Transcription
Today, your safety net is nonexistent. €167, you're sleeping on the floor. Uh, "I continued to invest quite aggressively, and in fact, I consumed my capital like that, and today, I find myself having to stop my DCA. Now, I have to start a little bit from the beginning again and rebuild my safety net. I would surely have more money if I had been able to listen to someone's advice back when I made all my, all my mistakes. Hello everyone, welcome to a new wealth analysis. Today, we are going to analyze the wealth of an intern at Finary One, which is negative. Let's go. New setting, you've seen it, I welcome you to my new studio. I'll give you a little tour dedicated in a video soon. But before that, I have the pleasure of welcoming Antoine. Hi Antoine. "Hi Monir. "Antoine, you work at Finary One. You've been here for a few months. When you applied, you shared a lot of your research work, you went quite far in finance. So I thought it would be nice to look at your wealth because there are quite a few surprising things. Alright, let's go. So, gross wealth €6,263. How old are you Antoine? 24 years old. "24 years old, that's really good. Net wealth - €3,179. So you are, you are in debt at this level. What's the gross net difference there? Well, in fact, it's, uh, well, these are two loans I took out. We'll talk about the first one I used for an investment, and the second was to finance my studies. Uh, I was an engineer before, and so I continued in finance, and so a master's in business school, which costs money. "And which costs a lot. "Yeah. "But good ROI, apparently, in a few years, in any case. "You're off to a good start. If we look at the gross wealth, we see that it's very, it's almost evenly split. Real estate, we'll talk about that. It's a garage you bought. It's, it's interesting. A garage in which city? "In Strasbourg, where I'm from. "Okay. In Strasbourg. So, an interesting first investment. Then, stocks and funds, that's quite substantial for your age. Well done for taking the plunge so young. And then quite a bit of crypto too, €18,000. I can't wait to see what, what you bought, the profile. Well, you mentioned that. You're 24, you get €1,760 per month as an allowance. I think that's what it's called for an internship. Ex-engineer. Why ex-engineer? Uh, I was an apprentice engineer, and so I changed my mind before, but I did 3 years of apprenticeship. That's what allowed me to invest right from the start, and so it was really a chance. But then, a change of direction. "Did you do your whole apprenticeship? "Uh, also where I'm from, in Alsace, in an engineering school, on apprenticeship, and I did all my schooling there. It's only since this year that I've been traveling a bit. "And now, you're doing a master's in finance, and where are you doing that master's? Well, I'm doing it at EM Lyon, so I spent 9 months in Lyon, so now, here on an internship, and so, so at your place in Paris. "Magnificent. Quite a few people from EM Lyon, by the way, are at Finary. If you're at EM Lyon, don't hesitate to apply. We're a good place for people from Lyon. Uh, so, we talked about it. Ah no, you're at €1,650 for your allowance, plus €110 for garage rent. Very concretely, the garage is a car garage, I imagine, at that price? "Yes, absolutely. So it's a garage, a standard size spot, about 13, 13 square meters that I bought. I financed it with a loan, and so yes, I rent it out for €110 per month. "We'll look at the specifics of the garage later. You tried to start companies in finance, it was aborted. What kind of companies did you try to start? "Well, the first attempt I made was to start a kind of hedge fund when I was a bit, a bit new to finance. I was quite into trading. I spent a lot of time, and my performance was quite good. So, I had started trying to collect investment commitments from investors. I was in the process of getting the track record validated, and ultimately it was aborted because it's a huge investment. And the second, the second attempt was a more recent attempt where I started creating a little bit of content on LinkedIn and helping young people start investing, to get them past that barrier. And for that, I had about thirty people I was helping, for about half a million in assets under advice, and it was also aborted due to personal investment, you know. "I remember, it was around that time that we, well, it was around that time that we spoke. "Exactly. You wanted to try everything: bonds, garages, stocks, crypto, trading, crowdfunding, so you really, you cast a wide net. You've been following the Finary method for 3 years. Mistake, putting too much money into trendy projects like Stepn, that was a crypto project, if I remember correctly, you had to walk. "Exactly. Yeah. To walk or run. Yeah. "You had to walk or run to earn crypto. And what happened with Stepn? It was around 2021-2022, when there was all the hype around cryptos, NFTs, etc. And that was the time when I was starting to get into investing a bit. I was on apprenticeship, so I had the means to invest, and in fact, I got a bit carried away by that hype too, and it's quite difficult when you're a beginner to judge the potential of a project and not just the excitement around that project, and so I lost a bit of money on that project. "So you experienced FOMO, investor biases. Soon I'll do a Finary Talk on all the biases. It's true that it's a complex subject. You have to live it to learn. You say you have an unhealthy relationship with money. So was that related to investments, or was it something else? "Well, it was triggered by investments, but in fact, it's a bit of everything. In any case, the way I got into investing was really with the goal of making money quickly, taking maximum risk, without really doing exhaustive research on the projects, on the topics, etc., and it became a bit of an obsession. And finally, it was a bit out of ego that I got interested, and I think I wouldn't be the same investor now if I hadn't spent time, well, losing money, having bad experiences. In the beginning, it wasn't ego, and then I fell into the pot and I haven't gotten out since. "You went from €500 to €27,000 in 2 months thanks to crypto, I imagine. "No, it was CFD trading. So, contracts with leverage. "Exactly. And on which platform did you trade that? It was on Metatrader. It was really, it was really the cliché of signals on a Telegram group. It worked well at first, and then, as expected, it didn't work in the end. Yeah. "Yes. Don't forget that if someone sells you the magic recipe on a Telegram group, always ask yourself why they would give it to you if it was really the magic recipe. They would keep it for themselves. It makes no sense to sell it for a few euros or tens of euros. So be wary of that. Massive learning rebound, over 600 hours of video content, trading school, and YouTube. Do you still trade today? "I don't anymore because, again, it requires a very regular and quite massive personal investment, but it's something I did a lot when I was in engineering school or on apprenticeship back then. Now, I've moved away from it a bit. I've changed my focus a bit. But yes, it's something I really enjoyed, that taught me a lot. Trading was one part, but the whole part of understanding economics and macroeconomics more deeply really appealed to me and really taught me a lot, and it was a great period. "By the way, you, we were talking about your papers, you wrote little notes. Here's a note on interest rate hikes. What are we looking at here? "So, this is a paper I wrote to apply for master's programs at the time. And since I didn't have any finance background, and I'm a mechanical engineer by training, so I worked in aeronautics and electrical engineering, so not really finance-related. So I told myself, well, I've been learning for quite some time, so I want to put it on paper and work on some topics. This was the, the, the hot topic a few months ago. This possible interest rate hike, recession, still. "Yeah, absolutely. And so, I created a little paper on that, which tried to, to converge a bit on an analysis of interest rate cuts now. "But now, interest rate cuts, yes. To study a bit, well, the pivot of the Fed. Will rates go down? If so, when? What's the impact on the stock market? How do we anticipate it? How do we try to measure it? What happened in the past? How do we prepare for what will happen in the future? And yes, it was a good exercise to put my knowledge on paper, to lay it out. Big job. "And so, that allowed you to be accepted at EM Lyon. So, great. We'll put the note in the description if you're interested. So, the objective today is to rebuild €5,000 in safety net. €5,000 is a bit more, well, I don't know if you spend everything you earn, but a bit more than 3 months' salary, almost 4 months. We'll look at your wealth later, where you stand. Let's look right away. In fact, today, your safety net is, well, it's nonexistent. €167. "Yeah. Okay, so there's no safety net, so you're without a safety net, you're sleeping on the floor. "Yeah. "Yeah, that's what happened. It's a bit the consequence of my, of my year of studies. In addition, "I miscalculated, and we'll talk about it in the questions I have for you, but in fact, I miscalculated the drop in my income. I continued to invest quite aggressively, "and in fact, I consumed my capital like that, and today I find myself having to stop my DCA and having consumed almost all my savings. And so, it's true that it's not a very pleasant feeling, especially when I came from a rather comfortable situation, where I could invest very regularly and quite strongly. So, it's true that it's a bit frustrating to find yourself saying, "Damn, I've been investing for 4 years, and now I have to start from the beginning again and rebuild my safety net." "You're going back to the base of the pyramid, but you still have existing wealth. You could, you could even convert part of your wealth, you could sell stocks or crypto. But in any case, we'll look at all that. Before looking at your Finary, we'll look at your cash flow. So you have your salary, you have your rent, you told us about that earlier, you have monthly investments on the LEP. So you opened a popular savings account, which is the closest account. Currently, the rate has dropped quite a bit. What is it? 3%? "3.5, I think. "Yeah, I'd say it's, it's between 3 and 3.5. Maybe more like 3 because it's been significantly reduced. "You have rent, you live in, you have an apartment in Paris, then it was a shared apartment, I imagine? "Classic. Then daily life, groceries, going out. What are the outings? Going to restaurants. Going "Yeah, that's it. I'm with my girlfriend in Paris. So yes, that's it. A restaurant from time to time. A drink after work with colleagues. And yes, that's it. Restaurants with friends who are in Paris. So you do treat yourself a bit. Transportation, the train to go back to Strasbourg, I imagine, some small subscriptions, and then you have the loan for the garage, which therefore offsets the negative. Is that something you anticipated when you bought it? "Well, it's something I anticipated, yes and no. In fact, my mindset with this parking space, it was going very, very fast. It actually comes from one of your videos with Alexandre Lacharme, "to whom we send our greetings. And so, yes, I saw that video, and I told myself, in my mindset of wanting to test everything, I told myself, let's go, let's look into real estate for €20,000 and finance it with credit, that could be very interesting. And unfortunately, as I was a student, I had no choice but to take out a student loan. "Hm. "And so, I negotiated a lot with my bank manager, who granted me a student loan to buy a garage. It was, it was a stroke of luck. Yeah. Yeah. I was very transparent with her. "So, this is the loan we're looking at, €16,000. "Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, it was €20,000 initially. I've paid off a bit since the, since the beginning. "Indeed, we see it here. And so, what was the rate? It's 1.8. Ah, that's not bad. "No? Yeah, it's, for that, I benefited from part of the advantage of taking out a student loan at a time when rates were very high. Yeah. You got a very low rate when rates were very high. But so, this garage generates a small income today. It generates €110, so when you bought the garage, you already knew you wouldn't be able to rent it out for the price of the monthly payment? "Yeah, that's it. Since with student loans, we are capped at 10 or 12 years with deferrals. "The monthly payments are higher. "So the monthly payments are mathematically higher. So yes, I knew I wouldn't break even. But I conceptualized it in my mind as my tenant helps me buy part of that rent, of the garage. So in fact, I pay 50% of the value of the garage so that in the end, it comes back to me 100% for me. "Absolutely. Yeah. You didn't put any down payment on the loan? "No. "That's a big advantage. So, you also gave us the old budget, how was it different? "Well, so that's "Ah yes, you had investments. "Exactly. That was my old cash flow when I was in engineering school. "So you had more, you earned more. "That's it. And also, I was in the provinces, so the cost of living is much lower. Housing, almost half the price. "Exactly. And I managed to generate €800 in monthly investments. "You were doing, you were doing PEA, bonds, we'll look at that, and crypto. Okay. So it was much more substantial. That's it. "The garage. We just talked about it after seeing the video with Alexandre. Today, if you had to do it again, would you do it again, this purchase? "Well, yes and no. I have a bit of that feeling now, but it's something I hadn't anticipated, but it's far from me, so I have less control, to be honest. You know, I'm thinking of selling it, but I think from an educational perspective, I loved that period. I did it very quickly between the moment I saw the video and discovered the existence of garages as an asset class, and the moment I bought it, 3 months passed. For that, I went to all the real estate agencies in my neighborhood in Strasbourg. I went to the town halls to see the development plans, where they want to extend the tram, which parking lots they are destroying, to buy in good areas. "Yeah. You did your research? "Yeah, it was very educational, and so I think for that purpose, I would do it again. Now, I think I'll sell it. "Would it be interesting to divide it into motorcycle parking spaces, which is the, I would say, the big trick that Alexandre used a lot, which is very popular in Paris, because a car space can be divided into four motorcycle spaces, depending on the configuration, but which can be rented out not at a quarter of the car price, but perhaps half, and so you can earn double. "So, is that something that would be possible? "Well, it's something I looked into at the time because, as you say, I was a bit influenced by Alexandre's words, and I thought it would be great. In reality, the management, instead of having one tenant, you have three or four. Ah, well, that's not the same thing. "So the tenant turnover is huge. Now, I'm no longer in the region, and so I don't want to burden my family with managing the comings and goings of my tenants' motorcycles. And since it's a closed garage, it implies a lot of constraints. You need more keys, maybe manage with a key box, etc. Well, it's something, yes, I didn't want to deal with it right away. It's something I looked into, in any case. Yeah. "Crypto, 70% major projects, 30% fun. We'll see what's exactly there. You have a DCA on an ETF that I had never seen, and it's the TLT ETF, inverse correlation between US rates, so Fed rates, and bond prices, speculation on future rate cuts. Profit from rising bond prices, logically rising prices, falling rates to reinvest in stocks once the economic context is clearer. QE, quantitative easing. And so, here you've put this graph. What are we looking at here? "So, this is since the moment they started raising rates. "Yes, that's it. "So we see that the price, the price of this ETF has fallen. "And you now hope that it will go the other way. "Exactly. Exactly. In fact, I hope, and that's what the analysis shows a bit, and it's linked to the paper we looked at. I hope that rates will fall. So naturally, the nominal price of the bond will rise, and that's something I use. I am quite convinced that there will surely be a stock market downturn, whether it's violent or not, but given the context, that's what has happened in the past, and so to not be exposed to this asset class but still have returns with rates that are incredible on the world's leading economy, and also to benefit from a rise while waiting for stocks to return to a normal price will be quite interesting. Yeah. "And so, this is on your CTO, I imagine. "Exactly. Yeah. So it's there, it's the TLT, and today, here we are on everything, so you have an unrealized loss. So, when did you get into this ETF? "I've been investing regularly in this ETF for a year and a half, and so, yes, my average price, well, yes, so it's the TLT, it's a product that is not accessible to Europeans. I have the DTLE, which is the Euro version. And so, yes, I entered around €3, more or less all the time. "And so, for example, if we look at one day and one year, which corresponds roughly to your "So, over one year, what are we looking at? We're looking at the SPX, the S&P 500, in purple. Well, this is Monday, it's not an ETF that replicates, so logically the ETF will have a tracking difference, slight but real, since there will be fees. You'll also have the exchange rate effect, the effect of the exchange rate which will be to your disadvantage since the dollar has depreciated a bit. Then there's the PX1 GR, sorry for the acronyms, but it's the CAC 40 with dividends reinvested. And you have the DTLE. Well, the DTLE, that was not the right way at all, it was not good. "You're doing a DCA, so you've cushioned the fall a bit. "That's it. And and no, in fact, it's a strategy that has clearly cost me money. So again, history teaches us, but yes, it's a strategy that has cost me money. It's a conviction I still have, and so I maintain it. I've stopped my DCA on stocks, and so I'm benefiting from the rise, I'm still exposed to stocks, but I have a portion that goes into bonds, waiting to be reallocated to the stock market. "There's a statistic I like, which is to see the number of years. Well, this is an example of what are called the returns per year for the S&P 500. But we could do the same for the CAC 40. Well, it doesn't go up to, it stops in 2023, apparently not, 2024. So we see that the years with -50, -40, -30 do exist, really. This is the great crisis of 1929, the Great Depression. The 2008 crisis, we also see the dot-com bubble here. But otherwise, it's true that very negative years are relatively rare. Average years between 0 and -20, well, there are still a few, but above all, there is an overwhelming majority of extremely positive years. Moreover, today, the year 2020, 2025 is starting off between 10 and 20%. Well, that could easily turn around. But it's true that what I mean by that is that it's very difficult to bet on a market reversal because for years I've been telling myself that the market should eventually reverse. I've had I don't know how many people on my show telling me it's going to reverse. Well, in the meantime, it keeps going up. So it's also very hard to invest at the peak because you think it's very, it's psychologically difficult to think that you're the, a bit the last idiot to enter a market. "But well, you have to keep this statistic in mind. And that's why DCA and ETFs, I think, are a good mix because it allows you to stay passive and be exposed to an asset class in the very long term without taking bets. You take a directional bet, which is the rise, but you don't, in any case, play the fall. In any case, I find it courageous. Don't do this at home because it's very risky. Now, maybe Antoine will be completely right in a year or two, but you have to do it with full knowledge. I think we're talking about more advanced strategies here than a standard ETF stock strategy. So you've stopped that, you told us, and stocks in marginal stock picking according to personal use: Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Dassault, Lyft, Figma. So these are apps, well, companies you like. I imagine you're not a customer of Dassault, but you admire Dassault, maybe you saw the video we did on Dassault. "Exactly. Yeah. No, in fact, and I think it was someone you had on who said that as long as there's a war somewhere in the world, having armaments isn't necessarily a bad decision. "Unfortunately, in the meantime, these are companies that perform well, and we're lucky in France to have some good companies in that sector. "So a bit of stock picking, and so, we saw that there was a little Figma on a CTO, Interactive Brokers. What's in your PEA? Well, there's the S&P 500. Well, that's going pretty well. There's Stock 50, Europe, a bit lighter. You have a company savings plan, so you worked at Le Grand, I imagine at one point. Were you matched on this plan? "Yeah. Can you explain the structure, how it worked? "Yeah, that's it. So when you're an employee, generally of a large group, you receive two types of annual bonuses: profit sharing and incentive pay. And on "profitable companies, "not all companies. "No, that's true, not all companies. And so, on these amounts that are paid to us, they give us the choice to reinvest them in the company, often with a discount, in the company's shares if it's listed, or with a discount. We had one that was around -30%. So we bought a share that sells on the market for 30% less. And generally, there's a match. And so we had that mechanism too, and so yes, I took advantage of it, and especially since Le Grand is a good company that's doing well in the sector, and with the match and the discount, it was quite interesting to do. "So, what did the Le Grand stock do? 20 years, it went up. "H. "Well, Le Grand, yeah, it's huge. Over 5 years, it's x 2. And so you bought it with a discount, you were also matched, and today you still hold it. "You have a tax advantage too. It's been more than 5 years since No, it hasn't been 5 years since you were at the company. "No, it hasn't been more than 5 years. However, since I no longer work there, we have the right to withdraw. So that's quite nice. Yeah. "So, what do you plan to do with this savings plan? "Well, for now, there's no particular reason to sell them, and that's why on the PEA side, I've significantly reduced my exposure to Europe because, well, I'm already exposed to Le Grand, which is basically a replica of the CAC 40, which follows the general dynamic of the French market, which are quite correlated. So I've reduced, "indeed, very close. "So I've reduced my exposure to the CAC 40 and Europe accordingly. For now, no, I don't plan to sell. You also took some Finary Life, and you have a brokerage account on which you have, as you said earlier, bought some stocks you like, but overall your wealth, well, you have a, well, a good performance if we, I think if you didn't have the TLT, you'd be largely in profit. On the crypto side, you have very, very good performances, +700%, +300%. So it seems to be very Bitcoin heavy. So you have Bitcoin already, then Solana, and then the rest is what? Ether? What's your logic here? How do you look at this market? "Well, I got into finance really through crypto. Basically, it was the easiest entry point. "Why was it the easiest? Because it was, what I understood best, it was where there was the most advertising too, in 2021-2022, prices were rising, so "prices were rising, they were at their peak, there was a lot of marketing, everything was quite, quite set up to facilitate investment, whereas at the time, stocks were a bit, a bit less sexy. You had to open an account, maybe go see your bank to open a PEA or a brokerage account, that didn't appeal to me much. Whereas here, in a few clicks, you could sign up on a crypto platform. "Binance in your case, or Trade Republic? "Historically. Yeah. Trade Republic was only for trying. Historically, I'm more on Binance, and I store them on my Ledger key. And how do I view this market? Before, I was a bit indiscriminate about projects. I try to frame it a bit, to have a majority of Bitcoin and Solana, Ethereum as a second step, and then, yes, on altcoins and some smaller projects that I analyzed at the time and bought all at the same time, but on a portion that I had studied and looked at a bit. Yeah. "In any case, overall, that gives us +204%, which is not bad. Uh, we'll look at the rest of your wealth. We'll just start taking questions. How to manage sudden variations in income and investment capacity? Well, that was your big topic. Well, I want to ask you the question. What's your next big income variation that you anticipate? "Well, I hope, I'm on my final internship, so I hope to be hired afterwards and have a, well, a salary. "At which company? "You'll tell me. Yeah. But I'd like to, because well, you'll tell me, you'll tell me how the boss is, but I don't know him well. So, in any case, you think you're going to go for a permanent contract, presumably you'll be able to significantly increase your income. So it will be a sudden variation, but in the right direction. "But you might have a transition period between when you finish your internship and when you start your permanent contract. That's it. "Yeah, that's it. And for me, in this case, it's rather the good side of the variation. But but yes, it's how do we adapt? Are there, in fact, transition periods, good reflexes to have? That's what I wanted to get your experience on, and how to manage, well, the first, the first job with a, well, a comfortable salary, the transition, well, to "real life, adult life. Well, listen, I think you have very solid foundations. We're not going to, I'm not going to tell you stories. You have a fairly thoughtful approach. In my opinion, what needs to be done, and what I recommend to everyone, is to always have a gap between your salary and your lifestyle. The day your lifestyle, your salary increases, your lifestyle should not change.
And so typically, the rule that I didn't impose on myself for a long time, but that I applied and still apply, is that I always have a one-year lag between the increase in my income and my lifestyle. Why? Because in fact, it gives me time to see what truly interests me and you know, I know that I have the possibility to, for example, take a bigger apartment or I don't know, go to that restaurant that is a bit more expensive, but do I really need it? Do I really want it after the excitement phase of saying that well, now instead of having, I don't know, 1800, we have 3000 in the account, 4000. So it allows for testing.
You have to do this on one hand, and on the other hand, you have to define your savings rate, your target savings rate. But the learning that you did the hard way is that you pushed yourself to the limit, in reality, you set a great savings rate. There's a small variation, in fact, you kind of tricked yourself. So let's say you take a salary of, I don't know, 3500. Of course, there will be taxes and so on, but let's say 2500 net, I think a savings rate, you see, starting at 20% seems good to me, and then well, it's better to gradually increase the savings rate as you also benefit a bit from your new income. What is certain is that if you immediately set yourself to, if you set yourself to 50%, well, that will be great. It's just that there's also a deprivation involved. So it's up to you to find the balance point, in fact. How much do you actually need to live properly? Well, in Paris, you know that rent is a lot, restaurants are a lot, and the reality is that everything is very expensive. So, it's really a trade-off to make. It's really a trade-off to make, and I also think that investments are good, they are very important. It's a bit like autopilot. I have someone in my circle who always talks about automatic watering. It has to keep running.
What is also good is to have, as you had at Le Grand, shares in the company where you will work. So, for Maroco, it would be yes, to negotiate a good salary first, to define how you will spend it, and therefore, above all, to define your savings rate, but also to negotiate shares, since the salary will pay for your lifestyle, but the shares will allow you to perhaps buy an apartment or a house or fulfill another dream or not. But at least if you work hard and the company booms, you will have your part, you will have your slice of the pie. Everyone has shares, all employees have shares, and that is something that is very important. We work hard, and I want everyone to benefit from it, but we are not the only ones to do it.
Is buying a garage at 22 years old a mistake or a good lesson? Well, I want to say, you bought it, you're still here, it didn't traumatize you, the good news is that you can sell it, I want to say. And apparently, you're even making a profit. Do you think the garage is worth more now? No, why not? Sell it. What is certain is that what I have also learned for myself is that it is important to cut positions that we no longer agree with or, well, simply on which we have changed our minds. I will talk about it, I think, in a few episodes or in a few videos, but I am changing my position on real estate. So I am selling apartments because in fact, I have discovered new things for myself, and am I selling them under the best conditions? Am I selling them with the biggest profit? No, not really. But in fact, I discovered that I wanted something else, and I think I can put that money to work elsewhere. So I am making this decision now. Is it the best decision? I don't know. However, it is the decision that seems most coherent with my life choices. So if you think that you have learned your lesson and that now you want to do something else, well, I want to tell you, sell it. You will pay off your loan, you will get your small profit back, you might lose some taxes in the process, but you will have closed the loop and you will be much stronger the second time. So I think it's a great learning experience at a low cost. So for me, that's exactly what needs to be done.
Was investing early, very early, very strongly, too risky? Absolutely not. We haven't looked at the rest of your projects. Well, you did some crowdfunding. I think you had a great approach. I find it quite incredible to have a net worth of 60,000 euros at your age. I think when I was 24, I had maybe, ah, I had about 20,000 euros, I think, because I also did an internship and I was at Sanofi, and it paid very well, and we had very large stock options. I think we had 8,000 or 10,000 euros per year. It was crazy, but the company was very profitable. So I think you've ticked all the boxes. The only thing I would question is your positioning on an asset that is based on a drop in value. There, I find that your entire portfolio is very coherent. In reality, it is very rational. You have a bit of local real estate, you have ETFs on high-growth markets, you have shares of companies you like, but there you have a slightly more speculative position that is expensive to hold because that's what you told me before, that you have underperformed, but you also have the opportunity cost. So it's a bit of a double-edged sword. That's, I think, the only position perhaps that I would question. But again, given your approach and the reflection you put into it, I want to say you are paying your dues to investment, and this learning will bring you a lot for your life as an investor. So I find it very healthy, and I find it very healthy indeed that you traded CFDs and then stopped, because you realized that it led nowhere. You traded crypto, and in the end, you came back to Bitcoin, Ethereum, well, very stable things. So we see that you took off like a rocket, you did a bit of everything, and then you came back to something very coherent. So for me, that's how it should be done.
Now, if you are watching this video and you are new to investing, well, benefit from everything Antoine has done and avoid going through the CFD, speculation, and so on, go straight to the much more long-term things. But in any case, no, it's a great learning experience. Do you perhaps have a recommendation to give to people who would be starting out in investing today? If you had to start over, what would you do differently? I would avoid all the detours, although I think I learned a lot and that without it, I wouldn't have had the same lessons. But I think if there is a sign of intelligence, it's the ability to learn from others. I would surely have more money if I had been able to listen to someone's advice back when I was making all my mistakes. So yes, I think the most important thing is to try. I think it's to find pleasure in it. In the beginning, investing can often be synonymous with deprivation, a bit of frugality. You have to manage to find pleasure in it, build good habits as early as possible, and try to maintain them over time. And that's it. And time will do the rest.
Antoine, you saw it earlier, your score was 78/100. You told me that you have been applying the Finari method for over 3 years. So, where do you gain points? Where do you lose them? You earn more than you spend. That's good, that's confirmed. You pay yourself first, because paying yourself first, the idea is to say that you pay for the current month, the current month invested for the future month. So that's what paying yourself first consists of. The safety net, 3 to 6 months of expenses. Well, you said it, you pointed it out, that's not working. You invest in the stock market, you invest primarily through your PEA. By the way, we saw that you have American stocks on your CTO, you have ETFs on your CTO because it's not possible to put them on the PEA. However, you have your S&P 500 ETF on the PEA. Anyway, you understood the mechanics. You choose ETFs, you have very little overlap between your ETFs because you only have two. You have S&P and Eurostoxx, so naturally, they are two different continents. So, great. You've minimized fees, but that goes with ETFs. Do you do a monthly DCA? No, not anymore, but you did it, you are doing it, and you plan to return to it. Stock picking, no more than 20%, that's also confirmed. So it's really a small pleasure pocket. You have a CTO, you also took out a savings plan. Decidedly, a very good student. You bought real estate with leverage, and it's rental real estate. Well, it's a subcategory of rental real estate, but it's a category that requires very little maintenance since I imagine there are no water leaks in your parking lot and you're not going to change any seals. It's pretty basic, right? Yes. No, the only problem is that my tenant is bothering me, but otherwise, that's about it. Well, you have to check that he knows how to drive too. Bitcoin, Ethereum in crypto, that's confirmed. You don't do DCA. Do you plan to do it again later? Yes, of course. Yes. So you plan to resume DCA on crypto. Global reflexes, you invest in yourself, well, you invest in your studies, which is a monstrous investment in reality, very costly, but I think it will be extremely profitable in the medium and long term. Long-term vision, in your objectives, you don't mention it, even if we feel that in your mindset, well, you are here to, you are projecting yourself, so we haven't put it in. Clearly defined objective, well, for now, the only objective is the basics, which is to rebuild the safety net. Have you optimized your tax situation? Yes, because you have chosen the right investment vehicles and you have enough liquid assets. The reality is that today, you can press two buttons and recover two-thirds of your assets because it's crypto, it's stocks, so there's no problem. So that gives a score of 78/100. Not bad. Not bad.
If you are interested in us analyzing the portfolio of another Antoine, who was also an intern, a great intern, and who could come back, or Antoine in one year to see what he has become, let me know in the comments. If you want me to analyze your portfolio too, that's in the comments. You fill out the form, you apply. And then there is an extremely complex process of finding the most interesting profile for everyone. So, we have thousands of applications, unfortunately, we can only make one video per week. But in any case, we look at all profiles. Apply and make good investments. Avoid leveraged products, though. And I'll see you very soon. Bye! [Music]