Your portfolio, looking at it, is over $2 million large. You're making $26,000 a month off of this. This is all covered call ETFs. It's a pretty, you know, decent-sized portfolio. It's basically everything I have. So, you know, it's not that complicated, though. It's not that complicated. I'm going to list them, but you have HyLd and tell me if this is the bulk of it: Hy LD. This is going to be on screen: USC, QQQL, HH IIS, MST. That's five. That's a five. These are all ETFs. They're all covered call ETFs, right?

For the most part. Yes, they are. That's always going to be my bread and butter. So, you're probably looking at April. The May one is actually the updates actually coming out in a few days. There's there's a couple of extra ones in there relating to Bitcoin. I could give you the stock symbols if you want. They're small positions, but it's um th those are my core positions for sure. Like those are they're they're big massive positions.

Another two Bitcoin-related covered call ETFs that I added are HBIX and HBTE. They're both from Harvest. They're both covered call ETFs. They both have 25% leverage. And obviously, as you could see from my portfolio, that is actually my favorite format of funds to own: covered calls and 25% leverage. For me, that's like the holy grail of income investing. And we could talk a little bit about why I feel that way later on. Uh, the question, it's your podcast, so I'm here to answer whatever you want. But, uh, those the ones you mentioned, yes, are my core positions. I did add a little two other ones which will complement the MST, the micro strategy, and those three together are kind of going to be my Bitcoin exposures, if you will.

Okay, let's figure out how to tackle this. First, let's just go through each one one by one, but then I want to come back to how are you grow I'm going to come back to this. Just know how are you growing your portfolio? Because these are covered calls. So, I always say focus on capital gains when you're an investor. That's how your portfolio grows. Covered calls are better for short-term income, but you're not an old guy. You're a young guy. You're this. You're trying to get income now. But I checked your portfolio. Your portfolio is getting larger. It's not getting small. There's a lot of questions I have about that. I think just table that for a bit. Let's talk about it. But let's just tell people a little bit about each ETF here because I own HYLD. You own HYLD. Why did you pick HYLD?

Uh, because you have a position and it it's 12.56% of your portfolio as of April. Yeah. So the way I look at my portfolio, especially recently because my portfolio throughout the years and people who have been watching my channel for that's actually just past five years now. I I I still can't believe it. But my portfolio has evolved in in the last 5 years as well because a lot of these funds as you know did not exist even 3 years ago. Right? So being a covered call or an income investor when I started was a lot harder. There weren't many covered call ETFs out there. There certainly weren't leveraged ones. It was more of a very niche and lesser-known way of investing. It still is, but it's getting a lot more mainstream. And uh I would say, you know, the covered call ETF space has really blown up, especially in Canada. The US was a little late to the game, but it's blowing up there too. But in Canada, you have a lot of big players now or a lot of smaller players that have gotten much bigger, but uh you know, 5 years ago the biggest player by far was Beimo in terms of covered call ETFs assets. I think they're still number one, but you have guys like Hamilton and you have Harvest and you have uh Global X Canada now that rebranded used to be Horizons. Uh Brmpton's in the game. You have Evolve ETF. So there's a couple of other little ones as well, but those are, you know, you got more players now, more competition in terms of covered call ETFs in Canada, which is great.

So yeah, HyLd for me, the way I look at it is the S&P 500 to make things simple. So personally, throughout the years of investing experience, I've pretty much come to the realization, like many investors do after a while that start with, you know, picking stocks and looking for stocks and whatever what you're not going to beat the S&P 500. Sorry, you're just there's a 99% chance you're not going to do it. So, HYLD is actually, if you look at what it's, you know, you go to Hamilton's web page, it says they're trying to follow or have a similar asset mix to the S&P 500, right? So, HYLD is a Canadian hedge to the Canadian dollar. You're you're, you know, it's a Canadian-listed ETF. You're buying it in Canadian dollars. You're getting your dividend in Canadian dollars. They also have HYLD.U, U, which is still listed on the Canadian market, but you buy it in USD. That one is not hedged. So, essentially, it's kind of like it's basically an S&P 500 ETF hedged to the Canadian dollar. So, in my opinion, the best ETF to always compare it to would be the Vanguard. The Canadian-listed Vanguard S&P 500 hedged to the Canadian dollar, which is VSP. VFV is the more bigger popular one. That's the non-hedged one. So VFV non-hedged VSP hedge the Canadian dollar. So HYLD is kind of like a covered call income equivalent or with very similar assets, very similar stocks to VSP or the S&P 500.

You can hold that in your TFSA. Correct. This is a regular ETF. You could hold that anywhere. Yeah. Yeah, I was watching one of your videos and recent video and your users were saying your your viewers were saying uh but the 15% withholding tax and your response was wait no no no that doesn't make that doesn't apply because it's 15% withholding tax on US dividends but it's capital appreciation you're you're typically getting paid out on right the premiums on the covered call which is a capital gains. So a couple a couple of things there. So it there is no 15% withholding tax if the ETF is listed in Canada, right? So this is only coming from US-listed stocks or ETFs. So you got to have something like uh JP Morgan stock or even Apple and Microsoft have Nvidia, they have tiny tiny dividends. And the 15% withholding tax first of all is only on dividends. And in Canada, covered call income, which is the majority of what these cover covered call ETFs generate in Canada, option premium, covered call premium classified as capital gains, not dividends. So, as long as you have uh your your your ETFs listed in Canada, you don't have to worry about that 15% withholding tax. Now, there is a caveat to that. If the ETF itself holds some US dividend stocks, there could be they have to pay 15% withholding tax on that. But it's so so so small because you know the S&P 500, if you just look at the yield itself, it's maybe about 1%. Because there's not many dividend stocks in the S&P 500. Well, there are quite a few, but the dividends are really, really small. Yeah. So, it's possible that Hamilton or Harvest or Beimo does pay 15% withholding tax, but it's handled within the ETF. It's it's transparent to you. You don't see it as an investor. You actually have to go on their website, look at the 2024 breakdown of the distributions, and you'll see a column that's typically called foreign income tax paid. And if you see something there, that means that they paid that that much in um withholding tax, but it's typically always zero or very very very very little.

All right, that's good to know. For me, I don't even I don't hold HYLD in my TFSA. I just have it in a non-registered account. It's just it's not part of my TFSA. Let's move on to Global X enhanced S&P 500 covered call ETF. That's us. And really quick, I've noticed over 80% of viewers who watch aren't subscribed. An easy way to support the channel is by hitting that subscribe button. And I personally commit to continue providing quality educational content with each video. And let's see what you have here. So that's as of April. Everything, guys, I'm saying is as of April. His latest one's coming out in a few days. So check his channel to download that. This is weighted at 18.4%. He's got a yield of 12.77%. And by the way, let me go back here quickly. He's making this. I love this. You're making off of Hyld $2,178 a month. The one we just mentioned, USCL, you're making basically $3,200 a month. Uh, talk to me about why you add that in. Because now me looking, I'm not too familiar with Global X Enhance. I'm just going You have two of the same S&P 500 ETFs covered.

That's a good question. And I still get that question all the time. So much so that I made a video recently called HYLD versus USCL. Okay. So, um there there's a few differences between the two. There USCL is literally the S&P 500. Like it literally holds the S&P 500. It writes in covered calls, but it writes index calls. So, S&P call options. That's the difference number one between HYLD and USCL. HYLD. If you look what's inside on their website, it's a combination of multiple Hamilton ETFs. There's the the two biggest ones are SMAX and QAX. SMAX is kind of like a concentrated S&P 500. QAX is like 15 technology stocks. So, they're they're actually holding the stocks themselves, the individual stocks, the Apple, Microsoft, blah blah blah blah blah. And it's it it's kind of like more or less it translates into an S&P 500. it kind of follows what it does. But USCL is literally the S&P 500 index and the that that's the first difference. The second difference is that USCL is not hedged to the Canadian dollar HYLD is. So in in essence, if the Canadian dollar gets uh weaker and the versus the US dollar, so the US dollar is getting stronger, which it it has been doing in the last 6 to 12 months, that's going to benefit USCL and hurt HYLD a little bit because you're holding them in Canadian dollars, both of them, but they're investing in US-listed assets. So there's some currency uh implications there. So that's exactly why I have both of them. It's I like both of them. I like both Global X and Hamilton. I like the strategies. They're very, very similar. The management fee is the same. They're writing covered calls on it. They both have 25% leverage. Um, but HYLD I I personally will always compare to VSP and USCL I will always compare to VFD because it's hedge to the Canadian dollar. Those are really the main differences. But for me, the way I look at it, HYLD and USCL are like a unit. They're like twin brothers or twin sisters. And together, the combination for me makes up my S&P 500 exposure. It completes your It balances it out. It completes it, right? You could say it balances the currency risk out. So, if the dollar gets weaker or stronger, one's going to benefit, the other one's not. It kind of balances out. So, I don't have an equal weight between the two, but um you know, are you trying to equal it out? It might be getting there, but uh you know, they're they're both for me, they're both S&P 500 exposures.

Is it just weighted to the one that you started investing in first has more allocation like you have 300,000 and global? But Global X is newer though. It's uh Global X is newer, but the S&P 500 isn't new. So, to me, that does that doesn't matter. As long as you understand the strategy, you're good. Um, the thing is, and we'll probably talk about this, I'm a Canadian non-resident for tax purposes. So, my tax situation completely different from yours, right? So, the way it works is if you look at the breakdown of USCL and look at the breakdown of HYLD for 2024, USCL only has capital gains and rock, which is exactly what I want as a non-resident in my cash account. So, I might as well talk about this now because your your audience might be scratching their head. When you're a Canadian non-resident, you're not declaring taxes in Canada anymore, right? I'm a resident of Panama. If I hold uh Canadian-listed ETFs in my cash account, I'm subject to a the universal Canadian withholding tax rate, which is actually 25%. So every month I get my HYLD, USCL, every everything in my cash account, I get those dividends. Automatically 25% is withheld from my broker Quest Trade.

That's a lot. Yes. But the following year, the portion that was deemed to be capital gains or rock, I get it refunded. So I have a big motivation to only put things that give me capital gains or rock in my cash account. So this is why I have a little bit more in USCL cuz HYLD has a little bit of dividend stocks in there. It has some bonds in there. So there's a small portion maybe 10%. It's not that much that's going to be foreign income or other income. So on that portion I don't get refunded. So this is why I actually have a lot of HYLD in my TFSAs and I have more USCL in my cash account. So, I'm trying to maximize as much as I could every dollar for tax savings. That's really why the percentage is that way. But for me, they're both kind of in terms of assets, they're the they're very similar, if not the same.

Is that why you moved to Panama for the tax uh benefits? It's definitely one of the reasons I I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. Um, but you know everything that happened in our lives to be honest it happened because of this style of investing and becoming financially independent. If we didn't accomplish that we who knows where we would be and you know what I mean? So once we got our financial independence because of this style of investing and we were able to quit our jobs and live comfortably off our income, it just dawned on us fairly quickly, why are we still in Canada? the weather is cold, the taxes are high. So, we started looking at other options and Panama came up really quickly on our radar because we followed another Canadian couple couple who did the same thing. Uh Stefan James and Tatiana James. Their channel is Project. Well, they both have channels now. Uh they had they had like Amazon businesses. They're they're really rich, okay? They're they're like 1000 millionaires or whatever. I think they they go back to Vancouver once in a while, but we followed them and they started their plan was to go to Hawaii or California and then they discovered Panama and how much bang for your buck is and they really like the country and they started talking about it, the taxes. So, we said we looked into it and said, "Hey, we're not working. Let's just spend the winter there." Cuz you know, we're Italian, so we we we don't do well in cold weather.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We spent three and a half months in Panama the winter. We fell in love with it and the the rest is is history. I want to come back to this. I have a lot of questions about that. So anyone watching just know we're going to come back to this. I want to talk to you about after we work through this list that process of you guys were working. You came across this what that process of building your portfolio getting that financial independence. Not a problem. I'll do my best. Maybe we can come out with a road map for everyone watching. Let's just dive into that. But let's just hammer through this list here so then everyone has it. Then what's one of this list if we don't know how to get that financial independence? So let's let's talk about that too. So uh the next one is Global X enhanced NASDAQ 100 covered call ETF QQCL. So now you're just tracking the NASDAQ 100. Same thing covered calls. It's essentially a a mirror image of USCL in terms of strategy and and everything covered calls 25% leverage except it's on the NASDAQ 100 index and you waited heavy on it. really has pretty much all the indexes with covered calls, all the indexes with covered calls and leverage. They even have growth indexes and the growth indexes with 25% leverage. So, Global X really, my opinion, has nailed it out of the park. If you're an index investor, you like indexes, whether it's growth whether it's growth with leverage, whether it's covered calls, whether it's covered calls with leverage, Global X has all of them. uh they recently completed their uh their suite. But yeah, QQCL is basically you're investing in the NASDAQ 100 index. They're writing covered calls on the index or NDX calls. And uh you know, I recently did a 30-minute Q&A with the head of investments there to talk about this. I they invited me to Toronto to their office. So if you guys want to check out that video on my channel, there's a recent Q&A with him. Um, but they're writing just like USCL, they're writing index calls on the option on the index on the NASDAQ 100. So QQCL has about 15 15% yield because it's a little bit more volatile than the S&P 500. The NASDAQ 100 is there's a lot of overlap between the two, but uh yeah, that that's the next one on the list.

This is pretty balanced. I'm looking through it because if you add up HYLD and USCL, that's 30% of your portfolio. QQCL, which is NASDAQ, 30%. So, you're kind of sticking to that. So, that comes out to for QQCL, guys, remember, download this PDF so you can see what I'm seeing. Uh, that comes out to $5,665 a month. So, you're already at over 10 grand a month. Um, at 30% 30%. Um, so this is now looking at this, this is like you're safe. You're Molson Canadian of covered calls. It's like, you know, it's going to provide for you. It's like a good, it's a good beer. It's stable. You have these three ETFs, S&P 500, NASDAQ 100, but now we get into HHIS, which is 14 stocks only. It's the harvest diversified high income shares. I'm not too familiar with this one. It's Apple's going to be added in it soon. So, ju just before we move on to HHIS. Yeah. So, Hyd USCL, QQQL. To me, it's like owning the risk. So when whenever you put covered calls on something, you're actually lowering your risk or your volatility a little bit. That's what covered calls do. But then these funds add 25% leverage which increases the risk a little bit. So it kind of it kind of balances each other out. So I just want to make your your your audience understand and this is a question I get all the time and there's very common misunderstanding about how risky these are. Are they risky? So the risk level of an HYLD is very very similar to just owning the S&P 500 hedge to the Canadian dollar like owning VSP. USCL the risk is very similar to VFV and QQCL the risk is very similar to owning QQQC which is the Canadian QQQ right so it's it the risk level is like owning the indexes themselves.

HHIS is another monster. So this one is the way I look at it and again I have a video that just came out HHIS breakdown. The way I look at it simply is a concentrated NASDAQ 100. So almost all the stocks in there you'll recognize they're all the top stocks of the NASDAQ and the S&P. You know Microsoft, Apple's going to be there, Meta's there, Tesla, Nvidia. You just have more concentration there. it. So there's there's it's it's a little I guess you could say it's it's definitely more risky than just buying the S&P or the NASDAQ because you have more concentration. uh and but the format is completely the same covered calls 25% leverage but because you have more concentration because there's a lot of volat more volatile stocks in there like Tesla and Nvidia and Palunteer Micro Strategy uh you're able to generate a lot more premiums because covered call premiums are based on volatility and those are more volatile stocks than the S&P 500 index or the NASDAQ 100 index. So they're able to generate about 25% yield on that fund. So HH right now is just under $12. The yield is a little over 25% right now on HHIS. And that yield is very sustainable. Most people think it's it's just crazy, but it's it's sustainable because those stocks generate those types of call premiums. It's as simple as that. Plus, there's 25% leverage in there, which is, you know, classic borrowed money that the fund manager, it's not you borrowing the money, it's within the ETF, which is great. They get the best borrowing rates. Rates are very low in Canada. So, the way I look at HHIS is kind of like a concentrated NASDAQ 100, if you will. Is HHIS US hedged as well or is that not? No. So the only one that's hedged to the Canadian dollar is HyLd. Hyd of course they have HYLD.U which is not. But everything else USCL QCL HHI everything else is not hedged to the Canadian dollar which means if you like the USD better than the

Canadian dollar; that's what you would go for. That's what you would prefer. Also, for your tax purposes, it makes more sense.

Correct. In being in Panama. Yes. Because if I would hold—Yeah. Uh, well, first of all, there's not really—there is no US equivalent, US listed equivalent of these with 25% leverage. You could find a million S&P 500, NASDAQ 100, Russell 2000, uh, sector single-stock covered-call ETFs in the US, but none of them have the 25% leverage. So, I feel the Canadian one's always going to have that very superior edge. On top of that, I would pay a 30% withholding tax in my cash account instead of 25, and I wouldn't get anything back. So, for especially for non-resident, it's completely non—not worth it. But even for a Canadian resident, it's still not worth it. You might as well stick with the Canadian listed ETFs in your TFSA and cash account, especially.

So, on this one, you have a total investment of 55,000. Your weight—30%, 31% of your portfolio. Uh, like the yield here is 24%; that probably fluctuates, and you get paid $10,000 a month. So, guys, right now we're at about 20,000—over $20,000 a month.

Yeah. Keep in mind that the monthly distributions could vary. It's—how much do they vary by? How is it erratic, or is it like a lot, or you still roughly know—depends on the fund, right? Because if you're doing covered calls on a single stock like Micro Strategy, for example, it's going to be more erratic because Micro Strategy is more erratic. So, the more boring the thing is, most likely the more—the less fluctuations you will see up or down, right?

So, do you even care? Tell me the truth. Like because you're getting $25,000—your living expenses are like, I don't know. We're talking about what you're doing with this, by the way. Are you reinvesting it? Are you living off it? But if you're in Panama, yeah, living expenses can't be the craziest because you're in Panama. You're not—unless you're crazy and you're just like this every day—you're not blowing through $25,000 a month in—in capital G, right? So, it's like if it varies, you're like whatever. You just go about your business, right? You're not—it's not like you're a retirement person. You're on a more modest yield where you need to get paid that $300 to $5,000 a month because you got fixed—you got bills you got to pay—fixed, right? Like this is the very—the varied element. I don't think it wouldn't bother me that much. I'll be honest. If it—if it fluctuates by even—it can't bother you because it's just the way it is. This is—these—these are not dividends from dividend stocks. You know, like Bell just kept their dividend—big disaster. These are not dividends. These are call option premiums. It's completely different. So, by nature, they—they vary. The Canadian fund managers, I talked to all of them; they know—they're not stupid. They understand that people are relying on these distributions. So, they do their best to keep them relatively even. Some of them are taking in—some months take in more than what they give out, but some months they take in less than what they give out. So, what they typically do is they—they do a—a report of the last year or two years, and what is the average, and they typically give you like an average that they take in. But sometimes they do have to adjust them because they want to be responsible and make them sustainable. So, some people get upset when they see a reduction. They get happy when they see an increase. I'm agnostic when I see both because I understand that it's just a—just a game—part of it. I'm happy getting income anyway, no matter what. So, I don't care. That comes with experience.

Let's hammer home this one point. Like they're call options. They're not dividends. Like people need to understand that. They need to understand. Can you, in layman's terms, because I know a lot of people watching this aren't familiar with it, explain exactly what call options are, how they're—like how they're paying you out exactly. It's not from dividends; it's from premiums and call—optify as much as you can for anyone watching.

So, uh, you know how there's a stock market where stocks are traded? There's also an options market where options are traded. So, there's two types of options: a buy option and a—and a—and a sell option. So, a buy option is a call option. So, they are selling call options. So, call option—when you sell one, you're—you're basically—and it depends on how much of the portfolio you're doing this. In Canada, typically nobody goes over 50% of the portfolio. So, what they're doing is they're selling call options, and that's how they're making their premiums, their dividends if you will—are technically called premiums. Kind of like an insurance company that takes in premiums from their clients. So, basically, the general premise, and layman's terms of what you're doing when you're selling a call option, is you're giving up a certain percentage of the upside of the asset—of the stock. Right? So, if you're writing covered calls on Micro Strategy, it means you own Micro Strategy stock; you're selling call options at a higher price. So, let's say Micro Strategy is at $100. You sell a call option at $105, and it expires in 30 days. Typically options expire in 30 days. So, basically, you're—you're—you're telling—you're selling someone the right or the privilege to buy your Micro Strategy shares at $105. That's basically an example of a call option. And for that privilege, you're getting paid a premium no matter what happens up front. So, at the end of the 30 days, if Micro Strategy stays at 100, goes to 101, 2, 3, 4, 5, even 105 or less, the option is worthless because there's no way they're going to buy Micro Strategy off of you for 105 when they could just buy it on the—at the market for less than that. So, the problem—or when you get called away or when the option gets exercised—would be if Micro Strategy ends up being $110 after 30 days. So, of course, they're going to—they're going to say, "I—give me your shares at 105," because now they're—they're at 110. So, as the—the option writer, the seller, you're giving up Micro Strategy past 105, the price past 105.

Yeah. Well, hopefully that makes sense. That—are they making millions off that strategy—like individual investors doing call and put? Do you know? Are they just making short-term cash flow that doesn't really equate that much? Guy who—he's really good with this stuff, and he has a lot more money than me. He's also in Canada, and he doesn't—he just doesn't want to pay the ETF fee. So, he has a lot of this stock and that stock, and whenever he needs some cash, he'll sell his call options. Like there's a million different combinations of ways you could do it.

Yeah. But I'm—I don't know—I'm not sophisticated enough to even start trying to do it. Like I don't—Yeah, that—I have zero interest in that. So, we're going to move past that as well. Let's—let's—let's go to the last one.

MST—that is a Harvest Micro Strategy Enhanced High Income Shares—uh, MSTR stock with covered calls and you have—and 25% leverage. Yeah. So, MST is one of the 14—soon to be 15—in HHIS. So, HHIS is really—let's just say 15—when the Apple one comes out, it's going to be 50. HHIS is a combination of 15 Harvest single-stock covered-call ETFs.

Right. Right. So, HHIS has 15 of those, and Micro Strategy is one of them—or so this MST is technically one in HHIS. So, it's just Micro Strategy stock. If you go to the website, you look at holdings, it says Micro Strategy 125%. And they're just writing covered calls on that stock, but they—they write only between 33 and 50% of the portfolio, which means by default they never write more than 50. So, they still capture some of the upside on—if—when there is 50%, but probably more because I think they started about—Harvest typically does 33 typically, but they could go up to 50. So, they're making all those premiums, and the premiums are very, very high with MST. That's why you see the enormous 55%.

55%. Yeah. Um, and that's not even—that's on less than half the portfolio. Imagine, right? That's why the yield max one is like 100% yield because they're writing on 100% of the portfolio. Okay, so let's—let's talk about this for a second because that's 55%. Um, so how much is it depreciating by every month? Like, are you—have to keep reinvesting your profit? I actually have—I actually have massive appreciation on it because my strategy is going up—or has gone up. It—the ETF will—will appreciate or depreciate with whatever the underlying asset is.

Asset is—Yeah. Yeah. But on top of that, you have to remember that, you know, right now the—the—the monthly dividend, which could change, is 66 cents a share per month. You have to remember that on any ETF, on any of these, the—every month on the X dividend date, the ETF stock price is going to decrease by the amount of the dividend. So, on every X dividend date of MSTE, the stock price, you're going to wake up in the morning, and it's 66 cents less. That's because the premium is coming out of the net asset value of the ETF every month, and then they give it to you as cash. So, a big misunderstanding, a big thing people always say about these high-yield ETFs is they have depreciation; there's NAV erosion; there's erosion of capital; there's capital erosion. It's not true because it—the 66 cents is not going in thin air. It's being given to you in cash, and you could do whatever you want with it.

Yeah. Right. These—you—you can't look at stock charts. You got to look at total returns. You got to count that 66 cents every time as well. Right. So, when I'm looking at this, we were talking a bit off-camera. I was saying, yeah, I bought Hamilton ETFs because I was just—didn't want to put in a GIC. I didn't want to put it into a high-interest savings. I just wanted it where I can liquidate it really fast because it—I had about $100,000. I was just like, "All right, I—I just want it available. Let's say another market crash happens, and I want to snatch up a bunch of stuff. I can just sell that. It's liquid enough. I can sell it. Next day, I can buy $100,000."

You could buy and sell them like a regular ETF. Yeah. My personal opinion, I think these are designed to really buy and hold and collect the income. But you could buy and sell them. You know, if you—if you get kidnapped and you need a—some quick ransom money, you could sell them. But I would try to never sell them.

Well, let's—then let's talk about what I should do then because I own UMAX. I own HYLD, and I—and I own uh HMAX, and I have 50% of it in UMAX. Uh, 25 in HMAX, 25 in HYLD. I have so much—I have so much US exposure. I was like, great, I'll just have UMAX and stuff as like Canadian exposure. Plus, you get a dividend tax—if there's dividends on it—I guess I didn't fully understand it, but uh—dividend uh tax credit and all that stuff. But now that I'm looking at this, I was like, great, I can have it there. I can collect some dividend. I get some yield. I get to make a little bit of money while I hold it there. But I'm thinking, why don't I just put $100,000 on uh MST and just collect $55,000 a month.

And yeah, a lot of people have that question, but you have to remember your risk is much elevated. So, you're still investing in MSTR, whereas UMAX or HMAX—you're investing in 10 to 15—you—Canadian utility stocks or finance—Canadian financial—the risk level is completely not the same—right—if you—so—but if you look at my perspective—risk is—what is it going to drop to zero? Am I going to lose $100,000? Like uh—if I'm—hold—question—what is the risk, right? Yeah, and then I don't care that much. I don't need this money tomorrow. I literally just have it there as like—if I ever feel like I just want $100,000 to go buy some random stock that I think is so undervalued that I can just buy into it. It's—it's not in a—a registered uh tax-shelter account. Uh, I could easily hold it for three years and just based off of dividend pay—I mean yield payouts, I made up the difference uh just off those monthly payout. Like that's what I'm saying. Like is it that risky really? Even if it dropped half in value in a year and I held it for three years, I would still technically—unless they didn't change the yield drastically—it wouldn't be that painful. Like, am I thinking—am I thinking right, or am I completely off track here? Of how—

No, you're—you're—you're not thinking wrong; that's for sure. But you have to remember that your risk is still associated with the underlying asset. So, would you put—let's say you were a growth investor—would you put it all in MSTR and—and ditch your S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100? And by the way, don't think I don't ask myself or simulate—what if I just sell my HYLD and QQCL and USCL, put it all just in MST and HHIS? I'll probably be making like four—$500,000 a year of dividends.

Yes. But it's really about how much volatility and how much capital fluctuation you could stomach in your—I think—I think it'd be—because I'm coming from a similar position as you where I have quite a large portfolio in my safe ETFs—in VS—in VFVS and—and stuff like that where I never sell them. They're just there where I'm okay—I'm okay no matter what. Like I'm—I could retire by 45, 46 and be completely done. uh, where I—I have room for high volatility where I go, "Oh, this isn't going to make or break me regardless of what happens." It's—uh—should I add some volatility into my portfolio? Should I just weave this in? Uh, then that would be the—only time I'd be thinking about.

Yeah. Yeah. High risk, high reward. Right. That famous line—that—that's really what applies here. So, yeah, I mean it—if you put it all in MST or a big chunk in MST, you're going to get that massive yield. And if Micro Strategy does really, really, really well, you'll appreciate, and your—the performance of your MST will be more or less similar to MSTR.

Walk me through your—your process. You own $115,000. What would your decision make? Just walk us through—what was your decision-making process be like? I'm going to—I said, "You know what? I'm going to go about 10% Bitcoin exposure, and the rest in big-cap US indexes." So, my—my general—my—my process or my thinking is that—um—the question I ask myself all the time now before I invest in any—anything is—is this thing going to beat the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ 100? These things are almost unbeatable by stock pickers, and you know—if you look at Canadian stocks, Canadian indexes, they never beat the US indexes over time. I don't care about last month or last three months. I care about the last 5 to 10 years and the next 5 to 10 years.

Mhm. Europe doesn't beat them. Emerging markets don't beat them. Nobody beats the US. Nobody. So, this is why I have my baseline core in the S&P and NASDAQ. I also think index investing is personally one of my favorite and the best way of investing and easiest because when you're investing in an index like the S&P or the NASDAQ, they're constantly changing. The index is constantly rebalancing. It's like auto-diversification, auto-adjustment to the best company. If a company gets better and better and bigger and bigger, it's going to take a bigger percentage. It's like capitalism is almost embedded in the index style. You know what I mean? So, I love that. But HHIS, you know what? Concentrated S&P are concentrated. NASDAQ, those 15 stocks make up such a big portion. I'm okay going a third there. Maybe someone is okay going 50%. Maybe someone is okay doing 80%, or maybe someone's not comfortable, and they'll do 10% HHIS—the rest in the S&P, NASDAQ, or some Canada. This is where do-it-yourself investing becomes a blessing and a curse. A lot of people's biggest question I get all the time from you people is what percentage do I put in what? The answer is there is no answer. There is no magical formula. It's really up to you to figure out what you can—

This is fun for me, though. I like—I like talking shop a little bit. This is a little bit fun for me. And I really want to be very clear with everybody: We are not financial advisors. I am one guy just talking to—I am one guy talking to another guy, and we're just having a little bit of fun. I'm throwing out crazy hypotheticals. Do not expect me to act on anything I'm saying. I'm just having a lot of fun because I know he's the pro in this area. So, I like throwing him these scenarios, and then internally I get a little bit happy talking about it. It's fun. It's fun to talk about for sure. It is fun to talk about. It's very different. If I were actually put $100,000 on something, I don't think I'd be having a lot more fun. I'd be a little bit more stressed out, especially since I'd have to do a lot more research before I do any of these, especially if it went down 50%. If it goes up—if it doubles or triples, you're going to be happy. But yeah, big difference between us talking, having fun here, talking about it, than actually doing it.

I—I think though—is you mentioned MST is being incorporated into HHIS. Are you still going to keep your position in MST, or are you just going to liquidate it?

I will. I—to me—M—So, the way I look at it, so I—I really like Bitcoin. I'm not a crypto expert at all. Yeah, I really—I—I guess I could say I understand Bitcoin. I find it very fascinating. I'm a huge Michael Sailor fan. I will admit that right away. Just watching his podcast, watching him talk, it's like I'm mesmerized. I can't—I can't—everything he says makes sense. I also, you know, did some research on him. He kind of predicted the MAGA 7 years ago that they were going to take over, and he wasn't right. So, he just—his conviction, his confidence—and what I see happening, the Trump administration, very pro-crypto, the fact that more and more companies are buying it. I think the ship has sailed where Bitcoin is no longer just a speculative asset. This is—Yeah, that's—I—I think it's very special and unique, and it could be the, you know, it could be the biggest life-changing thing for my portfolio. And um—you know, I—I don't need my uh my portfolio to live off of. Um, you know, I have other sources. I'm blessed to have other sources of income now, the YouTube channel, other things. Uh, so I—I mostly reinvest everything anyway. So, I'm comfortable to go to 10% exposure Bitcoin, and I actually—going to raise it to 15. Some people are 50, man. You know what I mean? Maybe next year I'll be 20, 25. So, the more my confidence level grows in Bitcoin, the more exposure I'll put, but I'm still an income investor at heart. I'm still going to be investing in the leverage covered-call ETFs. That's just what I love. So, right now MST—um—Michael—Michael Sailor says it's like a leveraged investment in Bitcoin. If you want to buy Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin. If you want to outperform Bitcoin by Micro Strategy, but you're going to get a lot of volatility and a lot of swings. I'm okay with that. So, for me, MST, HBIX, which is just Bitcoin, and then you have HBTE. These, by the way, they're all Harvest products. Uh, I think what Harvest has done for Bitcoin is really, really good. They came out with an ETF—HPT—called Bitcoin Leaders. So, in there you have 15 companies that are involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem. So, Micro Strategy is actually there. Block is there. Coinbase is there. Marathon, Galaxy—you have bit—a little bit of Bitcoin itself and a bunch of little crypto miners in that ETF.

Yeah. And they're writing covered calls on it with 25% leverage. And then you have the bit—just Bitcoin, you know, which is kind of like the boringest one. So, those three exposures for me make up my Bitcoin exposure, which is—I'm planning to make 15% overall in the next couple of months. You mentioned Harvest. Like you're dealing with Hamilton, Harvest, you got Global X. You—you're only dealing with highly reputable companies that you know are good for—you know, you don't have to get there. Like they remove that headache. You're good if you buy one.

Of their ETFs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's that. I I I know all of them. I met all of them. They're good. They're They were good friends even before they became sponsors of the channel. They they approached me.

Mhm. Um I I under I The most important thing is you have to understand what they're doing and what their strategy is. That's the most important thing. I have the utmost confidence in all of them. I know exactly black and white what the covered call strategy is. How much are they giving up upside and proof is in the pudding. You know, their other ETFs do do really well. So, as long as you understand the it's more about understanding the the product and the ETF and the strategy than Hamilton versus Beimo versus, you know, like Beimo, for example, a lot more bigger and more reputable, you could say, but they don't have any of the cover call strategies that I like.

Yeah. Right. They don't have any 25% leverage ETFs and they mostly stick with dividend stocks. They're more boring sector specific. I like the indexes. I like, you know, more what Hamilton Harvest and Global X do that format. So, right, I have my eye on HHIS. I'm just going I like the idea of if they're bringing on MSTR, so 15 with covered calls. I like obviously their high yield of 23.85. Uh maybe something I'd hold for a year or two for that with that money I have. Yeah, it's like 26 now, which is crazy. Um I just I just like that.

But then could I go to your channel and just to get started with my research, find relevant videos to just uh about HHIS? Do you have any content on that?

For sure. So the best thing to do is search my channel and and put the stock symbol you want and if it's a hot high-income one like HHIS and for all of these you'll find the the related videos for sure. So HHIS I I have a recent one where I kept getting questions about or or kept seeing uh false information about it that it's it's too speculative too speculative. It's typically people who talk like that and say that kind of thing, they don't really understand what they're investing in. An in it's very simple. An investment in HHIS is an equal weighted investment in in 15 companies. Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, you go through the list. None of those companies are small fries, small little companies. Some I guess you could call speculative like Palunteer maybe and Tesla, but to me they're not really, you know, HHIS harvest has chosen more innovation type companies to go with HHIS to really sustain high yield because innovation type companies aka tech companies. There's simply more volatility in there which means more call premiums, right? It's only natural. But you have to like those stocks. Don't invest in HHIS if you don't like the 15 stocks in there because that's what you're really investing in. You got to look beyond the ticker. You always have to look at the underlying assets of each one. Always.

I want to talk a little bit about now because every most people on my channel were long there's they're actually I find my channel breaks up into two buckets. Either people with over 10-year time horizons who are looking for capital gains, what am I going to have by retirement or people who are actually in that transition period or in retirement and I feel like this is the people who are going to be really interested in this or like hey I need income to live off of. Uh I get emails all the time now of covered call strategies and stuff like that. I actually send over to your channel like just go look at his content. Um but it's I think this would be relevant to them. I'm going to tell you where my brain is at and I'm going to guess why you picked this strategy and you tell me how close I am. So the the reason why I do what I do is I'm focused on capital gains, right? I'm just trying to frontload as many capital gains as possible solely transition into more income oriented investing when I'm ready to start milking that for cash. But that might not even be for a long time. Retire by 45, but I might not even use this cash till I'm 55, 60, who knows, right? Switch it over then. See how big that pot is. Go from there. I have that extra income. That's really emergency fund for me. It's just money I have that's like if my house catches on fire, I can fix some stuff if something happens. That's all it is. So, I wasn't using it for anything. I didn't want to put it into a stock that was uh V uh VFV or something because I don't touch those. So, I can't put it there and everything I do is long-term holds. Uh if I was going to use it, it would be for something where the recent market crash, I bought everything at a 40% dip. Maybe I'll flip it in two, three years and it's an all-time high again. Go buy something else with it, right? And that's what I'd be waiting for. So my reason for covered call was very much I'm not a covered call investor. I got money. I'm not I'm literally purposefully not allocating anywhere else. I need it to be as liquid as possible, but I want to collect as much interest on it as possible. I don't want to put in GSE because I think there's better options than that. I landed on uh Hamilton ETFs because I was really familiar with Hamilton ETFs from my previous work working in advertising for publicly traded company. So I knew all about them. Same with Harvest. So, I went with them because familiar. I knew they're trusted. Yada yada yada. You you're young. Uh you're we're around the same age. I'm thinking you just went I don't want to wait till I'm older. I want to chill now. This is a strategy that I can I can because you're reinvesting a lot of it. You're building up other income sources, but you're like, if I really wanted to though, I could just stop doing everything and just go on autopilot for the rest of my life starting right now. So, it's more like I want to live good now and I still know I'll be fine later and it'll just be all good. Like maybe I won't have the same capital appreciation as Gary does at that point, but do we really care? Are we are we arguing over pennies at this point? Does it really matter at that age? So, I'd rather just have all the benefit now and have the benefit later. It was more like a mental thing or am I way off base on that?

No, I think that you're you're what you're talking about is how most people see it. I with time and experience, I kind of see it differently. The last thing you said really resonates more. It's a mental thing. So, the way I like to explain it is if you're going to go with VU, VO, the indexes or growth stocks or whatever, whatever, it's fantastic. I'm not I'll never not I don't I like all styles of investing. I think there's three styles. There's growth, you know, growth stocks, passive index ETFs like the S&P, the NASDAQ. There's the dividend style which is you're only focusing on dividend stocks not cover call like like uh Bell and Telus forget Bellad example but you know utilities and health care stocks that financials they have a lot of dividends and they typically grow their dividends over time then you have the income investor which you're just you're trying to maximize income but I feel like I income has a big advantage over dividends because dividends you're you're you could only buy and invest in dividend stocks. What about all those fantastic great growth stocks? So, as a covered call investor, I could still get the indexes, you know, and get growth stocks and and and as long as they have covered calls, I I turn them into an income investment. So, it it's it's more about I don't have to worry about selling anything down the line. I'm not as dependent on the stock market as you are. You are going to have to sell at one point your VO to make capital gains like you said you're chasing capital gains or you or when you when you want to retire you're going to have to swap into more dividends or income oriented fund I don't want to have that problem at all I don't want to be dependent on the market I don't want to care if the market crashes 30 40% to me it doesn't matter because I'm ne I with this strategy I never have to sell anything.

Another thing I will tell tell you there's a big misconception around the word growth or capital gains as you say it as you as you said it. So growth, what are we trying to grow? Mo most people when they think growth growth stocks they're they want capital appreciation. They want stock prices to go up so they could sell them and make a profit aka a capital gain. But it's really not the growth of the stock price you should be worried about. It's the growth of your money of your investment. Right? You put in this much after 10 years you want it to be much higher. You want that to grow. So there's a there's a lot of people in my community that are young or have 10 20 30 years left. They're still going with this style. And I would still go with this style even if I was 18 because if you put here's the beauty of it. It's the flexibility with this strategy. You have flexibility. The growth investor does not. The gross investor when he needs cash flow that there's an emergency they have to sell units also to realize their profit they're going to have to sell at some point trust me I've met with over a thousand people it worries people they're always looking every day when do I sell how much do I sell what do I do with the money afterwards these are all mental problems that I I never have to deal with and here's the beauty part of it if you like VO or the NASDAQ uh QQQ, QQQC in in Canada or Vietv in Canada. You could just get USCL and put it on Drip. You could just get QQCL, put it on Drip, Hy LD, HHIS, put it on Drip. If you do that, you're kind of turning your income investment into a growth investment. And then later on, if you need cash flow, if you're if you're starting retirement, you don't have to sell anything. You could just turn the drip off. So, you have much easier time and less to worry about later on. And here's the beauty. The performance is more or less going to be the same.

I was going to ask you, but if you do USCL versus VFV, HYLD versus VSSP, QQCL versus QQC, what you'll realize is that thanks to that 25% leverage, the performance is extremely similar, if not identical to the growth one anyway, as long as you're reinvesting that drip obviously, right? As long as you're reinvesting. But even if you're not reinvesting it and you're taking out that cash, it's still similar really just Yeah. So if you go to like the kind of the stock channel, there's a tool where you could do a total return and it shows you the total return with dividends reinvested dividend without the reinvested. So it's like you're spending them. It's it's typically a little bit lower the return if you're spending them, but it it it's still very similar. Um, will will USCL beat VFV in in the next 10 years? I don't know. I have no idea. I know that it'll be pretty similar. Um, the leverage certainly helps. If if the S&P 500 does really well and interest rates are down, leverage costs are low, maybe USCL will beat VFV. I I don't know. But what I'm trying to say is that it's in terms of you you can't just look at yield. You got to look at your overall performance, your total return, which is what what people should be saying instead of growth, say total return. That's best way to look at it, right? So these are very performant as well. They have great growth and great total return as well, if not the equivalent of the underlying without the covered calls. And that's thanks to that 25% leverage. If you just do S&P with covered calls, no leverage, you're not going to beat VU. You're not going to beat VFV. It It's impossible because if the S&P goes up over time, covered calls meanings you're giving up some of that upside. So, in a long period of time, you're not going to outperform. But that 25% leverage seems to have been like the sweet spot or that holy grail where it it helps to bring up, you know, covered calls, lowers the return. It it gives you heal the monthly cash flow. It's beautiful, but it lowers your performance over time.

But how often how of how often are you um how often are you adjusting your portfolio? You only like you got five core ETFs. This is your core position. My goal is to never adjust it anymore. Like I'm I'm You got your ratios. It's so simple. It's 3030. Like you got it like it's nice. It's clean I came up with. Now maybe I I think I'll be more risk tolerant as I get older. So maybe instead of 30 30 30 it'll be like 20 35 35, right? Because my portfolio, the more down you go, the higher the risk goes, right? So the S&P is the most boring. The NASDAQ not not that much more risky, but a little bit more because there's such overlap now with the NASDAQ S&P. HHIS more risky because it's more concentrated. But another thing you got to remember d over diversification lots of diversification is not necessarily a good thing for total return. You see a lot of uh geniuses like Warren Buffett and Mark Well, I don't know if Mark Cuban's considered a genius anymore, but Michael Sailor, they all say diversification is a pretty bad idea. I mean Warren Buffett said it on pretty stupid but then he he he he said well this is what I meant by it diversification is not for you to increase your performance is to it will literally give you average performance that's what it does so you know example if you just bought the magnificent 7 for the last 10 years you would have done much better than the S&P much better than the NASDAQ right you're take you're less diversified but you're getting more return So for me it's really about the portfolio, the percentages on what I could stomach comfortably, my wife and I, cuz it's not just me. Yeah. But because we don't, you know, we have no kids, because we have other sources of income, we could maybe take a little bit more risk. But to me, the risk of my portfolio is not that it's not high. If you take the average of like the S&P, the NASDAQ and HHIS, the average is like of risk is to me is the NASDAQ 100. It's not that risky to me, but for some people it is, right? So, this is really it really depends. So, maybe as I get older, I'll care less. I'll have even more stomach for risk. Maybe I'll go to like 20% Bitcoin and 40% HHIS. Like, I I don't know. I'm just going with feeling and experience and things like that. So that's important though because you got to invest on where you are in your personal life. Don't ever copy what I say or what Adriano says. It's like anyone take take inventory of where you're at and what where you at with your life, what risk tolerance you have. What is literally your financial situation? Do not invest a penny if you think you might need that money in the next 5 years. Like do not spend money you don't have like ever. uh to make sure you have your emergency fund set up. Make sure you you've done all your financial planning. Uh and I really want to hammer in people's heads. Me, I have a whole portfolio. I have other streams of income. I'm this kind of investor. A lot of people watching are similar to me. I'm I'm considering this personally because I have room to take on higher risk stuff. I can even get into the micro strategy if I really want to because it can fit my lifestyle, what my circumstances. Please do not even think uh think about that. And Warren Buffett, back to him, he always says he invests in his sort of sphere of knowledge where he's not good at like every type of investing. He's like he knows his lane. He sticks to it and that's why he's so successful. It's like make sure you do your due diligence. Check out passive income investing and check out all the content there before you even start. Like don't just be like, "Yeah, Gary got hyped up about MSTE. I'm going to buy it to No, no, no. I'm not I'm going to do I'm going to put an extraordinary amount of hours before I I purchase anything. like I'm going to put a ridiculous amount, like crazy amount, and then when I feel like I'm over saturated with knowledge, where I feel like we could actually have a conversation where I know just a little bit less than him, then I'll feel comfortable enough to start investing. I had a podcast with uh Ron from Ron's basement. He's a gold investor, silver, does crypto. He did me introductory in gold and silver. I'm like, "Oh, I should probably add that to my portfolio." But I have a long ways to go before I feel competent enough as a gold and silver investor to actually start purchasing those stocks. So do what I'm doing when it comes to research. Spend an ungodly amount of time doing research where you almost feel like an expert before you invest even a dollar.

Now I want to talk about you now. I'm so interested about everything you've done. So you're living in Montreal. You're working a regular 9 to 5, right? And you mind asking what field were you in before all of this? What were you working?

My wife and I were in the tech field. Okay. Um but not in the technical tech field like we weren't programmers more in the management. So uh we both started at the help desk you know customer service technical and and then I went to uh incident and problem management. So incident problem management is just a very unique job that I that I was I was pretty good at. You have to be cool under pressure but basically it's a 24/7 you have a pager. I had a pager. I work night shifts and uh they would call me or I would get paid for a major incident. So, you know, one of my c biggest clients at the beginning was Bell Canada, but then I went to Air Air Canada. So, for example, if the Air Canada website is down, that's that's like the end of the world severity one incident. It means every second that it's down, they're losing X amount of money. So, typically I would get called on incidents that are the companies were losing money. Yeah. So that that's what I did. I I was an incident problem manager. So I would organize a conference call and I would get the data the server guy and the application guy and the database guy and I would deal with all the technical guys which were very eccentric people very fun to deal with. Uh and I basically I would do like a war room and I would we need to figure out how to solve this as soon as possible. And I would keep management upper management informed during the incident. That's incident management. That that's what I did before.

Do you think that helps with stress management? You did that for long enough. So when you when when you start doing high risk covered calls, you're like, "This ain't nothing. I like your brain's almost like conditioned to not freak out." But that that's why I fall asleep because covered calls lowers the risk. It's not risky, right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned But uh yeah, I would say I'm I'm a fairly cool, calm, and collected type of guy. You have to be for that job. Yeah. Um, so, um, yeah, I mean it certainly help. It certainly helps I would say, but not financial at all. But I've always had an interest in stocks and finances all the time. And, you know, during our careers, my wife and I, we weren't really investing that much. I was maybe I was swing trading. I was buying like Blackberry and Bombardi and even Air Canada at one point. I was just buying like distraught companies, companies that are really low oil stocks, Canadian oil stock, just to maybe flip them in a few months and make some money. I I I, you know, over time I made more money than I lost, but it was too stressful. It's such a waste of time. So my wife and I throughout those like seven years at the beginning, we put all our disposable income paying paying off our mortgage. That's really our story. What we did, we got our mortgage, our 20-year mortgage paid in like seven years.

Jesus. Yeah. And that it's at that point where we started thinking, okay, what are we going to do with all this disposable income? So that's when I started doing

More research into dividend stocks, income-oriented stocks. And if you look at my very first portfolio investment, some covered call stuff, but a lot of single REITs. I had like Bell and Telus and CIBC, Scotiabank. I had a bunch of dividend stocks. I was just trying everything because I had all this excess money once the mortgage was paid and then slowly, gradually started discovering covered call stuff and split funds and things like that.

And once we hit $1,000 a month, we’re like, “Holy crap, this really works.” Yeah. And then we just started doing hypotheticals. What if we sold a condo? Cuz we bought a condo in a really good place in Montreal next to a metro station. What if we sold the condo? How much could we get? What if we invest it all? How much will we get? Well, we would get x amount of money per month, which means we could easily pay all our living expenses. So, that’s that’s basically what we ended up doing.

Uh, we sold our condo. My wife quit her job, cuz uh she was unhappy. I was okay at my job. I stayed on for a year because we’re we don’t make any spur-of-the-moment decisions. So, she quit, but I stayed on just to prove the system. And after another year or so, or less than that, I I quit also. And and then everyone started asking us, “What do you mean you quit? You’re like 35. What the hell are is going on?” I would try to explain it to them. I I’ll never forget this. It was at the gym. We were going to the gym. We were trying to explain to these kids what we were doing and cuz they’re, you know, how did you retire at 35? Well, this and that. And they just looked at you like they you have no idea what they’re what you’re talking about. So in the car on the way home, I think I don’t know if it was me or my wife, we said, “You know what? we might as well put it on YouTube just to save time so we could just send people there.

Yeah, that’s how the channel started basically. That’s funny. That’s sort of how my channel started actually. That’s weird cuz it was answering questions from my friends and stuff and I just got tired of it and I was like I’ll just start doing some basic investing advice. Exactly. Um I want to go back a little bit. Did you and your wife work together at the same job? Is that how you guys met?

Yeah, that’s where we met. We met at We met at CGI, which is the biggest um IT services company in Canada. So, we met there. I went there straight out of college. Uh, actually didn’t even finish college. I got that as a was very lucky. I got that as a summer job. And I just I just didn’t feel like going back to learning C++ and programming. And luckily, I made the right decision because nobody uses that crap anyway anymore. So, just stay stay with the company. So, I started when I was like 19, 20. And we moved up. We both became managers and we both had uh, you know, my wife at one point had like 100 employees. I had maybe 30 35 incident managers and then I got another opportunity to go to another company. I took it and then eventually they got we we got ported to Air Canada. I I was with Air Canada for a year or two and then end up ended up quitting. But the whole career was in that same you know incident problem management field.

I’m I’m always intrigued by husband-wife combinations cuz I have my business now. My wife and me, we own the business together and she’s involved like so she’s involved with it. I met your wife once. I’ve spoken to her once months ago. She’s impressive. She gives me the Is she involved in operations? Is she the one keeping the day-to-day operations running with the business? Is that how it works?

Like she’s definitely involved. She she’s more of the creative slash marketing, I would say. I’m I’m more the operations, operations filming and um but uh you know it’s it’s uh we’re also thinking of starting a podcast as well. She’s gonna spearhead that. So we’ve both like when we we were both very entrepreneurial. Yeah. So we met and we right away even before dating I think we started doing these little side side hustles together. So back in the day the biggest thing was reselling on eBay. So we ended up making these I don’t even remember how these connections in China. We would import stuff from China then resell it on eBay. We were doing a lot of side hustles together. Uh even before we started dating. So we we’re very entrepreneurial by nature. So I I don’t see us ever like stopping, you know, doing for, you know, for us this is kind of a full-time business now, but it’s we do it because we like it. We we I I love it. I mean I could talk about this stuff all day.

When did you when did you guys start YouTube? How long ago was that? I’ll never forget because it was just a few months before COVID. So, it’s very hard to forget. So, just a few months before COVID, November or December of 2019, I believe. Yeah. Is when we sold the condo and put all the money in. So, we actually experienced a a big crash 3 months after we went all in. So trust me now that was a huge learning experience. Um you’ll you’ll never you could be an investor for 10 years but you’ll never learn as much and as as in a big crash that period of time. So uh once you go through your first roller coaster ride the second the third one is is a lot more boring. So it kind of also proved the concept as well of not needing to sell just living off of the income.

That’s true because you didn’t have to. You just were like whatever. It’s like I never plan on selling this. And was it your idea with with the covered calls? It was you came across it. You were like to your wife discovered the funds but at that point it was just a mishmash of dividend stocks and REITs, covered call ETFs and closed-end funds, split share funds. I literally went on the TD I was with TD broker now with Quest Trade. But you could go through a you could do a screener. Show me everything over over five or six percent yield. And I I got the lists and I just took the lists and I just started doing research on them one by one. And that’s how I started discovering covered call ETFs, closed-end funds, split-share funds and started investing in them even before understanding what they really were. I just saw the yield. I looked at the the dividend history. Yeah. And from there, from knowledge, researching, going on the fund manager’s website, learning what are covered to calls, it takes time, but you learn and you learn and you learn. And eventually we narrow down that the covered call strategy was really the best thing for us. It’s the most

Let’s work through this. Let’s work through this timeline. You get the job, you uh you come across covered calls, right before COVID, you’re all in. COVID crash happens. All in. all in. But then COVID crash happens. Did you see an uptick in viewership on your YouTube channel because everybody was now locked at home at some point? And finance channels blew up in this window. A lot of guys I know who are in finance all built their channels in this window. I came way after.

So yeah, for sure. It was um so I think our channel launched in February March which is right now of 2020 and really the big catalyst was the our third portfolio unveil video and to this date after 5 years it’s probably one of our most most viewed most popular video. I don’t know what happened, but to get to get to 1,000 subscribers, it took like six, seven months, but after that video, we just kept looking on the phone and the subscribers were jumping by dozens like every second. So, it was crazy. It it it was the third portfolio unveil video that uh third or fourth, I can’t remember. But um that’s when the channel started accelerating and and you know the rest is history. Now we’re about to hit 100,000 subscribers and not not yet, but we’re we’re getting there. Wow. So, um and there’s a couple things people can do. Like when I was going through your I was trying to when I was going through your YouTube channel, they can grab your ultimate DIY investing package. You you guys have that on your YouTube channel. You have your membership services on your YouTube channel. So is that what you typically do day-to-day? Now your operations is like cuz you pump out content really you pump out a lot of content like every other day.

Yeah. So at the beginning I used to write scripts and it was so long. I was reading off a page. Now I just, you know, luckily I think one of the best classes I took in college wasn’t the computer stuff. I didn’t even finish was public. I took a public speaking course that really helped me. Now I I don’t have scripts anymore. There’s a there’s a topic. People message me about something. When when the community grows, it’s very easy. You know what people videos on. So I just go in front of the camera, hit record. I have a little webcam. I got a microphone. My videos are extremely easy. Almost no editing to do. So that’s why I’m able to pump out a lot of content. Um but yeah, I do I have the the videos. I do uh one-on-one coaching sessions just on the weekend, which always sell out. It’s crazy. People want to, you know, uh I I go I talked to over a thousand people, mostly Canadians, but also in the US and a lot of people outside in Thailand or people that want to kind of do what we did and leave the country and and live off of their income. So, I’m busy with that on the weekend. During the week, I I do some I do most of my filming typically between like 12:30 and 2 2 in the afternoon. Um and then I have those two digital products as well which I worked on which it started just as a tracker for me that’s how uh you know I worked a lot with Excel in my job a lot of reporting so I was just trying myself to track all these ETFs and eventually it just we developed kind of an Excel products and we we sell it now and you it comes with lifetime updates and we’re always updating it and there’s portfolio samples whether it’s for income growth for dividend. You know, like I talked about there’s three styles of investing I feel and I don’t discriminate. I think all three are great long-term uh with lists and uh my wife kept adding to it. We kept adding to it, growing it and um so we have those two digital products as well, which we did want to do at least one update per year. So yeah, we’re we’re very busy. We want to start a podcast. Like I told you, we’re very entrepreneurial. We we we love being entrepreneurial. That’s just the way cuz we we didn’t grow up we grew up pretty poor like we we ate we were able to eat and everything but you know both our parents I mean you know working-class immigrants right so we don’t come from money at all so we always had that kind of ingrained because even as a as a small child I realized like money is you the doors open when when you have that your life is just better you could do the things you want to do that that’s I see money as freedom I see it as like a greed thing.

100% same. More freedom. More money equals more freedom. That’s how I see it. I couldn’t agree with you more. That’s exactly how I see it.

You mentioned your your family’s immigrants. I’m guessing they immigrated from Italy or from Europe, right? What did your family think both your families when you guys were like, “Bye guys, we’re going to thought everyone thoughts.” No. When when you go when you when you go and move to Panama, what they think when you’re like, “Hey, I’m going to go to Panama now and we’re going to move here,” you know, immigrant families, you know how they’re they’re very traditional. You know, buy a house and have a family. We just did the complete opposite. We did the complete opposite of of every expectation. That’s just how we are. We don’t, you know, we we don’t go with the flow. We go against the grain, right? We go against the crowd. So at first, you know, they were well really they’re hesitant or whatever to to understand it, but then eventually they they accepted and then they saw that okay, once they visit and they see like just such a a a great country. It’s it’s a pretty developed country in Central America where you have, you know, obviously there’s some adjustments. You know, the weather there’s there’s bugs. There’s a lot of bugs here, but you know, in Panama City, you look at the skyline, it’s just it it looks like uh Miami, New York. It’s crazy. So, it’s a it’s a nice little still well-kept secret, in my opinion. But, we’re we’re here. It’s going to be three years next week, I think, that we’re in Pan that we live full-time in Panama. So, eventually, they accepted it. They came, they visited, and okay, everything’s fine, you know.

So, uh I got I got a few more questions, then I’ll let you go. We we’ve been talking for a while and it’s more about Panama. Uh when in Panama cuz you sold your you sold your property. Are you renting there or are you going to are you going to are you buying in Panama?

So what happened is we sold our condo our paid-off condo and then we rented in Montreal, right? And then we started thinking, well, let’s snowbird because we hate the winter. So why why should we stay uh you know, the YouTube channel is going there’s a little bit of revenue there. There’s a portfolio income as well. Let’s just get out of here for the winter. Let’s go to Panama after seeing that that other Canadian couple that went to Panama. So, we like the beach. So, we just Googled, you know, the best beaches in Panama. It’s Coronado and it’s a typical uh it’s probably one of the most popular, if not the most popular expat community. So, we went there. We stayed for three and a half months, made some friends. We found a place that we liked owned by Canadians that we wanted to rent. We found a lawyer. Everything happened in those three and a half months. It was a It was great. When we decide we want to do something, we go fast. We go by feeling. You know, as as you probably know and learned already, time is the most valuable thing in the world. It’s not even close to being money. So, we stayed there three and a half months. We fell in love with it. Made got our lawyer, started the process, went back home, sold everything. Three months later, we’re back in Panama living there full-time.

Jesus, that’s awesome. That’s perfect. That’s awesome. And then you probably visit home every once in a while, right, for holidays or whatever.

Yeah, once in a while, sometimes I go back to for business, like for Blossom events, you know, I I was one of the early Now Blossom is big, you know, it’s really, but I was one of the early early uh, you know, influencers, if you will, to to to go with Brandon and and the Blossom team and stuff. So, sometimes I I go back home for that. Uh, Those guys are taking over. I had Marcos Mila on last week and yeah, he’s with Blossom as well. They’re everywhere. So many influencers on on that now. A lot of young mostly all young people that use TikTok and I’m like the oldest guy there. I think I’m I’m 40 this month and I I feel like an old fart already with all those kids. But it’s it’s really cool to see young people talk about the S&P 500 and you know and and it’s it’s literally the number one thing I when people come up to me and they have no clue about investing nothing. Zero knowledge. The first thing I tell them look you just never want to go wrong ever. You never want to lose money. S&P 500. That’s what Warren Buffett tells everyone to buy for good reason, right? Whether it’s VU or VFV or USCL or HYLD, it’s the same crap. Okay. S&P 500. Start with that. Go with that and build on that. It’s It’s like one of the best things. But uh yeah, and we basically moved to Panama City like a week ago, by the way.

Yeah, that’s why I was late today for the call, which I apologize for. I’m usually never late, but uh now I’m in the heart of the city. It’s noisy, but hey, I could see the whole skyline right here. Actually, I’m looking at it. Um and it’s uh it’s pretty cool. You your dollar goes very far here. Like I actually live in the It’s the old Trump Tower actually. Marriott bought it. There’s residents in here. It’s pretty cool. It’s There’s restaurants. There’s a 24-hour It’s like living in a hotel. It’s absolutely crazy. This in Montreal would probably be like I don’t know how much the rent would be like 8,000 a month. 6,000 at least. So here it’s very very affordable. It’s not like Thailand or or you know, it’s not super cheap because it’s pretty developed. Yeah. But it’s cheaper than Montreal. It’s like maybe a middle ground between Thailand and Montreal. But the exchange rate like you feel like you’re not getting screwed. Like when we were in Canada, my wife and I, we have a saying. We always felt like we were getting jipped. Everything was very, very high. The taxes, car registration, everything was always going up and up and up and things were going up. Food, restaurants were crazy, taxes were crazy. you we couldn’t go go out to a nice restaurant without spending you know if you get the wine and everything without spending at least $200 $300.

Yeah. Here 100 you get the same thing even better 9000 bucks no problem you know.

Yeah I’m in Vancouver everything’s ridiculous where I am in Vancouver crazier I heard.

Yeah thing it’s it’s dumb. I’m thinking about like getting another property but now I’m just like why do do I even want to do that? like do I want get I legitimately I’m just like I but I like allocate the money to buying another house and turning into like a rental property but I’m like it’s not even going to appreciate like if I invest it’ll appreciate even better like it’s a weird situation I’m in right now about is it did you ask yourself is is that investment going to beat the S&P 500? Do you know why but I actually and here’s something maybe homeowners need to understand I stopped treating it now as a financial investment. So, I have two kids. I have two kids and I wanted to make sure they each had a house that they could. So, I was like, “Okay, I got a house. My my daughter’s got a house.” And then I had a son. I’m like, “Uh, I should probably get him a house.”

Lucky them. Yeah. Right. So, because I’m like, what’s going to happen in 30 years? They could be the richest kids on the planet. They can’t buy a house because it’s the market’s going to be so insane that no matter how well off they are, they can never buy in. It’ll it’ll just be impossible. It’s like, okay, well, if mom and dad don’t handle it now, they won’t have that, right? Right? So, we’re trying to give them a head start in life as much cuz my parents were immigrants from India. They worked low-paying jobs, but they gave me a head start by giving me a roof over my head, giving me a stable childhood, right? Just where I felt loved and give me a roof over my head. I felt I was fed. Huge head start, right? So then I could go and chase what I need to chase, right? My kids, I built up a certain level. Can they start where I start? Like start above that. So, I had to differentiate it. It’s no longer a financial investment. It’s a got to take care of my kids type thing now. I think that’s how I that’s that’s how I justify it.

Yeah. Sense. It’s different for every every situation, right? That I usually tell people when it comes to even investing, there is no right or wrong. It’s what’s right for you that you have to look at. Everyone’s always looking for the best. Is it the best time to get in? Is this the best? The best doesn’t exist in investing. It’s really what’s the best for you. Um, so every situation is different, for sure.

All righty. Well, thanks for your time today. I really appreciate it. I think everyone learned a lot about covered calls. And by the way guys, make sure you check out the channel. I mentioned before, check out the first pin comment.

The description. If you want to know anything about income-oriented investing, this is the guy you need to be watching. Check out his channel. He has everything.

We have a website too, passiveincomeinvesting.ca. That's where you could book the sessions, which are the June ones. The June ones are always sold out—are sold out already—but you could go on our website there. You could see the digital products, the channels there, the links, and all that as well.

Passiveinvesting.ca. All right, great. Thank you. Talk soon. All right. You take care.

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$30,000+/Month: 5 ETF Portfolio for Passive Income - Adriano Starinieri | GG Podcast #4

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