People often ask me if I spend a lot of time trading stocks every day — buying and selling constantly.
The short answer is: no.
I spend a lot of time looking around — studying trends, talking to people, and analyzing where the macroeconomy is headed.
Once I have a sense of the broader environment, I drill down into the microeconomics of individual companies.
For example, I might focus on a company like NVIDIA and study where they’re likely to be in three to five years.
But no matter how great a company looks, macro factors — like a collapsing economy, tariffs, or even the risk of war with China — will always take precedence. You can’t ignore the big picture.
As for trading — rapid in-and-out moves — I’ve done it before.
I could win about 60% of the time.
But it’s a grind. It’s not fun, and at the end of the day, it doesn’t build real wealth.
It’s a lot of work fighting over pennies.
Trading taught me some valuable skills, though.
I used to battle for 10 cents a share, setting tight limit orders and spending minutes arguing with the market.
Now, I just place a market order and move on.
If it costs me $5 or $10 more to get into a good long-term position, that’s irrelevant.
What matters is owning the right assets, not squeezing out the last penny.
Today, my strategy is about building smart portfolios for different goals:
- My HSA account is invested differently from my IRA.
- My regular brokerage account is structured differently again.
- I even have a small, high-risk contrarian account — a tiny personal hedge fund — where I trade things like the VIX and other volatility plays.
(That account is less than 5% of my total money — high risk, isolated.)
The rest of my portfolio is downright boring:
- A year ago, I had a lot in the S&P 500.
- Today, at least 50% is in fixed-income assets yielding about 4%.
- A significant portion is in gold.
- And 20% or more is sitting in cash.
At this point, I would rather miss out on some opportunities than lose hard-earned capital.
Risk management matters more to me than squeezing out a little extra upside.
If you’re trading every day in this market, you might as well be playing roulette in a casino.
I’m not here to gamble — I’m here to build lasting wealth.
Next time we will talk more on picking stocks and timing.
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