The human brain is biologically incapable of intuitively understanding exponential growth. We are designed for a linear world where one plus one equals two, and where the threats we face move at a predictable, constant speed across the savannah.

We think in straight lines.

But wealth is not generated in straight lines. Real wealth, the kind that creates generational freedom, is generated exponentially. It compounds. It doubles, then doubles again.

And this mismatch between our linear biology and the exponential reality of high-performance assets creates a massive psychological trap.

This is the reason why most people sell their winners too early and hold their losers forever.

This glitch in our software becomes painfully obvious when we look at what has happened with Bitcoin over the last two years. In November 2022, the world felt like it was ending. FTX had just imploded, leverage was being flushed out of the system, and the “experts” were declaring crypto dead for the hundredth time. In the middle of that chaos, we sent a newsletter with a very unpopular recommendation: Buy Bitcoin.

It was trading at $16,000.

Back then, the decision felt incredibly risky, but the emotional math was actually quite easy to handle. If the price dropped 10% the next day, you lost $1,600 per coin. It was annoying, sure, but it was a number you could wrap your head around. It was the price of a laptop or a short weekend trip (linear thinking).

The volatility was contained within a mental box that felt safe. You could sleep at night because the absolute dollar amount of the swings felt negligible.

Fast forward to today.

We have watched the price climb from the depths of $16,000 to over $120,000. If you followed our advice and simply sat on your hands, you are sitting on a life-changing multiple of your initial capital. But this is where the linear brain starts to panic.

As the asset grows, the volatility scales up in nominal terms, even if the percentage moves get smaller.

When Bitcoin trades at $95,000, a boring, standard 5% correction is a nearly $5,000 drop. A single bad day now wipes out more nominal value than your entire initial investment was worth back in 2022. The percentage is small, but the dollar sign is huge. And because your brain is stuck in linear mode, it screams danger.

You see a $20,000 swing in your portfolio on a Tuesday morning and your pulse spikes. You forget that this is just noise. You forget that this is the price of admission for exponential growth.

This is the specific moment where the “rich” are separated from the “comfortable.”

To become a millionaire, you have to understand that exponential growth happens at the end, not the beginning.

The nature of compounding is that the vast majority of the gains come in the final stages of the holding period. It takes a long time to double your money the first time. But once you have a substantial base, a single 10% move generates more wealth than years of work in the early days.

But here is the catch: you only get those massive, life-changing backend returns if you can stomach the massive, life-changing backend volatility.

Most investors cap their own wealth because they treat their portfolio like a bank account. They see the number hit a certain “linear” milestone, maybe enough to pay off a mortgage or buy a nice car, and they sell. They interrupt the compounding curve right before it goes vertical. They trade exponential freedom for linear comfort.

If you want to build dynastic wealth, you have to become numb to the nominal numbers.

You have to reach a point where a six-figure fluctuation in your net worth feels like nothing more than a change in the weather. If you panic when your portfolio drops by $50,000, you will never be allowed to hold a portfolio that can grow by $1,000,000. The market demands that you pay a psychological toll for the upside.

The logic is brutal but simple: You cannot have the upside of the exponential curve without the vertigo of the exponential swings.

When you look at the chart of any massive winner, whether it’s Amazon in the 90s, Apple in the 2000s, or Bitcoin today it looks like a smooth line up and to the right. But if you zoom in, it is a graveyard of investors who sold during a 30% drop because the “dollar amount” scared them. They were thinking linearly. They were trying to protect $10,000 and missed out on $10 million.

Real wealth is not found in trading around the edges. It is found in identifying a secular trend, taking a position, and then having the iron discipline to let the exponential math do the heavy lifting.

The first million is the hardest because you are fighting against gravity. But the second, third, and fourth million are purely a function of time and retention. If you sell your winners to “lock in profits,” you are effectively firing your best employees just as they are starting to do their best work.

Don’t let your linear brain rob you of your exponential future.

I’m dropping something I wish someone had told me 10 years ago.

If you’re employed, read this twice.

Not motivational quotes. Not theory. But real, battle-tested rules.

The kind that helps you:

• Escape quietly

• Build real wealth

• Never depend on a paycheck again

Let’s go.

Build Early

There’s something powerful about building a home in your 30s instead of your 50s. It forces clarity. It aligns your priorities. Whether it’s rural or urban, the place you build becomes an anchor, a center of gravity.

Many wait too long, trapped in the illusion of stability provided by company housing or cushy rentals. But comfort is dangerous when it’s borrowed. Build early. Let your family grow into it, not inherit it when you’re done.

Go Home

You are not the spine of your department. If you vanish tomorrow, someone will be in your seat by Monday.

The company will not collapse. Your family, though, that’s irreplaceable. Don’t confuse presence at work with value.

Go home.

Often.

Touch base. Remind yourself who you’re really building for.

Master Your Craft

Chasing promotions is a full-time job. It distracts you from the actual work. From the craft. Become exceptional at what you do. Learn deeply. Stay curious. If a promotion comes, fine.

If it doesn’t, that’s also fine.

The real win is internal leverage. That calm, quiet confidence that can’t be taken away by office politics.

Stay Out of Gossip

It’s not worth it. Office gossip is a tax on your integrity. A few words in the wrong room can tarnish your name for years. Stay clean. Build a reputation that doesn’t need defending. People remember.

No Competition

Your boss is not your rival. Your colleague is not your enemy. Trying to outshine everyone is exhausting and unnecessary.

Build in silence.

Let the work talk.

Your real opponent is your past self, not the people sharing your Zoom link.

Build a Side Game

The salary treadmill always speeds up. Inflation, expectations, lifestyle creep. At some point, the math stops working. Don’t wait for that moment. Build a side business now. Even a small one.

Get used to income that doesn’t come with a contract. Let your future freedom compound in the background.

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A few days ago I read a PDF that was very, very interesting. I genuinely think it can help you.

It wasn’t the usual motivational piece about “thinking big.” It wasn’t a technical guide on asset allocation for family offices either. It was something far more useful. A brutally honest collection of founder profiles who have already played the game at different levels. Some worth $10 million. Some worth over $1 billion. Some who never sold. Others who exited early and then lost their way.

And the most interesting part wasn’t how much they made.

It was where they messed up.

Because if you study their mistakes carefully, you realize something uncomfortable: if you make those same mistakes with a $500K, $1M, or $2M portfolio, it won’t cost you ego. It will cost you decades.

One of the most repeated mistakes was this: selling too early the asset that was actually making them rich.

The compounder who never sold understood something most people don’t when they’re still building. His company wasn’t just an asset. It was his compounding engine. As long as he had control and a competitive edge, diversification was mathematically inferior.

Many others did the opposite. They sold their core asset to “diversify,” paid massive taxes, moved into a portfolio of average ETFs, and never again owned something with that kind of asymmetric upside.

The result wasn’t ruin. It was something worse.

Permanent financial mediocrity.

If you build an asset compounding at 20 percent annually and trade it for a diversified 7 percent portfolio out of fear of concentration, you’re not being prudent. You’re amputating your upside.

Second brutal mistake: confusing liquidity with freedom.

Several founders who had large exits describe the same pattern. Suddenly they had $30M, $50M, or more in cash. Absolute safety. Zero pressure. And yet, anxiety.

Why?

Because before, they had flow plus growing equity. After the exit, they only had capital fluctuating. No structure. No clear mission. No system.

On a smaller scale, the same thing happens.

If you build your wealth around selling events, every bear market paralyzes you. If you depend on selling to live, every downturn traps you.

Retiring early doesn’t mean hitting a big number in an account. It means having a system that doesn’t force you to sell at the worst possible time.

Third mistake: overestimating skill transfer.

One profile in the PDF made a nine-figure exit and later failed in his second venture. Not because he lacked money. Not because he lacked intelligence. But because he assumed success in one industry would automatically transfer to another.

The same dynamic applies to your portfolio.

Just because you made money in tech doesn’t mean you understand biotech. Just because one cycle favored you doesn’t mean you’re brilliant. Many people partially ruined themselves by extrapolating a hot streak.

The market does not pay for confidence. It pays for edge.

Fourth mistake: ignoring burn rate.

One profile that stood out was a billionaire with a relatively low burn compared to his net worth. Another spent millions per year but had a massive EBITDA engine backing it up.

The contrast matters.

The people who suffer aren’t the ones who spend a lot. They’re the ones who spend out of alignment with real flow. A high fixed burn without stable cash flow turns any drawdown into stress.

If you live like you have $5M when your net worth is $1M, the market will eventually teach you humility.

Fifth mistake: concentration without control.

Concentration is powerful. But only when you control the asset or deeply understand the terrain.

One profile lost over $100 million on paper during an extreme downturn. He survived because his identity wasn’t tied to the number and because he accepted the cyclicality of his sector.

If you concentrate in something you don’t control, without enough liquidity, and without the stomach for volatility, you’re not playing an asymmetric game.

You’re playing roulette.

So what does all this have to do with retiring early?

Much more than it seems.

Most people think retiring early means accumulating enough to live off 4 percent per year and walking away. But the most interesting profiles in the document show something different.

The ones who truly reached freedom didn’t sell their wealth machine. They optimized it to produce sufficient flow and kept their core intact.

They don’t live off 4 percent from an ETF.

They live off the flow of assets they understand and control.

Retiring early isn’t about leaving the game. It’s about changing the rules under which you play.

If you depend exclusively on appreciation, you’re hostage to the market.
If you depend exclusively on salary, you’re hostage to time.
If you depend on a future exit, you’re hostage to an event.

Real freedom appears when your system has three characteristics:

Structural compounding.
Sufficient flow.
Liquidity optionality.

And here’s the uncomfortable part.

With less than $2M, you’re at the most dangerous and most powerful stage at the same time. Dangerous because you might think you’re more sophisticated than you are. Powerful because you can still design the system correctly.

The founders in the PDF who radiate the most stability aren’t the ones maximizing returns every year. They’re the ones who understood which game they were playing.

The one who chose concentration because he had real control.
The one who chose diversification because he knew his psychology couldn’t tolerate drawdowns.
The one who lowered his burn before the market forced him to.
The one who never again sold his best asset just to “feel safe.”

How to actually build wealth and retire early is not a magic formula.

It’s about avoiding structural mistakes.

Not selling your core out of fear.
Not inflating your lifestyle before consolidating flow.
Not confusing liquidity with purpose.
Not concentrating where you have no advantage.
Not depending on a single exit event to feel free.

If you avoid those five mistakes for ten or fifteen years, your probability of real financial freedom explodes.

Not because you were brilliant.

But because you didn’t sabotage yourself.

There’s a well-known quote from Charles Munger (who, sadly, left us just before turning 100):

“I’d like to know where I’m going to die, so I never go there.”

It sounds simple, but there’s deep reflection behind that.

Taleb understood this perfectly. That’s why his portfolio is completely asymmetric, built to withstand any possible event.

I think a mix of both Taleb and Munger led me to build the asymmetric portfolio.

A portfolio that benefits from market fragility.

And markets are getting more fragile every day.

Do you remember just a few months ago when silver and gold moved as much as 20% and 40% within a few sessions?

That meant roughly $7–9 trillion was wiped off the markets, in other words, the value of the 2–3 biggest companies in the world, gone in just a few days.

Is that even possible?

Is there really that much money moving around?

No. And no.

The reason this happens is simple: most people don’t understand that:

1. The price is just the last trade made between two people

2. There’s an endless web of financial derivatives that makes prices move violently

Knowing all this, and following the logic of Taleb and Munger, today I want to explain how not to die in the world of investing.

Some of it might sound obvious. But it’s worth saying out loud, because humans have a cognitive bias: we forget pain quickly.

And when we forget pain, the same mistakes get repeated. Again. And again.

At the end, I’ll show you how to avoid this trap and the best way to structure your portfolio to survive.

Not knowing your fixed costs

This is the most common mistake people make. If you’re a person, anything you pay on a recurring basis is a fixed cost. You can only go broke if your fixed costs exceed your income.

I know some will talk about variable costs, but if you’re a person, it’s easy to cut those when necessary.

The most common fixed costs?

• Mortgage or rent

• Utilities

• Subscriptions

• School tuition

• And if you’re a true financial suicide case, a second home

If you’re running a business, the biggest fixed costs are:

• Payroll

• Raw materials

Bill Gates understood this when Microsoft was still a young company. He said he came up with a hyper-conservative strategy: keep enough cash in the bank to pay salaries for a full year, even if zero revenue came in.

Warren Buffett echoed a similar idea when he told Berkshire Hathaway shareholders in 2008:

“I’ve promised to always run Berkshire with more-than-abundant liquidity. If I have to choose, I won’t trade a single night of sleep for the possibility of extra profits.”

What happens most of the time is that we assume an optimistic bias when taking on risk, the “Russian Roulette Syndrome”:

It’s the emotional attachment to a favorable probability, even when the downside is utterly unacceptable.

The odds are on your side in Russian roulette.

But the negative outcome outweighs all potential upside.

Yes, you need to take risks to make progress.

But you should never take a risk that could destroy you.

Leverage

This one’s the clearest.

If you have Bitcoin in a Ledger, no one can take it from you.

If you have gold in a safe, same.

Even if you own a Nasdaq ETF, it’s still relatively safe, even though some of those companies might be leveraged, they’ll likely be replaced by others with stronger balance sheets over time.

But it’s a different story when you’re the one holding leverage… and you’re the weak link.

And yet, all of that breaks into a thousand pieces if leverage is misused.

Leverage itself isn’t bad. In fact, when used well, it’s what turns a good portfolio into a lethal weapon. But the problem isn’t leverage. The problem is who’s holding it.

If your assets are leveraged, and you don’t know it, you’re already dead.

If your lifestyle is leveraged with fragile income and high fixed costs, you’re also dead.

If you need to sell assets during stress just to pay your bills, you’re already dead.

People think financial ruin hits like lightning.

In reality, it’s a small wound that gets infected slowly until one day you can’t walk anymore.

And the worst part is you knew it, but ignored it.

That’s why there’s only one kind of portfolio that survives all of this:

A portfolio that never forces you to sell. That pays you just for breathing. That feeds off chaos.

An asymmetric portfolio

One that clearly separates your assets into three boxes: flow, core, and optionality.

One where your core is never touched, it’s your foundation of power.

Where your flow covers your fixed costs every single month, letting you live with dignity without touching your core.

And where your optionality lets you strike when others are paralyzed, because you have liquidity, margin, and patience.

If you don’t build this, sooner or later the system will force you to sell your soul to pay rent.

It doesn’t matter how hard you work or how much you earn. If your portfolio lacks antifragility, the system will wipe you out in the next dislocation. Or the one after that. It’s just a matter of time.

As Munger said, “I’d like to know where I’m going to die, so I never go there.”

The funny thing is: in finance, we do know where most people die.

They die from lack of liquidity. From being forced to sell. From a lifestyle that demands they do.

And yet they keep walking straight into that trap, over and over again.

Taleb understood this perfectly. That’s why his portfolio is built to benefit from chaos, not resist it.

That’s where real wealth is born.

Not from predicting the future.

But from designing a system that works even when you’re wrong.

If you want real wealth, forget about “earning it someday.”

Focus on living from flow right now.

Make sure your core is never touched.

And keep liquidity (and courage) to strike when everyone else is panicking.

Because wealth isn’t in the number.

It’s in the structure.

Now our portfolio…

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From time to time I write notes. Like Naval says, it’s a way to compress what I actually think into very few words. No decoration. No performance. Just signal.

What I’ve noticed over the years is that many of those notes age well. Some even get better with time. I go back to them often. I reread them. I extract what still holds. And I discard what doesn’t. That loop alone has probably been one of the highest return activities in my life.

That’s why I keep saying this, even if it sounds arrogant. If you remove the time cost from the equation, reading (my) Notes has an almost infinite return. One or two minutes. That’s it. No threads. No noise. No dopamine farming. Just a thought that either survives contact with reality or doesn’t.

A few days ago I went back to September. Almost a year ago. And I stopped on one specific note. I read it again and said to myself, this one is not timeless. And precisely because of that, it matters.

The core idea was simple but uncomfortable. What if we never see a real recession again.

Not a correction. Not a 20 or 30 percent drawdown that gets bought within months. I’m talking about the kind of recession people still reference decades later. 1929. 2008. COVID, for a few weeks at least. The kind of event where assets are destroyed, not just repriced. Where time itself becomes the enemy.

The theory goes like this. The system can no longer afford sustained deflationary collapses.

Debt levels are too high.

Political tolerance is too low.

The monetary response function is now asymmetric. Pain is not allowed to compound. It is absorbed. Socialized. Monetized.

That doesn’t mean volatility disappears. Volatility is the price of the illusion. But it does mean that the market structure we grew up with may no longer produce decade-long bottoms where you can buy quality assets at a 70 percent discount and wait patiently for normalization.

Or, as Taleb puts it, keeping a large portion of the portfolio in cash (the barbell strategy).

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A few months ago, I received a reply to one of my articles with an investment strategy I want to share with you today. A strategy that lets you accumulate the asset of your choice at a lower price, build a long-term position, and generate income. All in one.

Today I’m breaking it down step by step so you can implement it and start generating income right away.

As you know, I believe wealth comes from circulating capital. I’ve written about this several times.

If you need 2k a month to live, and you own funds like JEPQ or others I’ve recommended before, with half a million (in the currency of your choice), you can be free.

But the best part isn’t being free. It’s the feeling of being free. It’s the mental peace that comes from placing your attention where it actually matters. Because that’s when everything starts to flow.

You’re sitting in the “F**k you money” seat. And ironically, that’s when income starts to show up from everywhere.

If you want to dig deeper into this, there’s a book I always recommend, Die With Zero. But if what you want is the step-by-step, the practical method to actually implement this today, I’ve got you covered.

The returns? Way better than real estate.

I used to run this strategy all the time.

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Everyone wants to look busy. It signals purpose. It soothes the ego. It feeds the illusion that motion equals progress.

But most of the wealth I’ve built came from doing… nothing.

Not passive. Not lazy. Positioned.

That’s a different game. And most people never play it because it doesn’t look like anything. It looks like sitting. Waiting. Watching. Not chasing.

But that is the work.

We’ve built a world addicted to events. The spike. The announcement. The moment. The top. The crash. The next. The now. Everyone is tuned to the dopamine loop of “what’s happening” instead of “what am I becoming?”

That’s a problem. Because nothing asymmetrical comes from noise.

Asymmetry only reveals itself to those willing to live through the flat, uneventful periods. Those who structure systems that don’t depend on action. Who can watch the market convulse, headlines scream, politicians fail, and still not touch a single position.

Why?

Because the real process is invisible.

It’s how you prepared months ago. It’s h…

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Many times I’ve shared the techniques the wealthy use to grow their net worth at an incredible pace.

Since I started implementing all of them, I’ve been able to more than double my personal wealth year after year.

Yes, you heard that right.
If you start with 100k:

Year 1, 200k
Year 2, 400k
Year 3, 800k

…

I could go on, but I don’t want to tease you too much.
What I like most about this is the feeling of security, knowing I can face almost anything.

Most of what I’ve taught you is based on a very well-known technique, Buy Borrow Die. It works incredibly well because, whether you believe it or not, you are saving a huge portion of taxes.

The State, believe it or not, is better than many hedge funds. AQR, Bridgewater and many others would love to have this advantage, and yet the State is the one taking it.

Good thing you found this newsletter. Welcome, let me open your eyes.

A euro money market fund today yields around 2%.

It charges a 1% management fee and then the State takes 20% of the gains.

So you go from 2% to 0.75%. Impressive…

But I don’t want to get lost in that today. Another day I’ll show you ways to avoid this taxation. Today I want to share a different tax trick, one that very few people use and that I find extremely profitable.

Actually, extremely profitable.

Even more than Buy Borrow Die.

Because when you implement Buy Borrow Die you face one problem. If you borrow 100k, you will always have at least 100k of debt. If you don’t have cash flow, reducing it is almost impossible. Or is it?

Today I want to talk about this only to paid subscribers.

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For years, people have looked at the offshore structures of billionaires and assumed that was the blueprint.

Cayman

BVI

Jersey

Singapore

A web of shell companies, nominee directors, and jurisdictions that politely tell foreign tax authorities to stop asking questions. It looks sophisticated, powerful, almost cinematic. Jason Bourne with a Bloomberg terminal.

The reality is less romantic and far more instructive.

When you study the data on where elite capital actually hides, a pattern emerges. In some countries, up to 70–90% of the offshore wealth of the top tier sits in jurisdictions that are effectively black holes for information exchange.

Places built on one promise: secrecy first, cooperation never. In others, the proportion is much lower. Not because the elites are more virtuous, but because their domestic systems, capital controls, and geopolitical exposure create different incentives.

What’s fascinating is not just the percentage. It’s the loyalty.

Russian, Chinese, Brazilian billionaires overwhelmingly cluster in the same few Caribbean structures. South African wealth flows to the Channel Islands instead.

Asian elites, even from countries with low corruption and strong institutions, still route capital through shadow hubs that offer deniability and legal distance. This is not about taxes anymore. It’s about jurisdictional optionality. About having assets that can survive political shifts, currency controls, sudden regulation, or a change in regime.

The rich are not optimizing for yield. They are optimizing for survivability.

From the outside, it looks like complexity. From the inside, it is redundancy. Multiple layers, multiple passports, multiple banks, multiple legal systems. The goal is not to beat the market. The goal is to remain unkillable by the system that created the market.

This is where most online entrepreneurs, traders, and investors get the story wrong.

They see the structures and try to copy the form, not the function. They open offshore companies in exotic jurisdictions, stack wallets, add trustees, pay retainers to lawyers who speak in Latin and invoice in five figures. And then they discover the real cost. Endless compliance. Banking friction. Account closures. Frozen transfers. A permanent low-grade anxiety that something, somewhere, is about to break.

The billionaire can afford this because the structure is a rounding error. The admin team is full time. The legal budget is invisible. The political optionality is worth the drag.

For the digital wealth builder, the one whose capital is still in the growth phase, complexity is usually a net negative. Not because secrecy is bad, but because fragility is.

What matters is not how opaque your structure looks. It’s how resilient it is to three forces: taxation, regulation, and monetary debasement.

This is why the new gravitational center of global capital is so telling.

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Today I’m going to write something more technical than usual. If you found this newsletter through personal finance or portfolio strategy, this one might feel dense. That’s fine. But I think I need to explain it, because the mistake I’m about to describe is more common than it looks, and it costs real money.

A subscriber sent me this:

He had bought August VIX calls with a $19 strike. The market sold off. The VIX spiked. And he made nothing.

He asked whether the problem was volume, spreads, or strike selection. He wanted to know what he had done wrong.

The uncomfortable answer is this: he didn’t do anything wrong. The market already knew what he knew. And it charged him for that knowledge before he could profit from it.

This is not an execution error. It is a misunderstanding of the instrument. And it deserves a proper breakdown.

The VIX you see on your screen is not what you buy when you buy a VIX option.

The VIX spot, the number that appears on Bloomberg or your brokerage dashboard, is an index. It is not an asset. You cannot buy or sell it directly. VIX options settle against VIX futures, not spot VIX. And that distinction changes everything.

When fear builds gradually in the market, futures price it in before it happens. If sentiment deteriorates over several weeks, the August future has already moved before the spot index makes its visible jump. By the time spot finally spikes, the future barely reacts. It already got there.

Result: you bought the right thing, at the right time, and made nothing.

This has a name. It is called contango. It is the normal condition of the VIX futures curve. Contracts further out in time trade above spot because the market demands a premium for future uncertainty. Contango erodes your position while you wait. And if the spike is gradual rather than sudden, the futures absorb the move without your options ever reflecting it.

Deep OTM VIX calls, say a $100 strike, behave completely differently. Not because they have more volume or tighter spreads. But because they represent an event the market cannot gradually discount.

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Today I want to show you a new way of seeing money. Maybe one you’ve never seen before. I hope this helps many of you. It’s helped me see things differently, and save a lot of time (and energy).

A few weeks ago, I was flying back from a business meeting. Yes, believe it or not, those still happen. I was exhausted after two intense days. That feeling when your brain just shuts down. You try to think… and it hurts.

I had tried reading, then listening to a podcast, until I finally decided to do nothing. I left everything in my bag and just stared out the window.

Everything was dark. The world was asleep. Or maybe not. There were lights everywhere. Clusters of them. From small villages to big cities. By the number and intensity, I could almost guess real estate prices.

More lights, higher prices. Fewer lights, cheaper.

That made me think of a chart I saw years ago.

Countries with high per capita energy use: rich. Countries with low energy use: poor.

That moment triggered a wave of thoughts. Everything started to flow. Dots connected. I could feel I was reaching a conclusion I hadn’t seen before, but it made total sense.

What if Elon Musk was right? What if the currency of the future is energy?

But wait… wasn’t the future all about AI? I asked myself.

And that’s when it clicked. AI needs data centers. Data centers consume massive energy. And energy is limited, valuable, essential.

I remembered the first law of thermodynamics I studied twelve years ago in university: energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed.

F**k. Energy is what moves everything.

More energy, more money. But it couldn’t be that simple. A car uses less energy than 20 people. And if I want to move a suitcase 1000 km, isn’t it more efficient to use a car?

Then I thought about the next layer: Power.

For those who don’t know, it’s the rate of energy over time. It’s how much energy you can apply in a given period.

And that’s when everything made sense: money follows power.

That’s the key. It’s not just about having energy, it’s about knowing when and how to release it. In a way that doesn’t leak.

Right then, the obese man sitting next to me ordered an enormous hamburger, followed by a regular Coke. The burger was so greasy half the plane knew what he was eating just from the smell.

And I thought: this guy just converted energy (money) into more energy for his body… when his own reserves are already full.

My mind kept spinning. How do I connect all these dots?

I got home, and as I was drifting off to sleep, I read a quote by Naval Ravikant that captured in 180 characters what my brain had been trying to articulate:

Money is energy, one step removed.

We will always expend energy to obtain it, distribute it, and secure it, whether it’s via aircraft carriers, central bankers or data centers.

The energy expenditure can be masked but not removed. Someone will spend 99 cents to take a dollar.

You know the best part? The tweet was from May 2019. Way before all the AI hype.

That’s when I understood everything. I had found the method to get rich, and it was this:

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It all started last week when I was listening to a Spanish podcaster. He makes a lot of money, which is why he moved to Andorra. For those who don’t know, Andorra is like the Dubai of Europe, or rather, of Spaniards. A place to pay less tax and live surrounded by people making serious cash.

Less dunes, more snow. But it’s the same game.

This podcaster bought a house that turned out to be in an avalanche risk zone. He had no idea. Lost nearly 100k and now he’s in court. Sure, 95% of the time nothing happens. But it’s the 5% that will crush you. Neighbors, hidden issues, weather damage, stuff you’ll never catch in two or three visits.

That’s why I’m writing this today. Because in 2026, investing in real estate just doesn’t make sense anymore. Not like it used to. A decade ago, it was still one of the best ways to get rich. Kiyosaki, Cardone... The banks loved it. You bought something they could locate and touch.

That allowed them to give you financing. You made more money, and they made money on your money.

But things have changed. Now, with a simple index fund, you can borrow against your position. Why? Very simple: the assets of a company like Google, both tangible and intangible, are worth far more than that house you have in Detroit. Same with the podcaster’s snow-covered mountain trap.

You don’t have to be a genius. The banks know it too. But:

1. Until now, they didn’t have the tech to make this kind of lending easy.

2. They make more money from mortgages than from lending against an index fund (unless the interest rate is high).

So of course they pushed real estate.

But that game is over.

Look at a fund like the Nasdaq.

You get an 18% annual CAGR.

Leverage it 1.5x, subtract a 4% borrowing cost, and you’re getting a 25% return on your capital.

Even if you’re Cardone himself, you’re not getting that on a building, even with 5x leverage and 20% down.

Believe it or not, that’s also why we use smart leverage in our portfolio.

Now let’s look at real estate in 2026. I’m not giving you theory. I’m giving you numbers:

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I don’t know if this happens to you too, but when someone tells me something for the first time, I usually think it’s not that important. And after a while, either through my own thinking or because someone reframes it differently, I come back to that first idea and give it a second thought.

That’s why rereading is insanely valuable. It really pays off.

Why am I saying this?

Simple. Naval Ravikant once said that if he were born anywhere in the world, knowing what he knows and speaking English, he’d become rich again.

There’s also that old idea that if the whole world went communist, and we redistributed wealth equally between rich and poor, but then allowed free trade… the rich would end up rich again.

When I first read that, I kind of brushed it off. Sounded like the classic arrogant quote.

But over time, I’ve come to believe it’s true.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. And today I want to show you a trick for infinite money on Interactive Brokers.

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There are moments when the market speaks to you clearly. Not through a data point. Not through a headline. Through a visceral feeling, built over months of observation, that tells you: something doesn’t add up.

I’ve had that feeling for weeks. And recently, I acted on it.

I reduced my equity exposure to practically zero. I moved roughly 70% of my portfolio into cash and cash equivalents. Not as a temporary refuge. As a strategic position. Because I believe what’s coming isn’t a correction. It’s a structural reset that most investors haven’t processed yet.

Before I get into what I’m doing and why, I want us to look back. Because history has a very unpleasant way of repeating itself for those who don’t study it.

In 2000, the Nasdaq traded at 80 times earnings. Market consensus was that the internet had changed everything, that traditional valuation rules no longer applied, that anyone not invested was an idiot. Pension funds piled into tech. Retail investors sold homes to buy stocks. FOMO was the dominant investment strategy.

The index took more than twelve years to recover its highs. Twelve years. A generation of savings destroyed, not by an unpredictable crisis, but by collective overconfidence accumulated over years of uninterrupted gains.

Japan is even more brutal. The Nikkei hit its peak in December 1989 at 38,915 points. It didn’t return to that level until 2024. Thirty-five years. Investors who did everything “right” by the dominant playbook of the era who diversified, who held, who didn’t panic sell and who died with portfolios still underwater relative to their entry point.

These aren’t anecdotes. They are reminders of what happens when consensus is wrong at a real inflection point.

And I believe we’re at one.

The reason I sold equities isn’t macro in the classical sense. It’s not just interest rates, fiscal deficits, or stretched valuations, though all of that compounds. The reason is more specific. And more unsettling.

Corporate guidance is beginning to incorporate, quietly still, the impact of AI on cost structures. And what that guidance will reveal over the coming quarters is that human capital, which represents between 60% and 80% of operating costs for most service companies, is in the process of being replaced.

Not for every company. There will be extraordinary winners. Those that own the models, those that control the infrastructure, those that have built competitive advantages on proprietary data. Those companies can multiply margins in ways the market hasn’t priced yet.

But the vast majority of the index is not those companies.

They are consultancies, mid-sized banks, insurers, retailers, logistics firms, professional services companies. Businesses that for decades built their moat on the cost of replicating their human capital. That moat is disappearing. And the market hasn’t discounted it yet because nobody wants to be the first to leave the party.

When guidance starts including lines like “30% headcount reduction expected for 2026” or “automation of processes equivalent to 500 FTEs,” current multiples will be exposed. And in an environment where the index trades near all-time highs on a cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings basis, there is no margin for error.

My portfolio today looks like this.

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Today is a special day for two reasons, first I’m turning 31.

I look back and can’t believe how fast everything has gone by.

My grandparents are gone, my parents are nearing retirement… so many moments that won’t come back.

But the important thing isn’t that it’s my birthday.

What matters is that this is the 500th article I’ve written.

Yes, 500 real articles about something as vital as finance.

This journey started over five years ago. And today I want to do a quick recap of my biggest wins… and the few mistakes I’ve made along the way.

I won’t lie.

There were far more wins than mistakes.

But the mistakes were necessary too.

The best part of this path is that I never wasted 10,000 hours analyzing companies.

I didn’t try to guess the best sector either.

Everything I’ve done has been based on rational thinking: reading, thinking independently, and writing what’s on my mind for all of you.

And if you joined late, let me be honest:

You missed a lot.

But like with Bitcoin, it’s never too late to get in.

E…

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What if Warren Buffett is wrong when he says he’d simply leave his family invested in the Standard & Poor’s 500 and nothing else?

It’s a comforting idea. Feels clean, classic, proven. The market always goes up. Right?

But that worldview collapses the moment you shift your lens from nominal returns to real value. From price to purchasing power. From numbers to money itself.

Because when you invest in an index like the S&P 500, you’re not just buying companies. You’re buying future cash flows denominated in a specific currency. And your real return depends not only on the business, but on the long-term integrity of that currency.

And here’s the trap: most investors never factor that in.

Let’s run a simple thought experiment. Build an index of the top 100 companies in any country: Zimbabwe, Japan, South Africa, Argentina, Germany, Venezuela, Russia. Then roll that index back over the last 50, 70, 100 years. Now measure it not in local currency, but in hard money, like gold, Bitcoin or high-end real estate.

The result? Most of these indices tend to go to zero in real terms.

Why? Because each one of them is implicitly a bet on the currency it’s tied to.

Some real-world examples:

• Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Argentina: multiple collapses, endless money printing, repeated hyperinflation.

• Germany: wealth wiped out after WWI and again after WWII.

• Russia: currency reboots, capital controls, loss of convertibility.

• Japan: deflationary traps, lost decades, real stagnation despite nominal stability.

In fact, when you zoom out long enough, you’ll find that 95% of currencies (and their corresponding local stock indices) have failed to preserve real wealth. Not temporarily. Not in a bad year. But over the full arc of monetary and geopolitical history.

That’s the part nobody teaches you in business school.

That’s also why assets like gold, which are not tied to any single currency or central bank, have historically preserved purchasing power through war, collapse, and institutional breakdown. Not because gold is magical. But because it escapes the trap of local currency erosion.

So when someone says “just buy the index,” the real question is: “which index, in which currency, over which timescale?”

And here’s where we hit the blind spot.

By defaulting to the S&P 500, we’re cheating ourselves. We’re picking the best survivor. We’re anchoring to the one that didn’t fail (yet) and pretending that’s the norm.

But that’s backwards logic. That’s survivorship bias in its purest form.

Yes, the S&P 500 has delivered extraordinary returns in USD terms. But that’s precisely because (for now) the U.S. dollar has been the dominant global currency. The “least bad” fiat.

That doesn’t make it eternal.

Empires fall. Monetary regimes change. Reserve currencies die.

And the S&P 500 will fall too, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But to believe it will always remain the “safe index” is to believe in financial exceptionalism that history has proven false again and again.

It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t invest in it.

But it does mean we need to be clear-eyed about what it really is.

A bet on the United States. A bet on the dollar. A bet on a very specific phase of global history. And the moment that shifts the moment the empire staggers, or the currency weakens that index may stop being the “obvious” choice it seems today.

That’s the whole point.

When we measure everything in dollars, and then celebrate the outperformance of the dollar-denominated index, we’re grading our own exam. The system loops in on itself.

You can see this distortion clearly in historical comparisons. Take the S&P 500 vs. gold from 1970 to 2024, both in terms of price performance and real purchasing power. The “superiority” of equities fluctuates wildly once you remove the dollar as the measuring stick.

Even in the U.S., adjusted for real inflation, taxes, and drawdowns, returns are more fragile than they seem. The official narrative smooths over regime changes, central bank interventions, and CPI manipulation.

Again: the index only “always goes up” if the measuring tape doesn’t shrink.

So what happens if the dollar is next?

It doesn’t need to hyperinflate or collapse. Just lose 30%, 40%, 60% of its purchasing power over a few decades the way nearly every currency has at some point. Suddenly, all your “gains” are just numbers with less meaning.

This is what most investors miss.

They think they’re investing in companies.

But they’re actually investing in accounting entries denominated in fiat units that may not survive intact.

This is why building a real system of wealth requires stepping back and understanding the meta-game.

Not just choosing the “best stocks” or the “right index,” but choosing what units you want to measure and preserve your wealth in.

Because if you get that part wrong, everything else is noise.

And that, really, is the core of all of this.

Not to say “don’t invest in the S&P 500.”

But to say: let’s stop pretending it’s the universal answer.

Let’s stop playing solitaire and pretending we’re beating the market.

Because if we don’t understand what it means to tie our future to a currency, if we don’t understand what happens when that currency slips, then we’re not investing.

We’re just counting illusions.

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In 1751, the British government had a problem you’d recognize immediately: too much debt, too many creditors, too many different interest rates. Prime Minister Henry Pelham did something radical.

He took every outstanding government debt instrument and consolidated it into a single bond (the “Consolidated Annuities”) at a fixed rate of 3.5% per year. No maturity date. No obligation to ever repay the principal.

The instrument born that year lived for 264 years.

The British Consols were redeemed for the last time in 2015, when the government finally cancelled what remained in circulation. A bond that survived the Industrial Revolution, two World Wars, the end of the gold standard, the fall of the British Empire, and the creation of the euro. A bond nobody had to roll over. That never matured. That simply... existed.

Why did it last so long?

The answer is in the mechanics, not the politics.

The first reason was the elimination of refinancing ri…

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Elon Musk, to me, is one of the greatest missionaries to ever live.

Yes, sometimes he seems exaggerated. Even eccentric. But if you strip the ego away and actually listen, you’ll see what I see: a brutally clear vision of the future.

A few days ago I watched a video saying one of the most valuable assets in the world today is attention. And that we’re losing it. Our ability to focus is now worse than a goldfish. Somewhere between 6 to 8 seconds. We’re drowning in short videos. People can’t finish a book. Can’t wait. Can’t tolerate boredom. They want dopamine every five seconds. And that’s killing their ability to build real wealth.

There are only two ways to play this game.

You’re either the one consuming.

Or you’re the one making money off the consumers.

That made me think about the three levers I always come back to. The ones Naval talks about. People. Capital. Code.

They always tell you: to scale, you need to hire. You need people. But what if you don’t? What if you use their energy, their attention, their time… without ever putting them on payroll? What if you make money while they watch the videos?

Elon said it best: energy is the only real currency

If you can monetize energy: attention, time, focus, you don’t need offices. You don’t need employees. You don’t need bureaucracy. You need systems. And leverage.

So here are the three clearest ways I see to monetize attention right now. And the exact assets I like in each one. No fluff. No theory. Just signal.

1. Platforms that capture mass attention

These are the companies turning time into cash. YouTube. TikTok. Meta. Netflix. But don’t look at them as entertainment. They’re cash engines. Because they’ve closed the full loop: distribution, addiction, monetization.

If you want to ride this wave with capital, use ETFs with concentrated exposure to these platforms. Two obvious plays: $QQQ (Invesco QQQ Trust) and $XLC (Communication Services Select Sector SPDR). You’re not just buying stock. You’re buying human time converted into profit. Self-learning algorithms. Network effects that get stronger by the day.

This isn’t a tech bet. It’s a human behavior bet.

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You can feel it.

The shift. The collapse. The quiet replacement of what you thought was the game.

We were sold the story of the free market. Competition, meritocracy, open systems. But that system is gone. And most people haven’t even noticed.

They’re still optimizing portfolios, diversifying like it’s 1990, listening to financial advisors who don’t understand what’s happening. Meanwhile, the people building the future are three steps ahead. They’re not protecting wealth. They’re replacing the infrastructure of civilization.

Let’s stop pretending.

This isn’t gradual.

You’re living through a transition from a market economy to a techno-feudal regime, where power concentrates in private hands, forever. A regime run by a small class who own the code, the data, the pipes, and the narrative.

Control.

Not just capital. Infrastructure. Distribution. Scarcity itself.

This isn’t theory. It’s happening.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, it wasn’t about memes or free speech. It was about owning a centralized vector of influence. He didn’t just buy a company. He bought narrative bandwidth. That gives you cultural power. And political leverage.

When BlackRock launched BUIDL, a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund on private blockchain, it wasn’t about innovation. It was about creating a new financial stack, one that operates outside of Fedwire, outside of SWIFT, outside of your reach.

That’s the pattern.

Parallel systems. New rails. New rules.

Most people are still stuck in systems built a century ago. They rely on inflation-ravaged savings accounts, fiat pensions, public markets manipulated by central banks.

The wealthy?

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Like it or not, life is a question of leverage. There is no real middle ground. You either live with low leverage, medium leverage, or very high leverage.

And I’m not just talking about money. I’m talking about your time, your energy, your daily decisions, and the way you choose to play the game. Everything you do is a reflection of the level of leverage you are willing to accept in your life.

Most people never ask themselves this question consciously. They simply follow inertia. They study something. They get a job. They switch jobs. They save. They invest “diversified.”

And they wait.

The problem is that this path, by definition, is low leverage. Safe. Predictable. And mediocre.

Think about a barber. How many haircuts can he do at the same time? One.

Think about a plumber. Same thing. Even if they are exceptional at their craft, their ceiling is defined by the number of hours in a day and by their own body. There is no real scalability. No explosion. There is stability, yes. But there is no asymmetry.

Then you have medium-leverage careers. Consultants. Marketing agents. Well-paid executives in the corporate world. They may have big bonuses, stock options, and status.

But they are still inside a system where the upside is capped and the downside never disappears. They don’t own the game. They are well-paid pieces on the board.

And then there is high leverage. The one that actually matters if you want to arrive in 2030 playing in a completely different league.

1. Ownership as leverage

The first step is obvious, yet almost nobody takes it seriously. Get a job, or better said, position yourself in life, in a way that gives you the highest leverage possible. As Naval would say, this only happens when you own something or when you expose yourself to clear asymmetries. I’m not talking about being “employee number 347” at a large company. I’m talking about creating a startup. Or joining very early a new company where your upside is not limited by an annual salary, but by the size of the problem you are solving.

Yes, the risk is high. Of course it is. But the risk is asymmetric. And that is exactly what you want. I would rather try ten times, fail nine, and have one outcome that completely changes my life trajectory, than spend thirty years optimizing a career that was limited from day one.

Ownership is not glamour. It is uncertainty. But it is the only real path to extreme leverage.

2. Code as infinite force

The second step is understanding that the twenty-first century belongs to code. Creating a side hustle with code is no longer optional. It is a strategic necessity. Why? Because the marginal cost of reaching one more person is close to zero. You build once. You write once. And you can reach a hundred, a thousand, or a million people with the same initial effort.

This doesn’t mean you need to be the best programmer in the world. It means you need to think in systems that work while you are not there. Software. Automation. Digital products. Tools. Code is pure modern leverage. And when combined with distribution, it becomes brutal.

3. Capital over diversification

This is where most people get lost. They think the path is to build a portfolio with 50 stocks, 10 ETFs, and a bit of crypto “just in case.” That is not leverage. That is anesthesia. Even if you do it well, the upside is mathematically limited.

Capital, when used correctly, is one of my favorite forms of leverage. We live in a system where raising capital is easier than ever, where the Cantillon effect still exists, and where real assets tend to rise over time. If you know how to structure it, you can make money work for you at a speed that saving alone will never replicate.

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