 2007, 2008 and I test myself the COVID last year and it performed well, maybe this is a strategy that you should consider as well. Because this is something where I'm not saying put your whole portfolio in this, but put something on that think it makes sense. It's a way to diversify while having some peace of mind. So I will keep presenting you videos about trading and investing. Of course I'm still invested in the US market for long term. I started to have something like ETF portfolio long term, the one I just mentioned. And then I'm still trading. And also the REITs, I'm still investing in REITs. Now REITs were doing quite well except first REIT. So if you have first REIT, you know that the fundamentals were good and then something happened. Now is down a lot like it was trading at 130 something now is 0.25, something like that. And again emotional. Right, Emotional stress and how to deal with that. I think the best way to deal with something that is losing money if you still think that you want to keep because according to your rules, you want to keep an investment that is losing some money in your portfolio. Portfolio. The best way to do that is to focus on investing in something else for which the money, the return, the performance that you get is basically hedging the loss that you're having with the other investment. That's what I done. And that's why even though I still have first REIT in my portfolio, what I got from the other investment in the REITs that I was performing basically cover and even I made some money. So all in all, I think this year financially has been quite good for me. Of course there was a period in the middle where many of the long term I would say ETF that I was holding, they went down. But I had the confidence to hold and I didn't sell and it was the right decision. But again I know that to do that you really need to be trained with your mind because I know that when you are under a lot of pressure and fear, taking the right decision is of course the right choice, but it's not the easiest one. So that's what I think. In the future I will make videos where I will also shift a little to this kind of concepts to make something that is Taking you less time, taking you actually giving you more peace of mind. And that's exactly what I'm doing. So I'm not telling you something because I think it's good. It's because I'm really doing myself. Even my allocation now I shift more money on the long term and passive investment rather than the trading. And when I started it was different. When I started I was excited by the chart and the technical indicators and all these things. But with the time, I realized that actually you can get similar, if not better returns by spending less time on that. And at the same time you also have more peace of mind because you know in trading you are using stop loss, take profit and usually your position is big and you're using margin oftentimes. And it can happen that you have a gap down, so you lose more than what you should. And imagine already you are under stress and then you start to see some gap down. So you start to lose money here, money there. What would you do? Well, I think for many people it will be just okay, I sell everything and fine, I'm done. So you will be not happy because you lost money and then later even more because you see that the price went back up. You should have made a lot of money maybe, and instead you lost a lot. I'm also holding some bitcoin and other crypto, not much. I sold something when it reached around 19k, now is going up even more, but it's fine. So again, to summarize, this year has been challenging. It was different for me because basically I told you, right? I spent many months in Italy, then I'm back here and I have to go through the quarantine. And you know, when you come back to Singapore, you have to stay two weeks in the hotel. Then they do the test and luckily nothing was wrong. So the test was good. And then I got some holiday periods and then I took this time again. I just want to summarize with that. I took the time to really think about, at least for me. And maybe this will resonate with some of you as well. Really think about, okay, investing, trading, everything is great, but things like that can happen. It may happen again that there is some situation that is putting you under stress. It doesn't have to be as big as this, but it can be. Any news? Maybe job related, family related, or maybe you are for some reason you are not there. So what is a resilience strategy to invest that will work even if you are temporarily under stress? So I think this is a very important topic and with that, I would like to conclude the video. So I'm still here. The channel is still alive. I will start to post something again slowly, maybe once every week to start with that. Thank you. Thank you very much. If it's the first time you come to this channel, you may watch the previous video to show what I. What I was doing. If you have any question, please leave a comment and see you soon. Bye.