Chapter 2: Choosing the Correct Investment

Chapter 2: Choosing the Correct Investment

Warning: The Final Outcome of Not Investing Is Becoming an Impoverished Elderly Person

Hello everyone. Today is May 6, 2026. Our topic today is: “Choosing the Right Long-Term Investment.”

Before we begin, I want to respond to a comment from a 28-year-old viewer. He mentioned that his sisters not only refuse to invest or save money, but they even borrow money to spend and completely burn through everything they borrow. This viewer introduced our videos to his family, and to those who still refuse to invest, I want to say this:

If a friend introduced you to these videos, you should listen carefully. Otherwise, if you do not prepare for retirement now, if you continue living paycheck to paycheck and spending everything you have, then the person who may end up homeless and abandoned in the future will be you.

This viewer is deeply worried about his sisters’ financial future. If you have family support, perhaps things may still work out. But if nobody in the family has savings and everyone is simply consuming everything away, that becomes the worst possible outcome.

You cannot live with the mindset of “Spend money when you have it, and don’t worry when you don’t.” That path eventually leads to homelessness. Your friend cared enough to introduce these videos to you. If you still ignore them and refuse to learn, you will only become poorer. If all you know is how to enjoy life without saving or investing, then you are simply preparing yourself to become a poor and homeless elderly person in the future.

Seeing situations like this is truly frustrating. People who never wake up financially remain poor forever. In this world, 99.99% of people are poor, and now the AI era has already begun.

AI is a paradigm shift. It will replace human jobs across the world. This may turn 99.999% of people into financially powerless individuals, dependent on governments providing universal basic income simply to survive.

The Only Escape From the Labor Trap: Sell the House

Another viewer commented that after watching the videos, he realized he had no money to invest because every month he must pay his mortgage. He asked me:

“If I don’t want to remain a laborer forever, how should I invest?”

My answer is simple:

Don’t buy a house. Sell the house.

That’s it. Before talking about investing, sell the house first and you will finally have money to invest.

Why buy a house in the first place? You complain that working as a laborer doesn’t make money because all your income goes into mortgage payments. Then you ask me what to do. My answer is still the same:

Sell the house.

The Most Important Part of Investing: Choosing the Right Asset and Avoiding Long-Term Bonds

The first step of long-term investing is “to invest.” The second step is “to invest correctly.”

The most important thing in investing is choosing the right asset. If you choose the wrong asset, you may never achieve financial freedom. While others build fortunes worth billions, you may still only have a few million dollars. Compared to them, you remain poor.

Many people choose investments such as VT, VOO, or SPY. In reality, these investments may never make you truly wealthy.

Do not assume that because Warren Buffett recommends SPY, you should automatically buy SPY as well. Buffett is already elderly. His asset growth trajectory has nothing to do with yours.

But you may still have another 50 years ahead of you. If you only realize 50 years later that the asset was not good enough, it will already be too late.

The wrong direction will never lead you to the right destination.

Investing should focus on broad-based index funds, and more importantly, the correct market.

Do not buy world funds, Vietnam funds, Australian funds, or European funds. Just focus on one thing:

America.

There is also another critical mistake you must never make:

Do not invest in long-term bonds.

Do not invest in corporate bonds. Do not invest in fancy-sounding bonds recommended by financial advisors, such as junk bonds or structured bonds.

The longer and more complicated the bond name sounds, the more you should avoid it.

The only bonds worth owning are short-term Treasury bills with maturities under one year — for example, BOXX in the United States or 00865B in Taiwan — or money market funds.

(Disclaimer: We are not professional investment advisors or tax professionals. Everything shared here is based on personal experience. Please invest carefully.)

What Is a Broad-Based Index Fund? A broad-based index fund is a passive investment fund that usually tracks a market-cap-weighted index.

In the United States, the best choice is QQQ, which tracks the Nasdaq-100 Index. In Taiwan, it is 00662, or other equivalent funds around the world that track the Nasdaq-100.

Taiwanese investors may also allocate a small portion to 0050 or 006208 because Taiwan recently benefited greatly from the AI supply chain boom. This economic cycle may continue for another 10 to 20 years.

But beyond that, do not invest in VT, SPY, or VOO. Investing in those funds may actually make you poorer over the long run.

Let’s compare the historical data.

From 1999 until today:

• QQQ increased approximately 10–12 times.
• SPY and VOO increased only around 4.5–5 times.
• VT increased only around 2.5 times. The performance gap is enormous. If you become poorer because of your investment choices, it should not surprise you.

I have invested for over 40 years. These are real experiences, and I would never intentionally mislead you.

Why Only America? Understanding the Global Industrial Train

Why must investing focus on America?

Because the global industrial system is like a train, and every country plays a different role.

The Engine — America

America controls branding, innovation, and product development. American AI innovation drives cloud computing and creates the highest value-added industries in the world. America is the locomotive pulling the global economy forward.

The Second Train Car — Taiwan and South Korea

These countries primarily handle manufacturing.

Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, such as TSMC, manufactures chips for American giants like NVIDIA, Apple, and Google.

Today, AI hardware shortages have become a global issue, and Taiwan happens to dominate hardware manufacturing. Taiwan benefits by staying closely connected to America’s industrial chain.

Taiwan and South Korea essentially exchange labor, resources, and environmental costs in order to supply products to America.

The Third-Class Train Cars — Europe and Commodity Nations

Countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and even much of Europe now have relatively low value-added positions in the AI supply chain.

Do not invest heavily in these markets.

No train car behind the locomotive can permanently move faster than the locomotive itself. If the rear cars somehow try to outrun the engine, the entire train crashes.

The core investment logic is simple:

Do not blindly invest globally. Do not invest in the weakest train cars. Focus only on American technology.

Believe in America. Believe in technology. Believe in human progress.

That is the only path toward becoming wealthy in the future.

The AI Paradigm Shift: A Future of Extreme Wealth and Extreme Poverty

The future society will no longer have a middle class.

There will only be two groups left:

• The extremely wealthy
• The extremely poor This is the result of a paradigm shift.

Previous paradigm shifts replaced products:

• Smartphones replaced landline telephones
• LCD screens replaced CRT televisions
• Digital cameras replaced film
• CDs replaced vinyl records But AI is far more serious and frightening.

AI may replace human labor itself.

If you do not invest, even if you still have a job today, your future job may disappear. You will become poor.

Only by investing long-term in American high-tech industries do you have a chance to survive financially.

Look at the top holdings of the Nasdaq-100 Index: NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Broadcom, Meta, and others.

Almost all are AI-related companies. The top 10 holdings alone account for roughly 46% of the index.

Owning these 100 companies is far safer than gambling on individual stocks or narrowly focused ETFs.

Two Hundred Years of Data Prove Stocks Are Safest Long-Term

Long-term investing in the Nasdaq-100 is the key to wealth.

Looking at 200 years of U.S. market history (1801–2021):

• Stocks: $1 became approximately $27.74 million.
• Bonds: $1 became only around $34,000.
• Short-term Treasury bills: $1 became around $5,000.
• Gold: roughly 2.1% annual return, barely beating inflation.
• Cash: purchasing power collapsed almost to zero. I especially want to warn everyone:

Bonds are actually far riskier than stocks.

Take the long-term Treasury ETF TLT as an example. If you bought near the 2020 peak, it fell from around $164 to roughly $85 — nearly a 50% decline.

It declined continuously for almost seven years.

Do you still think bonds are safer?

Bond investing is extremely difficult. One major mistake can destroy your financial future.

Stocks, on the other hand, may carry huge short-term volatility, but are historically very safe over the long run.

• Holding stocks for 1 year: gains of 70% or losses near 40% are both possible.
• Holding stocks for 15–20 years: returns gradually converge toward long-term averages around 11%, and losses become increasingly unlikely. The longer you hold stocks, the safer you become.

But if your money is needed in the short term, or if market volatility causes you severe anxiety and sleepless nights, then perhaps you should leave the stock market entirely and simply keep money in bank deposits.

Otherwise, investing may only become emotional torture for you.

The Incredible Power of Early Investing and Compound Growth

Long-term investing offers enormous rewards.

Turning $100 million into $10 billion is not impossible.

But remember two key principles:

1. Choose high-return assets.
2. Start investing as early as possible. Suppose you want to accumulate $1 million over 40 years:

• At a 12% annual return (like QQQ), you only need to invest about $85 per month.
• At a 10% return (like SPY), you need around $156 per month.
• With lower-return investments, you may need over $500 per month. Time is your greatest ally.

Young people who start early can achieve enormous goals with small monthly contributions.

But if you only have 10 years before retirement, accumulating the equivalent of NT$30 million may require contributing over NT$130,000 per month.

So when is the best time to invest?

The best time was 40 years ago. The second-best time is now.

Whenever you have money, invest immediately. Never try to predict market tops or bottoms.

The Core Philosophy: Buy and Never Sell

To become wealthy through investing, remember this principle:

“Whenever you have money, buy. Never sell.”

Think of yourself as a landlord. The CEOs of the Nasdaq-100 companies — Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and others — are working for you as the capitalist owner.

Would a landlord casually sell land that produces golden eggs forever?

Of course not.

Hold it tightly forever.

But investing also requires risk management.

Remember this saying:

“A six-foot-tall person can still drown in water that averages only two feet deep.”

If you overuse leverage and get wiped out during a market crash, future recoveries will no longer matter to you.

Every morning ask yourself:

“If the stock market crashes 80% today, can I still survive financially?”

Survival matters more than maximizing returns.

In investing, sometimes knowing less is actually better.

Do not spend every day online reading endless analysis, trying to guess when to buy or sell, or predicting market movements.

You only need to understand one thing:

Buy the Nasdaq-100 index fund. Whenever you have money, buy. Never sell.

That concludes Chapter 2 of the Billion-Dollar Investment Seminar.

I hope that a few years from now, everyone listening today will have accumulated assets worth billions, and perhaps then we can hold a “Hundred-Billion-Dollar Seminar.”

To outsiders, we may seem crazy. But only those who truly understand this logic can escape poverty.

If you have questions, feel free to email me. The lecture notes can be downloaded in the comment section.

See you next time!

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