You ever notice how everybody suddenly becomes a financial genius the moment the calendar flips? Doesn’t matter what year it is. Could be 1926, 1976, 2026—human beings wake up January 1st and think, “This is the year I outsmart the entire global economy.” As if the stock market is just sitting there waiting for you to show up with your New Year motivation and your freshly downloaded budgeting app.
And now we’ve got all these “financially independent traders,” which is Latin for “people who stare at screens until their pupils form candlestick charts.” Some of them actually know what they’re doing. Most don’t. But every so often, one of them pops up and says something that isn’t complete cosmic gibberish.
Like the guy they’re profiling now—the Marine veteran who’s been trading so long his brokerage account probably grew chest hair. Fifteen-plus years in the trenches, only two losing years, and those were during puberty. That’s damn impressive. When most kids were trading Pokémon cards, this kid was trading options. When most people his age were getting carded at bars, he was getting margin calls.
And he’s got three pieces of advice for the regular folks. The people who buy index funds. The people who dollar-cost average. The people who still think “volatility” sounds like something the school nurse checks you for.
And his advice? Not bad at all.
But the real comedy is how people will hear it…
and still try to reinvent the wheel with their Robinhood app at 2 a.m.
So let’s break it down, shall we?
We’ll take his points, pour them through the filter of common sense, shake them with a little cynicism, and serve them to you in a large reusable container labeled:
“You Probably Should Have Started Investing Ten Years Ago, But Since You Didn’t, Here’s How to Pretend You Did.”
I. THINK ABOUT WHAT THE WORLD WILL LOOK LIKE IN THREE TO FIVE YEARS — A.K.A. TRY ANCIENT MYSTICISM FOR FUN AND PROFIT
Now here’s a thought experiment:
“What will the world look like in three to five years?”
Sounds deep, doesn’t it? Sounds philosophical. Like something you’re supposed to ask while stroking your chin and pretending to understand macroeconomics.
But that’s the trick. You don’t actually need to get it right. You just need to pick something that seems vaguely plausible and invest in the direction of the future you hope doesn’t blow up in your face.
And right now, unless you’ve been living in a cave, a coma, or a congressional hearing, it’s pretty obvious what the world revolves around:
Artificial Intelligence.
Not because humanity needs it.
Not because it makes our lives better.
But because everybody thinks they can sprinkle “AI” on their company like paprika and suddenly the stock price doubles.
AI is the new electricity, the new steam engine, the new dot-com—but with fewer Pets.com mascots and more billion-dollar GPUs.
And let’s be honest: half of you don’t know what AI actually does. You just nod along because you heard someone on CNBC say “training compute scaling” and you didn’t want to look dumb.
But reality doesn’t matter! Markets don’t care whether you’re informed. They care whether you believe.
And people believe.
That’s why this trader is saying, “Look, if you think the future is full of smarter machines, then maybe—just maybe—you should own a piece of the companies making those machines.”
Simple enough, right?
Semiconductor makers. Chip designers. Enablers. Cloud providers. The whole alphabet soup of companies doing the real heavy lifting while half of Silicon Valley pretends writing prompts is a technical skill.
Micron, NVIDIA, Intel—hell, even ETFs full of tech stocks so you don’t accidentally pick the one company that blows up like a Samsung Note battery.
He also says you shouldn’t worry about whether there’s an AI bubble.
Of course there’s an AI bubble.
Everything becomes a bubble once the average person hears about it.
But his point is important:
“If you’re dollar-cost averaging, bubbles don’t matter.”
Because if you’re slowly buying over time, you’re basically smoothing out the insanity. You’re saying:
“Listen, Market, I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know why you’re doing it. I don’t even know if you’re drunk. But here’s twenty bucks every week—don’t spend it all in one place.”
Long-term investing is just trusting that the future has more stuff in it.
More products.
More companies.
More ideas.
More ways to sell you things you don’t need.
And he’s right: You’d have to be extremely brave—or catastrophically pessimistic—to bet that technology WON’T be worth more three to five years from now.
Unless we enter some Mad Max dystopia where the only “index fund” is how many cans of beans you’ve buried in your backyard.
II. START INVESTING NOW AND DON’T STOP — OR, THE MAGIC OF DOING SOMETHING INSTEAD OF NOTHING
You ever hear somebody say, “I’m waiting for the market to dip before I invest”?
These are the same people who say:
“I’ll start dieting after the holidays.”
“I’ll clean the garage this weekend.”
“I’ll quit smoking after this pack.”
“I’ll start the gym Monday.”
Humans are world-class procrastinators. If there were an Olympic event for putting things off, the judges would still be waiting for the contestants to show up.
Meanwhile, compound interest doesn’t wait.
It keeps moving whether you participate or not.
The trader's advice here is almost insultingly simple:
Start.
And don’t stop.
He’s not saying go gamble.
He’s not saying quit your job and become a day trader.
He’s not saying stare at candlesticks until you start hallucinating bullish patterns in your cereal.
He’s saying:
Put your money somewhere it can grow.
Automatically.
Consistently.
Predictably.
You can’t save your way to wealth. Not anymore.
Not when the price of a house is a million dollars and the price of groceries requires a GoFundMe.
Your savings account gives you interest so small it should come with an apology letter.
But the market?
The market actually works—if you give it time.
Not excitement.
Not drama.
Not day-to-day predictions.
Time.
You set up automatic deposits, and suddenly you don’t even miss the money anymore. It’s like taxes, except eventually you get something back.
If you’re lucky.
If you’re patient.
If you stop expecting the market to behave like your dog and respond to commands.
III. EARN MORE MONEY — OR, HOW TO ESCAPE THE ECONOMIC ESCAPE ROOM
Here’s the secret nobody wants to say out loud:
You can’t invest what you don’t have.
Investment articles love to pretend everybody is sitting on piles of cash. “Just contribute $500 a month!” they say. “Cut back on lattes!” they say.
Buddy, if lattes are standing between you and wealth, you’re not “a latte away” from financial independence, you’re a miracle away.
Reality is simple:
If you want to invest more, you need to make more.
That doesn’t mean selling your plasma or joining a pyramid scheme.
Although lots of people try those first—because they like shortcuts more than results.
The trader suggests two real options:
1. Get a raise.
Shocking, I know.
You mean ask your boss for more money?
You mean prove your worth?
You mean make the company acknowledge that you, a human being, contribute actual value?
Yes.
Of course, most companies will fight a raise the way your cat fights a bath.
But trying is still better than living your entire life at the same wage out of fear.
2. Start a side hustle.
And not the kind where you buy 200 mugs from Alibaba and pray you can resell them on Etsy.
He means something real.
Something useful.
Something you’re good at.
Maybe you’re handy with tools.
Maybe you can tutor kids.
Maybe you bake treats that don’t taste like drywall.
Maybe you can fix people’s printers without hurling them into the street.
Whatever it is, find a way to turn it into extra income and—big surprise—you now have more money to invest.
The best part?
More income means more investing power.
More investing power means faster compounding.
Faster compounding means financial independence.
And financial independence means you finally get to live life on your own terms, doing “cool stuff,” as the trader puts it.
I don’t know what your “cool stuff” is.
Traveling the world?
Quitting your job?
Starting a business?
Living in a cabin with 14 cats?
Whatever it is, money helps.
It’s not everything.
But it’s the lever that moves everything else.
THE PROBLEM WITH INVESTORS IS THEY WANT GUARANTEES IN A WORLD THAT DOESN’T OFFER ANY
Everybody wants certainty.
Certainty is sexy.
Certainty is comforting.
Certainty is like a warm blanket made of lies.
“What will stocks do next?”
Nobody knows.
“Is AI a bubble?”
Maybe.
“Is now a good time to invest?”
Always, if you don’t need the money until your grandchildren are old enough to complain about taxes.
But investors keep trying to predict the unpredictable.
They want the market to behave.
They want it to follow rules.
It doesn’t.
The market is the world’s biggest casino where the house sometimes loses.
And that’s why investors get confused.
Because unlike roulette wheels, CEOs sometimes do stupid things.
Sometimes governments change policies.
Sometimes wars happen.
Sometimes pandemics happen.
Sometimes companies go bankrupt because the CEO thought “fraud” was a business model.
And yet…
Long-term investors still win.
Not all of them, but many.
You know why?
Because the market doesn’t track intelligence.
It tracks persistence.
Outlast the chaos and you benefit.
Jump in and out trying to outsmart it and you become another cautionary tale.
WHY THINKING IN THREE TO FIVE YEARS IS SO HARD FOR PEOPLE
Most people can’t think five minutes ahead, let alone five years.
Ask someone what they’re having for dinner and they stare into the void as if you asked them to recite the periodic table.
But thinking ahead is the only edge you have.
Because the future isn’t evenly distributed—some people pay attention, and they reap the rewards.
The trick is not predicting specifics.
Nobody can do that reliably.
Not traders.
Not economists.
Not your uncle who won big on Dogecoin once and won’t shut up about it.
But you can predict themes.
Directions.
Trajectories.
Ask yourself:
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Will AI be bigger in five years?
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Will technology in general continue to expand?
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Will humans continue to outsource thinking to machines?
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Will companies keep trying to squeeze more productivity out of fewer employees?
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Will chips, data centers, and software control more of the world?
If the answer is yes, then investing in that direction is not rocket science.
It’s just basic pattern recognition—with fewer explosions.
BUT WAIT—ARE WE SUPPOSED TO TRUST OURSELVES?
This is the part that makes me laugh.
We want people to make long-term investing decisions based on what they think the future looks like.
Have you seen people?
These are the same creatures who think horoscopes are scientific and that “buying the dip” means panic-selling at the bottom.
These are people who believe the weather report two weeks out.
Two weeks!
Meteorologists can barely predict tomorrow!
And yet we want average investors to imagine the entire trajectory of technology, global economics, demographics, political instability, monetary policy, and innovation?
Good luck!
But the trader’s point still works:
Even if you’re a lousy forecaster, the future direction of human progress is still up.
Not straight up.
Not smoothly up.
Not mercifully up.
But up enough.
And that’s the secret.
You don’t have to be right.
You just have to be less wrong than the person who didn’t invest at all.
THE MYTH OF “WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TIME”
If there’s one universal truth in human behavior, it’s this:
People are terrified of acting when things feel uncertain.
And everything always feels uncertain.
So they wait.
“Oh, the market’s too high.”
“Oh, the market’s too low.”
“Oh, inflation is too high.”
“Oh, interest rates are weird.”
“Oh, elections are coming.”
“Oh, the moon is in retrograde.”
There’s always an excuse.
But the people who win are the ones who ignore excuses and automate the process.
Automation is magic.
Automation bypasses your dumb emotional brain and sends your money where it needs to go before you wake up and start second-guessing yourself.
Automation is the difference between “I’ll start eventually” and “Holy hell, I actually have a retirement account.”
THE RICH DON’T SAVE—THEY INVEST
Rich people don’t let their money sit still.
If money sits still, it dies.
Rich people know the game:
Money earns more money.
More money earns even more money.
And eventually, money replaces you.
That’s the real goal.
Not yachts.
Not private jets.
Not gold bathtubs.
Replace yourself with assets.
Assets don’t sleep.
Assets don’t take sick days.
Assets don’t get stuck in traffic.
Assets don’t ask for raises.
Assets don’t accidentally post something offensive on social media and get fired.
Assets work 24/7.
They are the perfect employees.
And the earlier you hire them, the better your life gets.
SIDE HUSTLES: THE MODERN AMERICAN RITE OF PASSAGE
You know the economy is broken when the average person needs two jobs just to afford one life.
But weirdly enough, side hustles can actually boost your investment power—if you’re doing them for the right reasons.
Not because you’re desperate.
Not because you enjoy burnout.
Not because you want to turn your hobby into another obligation that sucks the joy out of it.
But because you want to accelerate your freedom.
Even an extra $200 a month invested consistently can shave years off your working life.
But people don’t think that way.
They blow their side-hustle income on gadgets, streaming subscriptions, and that exercise bike that will be a coat rack by March.
Not judging.
Just observing.
But if you want out—if you want real independence—your extra money needs a mission.
THE TRUTH ABOUT FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE
It’s not about being rich.
It’s not about quitting your job.
It’s not even about bragging rights.
It’s about having the option to walk away.
It’s about doing things because you want to, not because you have to.
It’s about not having your entire life controlled by a boss, a paycheck, a schedule, or a corporation whose mission statement is “maximize shareholder value while pretending to care about employee wellness.”
The trader says that once you hit independence, you can “do cool stuff.”
He’s absolutely right.
But here’s the secret:
The coolest thing money buys is peace of mind.
Not excitement.
Not adventure.
Not status.
Peace.
The ability to say no.
The ability to sleep.
The ability to wake up without dread.
The ability to choose the life you actually want.
WHY TRADERS TALK ABOUT LONG-TERM INVESTING EVEN WHEN THEY’RE SHORT-TERM ANIMALS
Active traders are weird creatures.
They spend hours dissecting charts like they’re CSI investigators at a financial crime scene.
But even the best of them have the same message for regular people:
Don’t try this at home.
Just buy broad funds and chill.
If that’s not irony, I don’t know what is.
It’s like a professional stunt driver saying, “Yeah, I drift around exploding cars for a living, but you? Wear your seatbelt and stay under the speed limit.”
They know the truth.
Most people don’t have the time, temperament, or talent to trade actively.
They panic.
They sell low.
They chase trends.
They believe TikTok gurus.
They buy high because someone on Reddit said “this is the one.”
Long-term investing isn’t sexy.
But it works.
And professionals know it.
SO WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL THIS INFORMATION?
We boil it down.
We make it simple.
We turn it into something the average person can use without getting a finance degree from YouTube University.
Here it is:
THE THREE RULES FOR INVESTORS WHO DON’T WANT TO END UP BROKE AND BITTER
1. Think a few years ahead.
Not months. Not weeks. Certainly not hours.
Ask yourself what the world will need, build, crave, fear, or obsess over in three to five years.
2. Start investing now.
Not next year.
Not next month.
Not after “things calm down,” because they won’t.
3. Find ways to earn more.
Your income is the fuel.
Your investments are the engine.
Your future is the destination.
WHY THIS ADVICE WORKS EVEN IF YOU’RE A CHAOTIC HUMAN BEING (WHICH YOU ARE)
Because it doesn’t require precision.
It doesn’t require brilliance.
It doesn’t require timing.
It doesn’t require superhuman discipline.
All it requires is:
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Starting
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Continuing
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Not quitting
That’s it.
Three very simple things that humans find incredibly difficult—yet are absolutely essential.
A FINAL THOUGHT FOR 2026
Look around.
The world’s a mess.
Politics are wild.
Technology is sprinting ahead like it’s late for an appointment with destiny.
Corporations are inventing new ways to charge you for things that used to be free.
And people are still trying to get rich overnight by buying whatever stock their barber mentioned.
But in the middle of all that noise, there’s a path.
A boring path.
A simple path.
A real path.
Think ahead.
Start now.
Earn more.
Invest wisely.
And ignore the circus.
Financial success doesn’t come from genius.
It comes from stamina.
It comes from consistency.
It comes from understanding that wealth is built slowly, invisibly, quietly—like a tree growing underground long before anyone sees it.
Three to five years from now, you’ll either be grateful you started today…
or you’ll be telling yourself the same thing you’ve told yourself every year:
“Next year. I’ll start next year.”
And next year never comes.