Speaker 1: 0:00

Felix here. I'm a former banker options trader, but this video isn't going to be about finance or money. I thought I was due to give you guys a bit of a life update. Lots of things have changed over the last year and I thought this is a good time to lay out what's been happening. Maybe some lessons we can all take from that, we can all learn from that and how to make the coming year the most amazing ever for both you and me. So first of all, a little bit on the personal front. Lots of things have changed.

Speaker 1: 0:34

I spent the last year and a half in Europe. I was in Monaco, south of France, which was really interesting, and I was kind of thinking about moving somewhere else. And I went to the Caribbean, I went to the Bahamas and Cayman and all these lovely places and I thought should I move here, should I move there? And everything else, and it was kind of the circus that took me around the world. It was a little bit the post Covid madness. I spent some time in London also and I actually realized that the place I'd spent the previous 10 years, which is Hong Kong, which is where I'm right now, is still by far my favorite place in the world and I love travelling and I will spend part of each year in London where I have lots of friends and lots of connections to my sort of university life and everything else and also enjoy the glorious glamour of the South of France and the beautiful countryside in Europe.

Speaker 1: 1:28

But ultimately, day to day, I actually like being here. I love that as I'm recording this, it's just before Christmas and it's a little bit too hot because I haven't got the air con on, and I really enjoy that. So also the, the animals, winston and the cats, and everyone is a happiest here. The cats love the heat. Winston loves the beach. He goes every single morning. He loves swimming. He's got his pals and he's just better looked after here and we're very lucky. We've got lovely housekeepers who take care of us and it's a it's just a really, really nice, happy atmosphere to be in. At the same time, it's got the energy, the buzz where everybody around me is doing something amazing and huge, and I think surrounding yourself with the right people is one of the biggest real essence I was reminded of this year, like I was in Monaco. It's a luxurious place, all of that, but the people there are on a different stage of life. They have sold their business and they're sitting there because they don't want to pay tax and they're not really doing very much by on large, and that's just not where I am in my life. I want to be doing things. I enjoy doing lots of things. So for me I need to be somewhere more vibrant and that could be maybe Manhattan or somewhere like that, but the sort of crime and grittiness puts me off a little bit. So I love being here and yeah, there we are. That's a little bit on my personal side here Now.

Speaker 1: 3:00

Our journey here as a community has been insane. It's been pretty much exactly three years since I started this channel with no expectations. Never thought of doing a YouTube channel. I just thought is there a way that I can share investment banker grade knowledge about money management with people and teach people the real stuff Banks and hedge funds actually trade, rather than some sort of dumbed-down version, which was a lot of what we're seeing out there. And don't get me wrong, there are loads of amazing channels and people out there, but it's just very few ex-bankers really share what they do right, and it's a shame.

Speaker 1: 3:43

And I still remember if you started on 18th of December and by the 31st we had a thousand subscribers and I was just it's crazy, and there was a sort of addictive nature to it and I lost my nervousness and you know I'm a really introverted guy actually and I started to enjoy it. It was no longer becoming becoming less and less stressful and becoming more and more enjoyable and, as I got to know so many of you, it just became fun and I love our pre-market lives every day. It's like having breakfast with a group of friends and chatting through what the market's doing, which is kind of my hobby and passion, and I get to share it with lots more people. So for that I'm very, very grateful. And now we're at 65,000 subscribers as of yesterday, which is insane.

Speaker 1: 4:31

It's not always smooth, like we built up an Instagram account last year or this year and then Instagram shut it down without giving us any reason, I think probably because I, within one day, locked in from three different countries and it asked me for verification and I cocked it up and then you can't do anything about it and yeah, I paid people and consultants and all of that. So 130,000 subscribers and it goes up in smoke, and I think it's those things that actually make you better. And I just said, well, I was grumpy for a few weeks on it, honestly, and then I decided, well, we'll just do it again and we'll do it better. And I think it's a really good lesson that in life you're going to get stuff thrown at you and you just have to keep getting getting getting up again, and if you keep doing that, amazing things will happen. And yeah, our G account is nowhere near back to that size, but you know, we've got an amazing community.

Speaker 1: 5:27

We've got lots of other amazing things that are happening here, and people sometimes ask me like, how long, how long does it take to be successful in social media? And I'll walk you through what I mean by success here, because obviously that's very, very different for everybody. The first thing I would say is it takes longer than you think. The second thing is that consistency and persistence really really pay off. I think the algorithms want to see is this guy going to make content regularly or is this a one off?

Speaker 1: 5:59

The platform, like YouTube, ultimately cares that you spend as many minutes as possible on there so they can show you as many ads as possible, and that's kind of in conflict with what I want to do. I want to give you as much important information in a shorter period of time as possible, so I don't waste your time. So I've never gone down the road of let's make this video as long as possible or let's edit it to the nth degree so that you'll stay on it for a few minutes longer, which will probably help reach more people. So maybe I should do it, but I just I don't really. I don't really go down that road. I just think it's just the way it comes out and if you find it useful, brilliant people share it. I see the numbers that you know videos get shared by, which is crazy and and and I love you for that and I see I wake up in the morning and you know people are saying they're liking tweets in which I'm. My video was posted and I didn't do it, so I should probably get better at that, but look, I'm really, really grateful for that. So you know it takes. It takes some time and then I think you get some traction and I think it's because the algorithms recognize that people actually come back and consume this content and I call it content because that's what they call it.

Speaker 1: 7:12

I just hope it helps people to get to financial freedom, which is really what this is about. And success and happiness and fulfillment, I think, are the three things that we need to put together, and I was taught success is get good grades, get a good degree, get a good job, get a promotion every once in a while. That was sort of my parental definition of success. I felt and I realized over time that doesn't actually make you happy. The money helps tremendously. Up to a point, not having money sucks horribly. Having money gives you a lot more options and freedom and that can leapfrog you to the fulfillment and the happiness. And for me, the realization has been and I've got, you know, I've got other businesses and you can google it, and selling an extra container of stuff to somebody doesn't make me any happier. It did at the beginning. The first thousand containers are excited about and then it's diminishing returns. You're just like, yeah, another order, another client, whatever.

Speaker 1: 8:24

Bitch with what we're doing here, where I sat down very clearly from the beginning and I said our mission is to make people financially free and that means being able to live off your investments and all your trading income. Doesn't mean you have to, but you have the option and it just opens up freedom. You can still do your job or your business or whatever else you're doing, but you could stop doing that and therefore you might actually start enjoying the job that you weren't enjoying that much because it's no longer. Oh, I have to do this to get the paycheck to pay the mortgage. Now it becomes an option, and that's where I think everybody deserves to be.

Speaker 1: 9:06

So that's always been my ambition with us, and we've now got 8,000 students in the Academy, which is just insane. And for me, what that does is it creates dozens of really kind and generous and thoughtful and deep, meaningful messengers every day that I get from my students who write me incredible things that literally make my heart skip a beat and give me fulfillment. They give me happiness. So how does that work? Well, I make sure they get the best knowledge and coaching and guidance possible, and it works, and therefore, in return, I get the happiness sent back. So it's a funny little circle, but it's one that I think works for both of us. So I'm very, very, very happy with that.

Speaker 1: 10:05

And if I look at our Academy now, the Goat Academy, which I didn't know what goats stood for, right, being German and all, and in British English that isn't really a thing At least I'd never heard of it and we were literally donating money to goat sanctuaries. There are some amazing goat sanctuaries and goats are amazing creatures. They remind me very much of Winston. So that was kind of the joke, the pun really, when we started making courses again, because people were saying, hey, have you got a course on this? Do you teach this? And I was like, all right, let me sit down for a couple of weeks and make a course on this.

Speaker 1: 10:41

And we've brought on investment bankers who think the way. I think that. Isn't it a wonderfully rewarding thing to give other people the knowledge that we've had the great fortune to come by through our employers or former employers? So I think we now have six former investment bankers. Two of them have been market makers. They've worked at places like Morgan Stanley and Best Stuns I know they went down, but that wasn't that individual's fault Major investment banks, massive hedge funds. They've managed billions of dollars as fund managers, asset managers, and I just think it's crazy. Someone can hop on a call with them one-on-one and chew through their simulator, their real trading, and I love that. We're gonna keep doing that and we're gonna keep doing it better and better and better and better. And after the 8,000 comes the 80,000, right, and then comes the 800,000. And we get to really making those million people financially free. So that's seriously where I wanna take this and I think we have a really good shot of doing that and really making a real impact.

Speaker 1: 11:57

Now, another thing someone asked me the other day is like, what would you say to people? What should everybody be doing if money was no object? And, as I say, money is a funny thing. It gets you out of constraint, it brings you into freedom, and then it tends to create a void in people. And you see that in a lot of very successful people they're not fulfilled. They've got the Ferraris and the whatever, the boats and the houses, but they're still not fulfilled. So in itself, it's true it doesn't bring you happiness, but it's a heck of a lot easier to solve that problem.

Speaker 1: 12:34

And I think really you gotta do something that brings you fulfillment and you can start doing that before you have true financial freedom. And I see people, they might be charity, it might be teaching people to sale or volunteering and teaching kids to play football, soccer, whatever you call it, or it could be something like that or whatever a hobby you have, but if you can do it in a way that it has a positive impact on somebody else, I think that's actually what gives you happiness, and I sort of feel the happier you are. You actually attract more money, and part of that also is I put out this this year right, which is called the wealth accelerator planner, which is probably the worst business I've ever done. It costs $20 on Amazon and I get about, I think, a dollar 83 of that. So that's the book business for you and that's without a publisher in between.

Speaker 1: 13:33

But that's not why I did it. I did it because I actually wanted to have a better journal myself. So we have, you know, questions in here every day and sort of things we fill out every day morning, afternoon, intentions and reflections and for me it really helps to focus my mind. So I'm very happy I did that this year. But at the same time, it's important to say no to a lot of things. So I literally get offered every single day and since this channel kind of started to grow over the 10, 20 K mark in terms of subscribers initially it was the crypto people, it was all a lot of the platforms You've now gone out of business.

Speaker 1: 14:15

Then it's people who want to pay you to promote a particular stock. A lot of the gold miners do it, a lot of that space, and I've been on calls with some of them because I just wanted to understand what it was all about and I was just like this is just not, doesn't sound very ethical, it doesn't sound very kosher. I just don't want to be part of it and I don't really understand what you do. So I make that decision very early on no affiliates, no endorsements. Yeah, if there's a piece of something that I'm using, I'll tell you what I'm using, but I'm not getting anything for it. There are no links down there to other people's stuff, because I ultimately don't know what their intention is.

Speaker 1: 14:54

And I've worked in the finance industry and I know the intention is generally not a great one Bank structure products to pass all the risk to retail investors and make it risk free for themselves and keep all the profit. That's just the truth, right? So that's not going to change. You're not going to see me endorse whatever the latest thing is. So I think that's important and if I did that, yeah, I would bring money in for sure. You know, it's always nice to have money. I never say no to it.

Speaker 1: 15:28

But in this case I think it's better to say no to it and be happy with the impact I'm making and be happy and content with what I'm recommending, what I'm talking about. So you know, we've got software we're developing ourselves with a student of mine Jeff he's amazing and stuff like that. We're doing it because I can see this will help people, and sure we charge something for like 15 bucks a month or something, why? Well, we've got development teams to pay. We've got data streams to pay. We've got server usage to pay and that kind of thing, and the people I'm developing this with should deserve to get paid.

Speaker 1: 16:08

I'm not a communist, exactly. I mean, I'm a bloody options trader, right? So I'm nothing against making money. I just think it needs to be done with the right spirit and I think if you deliver 10 times the value that you're charging, I think it's a happy place to be for me and that's always my kind of yardstick.

Speaker 1: 16:26

Now the other thing I want to do with this 2024, I want to put out a trading book and it'll probably be something like a planner journal type thing, because every single day people say to me what should I do with this trade? I'm up this much or I'm down this much? Should I wait, exit? You know, whatever the options are, and the answer is always we need to decide that before we make the investment. We need to decide that before we do the trade, we need to write it down. So I'm thinking about a way and I'm working on that to give people more structure, both for their long term investments and also for their trades, so that they have a checklist. So you buy a stock and nine months later it goes up or down 50 percent. You can go back to it and go. This is why I bought it. These were the numbers at the time that matter.

Speaker 1: 17:18

This was my intention with it and then you can make a decision without emotions getting in the way, and I think that's really the biggest thing that I've learned as an investor. Probably the best advice I've ever gotten is you need rules, and I think it's really all about rules. Trading is all about rules. I love doing these life trading trainings we do every once in a while and I'll put a link up here somewhere. You can join the upcoming one, because I'll actually give you the rules. I'll explain them why they're there, because you only respect rules if you understand them, and then I'll show you how we actually implement them by doing some life trading together, and people can walk away from that and go OK, I'm in a different position now.

Speaker 1: 18:00

The whole mindset shifted away from this kind of hoping and wishing and praying to rules based trading. And that's what banks do. They have a system of rules. They don't just stick their finger in the air and hope for the best. So, yeah, my 2024, I'm really excited. I'm really looking forward to growing our community, helping more people, delivering more value and selfishly get back more happiness, and growing the coaching community. As I say, we've just brought on some more amazing minds, really amazing guys with insane experience, like decades and decades and decades, who will be such great mentors to people. And I'll keep doing this as long as it stays fun, and at the moment it's just tremendous fun.

Speaker 1: 18:55

I'm excited every morning to wake up and you know I look at the financial news, because that's my thing anyway and then I think, hey, this would be amazing, people would love to understand this and I think this would be real value, or to get this trade. And as long as that continues that way, I don't think financial markets are going to get boring anytime soon. You will continue to get my video notifications unless you stop them, and really I would want to recommend to you one thing, and that is sit down and write out what you would be doing if money was no object and that's a hard thing to do for most people is to be really hard for me to do that and if you don't know, your sheet is just blank. Write out what you hate. That's a lot easier for most people, right?

Speaker 1: 19:48

The commute, the traffic, the crappy lunch at work, the colleague that is like you know, there's kind of things, whatever it might be for you, and then next to it, write the opposite, without overthinking it. What's the opposite of that? That's your list, that's what you want, and then maybe write that out again, so you have a positive list and that's what you want to strive towards. And then just think about little steps you can make to strive towards that and you'd be surprised how quickly life can change. My life changed very, very quickly once I got onto the right path, not out of choice, but I was kind of forced onto it because I couldn't work. I injured myself, but you can do it before the universe, or your God or whatever you call it, comes and kicks you in the backside. So a huge hug of gratitude from me for you watching and for allowing to grow this community and helping me and the team reach people and help people and educate people, and I wish you a glorious, glorious New Year.