Never Lend Money to a Gambler: From the Futures Trap to a Lucky Investing Life That Turned Fate Around

Transcript

Introduction and Background to the Case

Hello everyone, this is CLEC James Talks, and I am James. Today is our twelfth installment. Today let us talk about a story: about a gambler, and about a husband who believed you could get rich in stock-index futures.

For a long stretch the couple both had good jobs, and then the husband felt work was too tiring, and with information outside constantly promoting how profitable futures were, he quit. At the time he even said you could make two hundred thousand-odd a day in futures. By this point you can probably tell what the whole experience reflects: no matter how much wealth, how many insurance policies or properties a household has, or how well the spouse earns, the bottomless pit of a futures gambler can never be filled.

This went back and forth for a very long time. At first the wife trusted her husband completely and handed all the family's assets and bank accounts over to him to manage, while she simply concentrated on working. But the household was always left with nothing: after the salary was lost came pledged insurance policies and cancelled time deposits. There was no telling when this bottomless pit would end, and the whole process was extremely hard.

From Groping in the Dark to Establishing the Right Investing Ideas

Around 2021 the wife began going to the library to research what investing actually is, because she genuinely could not understand why her husband was losing so much money in the futures market. And although the husband swore many times that he would never touch futures again and deleted the trading app from his computer, before long candlestick charts would appear on the screen again; this repeated several times.

So the wife began researching money management on her own. At the start she was like everyone else, buying some long-dated bonds, then high-dividend products, then individual stocks, then TSMC, buying as chaotically as if she were wandering a market, and only later did she gradually concentrate on index funds.

Finally, in January 2025, she found us. Recently I went back and reread the emails she has sent me over nearly two years. Her salary is in fact quite high. What I want to teach everyone here is this: the best way to deal with a gambler is to "absolutely never give him any money." It is like dealing with a drug addict: the best approach is not to supply the drug. For a gambler, money is his drug, and he will keep turning the household's assets into cash and squeezing it dry. Please remember: never indulge a gambler, and never indulge a drug addict.

A Warning About Lending and Indulgence

This is also why I keep advising everyone "never lend money to anyone." Not to parents, not to siblings, and still less to friends. Because if the other person does not understand money, lending to them is like handing drugs to a gambler; do you think he will quit gambling? He will not. And if a person truly understands investing and money management, why would he need to borrow from others?

So whenever someone asks to borrow from you:

1. First principle: absolutely do not lend to him.

2. Second principle: if he is willing, you can guide him on how to turn things around and how to invest in index funds.

Lending money to others is never a good thing, and indulging a gambler will never end well.

Turning a Family's Fate Around and the Fruits of Success

After this friend found us, she overcame her old fear of mortgaging property and took out a home-equity loan. Because her own working conditions and salary were good, and the house the couple had bought was a good one, she borrowed tens of millions of NT dollars from the bank without difficulty and began index investing in January 2025.

In the end her whole approach to investing and her life were turned around. Please remember: never be tempted when you see other people trading short term; investing is "buy and then leave it alone."

This friend wrote to me recently to say that her husband's ideas have changed and he now supports her long-term investing philosophy, and the household has completely returned to normal. He has found work again and every month regularly hands part of his salary to his wife to help with investing, and they recently traded up to the good car they wanted. This is a story of a spouse lost in the futures trap and a wife who became the steady great tree of the household and completely turned the family's fate around. She is deeply grateful to us for leading her out of that hard stretch of growth in life. Although that period is painful to look back on, it also showed real resilience.

She marvels that she does not know why she was so lucky, so blessed, to find us. She says that without meeting us her life would probably still be lost, helpless, and full of fear, living every day in uncertainty. At that time, because she lacked a complete investing system of her own, she could not correct her husband's mistaken ideas; and after finding us and building that system, she used her successful investment results to prove out the right financial road, and in the end changed her husband's view. She wrote her letter in tears, saying frankly that she cannot imagine how terrible things would be now if she had never met us and had missed this investing philosophy.

James's Reflections on Life and Gratitude

In fact our lives are often what destiny arranges. However successful a person is, a very large part of it comes from luck. Truly successful people usually do not attribute their achievements to personal effort; they understand that luck played the key role.

Looking back at my own upbringing, I was born in Taiwan in the 50th year of the Republic (1961). Taiwan then was an extraordinarily beautiful island, with butterflies everywhere. In my childhood memories the window screens at night were always covered with butterflies, moths, and insects; at dusk bats flew past in flocks, blotting out the sky like crows. As a child I would even run after the bats, curious about how they always dodged so nimbly without hitting anyone. The night sky then was full of stars, and you could see the brilliant Milky Way clearly with the naked eye; at Yehliu the ground underfoot was covered with tropical fish and coral, and stepping on it could even hurt. Taiwan then was that kind of simple, thriving world.

That is the environment we grew up in. Later I finished school, learned about computers, assembled an Apple II myself, joined Acer as a design engineer, then went to America and entered investing, until I retired and began promoting investment education. None of it could have been planned in advance.

If my life were to start over, could we possibly reproduce the same trajectory? Absolutely not. The university department I got into might be different, the company I joined might be different, the partner I met would be different, and even whether I would meet Frank Lee, who opened my eyes to investing, through playing golf is an unknown. If I did not understand investing, I do not even dare imagine what my achievements and my life would look like; just thinking back makes me break into a cold sweat. Because without investing I could not have retired smoothly, could not have taken good care of my daughter and my parents, and certainly could not be recording "James Talks" at leisure as I am now.

All of this is a gift capitalism has given us, letting humanity share the dividend of economic growth. If I did not understand "buy and hold," my wealth would certainly be far smaller and the risk I carried would rise sharply. To be able to understand the investing philosophy of capitalism, to believe that markets rise over the long term and that humanity keeps advancing, makes us an incomparably fortunate group of people.

Today's content shared the story of a gambler and a strong woman. She accompanied her husband through danger, guided the whole family back onto the right road, and in the end gained stability and happiness. Although the process was harrowing, perhaps this is destiny's best arrangement. Thank heaven! That is where today's "James Talks" ends. Thank you all, and goodbye.