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Acorns is a robo advisor that invests one's money for them into a collection of ETFs (exchange traded funds). The goal is for long-term investing. The company will recommend a portfolio but one can easily pick the kind of portfolio that they want. The portfolios are in a few different categories which are Conservative, Moderately Conservative, Moderate, Moderately Aggressive, and Aggressive. In this article, I want to look at the aggressive portfolio as I believe that it is the one that most people should do.
The aggressive portfolio is the only one that is 100% stocks. There is an option to add a Bitcoin ETF into the portfolio, but it is worth mentioning that the ETF is a Bitcoin futures ETF which bets on the future price of Bitcoin. This means that the ETF will not move exactly with the price of Bitcoin itself. Even if one does believe in Bitcoin, it is worth knowing the difference before adding that ETF. In this article, I'll be looking at the portfolio without the Bitcoin futures ETF in it. 55% of the portfolio consists of the S&P 500 ETF VOO. Most investors, historically, have lost to the S&P. In my opinion, it is the best way to passively invest. While there are many ETFs out there that track the S&P, VOO is best for long-term investing. 30% of the portfolio is in the ETF IXUS which consists of international stocks. The ETF's past performance is not as good as VOOs over the last 3, 5, and 10 years, but I believe that diversifying into international stocks is a good thing. 10% of the portfolio is in the ETF IJH. This ETF invests into mid-cap stocks. This ETF has a low expense ratio which makes it great for long-term investing. The fund also has an average p/e (price/earnings) ratio of around 15. Lastly, 5% of the portfolio is in the ETF IJR. This ETF invests in small-cap stocks. Small-cap stocks have historically seen great growth, and it is a segment that I believe deserves a spot in almost everyone's portfolio. This is a good small-cap stock ETF for long-term investing. If I was managing the portfolio, I might change the percentages in some of these ETFs, but I believe that each of these ETFs are good ones to own. This portfolio is fairly diversified, so I wouldn't consider it that risky over a long period of time. If one would like to start using Acorns, Check out my marketing page of finance themed products/services. Acorns is one of them, and they are currently offering $5 just for signing up with them through us! - https://mez.ink/cwtpromo.
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Meta had a really rough 2022. The market itself experienced a pretty large downturn, and Meta was hit especially hard. This happened mostly due to two not so great quarters for Meta. While I was not surprised to see the stock fall from these reports, I was very surprised to see how much they fell. Meta started trading at valuations so bizarre that I could not believe the opportunities that I was given to buy shares of this company.
At one point I wrote that Meta was trading at a p/e ratio of a tobacco stock. That was when I thought the valuation Meta was trading at was an amazing opportunity to buy shares of the company. While the company was having problems with earnings, I saw that Meta was still growing its platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Their earnings were hit from Apple's privacy change, but I believe this will be temporary, and Meta's latest earnings report did show that people advertising on their platforms were getting a better return than previously. I've seen many people claim that they believe that ad spend will be decreasing, but considering the fact that advertising on Meta's platforms has the best return over any other ad platform that I know of, I believe they would be the last platforms advertisers would pull money from. Since they are still increasing users, that gives them even more people to show ads to. Another comment that I kept seeing while Meta stock was crashing last year, was that the company was going to fail because the metaverse will fail. This take was one that always baffled me, and I have concluded that the people saying this have just never actually looked into this. It's almost like people forgot that behind the metaverse, there is still a core business. Even if the metaverse does completely fail, Meta as a company will be fine. Their key business is still growing. It seemed like everyone took this huge, highly profitable company and decided to only value it based off of a side project they have. Meta has a ton of cash, and while it might look like they spent a ton of cash on the metaverse, they have a ton more. I'm completely fine with Meta spending part of its excess cash on metaverse technology. If the metaverse fails, there's still a large company there that I'm happy to own. If it succeeds, then I'm happy that I'm a shareholder. What I find crazy is how many people last year would say that they are bearish on Meta, and when asked why, they would say because they don't believe in the metaverse. While the stock is doing well so far this year, It's still not valued at what I believe it should be. The company is currently valued at $477.65 billion. I believe that 2023 could be a very profitable year for them. I created a marketing page for some amazing finance themed products/services. Check it out and see if there is one that'll help you with your finance goals - https://mez.ink/cwtpromo
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SoFi is a company that I have been buying shares of for quite awhile. I really like this company, and I use this company myself. Their stock has risen by over 60% since the beginning of the year. A lot of that is due to their latest quarterly report where they beat expectations.
In the fourth quarter of 2022, SoFi brought in $440 million in revenue beating the consensus estimate of $425.84 million. This is because of huge growth on their services. Most of their revenue came from their lending business. This accounted for around $330 million of their revenue. While the company was hurt from student loan extensions and possible forgiveness, personal loans have increased quite dramatically. Also, many people have taken more than one loan out through SoFi. This is great news for the company as they are able to make more money off of the same customer. SoFi has also expanded the amount of members that they have to 5.2 million. This is a 51% year over year gain in members. This is what I care about the most as an investor in this company. The fact that the company is still rapidly growing the amount of people using their platform is great news. SoFi's banking numbers were also a standout in their quarterly report. They now have 2.2 million accounts on SoFi money which is their checking and savings account. I see a lot of potential here so I am very happy with this growth. I see a lot of potential with this company, and I am very happy with this quarterly report. The company is seeking to become profitable this year which I would be happy to see. Even with the increase in share price, I'm not planning to sell any shares. I want to own more of this company not less, so I plan to keep accumulating shares. Check out our finance themed marketing page featuring a number of products and services to help one with their finances. Some of these even being from SoFi https://mez.ink/cwtpromo
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Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and several other banks are reportedly working on a digital wallet that they hope will compete with Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, PayPal and other services. This digital wallet would be operated by Early Warning Services which is a joint venture between several banks and also runs payment app Zelle.
This new wallet would be launched with Visa and Mastercard already on board. While this does make sense for these banks to do, I believe that it is probably too late. Services like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are already built into our phones. They also already have a huge amount of users that already know how to use them, and I don’t believe those users are going to jump ship for another app. Apple has created some banking services, and this is a very real threat to these companies. Not only does Apple have Apple Pay, but they also offer their own branded credit card which is another threat to these banks. I am surprised that it took these banks this long to try to create their own digital wallet. While I do believe that they waited too long, I was surprised to see Zelle get as many users as it has. Perhaps there is a market for this wallet afterall. Check out our finance themed affiliate page to see finance themed products/services that could help one with their finance goals - https://mez.ink/cwtpromo
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Analysis of Ally Financials Inc. Stock1/19/2023 
I recently started purchasing shares of Ally Financials Inc. The stock has been on my radar for awhile now, and I plan to acquire more shares of this company over a longer period. Ally Financials is a digital financial services company most famous for its banking services. It’s a completely digital bank which is great because it doesn’t have to deal with the cost of brick and mortar locations. From the research that I have done on them, I can confidently say that it does a really good job as a bank. In this article, I want to look at the stock and give my analysis of the company.
The first thing I noticed when looking at this company is their price/earnings ratio (p/e ratio). They have a p/e ratio of 4.37 at time of writing. They’re a bank stock so I expected a low p/e ratio but 4.37 is, in my opinion, extremely low. They currently have a market cap of $7.82 billion. The company also offers a dividend yield of 4.44%. When looking at their revenue and earnings over the last few years, one will see that in 2021, Ally brough in $8.67 billion in revenue and made $3.06 billion off of that. In 2020, they brough in $6.2 billion in revenue and made $1.08 billion. In 2019, they made $6.38 billion in revenue and made $1.72 billion off of that. One can see a decline in both revenue and profits from 2019-2020 which investors should notice. I bought stock in Ally financials because I believe that they have a lot of growth potential. I am very bullish on online banking and believe it has a lot of potential. While I can see Ally having some short term struggles (and I hope it does so I can buy shares at a cheaper price), I do see a big opportunity for long-term growth. I think that Ally Financials is in a good position to capitalize on this in the long-term. While I do believe this is a good investment for me to make, I don’t necessarily believe that this is a good investment for everyone. My hope is that this article will help one better make that decision for themselves. Join our email list down below so that you never miss an article! Also, I have created an affiliate page featuring some of the finance themed products and services that I use. Each of these products and services is offering some really great benefits for those who choose to join them through my page. Check them out and see if there is something that would benefit you - https://mez.ink/cwtpromo
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The Business Model of Money Management1/14/2023 
Money Management is a very good business model. I am an investor in a couple money management companies, and I hope to create a fund one day where I can manage money for other people as well. In this article, I want to discuss the business model of money management and fund management.
A money manager will usually collect around .25%-1% of the money under management. If one is managing a $10 million portfolio, they would collect around $25,000-$100,000 off of that. A lot of money management companies, however, are making a lot more money than that as they are managing hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. Blackrock is the largest money management company in existence with around $10 trillion dollars in assets. If one can get enough money under management, they can make some serious money, and considering the fact that one is collecting a fee off of the total amount under management, money managers are incentivized to grow that money as much as possible so that they can earn more money. With funds, the percentages are much different depending on the fund. With a venture capital fund (a fund that invests in startups), most funds get 2% of the initial investment plus 20% of the carry. Venture Capital investing can be very fruitful if done right which is why the fees are so high. Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) usually have much lower fees. According to Morningstar, the average ETF fee was .23% in 2016. The fee mostly depends on what the fund does and who it is with. Vanguard, for instance, has very low fees while Ark’s are much higher. ETFs usually have more money to manage than everything else I've mentioned which is a big reason for the lower fees. Anyways, the point is, money management can be an insanely profitable business model. Join our email list down below to have all future articles emailed directly to you! I created an affiliate page for finance themed products. Referral links for investing apps and a credit card. They’re all offering some pretty great incentives, and I encourage you all to check out the page and see if there’s something that would make your life better or not. Check it out here - https://mez.ink/cwtpromo.
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StartEngine is an equity crowdfunding platform where startups can raise money from retail investors. This is really important as retail investors were not allowed to invest in startups for a long time. Thankfully, retail investors can invest in startups now, and companies like StartEngine are making it easier for them to do so. I believe that this is a great thing, and while I do not own any shares of the company myself at time of writing, I will mention that StartEngine is currently raising money on their own platform at a $1.32 billion valuation.
StartEngine is buying their competitor SeedInvest from parent company Circle. As part of the terms of the deal, Circle will own a minority stake in StartEngine. I think that this was a genius decision for StartEngine. SeedInvest has around 700,000 investors currently using their platform that StartEngine has the chance to add to their 1 million users. SeedInvest also has had $470 million dollars raised on its platform so far while StartEngine has had $650 million raised. StartEngine will now be able to put startups in front of more people than they were able to before, and I believe that this will give those investors the opportunity to invest into more companies. StartEngine and SeedInvest together have seen 37 exists with the startups on their platforms. StartEngine is ran by CEO Howard Marks who one may know as the founder of Activision. Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary is also a strategic investor for StartEngine and a big focus on their marketing. The crowdfunding space is growing very quickly and by buying SeedInvest, StartEngine is in an even better position to grow in the market. Join our email list so that you never miss an article! Also, download the investing app SoFi through our link and get $25 for free when you invest $10. Download here - https://www.sofi.com/invite/invest?gcp=3cf3452a-7a65-41c8-b2d4-dc3752d20d92&isAliasGcp=false
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I have a lot of goals in 2023. One of them is more than doubling the amount of money that I have invested. There are two ways to increase the amount of money that I can invest. One of them is by achieving a higher income which I definitely will do. The other is by spending less money which is harder but I also will do. If I can cut down on my expenses, then I will have more money to invest.
I have 4 different investment accounts which are my 401k, Roth IRA, Acorns, Individual Investment Account. My 401k is a percentage of my income. If I can make more money, more money gets put into it. That's really all I can do concerning that. With my Roth IRA, I can only invest $6k a year into it. The first thing I try to do every year is max out my Roth IRA. Since I can only invest $6k into that account this year, I can't really increase my investments concerning that. Acorns is a robo-investor that I invest into every week and it puts it into a collection of ETFs (exchange traded funds) for me. I don't invest a large portion of money into Acorns, but I like to have it as a passive way to invest my money. One of the first things I intend to do is double the amount that I normally invest in here. Lastly, there is my individual investment account. This account is all just stocks that I believe in. It's an active investment account, and most of my blog posts are concerning that account. There are quite a few companies that I have written about on this blog that I bought stock in that I really want to increase my holdings of. I plan to grow that investment account as much as possible because I want to own as many shares of these companies as possible. Those accounts are where I plan to put my money into this year. To hit my net worth goal this year, I need to both increase my income and decrease the amount of money I spend. One of the ways that I plan on doing this is by looking at what I spend my money on and finding cheaper alternatives. I also want to build out an actual budget as well. I'm very excited for this year. Join my email list down below so that you never miss an article! Also, download the investing app SoFi through our link and get $25 for free when you invest $10. Download here - https://www.sofi.com/invite/invest?gcp=3cf3452a-7a65-41c8-b2d4-dc3752d20d92&isAliasGcp=false
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I don't normally buy stocks that I consider risky. I like investing in companies that are trading at very low price/earnings ratio that I believe will continue to grow. One stock that I own that does not fit this criteria at all, however, is AST Spacemobile Inc (Ticker: ASTS). This stock is, in my opinion, a very risky investment to make for a ton of reasons that I will list, but it is also a stock that I believe could potentially have an amazing outcome. The stock is down almost 47% year to date.
First, I want to discuss why I bought ASTS in the first place. The company has a pretty impressive goal. They are trying to create a cellular broadband network for mobile phones through satellites. This will be very helpful for people in underdeveloped countries and rural areas. I really liked the mission of this company, and I still do. That is why I bought the stock. That was awhile ago though, and I have since learned a lot more about investing and valuing businesses. I'm not saying that I necessarily regret buying the stock, but I am saying that knowing what I do now about investing, I am not sure I would still have invested. I do still support the mission of ASTS, and I do not plan to sell my shares of the company anytime soon at all. ASTS currently has a market cap of around $876 million. They're losing a ton of money right now as the technology that they are building simply costs a lot of money. Last year, ASTS did $12.4 million in revenue but lost $30.55 million. The year before, they did $5.97 million in revenue but lost $24.06 million. They're growing their revenue every year which is a good thing, but they are also losing more and more money every single year which is obviously a bad thing. Again, this is to be expected as the technology that they are trying to build is very expensive, and if they can build it and it works, I believe this company will be worth so much more than they are now. Unfortunately, that is a big if. The reason I say that this is a big if is because they are currently spending more than they are making. When a company is spending more money than they are making, they have to continue to raise more money. While that does give the company more money to spend, it dilutes their shareholders. Let's say someone buys 1% of ASTS. They now own 1% of the company. ASTS is going to have to raise more money so they create more shares to sell to get that money and now that someone owns less than 1% of the company even though they haven't sold any of their shares. This is a worry I have with ASTS. They are going to have to dilute their shareholders, and while I do understand that, as a shareholder, I don't want my stake in the company to be diluted to nothing. An even bigger worry I have with ASTS is that they will be unable to raise enough money. If they can't continue to raise money, they cannot continue to be in business. I believe that I am either going to make a lot of money off of this stock or the stock will go to zero because they'll be unable to raise enough money. This is why I consider this to be such a risky stock. Join my email list down below so that you never miss an article! Also, download the investing app SoFi through our link and get $25 for free when you invest $10. Download here - https://www.sofi.com/invite/invest?gcp=3cf3452a-7a65-41c8-b2d4-dc3752d20d92&isAliasGcp=false
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My Current Investment Strategy12/9/2022 
The market itself has not preformed very well this year. The S&P 500 is down around 18% year to date right now. With 2023 approaching, many companies are predicting another tough year. At the beginning of 2022, I stated that I thought that this year would be a down year for the market as a whole, but I ended up being way more right than I thought that I would be. I have no idea how 2023 is going to go, and I don't know how anyone could possibly know. Perhaps the stock market has already bottomed or maybe it still has a bit more to fall. I have no idea. I do know that I will be buying stocks. Here is my current investment strategy.
1. The S&P 500 itself 90% of investors underperform the S&P over a long period of time. With this in mind, I like to invest most of my money into the S&P 500 ETF VOO. There's a lot of S&P 500 ETFs out there, but I like to invest in VOO because of its low expense ratio. I plan for my money to be in this ETF for a long time, so I want a very cheap expense ratio. VOO makes up my entire Roth IRA, and I even invest in VOO in my regular investment account as well. VOO, on average, goes up around 10% per year, and I believe that it will continue to do so. 2. Robo Investors I really like robo investors, and I believe that everyone should have one. I use the app Acorns as my robo investor. With Acorns, they manage my money for me. They invest it into a collection of ETFs (exchange traded funds). My goal with Acorns, is to have a passive investment platform that I do not touch ever. I have an automatic buy order set up with Acorns where every single week a certain amount of money automatically gets invested into my account which they then invest for me. I never open Acorns. I just have that money passively growing my net worth. My goal with my robo investor is to have a benchmark that my personal investments can look at as a goal to outperform. If you would like to join acorns, they'll give you $5 for free by creating an account through my link - www.acorns.com/invite/LXHSGB 3. Individual stocks With the market in a downturn, I have put a lot more work into finding what a business is actually worth in my own opinion. When I look at a company like Meta, for instance, I try to look at the revenue and profit that they are achieving and find what I believe the business is actually worth. If it's worth more to me than what it is trading at, then I buy the stock. This year, I have found a few companies trading below what I believe is fair value, so I invested in those companies. Time will tell if I am right, but I am a big believer in the companies that I am in. I plan to increase my holdings in the companies that I am already in, and I hope to find more companies that I can build a position in. 4. Private companies My main goal is to turn CWT into an investment company. I want to invest into private businesses that will either get acquired by another company, go public on the stock exchange, or make enough profit for me to make more money than I invested. On this article, one likely sees ads. The revenue that I can bring in from these ads, I hope, will provide me with money that I can place into businesses. That is my main investment goal. This is my current plan to build wealth. Join our email list so that you never miss an article. |
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