In this solo presentation, Mark Moss introduces the concept of "wealth velocity," borrowing the government's velocity‑of‑money metric to evaluate how quickly a single dollar can generate multiple layers of investment returns. He contrasts two investors: one who places $250k into a single asset versus another who spreads the same equity across three assets, illustrating how compounding across multiple holdings accelerates wealth growth. Moss explains that most investors focus on return on assets (e.g., a 5% appreciation on a home) but ignore return on equity (ROE), which measures the profit generated by the equity portion of an asset. By leveraging equity—using down‑payments and credit—to acquire additional assets, investors can multiply their ROE and achieve a higher overall portfolio return. He then differentiates "horizontal" investing (diversifying a fixed amount across many assets, yielding an average blended return) from "vertical" investing (layering assets by repeatedly extracting equity and using it as collateral for new investments). This stacking can boost returns from an 8% blended rate to 20‑24% on the same capital. Moss warns that adding layers can mask weak cash flows and increase fragility, so risk must be managed through a "positive carry" principle: the cost of borrowing must be lower than the return on the new investment. He uses a driving‑route analogy to illustrate how much risk one should take based on urgency and importance of the financial goal. Finally, Moss promotes a free live workshop where participants bring their last year’s tax bill and net‑worth figures to receive a personalized wealth‑velocity plan, emphasizing practical application of the concepts.
Chapters
Suppose we have 2 investors that each start with $250,000 each, the same amount of money. Now, one of them puts that money, that equity, into a single asset, and that asset grows, does great. The other one uses the same equity, but they buy 2 more assets with it. So now they have 3 assets growing for the same amount of money. Now, in the beginning, the equity position they have looks somewhat the same, but over time, the difference starts to change radically. I call this the wealth velocity. It's the very same tool the government uses to measure the health of the growing economy, and we can use it to measure the health of our wealth. All right, I'm going to show you how to use $1 3 times. Let's go. All right. Now, to understand this concept, let me just tell you real quickly that the government uses this same math and not just measure the health of the economy, but to grow the economy. So if you want to measure the health of your investment portfolio and grow your investment portfolio, You might want to use the same strategy. Now, the government calls this the velocity of money, and it measures how much economic growth is created off of one single dollar. And it's by the velocity or how fast it moves. And the simple example is if I give a dollar to the lunch guy for the sandwich, the lunch guy gives a dollar to the delivery person that brought the bread, the delivery person gives a dollar to the gas station, the gas station guy gives the dollar to the person that restocked the chips, and the guy who restocked the chips gave the dollar to someone that fixed their tire. So now we have $5 of economic activity. $5 of economic growth or GDP, but there was only $1 that was used to create $5 of activity. All right? We can do the same thing, and we call this the velocity of wealth. Now, that's how fast can we get $1 moving through our investments? So, if I can put $1 into one investment, get it back, $1 into a second investment, get it back, $1 into a third investment, get it back, I now have 3 investments compounding. With only a single dollar. That's what we're measuring. It reminds me of the old Citibank commercial, like, you know, what's your number kind of a thing. So what is your number? What is your wealth number, your wealth velocity number? How many investments are we getting to compound off of a single dollar? Now, this is done with something called return on equity. I just got back from this investor conference. I was with 250 high net worth investors, and we were all at these individual tables. And I asked the investors at the table this question. I said, you know, we've been here for 2 days. We've been watching, you know, all these presentations by these investors. And they told us about these amazing investments, supposedly, you know, tech investments and biotech investments and distressed credit investments. And they've all talked about potential returns. I could make a 30% or a 50% return on this investment. That'd be amazing. And I said, I'm sure all of you think about your return on your investment, your return on your asset, right? The average median home goes up by 5% a year, right? How many of you have calculated your return on your Equity? What do you think the answer was? Zero. They didn't even know what I was talking about. Their eyes glazed over, like, what is he talking about equity? I'm like, well, you have equity in all your assets. What are you doing with it? They still glazed over. So, let me give you the example I gave to them. If I have a million-dollar piece of real estate, the median US real estate is going up at about 5% a year. That means that million-dollar real estate will go up by about 5% over the next year. Now, that's 5% on the million-dollar property. But do I have $200,000 of equity, or $300,000, or $400,000, or $500,000 of equity? So let's say I have $500,000 equity in that home on a million-dollar home. Does the home go up at a faster rate? No, the million dollars still goes up at the 5%, whether I have $500,000, $300,000, $200,000, or whatever. So then what is my return on my equity? It's effectively zero. So I have all this wealth, all this equity that's not earning me any money. So What if I decided to activate some of that equity? Now, the simple example is this. I could pay cash for the million-dollar property, or I could put 20% down and buy 5 properties. Now, all properties are going up at 5% a year. So would I rather have 1 property compounding at 5% a year, or 5 properties compounding at 5% a year? Because remember, the compounding is on the value of the property, not the amount of equity that I have. Just in this simple calculation, you can quickly understand that I am growing my wealth 5 times faster by doing it this way. So now that answers a very simple question about real estate. And the funny thing is, is that that makes sense to you, right? Like everybody kind of thinks that real estate is a way to build wealth. And so you think that maybe I should buy some rental properties at some point to get passive income, but nobody thinks they're supposed to save up and pay cash. You all expect that you're going to get a loan to do that. So my example, it makes sense, but you're like, of course, duh, of course I'm going to use credit, right? Okay. Well, then why don't I take that same mindset and I take that same strategy, but then apply it to different things? What am I talking about? If you take a look at my screen right here, this is how most people think about investing. On the left, most people are investing what we call horizontally, where I take $100 and I divide it up into a bunch of different assets. 5% here, 20% there, 30% there. So $40 of the $100, 40% goes into a 60/40 portfolio that my advisor manages for 30% of it goes into my real estate, maybe 20% of it, probably for you it's like 5%, uh, put in, goes into Bitcoin, and then maybe 10% goes into cash. So now I've divided, I've split up, I've fractionalized that $100, and now my blended return is the average of those assets, and I get about an 8% return. Now what I could do is I could invest it through layers, what I call vertical investing. And now the $100 can go into my first core asset, a productive asset. I could take some of that equity. Remember that house example? I had $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 in equity. I could take some of that asset and put it into an asset like Bitcoin. I could then take some of that collateral out of the Bitcoin and put it into NASDAQ. And I could issue some credit against that to put it into something that provides cash flow to pay for the whole stack. Now instead of averaging my returns and getting 8%, I've now stacked the returns. And now I'm getting 20 to 24% return on my investment. So it makes sense on the real estate example, but we can apply that to other areas. So now we're not just getting our return, our investment, our return on our asset, we're actually able to calculate what the return on our equity position is. Because if you want to build wealth, you have to use the tools that you have. What are the tools that you have? You have equity and you have credit. Those are the tools that you have. And it comes down to how you play the game with the tools that you have. Now, a bigger net result can still hide weak cash flows. It could still, you know, hide that you have too much debt and maybe there's fragility there. And the real risk is adding layers While the capital you already own does very little. Now, I have a free training that walks you through the entire system that I run on my own balance sheet. The next session that I'm going to host this in is just a couple days away. So if you want to come, bring 2 numbers with you so we can figure this out for yourself. Number one, bring your last year's tax bill. And number 2, bring your net worth after debt. Now, this doesn't have to be audited. Just bring what you have roughly, and we're going to figure out what your wealth plan is moving forward. Go ahead and save your seat. I'll put a link in the description down below. I'll put a QR code on the screen right here. And I'll see you over there. All right. Now, some of you are just going, so Mark, what you're saying is I should just lever this thing up and risk, risk it all, right? Like, it sounds like it's very risky what you're, what you're proposing. It could be. There's risk on both sides. There's risk if you do and risk if you don't. And the question is, how much risk should you take, if at all? And here's the way I think about this. Number one, the first thing I want to think about is if I do something like this, I need to make sure that it's making me money. I need to make sure there's reward if I'm going to be taking the risk and the effort and the energy to do it. So number one, I need to make sure I have a positive carry, meaning if I'm able to get, let's say, liquidity capital out of my home at 6%, I need to make sure I'm making at least 7% or more. If I could free up some liquidity against maybe, maybe my stock portfolio at Robinhood at 5%, then I should get in 7, 8, or 9%. I need a positive carry. But, but more importantly than that, the question is, how hard do you need to push? And how much risk are you willing to take? What do I mean by that? Let's think about it as in a driving example. If I wanted to go somewhere, I could pull it up in Google Maps, I put in my destination where I want to get to, I put in my location where I'm at. Google Maps is going to give me a different set of route options. It can say you could ride a bike, you could walk, you could get in a car, you could ride the train, whatever. But let's say that I need to get there pretty quickly. Well, then I can't walk or ride a bike. Those are out. I got to push a little harder. Okay, I got to take a car. Then it gives me different route options. And let's say that to get to my location, it says it's going to take me 20 minutes, but I'm supposed to be there in 15. Well, now I have a choice. Do I want to drive faster than the speed limit? And take the risk. The risk of what? The risk of getting a ticket, the risk of losing my license, the risk of getting in a car accident. Well, it depends. Is it worth it for me to take that risk? How much faster over the speed limit do I have to go? And how important is it that I get there on time? If it's a buddy, can I call him and say I'll be 5 minutes late? Or is my wife in labor, right? So how important is it? And then how much risk do I want to take? If I have to go 5 miles over the speed limit, probably no big deal. Most of us might even go 10 miles over. No big deal. But do I want to go 100 miles an hour, 110 miles an hour? My truck will certainly do that. But in California, if I go that fast, I'll probably get arrested. So is it worth me going that fast? Do I want to take that much risk? And the question is, again, I don't know. If I'm just meeting a buddy for lunch, no. But if my wife is in the backseat dying, then yes. And so the question is, how many layers should we add? How should we think about adding to this? The question comes down to how hard do you need to push? And how important is it that you achieve that goal? By that timeframe, and that determines if you should add the next layer. Now, you might just say, well, that makes sense. Thanks for using an analogy I understand, but I don't know how hard I have to push. I don't even know how to calculate that number. Well, that's exactly why you should come to my live event that I'm having. Oh, yeah. Make sure to bring your amount of money that you spent in taxes last year and your average net worth, your approximate net worth. If you bring those 2 things, I'm going to help you figure out what your goal, your destination is, what rate of speed you'll have to drive to get to that goal in time, what you may have to do to push a little harder to get there faster, and if it's worth that extra effort for you. It's a free workshop. I do these. I have a lot of fun with them. If you bring those 2 things, I'll help you figure that out. I'll put a link down below if you want to get a seat. The seats are limited. We'll put a QR code on the screen right here, and I'll see you over there.
