Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome. Welcome to the your Opinion Doesn't Matter podcast, episode 91, the Zoom edition Finance and Zoom. Well, my name is Lamont. I'm here with a special guest, emil. How are you doing, brother?

Speaker 2: 0:22

I'm doing well, Monty. Thanks for inviting me back. I really appreciate it. Brother, Good to see you again.

Speaker 1: 0:26

Yes, nice to see you, man, and you know you've been a fan favorite. Some people are like oh, I liked when your friend was on the show. Emil, you was on our previous show when we had an interesting topic and that was very, very good and he was talking about the culture, the culture like a West Indian culture, so forth and so on.

Speaker 2: 0:47

I remember that right. That was a great podcast. I really enjoyed that. That was a couple of months ago.

Speaker 1: 0:52

Right, right, right, yeah. And so, yeah, how you been, how you been, I've been well.

Speaker 2: 0:58

I've been well, man. I just got off a vacation, a well-needed vacation, with my wife and my family. We had a family reunion first one we've ever done, and one of my cousins has been trying to do it for the past four years Got 27 members of my family together out of like I don't know 100, I don't know. Just came back from tourism, caicos, bahamas, last Friday from a week and I just had such a great time. I'm really, really relaxed and stuff. I came back to New York to 39 degrees from 90, which is a terrible shock. I'm good because I'm back here talking to you. I'm in good shape.

Speaker 1: 1:40

Nice, nice, nice. I want to say sorry to hear that you missed the sun and fun and you're here with us today All right, it's okay. This new year is starting off kind of shaky for me. It's like this never-ending of up in your face, like so much people passing away. Yeah, it's overwhelming. But I was going to do like usually, like last year, two people have passed away and I was like I'm going to go dark on it. I'm going to go dark on the web, like I'm not posting nothing.

Speaker 2: 2:21

And then.

Speaker 1: 2:22

But then I said you know what, this year I gotta just, I'm gonna just be happy and do what I'm regularly doing. You know, I can't, I can't, just, I can't just let certain things overwhelm me, even though these things are important. It may not be directly affecting me, but it's affecting someone else and I care about how other people feel as well. You know what I'm saying, not to say I'm not posting derogatory. I want people to be like you know they'll look at it and be like oh, if they know that I know that person, why would they? You know they look. I mean, I'll be thinking of certain things, like why would he post anything? And just not chill, you know, when he knows something is going on. But you know, you know out the way. But but yeah, so other than that, I'm just pushing, I'm pushing on and you know, living, I gotta live.

Speaker 1: 3:11

I gotta live my life and be happy and be happy. We, you know, we were speaking to you before. Like I kinda I kinda bamboozled you the first time to come on the show and the first off I wanted you to talk about finance. And then you just came on and then you found the next topic interesting, which was about the culture, and you said, all right, I'll do that. And then I said I owe you a finance episode. I owe you a finance episode and I'm here and I'm happy for the people to hear some interesting, interesting perspective on the financial market and the financial prices, or soon to be prices. That's in now. So just give me a brief. Give the people a brief. Just, you know, tell them about yourself and what are you, what's your specialties?

Speaker 2: 4:00

Sure, thanks, man. I appreciate you bringing me back. Excuse me, so my name is Emil Vio. I am a financial services professional, right. So I've been working on Wall Street since I was 22,. 23 years old, attended New York University, majored in international business, and I've worked for numerous financial services companies, some of the big ones Bank of America, merrill Lynch, thompson Financial.

Speaker 2: 4:37

Where else? Smith Barney, what you might call the old school Wall Street Gen Xer, who survived numerous calamities within the financial markets for many, many years. I'm that guy. Some have gone through it with me and some have left the industry altogether, especially after 2001,. September 11th and after OA. A lot of guys and a lot of ladies just left the game. I stayed in because I feel as though this may sound crazy and macabre, but I feel Wall Street owes me. I've been in it, I've serviced it and I'm going to get what I can out of it.

Speaker 2: 5:17

So, that said, I've worked in several different what they call verticals. That means just areas of the market from the capital markets, which is, like you know, selling products to investment bankers. I worked in the hedge fund space doing product sales to hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, and now I found my space and I am the. I'm currently now the assistant vice president of wealth um, um of wealth management, global wealth management, for a company called GoBullion International. So I manage um um, a group of guys within um the United States and Southeast um, mid Atlantic, um and West coast. So I I work for a financial technology or, let's put it, an institutional financial technology firm that introduces opportunities to financial advisors to purchase precious metals for their wealthiest clients, meaning I reach out to financial advisors with my team and we introduce the opportunity for them to buy gold for their wealthiest clients in their portfolios so they can benefit from the prices of gold and silver, platinum and palladium going up. So that's my job is to actually introduce investments to the financial advisor who manages portfolios for their clients.

Speaker 1: 6:50

Nice, nice, nice. So then, OK, so you said that side of it, right, so introducing them to you know possibilities of gold and all that stuff like that. So now, where do you get your information from the other side, like, okay, there's a deal here, or something like that as far as to know the gold, because I know you're not actually, you're basically like a broker, basically kind of sort of right.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Yeah, that's a very good way of looking at it. So I'm the intermediary, right, I'm the guy in between, right, so I manage the relationship between my firm and the investment firm. So, for example, Merrill Lynch Wealth Management is one of the biggest wealth management firms in the world. Right, they have over 14,000 financial advisors, private wealth managers. These are people who manage money for very wealthy accredited investors. Right, Like you got to have like a quarter of a million dollars to start just to open up an account with these guys. Some places it's a million, right, and depending on the size of the advisor's book of business, right, Book of business is how much his entire portfolio of clients are worth. Some guys will manage $500 million, a billion dollars, or a team that manages $2 billion. So that's my job, right, so to talk to that guy right, and force my way in in a very sophisticated manner by introducing the opportunity for his book of business to grow, if I introduce the right investment for him. Right, and if it makes sense to him to introduce that to his clients.

Speaker 2: 8:27

Gold is extremely expensive. It's not like a stock, right, Gold is not like a stock or a bond or anything like that. Gold is an actual piece of metal that you can barter for money, right, you know, when you watch those TV shows and those heist shows, oh we're going to steal gold bars from that vault in you know London or Zurich or some fancy geography, right, and they take the trucks and you know it's this whole fancy heist thing like that movie that came out many years ago with Mark Wahlberg and stuff like that, right, the Italian job, right, yeah, that stuff Like we're actually selling gold bars, right, Like this is like insane stuff that the average person doesn't have access to, right. So you have to really understand how that works. So, yeah, in that sense I'm giving entree because we have the relationship already. So my job is to connect to all the advisors inside the firm to make sure they understand who I am and what I could do for them, or what me and my team could do for them.

Speaker 1: 9:39

Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice. For some clarity A tad bit. But you know you did explain a lot, but I mean, like this right here is another level, it really is.

Speaker 2: 9:52

I've never done this before in my life and, honestly, I'm not a precious metals or gold expert. I'm not a platinum or palladium or silver or gold expert. So in the world of Wall Street, bro, people are under this impression right, because they do it on purpose that you have to have some kind of relative knowledge base to know this stuff, like 80% of Wall Street, like they teach you what they want you to know. They just have to like you enough to hire you to have you do it. Right, right, this is the actual environment. So don't get it twisted. You don't have to know this stuff, like coming out of college or anything like that. You just don't.

Speaker 1: 10:34

Right, right, that's a good way of summing it up, because I know somebody who didn't have the proper credentials and in in around the wall street area and they hired him because they liked him. They liked him and then they taught him, and then they taught him how to do this, even though he had skills in another area, but it definitely wasn't. This I'm not. It's not about the stock or anything like that. It's not about that selling or trading. It was more or less like IT stuff. Okay.

Speaker 2: 11:10

I understand.

Speaker 1: 11:11

It's interesting. It's very, very interesting and I have some questions for you. Why is investing in the stock market considered by so many people to be a scam?

Speaker 2: 11:22

Well, there's an old saying, right by so many people to be a scam. Well, there's an old saying, right, what you don't know, you don't know what you don't know, right. So for a very long time people would normally talk people normally just by the nature of who they are. Right, average human beings, when they don't know something, they tend to talk themselves out of it. Right. And if you don't know how something works and the kind of return that you can make off an investment sounds like they're too good to be true, then people say, well, then it can't be true, right. When in fact, wall Street and investing in Wall Street is the Open secret of exclusivity. That is a farce, right. So you tell somebody, for example. You tell somebody, for example, I'm going to buy a pair of Nikes for $200. You're just buying a pair of sneakers that the market tells you is worth $200 because, between marketing, the hype word on the street, somebody's wearing it, looks cool, it's flat, looks good, your outfit, it's already sold to you. You buy that $200, speaker, there's nothing scammy about it. Why? Because you can tie it, put it on your foot, walk out with it under your ankle.

Speaker 2: 12:56

Done A stock. Where do I buy it? How come I can't touch it? Where do I see it? Who's giving it to me? What's happening? How come I can't touch it? Where do I see it? Who's giving it to me? What's happening? Where's it coming from? Who builds this thing? Where am I going to find it? How do I sell it? Where do I get my money from, and when?

Speaker 2: 13:11

you begin to tell people how that works, and if it doesn't resonate because they can't see it, they can't touch it. It's a scam. The stock costs $10. You put $100 into it, that's 10 shares. The stock goes to $100. That's 90 points.

Speaker 2: 13:34

You've made like almost $2,000 in the span of a week, probably, depending on stock moves, yes, and the stock can also go down. Why, supply and demand? Right. But if you can make $2,000 off of $10, off of $100, let's say within a week, which has happened 1,000 times over and you call your broker and say, hey, John, can you liquidate that stock of Nike for me? How much do I get? Oh, you get $1,000. All right, thanks. Oh, $2,000. Or get a thousand bucks? All right, thank you. Two thousand or three thousand? All right, thanks. Can you send that to my account, please? Sure, when would I get there? Twenty four hours? I've done it, my buddies have done it.

Speaker 2: 14:13

I've known hundreds of people in my lifetime and if you have a friend that you trust and you can show you how it's done, it is no longer a scam Because somebody has to do it first before it's not noted as a scam anymore. That's the issue with society in a whole. Everything is a too good. Everything is I have to see it to believe it or I have to touch it to believe it. This is like real estate, right, it's not a scam because you can touch it. Right, it's not a scam because you can touch it. But some of the biggest scams in our society are real estate scams. And you can see the house you just, we just purchased. Go touch it, walk through the gate, take the key, walk through that door, but for all you know, that house is not even yours because somebody scammed you into it. Right?

Speaker 2: 15:03

right, it's all I'm saying, I'm just giving you two sets of diametrically opposing theories, but one could be actually 100% true and the other one is a physical theory, but it could be a scam as well.

Speaker 1: 15:17

Right right, right right. So the lack of knowledge would bring people to the ignorance of saying, oh, this is a scam.

Speaker 2: 15:25

Absolutely 100% 100%.

Speaker 1: 15:29

So what would you recommend to people to actually to learn about this? What steps should they take? Because I know it's a process, yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:41

Yeah, investing is what my call is. It's a long term play, right. It's like trying to date a woman. Right, you see yourself marrying her in five years and from now to 2030. Right, you're saying to yourself what are the steps do I have to take in order to marry that woman? And you, as a man, know what you got to do to marry that woman, right, that's the same way with investing. You have to study it, you have to research, you have to understand it. Right. You have to um, engage it right. Do uh, get.

Speaker 2: 16:28

There's a knowledge base to understanding what you're willing to invest. It right. And it's the same thing as relationship, right. Vice versa, right. So you first have to do your research and if you happen to know somebody who's with within that then call out, reach him Interesting I'm learning more about X right. Or if you don't have anyone in your immediate centers of influence COIs right. Or somebody that you know that knows somebody. Because it can happen, you take your ass to YouTube and you punch in how to invest in stocks and you're going to have, at best, two or 3000 people with all kinds of channels, who all kinds of financial services backgrounds, telling you about this. It's literally a retarded monkey can do this Right.

Speaker 2: 17:20

So he's got to go to YouTube University. Right, right, right, right, right right.

Speaker 1: 17:22

So he's got to go to YouTube University, Right, right, right right, literally, literally, and it takes all of 500 bucks.

Speaker 2: 17:30

Maybe less, but 500 bucks is a very, very, very decent start to learning how to invest in stocks. I don't mean one stock, I'm talking about a gang of them at one shot for 500 bucks ETFs, exchange-traded funds, index funds you can learn what those things are. It's just fancy language. But once the fancy language is taken away and you learn what that is, you're like oh, that's what that is. Yeah, they do it on purpose to keep certain people out. It's a ploy. It's a ploy and it's kind of sad.

Speaker 1: 18:05

It's kind of sad, it's kind of sad, but it's fancy language used on purpose to keep certain people out and then they see, they hear all of these words and they're like, oh no, oh no, because it's not everyday language it's not everyday language.

Speaker 2: 18:22

The vernacular and the verbiage is so foreign right that they make themselves not want to care right. The stock market is the place where most people will always can retire from and have more money in their pockets, if you start early enough, than you will in your average pension. Nice, nice. The average pension in the United States is like $200,000 to $300,000. The average pension. Most people who invest in the stock market for 20 years will come out with a million bucks. I know it's a broad term to use come out with a million bucks. I'm talking about somebody who's devoutly involved for 20 years and you've had a job for 20 years. You can probably outpace your own pension with the right investments in the stock market.

Speaker 1: 19:15

Right, right, especially if you was there when you was there in the beginning of Facebook or the beginning of something.

Speaker 2: 19:23

There you go, there you go. You just said it, right there.

Speaker 1: 19:28

You'd have been way up. You'd have been way up. You'd have been like pension what I'm retiring early, early, early, early, early, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 19:38

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:39

Nice, nice, nice, nice. Thanks for that. Thanks for your information. Let me go to question two. What are some of the easiest investments for people to get into that are not investment savvy?

Speaker 2: 19:55

GARY GENSLER. Oh, one, stocks. So I'll explain what a stock is In the most simplest, most layman term. A stock is an investment in a company, period End of story. You can go to your refrigerator and there are stocks all up in your refrigerator Heinz, ketchup, tropicana, boar's Head, pepsi, sprite it's endless Frito-Lay. Go in your cupboard Campbell's Soup. Every time you put a dollar towards something in your fridge or your cupboard, you're investing in a. That's basically like investing in a stock, right? It's just an investment in a share of a stock you go to. Like I said before about Nike, I don't know how much Nike stock costs might be like 150 bucks. If you purchase Nike for one share, you own a share of Nike and if Nike moves two points, you have two points of revenue going into your portfolio. It goes from $150 to $152, and that's $2. And it gets higher and higher and higher. So that's all a stock is.

Speaker 2: 21:20

You could have mutual funds, extremely easy to invest in. All mutual funds are is a pool of stocks in a basket. So one stock is by itself, right. A pool of stocks is a mutual fund. It can have Microsoft, it can have Time Warner, it can have Frito Lake, pepsi, it can have Ford Motor Company, right, and you invest in those mutual funds and that's a basket of stocks, right. Then you have something called REITs, which are super dumb.

Speaker 2: 22:01

Easy Real Estate Investment Trust REITs R-E-I-T-S REITs is investing in real estate funds. So if you have $10, like sitting on the side somewhere, like, let's say, a rainy day fund or or or some money you have on the side, you could take ten thousand dollars you can go to. You can go to uh, google and put in reits and it'll give you days worth of investments in REITs. Reits can be investments in developments in a particular state, right, or an already existing development that's doing extremely well. Let's say, a high rise in Manhattan with 150 floors and it's in middle of Park Avenue and 90% of the buildings already occupied, right, and all the other condos worth, let's say, $2 million in them.

Speaker 2: 23:13

That is a REIT and in the REIT, every single month you will receive dividends from the revenue stream that that development makes into perpetuity. So it could be $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, $100,000. $20,000, $50,000, $100,000. But imagine just investing $10,000 and getting back, for example, I don't know $300 a month in your bank account for the next 10 years. Or it gets reinvested and you can reinvest that into another REIT somewhere or something like that. Right, those are the number one easiest investments Easy.

Speaker 1: 24:08

Those are REITs, real estate investment R-E-I-T-S.

Speaker 2: 24:12

Right Now, some people like the actual physical you know oh, I want to invest in something I can see, like real estate. Right, I want to buy a three family or whatever. Yeah, you can invest in three family developments down south that's already underway. Or you can invest in a multi complex multi development complex in Atlanta or North Carolina, la they're everywhere and they give you prospectuses how it's going to do, how many investors are in it, you can see how long it's been around and, if you want, you can go visit the damn thing. Right, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. These things are physical properties that exist that you invest in without having to actually manage it yourself.

Speaker 1: 25:07

REITs are incredibly, incredibly, incredibly profitable. Nice, nice, nice. I never heard of that, never heard of REITs.

Speaker 2: 25:12

Yeah, and you broke down the mutual funds, right, that's what you said the mutual yes, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, REITs these are all baskets of investments you can invest in without having thousands and thousands of dollars.

Speaker 1: 25:29

So now for the REITs. What's the minimum you should start with with a REITs investment?

Speaker 2: 25:39

Most REITs minimum that you always usually see is like 5,000. Then it goes to 10. It could be 20. Some of them tell you well, this particular development over here is a luxury high-rise in Manhattan on Madison Avenue, and it's completely underweight and the occupancy so far is 70%. That's telling you that's how many people are already vested to already live in it, which means they're going to be paying that mortgage, which means you're going to be getting your money back in those REITs, right? So I'm speaking in layman's terms and I'm being vague as possible, but that's the concept of it.

Speaker 1: 26:20

What's the percent with? Like? What was the? What would be the percent? Like? Okay, say, say a person puts down five, 10,000, and that the say your firm purchased that REIT for you. What would that? What would? What would the investment, what would that person whose money it is? What percent? What would it be? Would it be a percent or just what would that be called?

Speaker 2: 26:45

So it's called. So you're investing in the actual real estate fund, so you're funding it, right, and yeah, so it's like a bond. So you're almost like you say okay, thanks for this money. So, in conjunction with you giving us money for this fund, we're going to give you a payment once a month for X amount of time, right, so look to it as a get back, not a kickback, but like a dividend to say thank you. This is every single month. Right, and I don't know if that's how it. You know because it's stipulated in the contract, the REIT contract. Right, when your dividends would start coming back to you, it could be two months, three months after the initial investment, or whatever the case may be. Right, and you'll know where the building's located, you'll know who the developer is, you know who the manager is, you'll know how many people are going to be living in it. It's so transparent it can't get any more transparent. Right, reach extremely profitable.

Speaker 1: 27:54

Nice, nice, nice, nice. I'm Tate, I'm listening, I'm listening, I am definitely listening. Man, do, please do.

Speaker 2: 28:03

This is something this is something that a lot of african-americans just do not care to care about, right, and it's not because they don't care, it's because they don't have the information being told to them. Right, because, because this is not like REITs are not even a popular term that's being thrown around Mutual funds, people know. They hear stock, they hear bonds. Those are the most common investment verbiage, common investment jargon. You will hear Mutual funds, stock bonds, right. You don't hear REITs, right. You don't hear ETFs Right. You don't hear that type of terminology. So you think it's some fancy-pass, expensive thing. But it's not.

Speaker 1: 28:54

Right, right, right, right right. It's very, very interesting and I definitely want to learn more about it. And yes, let me go to another question. Let me go to another question why do you think so many Black people don't invest and prefer to only maybe do real estate?

Speaker 2: 29:18

only maybe do real estate. Well, not to be presumptuous and it's not just us, but because we're talking about our people, we are risk-averse people. Right, we are risk-averse. We don't like taking chances on something that we just don't see and don't know. Right, this is not rocket science, right, and it's the natural cautionary tale type of world that we live in, right in, with the internet and the consistent scamming of the average person on a daily basis, actually by hour by hour.

Speaker 2: 30:06

We trust nothing that we clearly make no time to understand. And, yeah, investing takes serious devotion, right, there are people who are called long-term investors, who don't give a damn what happens in the market, as long as they know that, based off just forces, it's always going to go back up. There is something to that, but if we don't understand how something works, then we will never trust it. Right, understand how something works, then we will never trust it. Right, and it's one of those and I hate saying it right, but you know, oh, you know there are a lot of ignorant people out there or unknowledgeable people who will always say, oh, that's, that's a white man's game.

Speaker 1: 30:50

I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking the same thing.

Speaker 2: 30:52

Right, yeah, yeah. And and because he invented that, he invented that. He invented that game. Wall Street is clearly the Anglo-Saxon white man's creation, right From days of old, right From the barter system all the way up till today. Right, he has created and manufactured and, just out of thin air, just created nonsensical investments that people just don't understand how it's working. And how do I give you a dollar and next week I got 10,000. Right, and it's in my bank account. How did this happen? Right, and if we don't know how it happened, some people are like I don't give a damn, it's bread, but you should understand, because then you can replicate it and do it somewhere else.

Speaker 2: 31:48

The issue is we're not provided the intricate level of information to connect the dots, to see why this is good for us. Right, like the middle class was, the Black middle class was built on the backs of the post office, corporate America jobs, federal state and city employment. Right America jobs, federal state and city employment. Most of our parents didn't have credit cards in the 70s but they were buying houses because they were saving their money. They gave it to the bank and they got their house and they survived only on their pension and they survive only on their pension, right, right, and now it's a whole other kind of model. But they don't understand that their pensions are managed by Wall Street people, hedge funds and investment funds. Right, and now those big companies are coming into the federal, city and state world. And now your pension, your parents' pensions, it's being thrown into Wall Street, and now their money is going to be bigger, hopefully, and larger than your grandparents.

Speaker 1: 33:15

Because they're leveraging it.

Speaker 2: 33:17

Because they're leveraging it in other places. So those same places is where the Black Americans and African-Americans in Korea should be investing in those kind of places the REITs and the mutual funds and the ETFs and whatever. But that's again, it's risk, right, you know, you know you're not at work. You got to put the money out to get the money back, right, right, scared money don't make no money, right.

Speaker 1: 33:48

Right, right, that's you know. And people rather take a $10 loss and play lotto than than a hundred dollar loss. It's like people I say it's like Black people look at that as a white man's game and they don't want to take a chance and they don't believe. A lot of people are content and they don't think about financial freedom. They don't really. That's not. Financial freedom to them is bad, but they're all right, I bust my butt all week, come home, I take a drink and I'm cooling out.

Speaker 1: 34:23

I always say like this in school, you are taught a certain way, right, you are totally. You are taught a certain way to become workers and say like, say five percent, like, say if, like, say like a parent would tell a child like look, okay, listen, this is what I'm gonna, this is what I want you to do. I want you to think of a business, for this is from a middle school. I want you to think of a business and you're going to start putting it together to create a business, right, and then now in high school, you're going to put it together and put it together more and more. And in college now you're going to have your business. Right, but then, because 90 to 95 percent of the kids that's in school are trained to become workers and that other 5 percent could have those same kids working for them. It's a mindset. It's a mindset, it's a mindset.

Speaker 1: 35:16

I have my brother, my brother, he's a, he's a, he's a journalist for the Wall Street. He's a, he's an editor for the Wall Street Journal. Oh, wow, awesome. And he went to John Hopkins University, right. And just the other day, like two months ago, we were in a three-way chat, me and my other brother, my other older brother, right. We're in a three-way chat, me and my other brother, my other older brother, right. So, my other brother, he likes to get into like little debates about back in the days, but it's like becomes an argument. I said why, when we come together on a conversation, we don't talk about empowering each other, making money, making moves? We don't have these conversations but we'll take time to talk about foolishness, you know. And then my brother and I said to him separately the one who wasn't arguing with me, the one who went to John Hopkins I said why don't you never think about doing business? He says no, no, no, no, no. That's not me, that's not me, that's not me. And that's the thing. A lot of people that's their thing.

Speaker 2: 36:20

That's the thing A lot of people that's the thing.

Speaker 2: 36:21

That's not me, you don't try it. So they say it's not for them, and I get that, and that comes from reluctance, complacency. A lot of it is exposure and again, I'm biased only because I've worked in a place that is a money-driven economy. Wall Street is a money-driven, revenue-generating economy. It's a place that basically runs the free market, right? Wall Street is a place that runs the free market and dictates to the world what's happening to you all, right? So I have the insider's perspective on why these things are happening, right? So I've always been in that place where I worked as the sales guy who gets the information and push it out, and so I'll always have the information before you sort of kind of understand why this is happening, right? So before the financial crisis happened in 2008. In 2007, we heard about it, but it was developing, it was getting uglier and nastier.

Speaker 2: 37:46

But this product that I was selling to hedge funds, I was like, hmm, they don't know that this information is being gathered and these hedge funds are selling stuff to people and to each other and whatever these bonds, and I'm saying to myself this is going to be bad. Now I'm just saying all this to say when you get information. It's about the information when do I get information from, where do you get information from? And it's always been about access to info. It's that corporate slang, right? Access to information means everything. And I've always been privy, not special, but I've always been privy in certain spaces. The hedge fund space, the private equity space and the wealth management space are the three top places where info is manufactured and kept and hoarded for rich people, hoarded for rich people all the time.

Speaker 2: 38:57

And that's when I realized I know where I am. I realized that maybe I'm 55. I realized that 15 years ago, mind you, just lack of information and caring to take it and benefit yourself from it. Because we, unfortunately and look, I was, I'm from out here we knew from the same hood, right, we grew up in the same hood, you and I, you know, and when we were kids, we weren't connected to any of this stuff or people. Who was connected to this stuff? Right, I got to this stuff by happenstance, literally by happenstance. I wasn't gunning for it, right, it's not until I started school. There's always something about school that connected me to other kids who were doing that thing that I saw in the movie, like the movie Wall Street, right, the Boiler.

Speaker 1: 40:05

Room.

Speaker 2: 40:07

Well, Boiler Room came like 20 years after Wall Street. So Wall Street with Charlie Sheen was the catalyst movie, the one that set it off. And I got into that world because I thought it was like that movie. And when I got in it really was and I was like what the f I'm really in that movie and I was near that room on Wall Street, I was just downstairs from it and I would go up and down to talk to those guys and I was hooked, my guy, like a heroin addict. This is in 1993. 1993. And that's when I got my first understanding of access to like that information. Like nobody in Flatbush in my hood was working in a place like that that's great.

Speaker 1: 41:11

That's great. I mean, you have the inside look and and you have the knowledge and you gained a whole lot of knowledge and you know, you know, as you're saying, that certain information is being held by the higher-ups. The rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. But if people start to say, listen, let me stop playing lotto, this lotto, that you spend 200 a month on lotto just to win back $50, use that $150 and invest. Use the $150 and invest. You know.

Speaker 2: 41:40

Not even $150 in a mutual fund. It's really that easy. But again, there are people who would prefer to play crypto, which is literally, straight up and down, probably the biggest gamble I've ever seen as it relates to an investment instrument. Right even from a perspective of a guy who's been in this game that long, I'm saying to myself, wow, this one, this one needs to be looked at Now. Mind you, I know some cats who jump in early, like those tech, real tech savvy guys from like 2015, 2016, 17,.

Speaker 2: 42:32

Who was telling me about it and I was skeptic then. That couldn't grasp it, even as a financial services guy, that I couldn't grasp it. Even as a financial services guy, I couldn't grasp it. I knew some Asian guy who lived in Cali, who's a friend, who was calling me about it, asked me if I heard about it. I said no, what's that? He told me I'm investing about five grand in it. It's only like four cents. I said this sounds like a penny stock. No, it's not a stock, it's crypto. What's that? We're going back and forth for weeks and weeks and weeks. We lost contact for a little while and it was Bitcoin. This guy must be a millionaire by now, because there's a time in Bitcoin's history, you can cash out of your ledger without paying taxes. So I know this guy must have cashed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe a million, and change 5,004 cents Woo.

Speaker 2: 43:33

That's my point, which is legit. This is because the government has legitimized Bitcoin. Now, so is Bitcoin a scam? Probably not.

Speaker 1: 43:47

What was Bitcoin? Who came up with that? What was the intentions of Bitcoin?

Speaker 2: 43:55

Bitcoin came now. Interestingly enough, bitcoin was created by an Asian gentleman. I forgot the name. I think Natoshi something.

Speaker 2: 44:05

This is back in 2002 or three, if I'm not mistaken early twos and wanted to decentralize or have a decentralized way of transporting money without it being connected to a dollar, like the Federal Reserve's monetary policy and fiscal policy of the United States, where you wanted something to be disconnected from that and you have to be a developer, right, like software engineer type, to create something like this and created a coin and the ledger is just a way of coagulating all the information together and computers speaking to each other, but you don't have access and it's something you cannot decipher, right, because it's encrypted to a level where you have to have access to the ledger in order for you to even understand what's happening.

Speaker 2: 45:15

I say all this to say that now you can utilize crypto as a full currency, like a dollar would, but it's not a physical paper. It's digital, like everybody does, everybody knows, but it can be manufactured into physical cash and they're using it heavily in California. You can buy houses on crypto currency in California countries. But crypto is not a scam Now, because it cannot be managed or regulated by the government. It's its own process through human interaction. There's no banking system involved in this, so it cannot be managed, which is the genius of it.

Speaker 1: 46:20

Right, so that keeps the US out of their pocket.

Speaker 2: 46:24

Right. So Bitcoin is legit, but now it's so legit they're trying to manage it. So now, if you try to cash your crypto into your account, you're going to pay taxes.

Speaker 1: 46:39

Oh see, they're finding a way to get in there.

Speaker 2: 46:41

They're finding a way, but in 2015 and 16, if you cashed out, you cashed out tax-free. Wow, there are millionaires, millionaires, who are like 21 years old, 25 years old on this.

Speaker 1: 46:59

That's nice. So yeah, so you know it's interesting. You say and you break down. You broke down Bitcoin, so tell me a little bit about crypto. What is the science behind crypto? Is Bitcoin crypto? Are they kind of the same?

Speaker 2: 47:18

Well, crypto is a euphemism for digital currency. So Bitcoin is just crypto, Bitcoin you have.

Speaker 2: 47:27

Solano, you have Saldano, you have Ripple, you have tons of them. Now a lot of them have been deemed a scam, so a lot of them are gone. But there are some like three or four of them that are super legit Okay Right, and that people can invest in, but these are just non. These are whatchamacallit, non. They're not nondescript, but they're incapable of being regulated by government bodies and stuff like that. Right, which? This is the attraction to it it's decentralizing the financial markets. So the dollar looks as if it's at risk, when it's not. This is just another digital currency being used other than the US dollar, but it's outpacing inflation, right Like crazy. And now Bitcoin must be like $90,000 a coin. No one can avoid you said no one could afford.

Speaker 1: 48:35

It's $90 a coin. No one could avoid Bitcoin. No one could avoid Bitcoin, no one could avoid you said no one could afford it's $90.

Speaker 2: 48:39

No one could avoid Bitcoin. No one could avoid Bitcoin.

Speaker 1: 48:42

No one could afford it At the price it's now the Bitcoin. Is that much? Yes?

Speaker 2: 48:46

$90,000 a coin. Who could afford that? Oh?

Speaker 1: 48:49

$90,000. Yes, oh shoot Last I saw it it was $90,000 a coin. Sheesh man man. That's a serious thing. Is it true that Trump said that he was coming out with his own type of coin or something like that?

Speaker 2: 49:09

Yeah, so Donald Trump is trying to take advantage of the excitement behind digital currency and Trump is, for all intents and purposes, he's drifting. So he's trying to create a digital coin though he's the US president, which should be illegal, though he's the US president, which should be illegal so he can benefit off the ensuing excitement of digital currency. Right, because? Yeah, because his real estate empire is defaulting, it's falling apart, has fallen apart, so he has to have a new revenue generating scheme and I'm not a huge fan of what he's doing, never have been and he's trying to create a coin so he can enrich himself, but, again, it's going to work because his voters will invest in it, for the simple fact that he's creating it.

Speaker 1: 50:22

So I wouldn't call it a legit currency because it just will not be. And his popularity? You know people's going to shoot.

Speaker 2: 50:26

His popularity is fueling his ride.

Speaker 1: 50:30

Make America great. That red and white, that red hat People's buying it off the shelf. People's buying it off the shelf.

Speaker 2: 50:36

Yeah, that's not even worth having a conversation about because it's not really a legitimate plan and any recommendations. I really suggest that two things. This is my own opinion. People should really think about what investing is right. It's just a tool. Investing in the stock market is just a tool to have something else to fall back on right. So I'll give you a perfect example.

Speaker 2: 51:14

You go to the bank and you say I want to buy a house. My wife and I have 50 grand and we want to put towards this $300,000 house Great. Do you have anything else? Yeah, I have. I've got a 401k oh, that's great, but you probably won't want to have to use that. But how much is in your 401k?

Speaker 2: 51:38

Oh, I've been at my job for 26 years. I got about $900,000. That's great. Is there anything else? Yeah, my wife has a pension that's great. But is there anything else? Yeah, I have a stock portfolio worth $600,000. I got some leads. I put $20,000 in development. I'm getting $200 a month in dividends. I got $50,000 worth of bonds. I get interest rates every single month and I got some mutual funds over here.

Speaker 2: 52:13

That's called liquid assets. Listen closely. Those liquid assets can assist you in leveraging for that house. All of that right, and you can say, oh, and I got a life insurance policy with whole life cash value. That's a lot to have than just $50,000,. Right, and you want to say I want to use that money that I just all that I just told you about because that's the safety net that they're looking for To say, okay, these people, other than the $50,000 that they have, they have all those other things.

Speaker 2: 53:02

It's not rocket science. They have all those other things and we want to leverage all that other stuff Right To buy this house so you don't even have to give them the $50,000. Right, they say we have the $50,000 in our savings but we don't want have to give them the 50 grand. They said we have the 50,000 in our savings but we don't want to give that to you. This is what we got. So what can we get for that house? How can we get this house Now if you only have $50,000, no stocks, no bonds, no investment, nothing, then you have a harder time.

Speaker 2: 53:39

Then you're going to have a harder time, you understand. So you want to have those liquid assets right, that will say they could liquidate all of those things they just told me right now and have damn near $2 million and they are a safe bet for that $300,000 house. So you can have the 50 grand and I'm just speaking like in layman's terms, but this is how banks view you. But those investments that you invest in are your safety net right, and that's really your retirement. But you're also using that the physical presence of all of that liquid cash, to say, yeah, I want that $3,000 house, I have $2 million worth of all this liquid cash, but all we have in our savings is 50 grand. They don't care about the 50 grand, they care about that other stuff, because it says that you're safe, a safe bet.

Speaker 1: 54:45

And that's what the average person.

Speaker 2: 54:47

That's what they don't understand. They ain't got to even be a million bucks worth. It could be 150 grand worth of liquid investment 100 grand worth At least that they know you got some other stuff sitting there, but don't make that 50 bucks be it, because then you're going to be a liability Versus you know anything else, right?

Speaker 1: 55:16

Wow, this is very, very interesting. I hope the people out there get this information and you know, we could probably have a series where we could just actually stick to one and then nail it down to give people a better understanding. This is great information. You're welcome, man, if I'm loving it, so people got to love it, you know.

Speaker 2: 55:43

Well, you know I don't know what people don't know.

Speaker 1: 55:46

I don't know, what people don't know, yeah, but what I do know, I learned something today. I learned something today, that's all.

Speaker 2: 55:53

I appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure. Yeah, my pleasure, man.

Speaker 1: 55:58

Thank you, thank you, thank you. So, yeah, so, um, it's, this is episode 91. Um, this is the first time in a couple of years that we've done a zoom actual zoom meeting and um zoom podcast and this is a great show. It's a great, great show and, um, hopefully we get to do another one very soon. You know, I wonder we could do you have, like a Friday special.

Speaker 1: 56:25

Emil the finance guru, you know, and you have any parting words? I mean, let me start off with my parting words. My parting words is that you know, they say, if you knew better, do better. Right, they say that, but is it actually true? You know, people need to apply, apply what they, what they do, know, instead of holding on to it like okay, and stop being so skeptical and be like okay. You know, and one thing about life is that people believe, they believe in, they believe in things. That's, that's um, that don't cost them anything, like they would have faith, they'll have faith. They they so heavy with faith, but they don't, they don't, they don't, but they don't trust, they don't trust in themselves. They're like, okay, let me, let me put this money here. Yeah, the risk of losing it is is much more than just um the thought of financial freedom. Yeah, yeah, that's my closing statement. Everybody, hey, open your mind, open up your eyes and open up your wallet or your purse.

Speaker 2: 57:26

Yeah, absolutely no, you're 100% correct, yeah, and I just want to say thanks a lot for bringing me on. I really appreciate it. I'm pretty passionate about like knowledge and going to go get things, like go and learn things, right. I've always been like that. I've always been a voracious reader for a really long time. You know, some people will say, oh, I read a book a week. That's nonsense, right, that's like. You know, that kind of stuff I find to be like very disingenuous, um, in ways that it makes someone seem like they're, you know, trying to be better than everyone. It's almost like a forced thing. Um, and I don't mean to be mean about it, but I've read 60 books since the age of 21, 22. That's a lot of books, but it's not.

Speaker 2: 58:23

It's almost like two a year and I like to learn things other than what everybody is trying to read. Because of where I work, the environment I work in, I'm almost forced to learn and find out because I work around seriously worldly people, worldly people like who's done things. And I've done some things. I've traveled some great places. I've known some amazing people in my lifetime. I've connected some amazing, amazing, amazing professionals in my lifetime. I never thought that I would meet right. I've met some people that you know people from the hood just don't meet right. I've met people stacked elbow to elbow, chatted two, three, four hours. You know Robert Smith.

Speaker 1: 59:09

I never know him.

Speaker 2: 59:11

Robert Smith, the black billionaire.

Speaker 1: 59:13

Okay, the one that's higher than Jay-Z the richest man. Yeah, well, he's the finance guy right, Private equity, the one that's higher than.

Speaker 2: 59:19

Jay-Z the richest man. He's the finance guy, private equity firm, robert Smith. His net worth is like $9 billion. Jay, don't come close to nothing like that. Met Robert Smith many years ago at a banquet dinner. Fantastic conversation with the guy Got his phone number whole nine yards.

Speaker 2: 59:44

I was running a mentoring program at Goldman Sachs many years ago and it was a black banker's dinner, more or less, and it was like four or five hundred black professionals there honoring him. Um, and we had some kids there for my program and one of them I introduced them and it was a fantastic evening. So he was looking to fund the program. So, like, all these things have been happening to me in my lifetime, right. So I say all this to say go out there and learn on purpose. Learn Right and stop being distracted by pop the balloon and find love and dudes fighting on air and chicks scamming their men and dudes. You know, fighting in train stations. You're like we're getting distracted by nonsensical, like subpar, like way out the way, nonsense to the point where it's like commonplace, right, but you're over here buying Nikes for 200, but you want to invest in the stock for 50. Go out there and learn on purpose. That's my thing learn right, and I'll leave it at that.

Speaker 1: 1:01:04

learn on purpose. Folks learn on purpose, and I appreciate you. I appreciate you, emil, for coming on and spreading your wisdom better, yet I'll cut you off.

Speaker 2: 1:01:16

Go on, learn for purpose. That's what I'm going to cut you off. Go on, learn for purpose. That's what I really meant to say. Go on there, learn for purpose.

Speaker 1: 1:01:23

Learn for purpose. Learn for purpose, folks. You heard him Live and direct. This is the your Opinion Doesn't Matter. Podcast man, episode 91, a very, very good show. We are out, thank you.