However, multiple books and experts say this is almost impossible for the lay person – or non Wall Street expert to pick. There are too many choices and for every Amazon, there are multiple tech companies which crashed and burned during the internet crash.

 And for most of us, this may seem too difficult in how to sort this.

 But, what if there is a way to do this? And, to get others to do the work for you?

 This is exactly what I did and I used this to make a 25% return on Google and I found NVIDIA before it exploded using this method – although I sold out early. (That is a different story).

 The point is there are certain fundamentals we can use and different tools – some paid for but relatively inexpensive to find shares which could explode in the future. I would like to share my approach with you.

The 12 Steps to Achieving Stock Success

1. Start by asking – what is an “industry of the future?” – this is the Darvas Method from “How I Made $2m in the Stock Market by Nicolas Darvas” – a book written by a professional dancer who made $2m in the 1950s ($20m in today’s money) via the stock market without any expertise, mathematical ability etc

   The key is which industries are going to be generating money

   You can do some Google searching, read The Economist and other trends as well as to start thinking logically what these could be

   E.g. back in 2021 – I said quantum computing could be an industry of the future

2. What are some good stocks in this area to consider?

Do some original thinking, use Grok and other AI plus read stock market newsletters etc. e.g. “best quantum computing stocks”

Back in 2021, I found an article on Investor Place – saying “7 Quantum Stocks to buy for the next 10 years”

3.       Review the suggested stocks and put them into a ‘To Buy’ or ‘Not Buy’

E.g. I had Alphabet, Microsoft, IBM etc

4.       Choose the “stars” in the segment. In the book, “The Star Principle” by Richard Koch - a fast growing niche market different from the larger overall market and the largest player in the niche. The market niche is growing fast – at least 10 per cent a year – this is actually quite conservative and it is just a starting point

From the above article, “Among the various quantum computing stocks to buy for the next 10 years, the best buy is probably Alphabet stock.”

5.       Then Warren Buffett style thinking – do I understand what the company does?

I am pretty confident in investing in Alphabet as a company given their size and track record. I am very familiar with the company, the products and more.

6.       Competitive Advantage – The Warren Buffett/ Rule #1 Way – basically this is the competitive moat – can the company sustain this or not?

In Quantum computing, very few (if any) companies on the planet can match Alphabet. (and also I believe they might be #1 or one of the very best for AI and Machine Learning capability,which would be another one of my industries of the future}

7.       Check the five year price chart of the stock(s) you have shortlisted – from Trend Following by Michael Cove –

I looked at the 5 year chart of Alphabet. Trend Following.

I want to see an upward line over the last five years. Sure, the odd high and low but overall a straight line. Let’s see what it looks like – code (GOOG):

Overall, looks great over the last five years, on a general upward trajectory – consistently.

8.       Then, is this Warren Buffett approved? Using Rule #1 Toolbox – a paid resource from Phil Town – https://www.ruleoneinvesting.com/toolbox/

Rule #1 by Phil Town Research service is based on Warren Buffett investing and gives an idea as to whether the stock matches the Warren Buffett way requirements. You can use the 14 day trial to see if this would be useful for you.

This is a very quick and easy way to check the Warren Buffett analysis. The only issue is with the “sticker price” recommendation from Rule #1 which suggests $1,050 per share. I don’t think this will happen, so I will buy as is.

But, the analysis gives a good indication as to the strength of the stock.

c.       It gives a score out of 100 for Management/Moat/Meaning etc

9.       See if there are any favourable analyst buy suggestions. See if there are any favourable analyst buy suggestion. To see if there are solid fundamental reasonings behind this

Fool.com had a good article talking about Alphabet Inc being undervalued compared to its peers

And a Money Show article talked about: Alphabet has $132 billion in cash as of the end of Q3 FY21. And, “generates prodigious amounts of cash each quarter”.

“I would expect Alphabet to experience some volatility in 2021 as a result of the attacks on the company, but I would regard any pullbacks as opportunities to build a position in these shares. I own the stock and view it as a capital-gains favorite for 2021.”

10.  Check if the world’s top investing gurus like this stock - Use the Rule #1 Toolbox and the Gurus section which has the SEC Filings analysis of the top investors’ holdings

a.       On 8th January 2021, there are 12 Gurus owning Alphabet, Inc stock. Potentially 24 as there are 12 with GOOG and 12 with GOOGL. This is the third most popular stock for the gurus to own. This looks good to me.

11.  A Buy Decision – but at c. 10% of share investment capital

Because of the price of the Alphabet stock, I will be in at 12.5% of my prospective share investment capital so close enough.

Then, there is the question of whether to have GOOG (Class A) or GOOGL (Class C) shares. I will probably go for Class A as they have voting rights.

There is the choice of even going beyond the c.10% as this is such a strong buy here.

12.  Put in a trailing stop-loss order – from the Darvas Method

Would (usually) put in a stop-loss order below 10% of the price and increase this as the share price increases

I couldn’t actually do that with the stock broker at the time. Now, there are much better services to help with this

So, here is a powerful way you can quickly and easily find powerful companies to invest in - from massive multi-nationals like Alphabet Inc to smaller companies hardly anyone has heard of before.

I have been really interested in football (i.e. soccer) for years and was very excited to play around with Polymarket and their football betting opportunities.

 I noticed something - there are what I am calling heavy favourites - i.e. those giants of world football from Bayern Munich in Germany to Paris Saint Germain of France on Polymarket, were playing the weaker teams, the odds would be 80 cents or more that the stronger team would win. Sometimes for the team such as Bayern Munich, the odds would even be 90 cents or more. I realised that although the returns are not that great, the risk of losing is a lot lower and it is almost like taking free money.

Yes, of course there are times when the underdogs can either win or draw but on average, the stronger team is almost certain to win the game.

Now, to prepare I read some books or at least tried to read some books on professional betting and they talk about things such as a Kelly Criterion and finding undervalued odds etc. But the problem is that I just couldn't be bothered with all of that.

With investing, you have to find what suits your personality and what you will do well and do consistently.

The Beginning

I already had very strong footballing knowledge so I didn't need to do a lot of research as to which team is strong and which team is not and so I just started randomly with the biggest teams that I knew of in the Premier League, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 (the French league). My very first bet was actually Inter Milan versus Udinese in Serie A which even then I thought was not a great bet because Udinese is not one of the weaker teams and in fact they actually won that game.

I then moved on to teams such as Arsenal or Liverpool at the start of this season and what I would do is I would go to the FBref.com website and look at the previous head-to-head matches of these heavy favourites against whichever team they were playing. I wanted to see if for example they were playing away against a weaker team whether that weaker team had previously had good results against these favourites and therefore it was a risky bet.

 I did this a few times with a very small amounts of capital for example $5 to $10 and I think I did get OK results. I was starting to get a bit frustrated because I couldn't find that many games where for example Arsenal or Liverpool were playing a weaker team and I could only bet one or two weeks in advance. Also, in the Premier League there are many teams against which it is very risky to bet such as Brighton or Brentford who are capable of winning home or away even against very strong teams.

Expanding My Long Favourite Strategy

So, I'm not quite sure where this came from but a few weeks later I realised that I could start to expand my heavy favourite strategy to other countries as Polymarket opened its football betting to many global markets. I worked with Grok and asked it which were the heavy favourites or large giants or large clubs in every country all around the world for football. Please note: this was only for men's football as at the time of writing Polymarket still does not cover women's football despite me asking them frequently to do so.

So, I have a list of over 140 football clubs from all over the world which are deemed by group to be the very big clubs. I then decided to do a trial over 4 weeks - which ended up being 5 weeks because the international week ended up being a week and a half rather than a week. The idea was to test whether I could I do this profitably- i.e. could I make money doing this approach starting with smaller amounts in bulk with multiple bets across global leagues? If so, then over time e.g. over a year, compounding the weekly smaller wins could generate a huge return. All the while, reducing risk by focusing on these heavy favourites against weaker teams.

 Starting the Four Week Trial

The process was as follows -I would identify for the upcoming week league by league which games had heavy favourites or giants against much weaker teams. I used both my own football knowledge, the list provided to me by grok and a review of the current league table to see where each team was. I think I used Sky Sports’ league tables and other websites such as sofa scores ETC.

 When I had found these games, I then placed limit bid orders - anything from within 5 cents to sometimes 15 or 20 cents lower than the current market price depending upon my thoughts about the game, whether it was home or away and the current form of each team. This was not as scientific as using a specific formula but more a little bit on my own whim and looking at the relevant league table.

Over time, I started to get a little bit crazy and in the fourth week I only placed limit orders 10 cents or below the current market price. The ideal strategy was to place the bids on Monday which is a perfect day as there is usually little football on that day and I can place the bids for the whole week and sometimes into the following week.

 I did get a little bit rattled because in the third week it was the international games calendar which included FIFA friendlies and World Cup 2026 qualifiers. This was not quite what I had been expecting and it did throw in slightly different challenges to consider.

 I tried to avoid games where there was no clear advantage-such as the stronger mid table Premier League teams or where it was first versus second etc. If I did go into riskier games then I would want a much higher premium by maybe even 15 or 20 cents below the current market price.

The Overall Results

Over the four weeks- actually 5 weeks-I placed 68 bets in total from 153 limit bids placed which is a fill rate of 44%.

I spent in total $975.63 and one a total of $1030.40 which is a return of 5.6%.

In Week 1, I achieved fill rate of 70.8% which was 24 bets out of 34 limit bids placed. I bet $354.91 with a return of $420.32 which is a return of +18.4%. In Week 1, this was purely domestic global leagues everything from Serie A in Italy to the Saudi Pro League. I was also a bit more conservative in terms of how low I went for the limit bid order versus the current market price meaning I sometimes only went to 3 or 4 cents lower than the existing market price.

In Week 2, I had three bets filled from a total of 30 limit bid orders placed which is a fill rate of 10%. I bet $38.99 and returned $89.97 which is a return of +134.4%. The issue here is that in this week I went really really low in terms of limit order prices and therefore 90% of my orders were never filled. However, those orders which were filled gave me an unbelievable weekly return.

 In Week 3, things went a little bit awry because this was the international football week i.e. national teams were playing in both FIFA friendlies and FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifiers. I placed 55 limit bid orders of which 37 were filled meaning a fill rate of 67.2%.

 I spent $549.13 and returned $520.11 which is a return of -5.3%. I believe that the returns I got for the World Cup qualifiers were better than those for the FIFA friendlies.

For these bets, I looked at the World Cup qualification tables and for the friendly matches, I looked at the FIFA Coca-Cola ranking of where each team was to decide how to bet. Obviously, the FIFA friendlies are quite affected by multiple different factors - from squad rotation, heavy travel itineraries and maybe players taking it a little bit easier because it is just a friendly rather than a competitive international.

 In Week 4, I returned to the domestic league games where I had four limit bid orders filled out of a total of 34 which is a fill rate of 11.8%. I had placed every single bid to be 10 cents or lower than the current market rate and in fact, at some stage I went even lower than that. This is why the fill rate was so low.

I lost all four games meaning that my $32.60 gave me a return of $0.00 which is -100% negative return.

Grok Crunches the Numbers

I then asked my friend Grok (actually SuperGrok) to crunch the numbers and give me his take-away.

The Key Findings were:

• The strategy works beautifully when you stick to strong home favourites in top domestic leagues priced 60–80¢.

• International matches (especially friendlies) have massively inflated prices — the market overprices the big nations heavily.

• Anything under ~58–60¢ is negative EV with your current selection process.

• Away favourites add almost no edge — you’re basically paying for home advantage that isn’t there on Polymarket.

• Very high prices (85–90¢) on mega-favourites (PSV, Feyenoord, Bayern, etc.) still show slight +EV because Polymarket users chronically overbet the “No” side on huge favourites.

• Keep using limit orders aggressively, but raise your average stake on the very best spots (70–78¢ home big clubs) to $25–40 instead of $15–20. The edge is real there.

• If you follow the tightened rules above, your expected ROI should be in the +12–18% range long-term with much lower variance than the 5.6% you achieved over a noisy 4-week sample.

Interestingly, Grok did some further analysis and came up with this strategy for me: "So when you exclude the noisy international window, the strategy is crushing it at almost +30% ROI overall and an insane +45% ROI on home favourites."

For just domestic games, we had home favourites giving a +44.84% return and away favourites being at -11.1% return. This is for 27 home games and 10 away games.

Month 2 - The Strategy Going Forwards

Back to Grok first:

Final refined “Month 2 and beyond” rules (based only on the clean domestic data)

Take ONLY bets that meet ALL of these:

1. Domestic league match (no internationals, no cups)

2. Home team

3. Price between 62–88¢ (90¢ absolute max only for true giants: Bayern, PSG, Man City, Real Madrid, Inter/Juve/Napoli at home)

4. Team is currently top-4 in league or has ≥70% home win rate at home this season

If you stick religiously to those four filters you are looking at:

• ~85–90% win rate

• ~30–40% ROI per bet on average

• 4–6% monthly compounded is almost conservative

These are Grok's comments and they are very interesting indeed. I hadn't picked up as much about the Home v Away game difference. The key was when setting up the spreadsheet to capture the results, to have many different columns and data points, so we could do analysis against that.

The key point Is that even with the chaotic third week and so many international games, I still made a profit. As Grok has shown us if you take out the international games, then the domestic games provides an even better return. On top of that- Grok has shown us that the domestic home games priced well are an absolute goldmine.

So, what I am going to do going forwards is to focus on those domestic league top games Especially in the leagues that Brock is highlighted such as the Portuguese, Dutch, French league with the very top teams playing and then to scale up the bet size. So, instead of having 30 or 40 bets placed, with $10 to $20 in bet size, we can instead have fewer bigger bets placed more conservatively under the market price. Perhaps going up to $35 to $40 for example.

The current 5.6% return for the month is probably too low compared to what we can achieve based on the results of the first month just focusing on the domestic home games. Grok has even offered to scout these games for me.

This has been a fun and fascinating experiment just using Excel and Grok to help me set this up.

You can do the same for whichever sports or other markets you are interested in by doing the testing and analysis of your results to find what is working or not working.

Now, Meme coins are the great leveller in crypto. You can potentially make a lot of money from just a small amount of capital. This is what happened in 2021 where people made a lot of money through DOGE, SHIB and many other meme coins.

 The challenge is that there are so many meme coins being released every day on solana and many other chains. People don't know what to invest in and many others are rug pulled by the developers or snipers who get in very early and then sell before everyone else invests.

 The question is with so many thousands of meme coins compared to just the last bull market five years ago, how do you get ahead of the pack and make real profits in meme coins? In this article I'm going to share with you how you can actually start to really understand how to invest in meme coins and more importantly do so effectively.

 I will share with you my experience in investing in meme coins, what some of the pitfalls are and how you can get good at this.

The Principles of Meme Coin Investing

The first step is in taking meme coin investing seriously. It is no longer just a random hobby or gambling or I don't really know what I'm doing but let me just “ape in” type approach to investing. You need to approach this systematically and logically, doing the correct research and leaving out the emotions and greed seeking.

 Secondly, you need correct capital allocation. This means you don't put 100% of your net worth in meme coins but you put maybe 5 to 10% and only that capital which you can afford to lose. Ask meme coin investing is so risky, and you are maybe starting out, you are likely to make mistakes which could mean you lose the capital. What we want is for you to do the learning with lower amounts of capital and then scale up as you get good and more confident in what you are investing in.

 The third thing is to be early in high quality projects and once you find a token that you really believe in, to go into it very heavily. What that means is that we need a very small universe of meme coins that you have identified yourself. You need what in the business is called a thesis. Why are you investing in this meme coin? What is special about this particular meme coin? Also, why should you not invest in this meme coin?

 You need to consider both sides of the equation and to understand the risks of investing and also of course of not investing.

 Ultimately, you are going to need to put in the effort and the time to really understand meme coins, how they work and most importantly you need to develop your own edge. This means what are you better at than almost anyone else in the world when it comes to meme coins?

 That sounds daunting maybe and also impossible but I promise you if you put the time and the effort in you will get there and you will start to develop your own niche. At the end of the day what you are looking for is 1 area within the mean coin universe would you really enjoy and understand and you get to really know and this is almost like effortless for you to do.

 My own niche is in the Doge Coin/Shiba Inu Type coins on the Ethereum Layer 1 network. I do have some interest in some other tokens such as doge coin itself which is on the on the Litecoin platform and some in or on base. However, I really kind of understand that particular area and that is where I have put most of my focus on in terms of meme coins.

 For you, you will need to develop and find your own area because as someone said on Twitter, you cannot borrow the conviction of someone else on social media. I could tell you a particular token which I believe is going to do amazingly well and if you don't have the inner conviction because of the research you have done and the experience you have built up, you will not be able to hold it during the high volatility and therefore sell out and lose out on huge potential gains.

 The final point before we get into the meat of the article is that you also have to know when to sell. That is first of all if the token does not perform as Hoped and the thesis has changed. He might need to get out of it and move on.

 More importantly- and hopefully-when the token is gone up a lot, you need to know when to sell and most importantly you've got to get out before the end of the bull market and/or before interest in the coin evaporates. That may mean taking a much smaller win then others you see on social media. The point is to make a profit in real life rather than a potential or a paper profit which is huge but never materialises.

How To Get Good at Meme Coin Investing

Finding Meme Coins to Invest In

• You have to spend time exploring social media – from CoinGecko.com to X in particular. It is critical to set up the following social media accounts:

  • Set up an X account as that is the primary source of new information e.g. @Soka_Data, @MustStopMurad, @ardizor, @EricCryptoman, @JakeGagain

    • Do some searching for meme coins and follow the accounts of the main meme coins you are interested in

    • Also, follow the accounts that these people and projects are also following

  • Reddit – you can try these meme coin sub-reddits to start with: CryptoMoonShots, CryptoMars, CryptoMarsShots, memecoins, Moonshotcoins

  • Telegram – many meme coin projects will have an official Telegram account which you can join and find out what the community is doing

    • You can also join Telegram based trading accounts such as BullX where you can buy and sell directly from within BullX instantly without having to use the DEXes (Decentralised Exchanges such as Uniswap and connect your digital wallet such as MetaMask etc)

  • Discord – please join this and join the Discord Groups and Meme Coin projects’ official Discords

  • You will need to set up accounts and join different Groups which are focused on meme coins and crypto investing

    • It will take some time to separate the wheat from the chaff or the signal from the noise as you will have the “shillers” trying to sell you what they have already bought and others know the Developers and are trying to cash in

    • You could get “burned” a few times so treat the initial capital as learning capital

  • Really research CoinGecko’s Meme Coin pages - https://coingecko.com/en/categories/meme-token

  

  • Here you can filter the list of meme coins in so many different ways:

    • By chain e.g. Abstract, Base, Ethereum, Solana

    • By Market Cap – what is there over $1bn in Market Cap versus those under $1m in Market Cap

    • What is the 24 Hour volume? And 24 Hour Price Changes – so you can see where the capital is flowing

  • You can also look at the DexTools website in order to look at trending and new meme coins by chain: https://www.dextools.io/app/en/ether/hot-pairs

  • Just click the chain you are interested in

  As you do this initial research, start by choosing a few niches that you are interested in and call out to you. This can be anything from a specific chain e.g. ETH, BASE, SOL, TRX etc

  With so many projects launching everyday across different L1s and L2s, it is best to start with one chain and really master the tools - from the wallet, DEX, the chain scanner, the influencers

  Choose the Memes sub-niche which interests you the most - Dogs - Cats - Elon - Political - Japanese Anime characters - Sports clubs - etc You want to gain an edge over everyone else by knowing an area better than most.

  Also, please put together a spreadsheet of tokens you are interested in from this research – this can include the token name, contract address, website, Twitter Handle, Telegram and Discord Groups, the price, market cap and your thesis – why you think this is a good purchase

  We can then use this spreadsheet to do the next steps of deciding what to buy

  Decide What to Buy      

  There are two parts to deciding whether to buy – is this a scam or rug-pull and if not, what is the thesis or reason for it potentially doing well?

  What is the narrative? the story behind the token? - how is it unique, fun, inspiring and exciting for non-technical purchasers e.g. retail?  What kind of growth has it experienced so far and most importantly – how strong is the Community?

  Check the number of holders and growth.

  Also, look at the trend in the price and especially the Market Cap - what is a realistic MC for this token to reach - Which type of meme token is this? A blue-chip like Shiba Inu, DOGE or a new up and comer e.g. Neiro -

  How easy is it for retail to 'get this' - i.e. it is fun, as @MustStopMurad says almost a cult or community, where people have made money?

  In terms of rug pulls and scams, copy and paste the Contract Address into       https://tokensniffer.com/

You are looking for key things such as has the contract been renounced i.e. can the developer no longer make changes to the contract? Are there variable taxes which can be added? What else could give you a warning sign that this is too risky to look at?

You can ask your favourite AI tool to also help you in making that assessment e.g. Grok is especially good at doing this kind of analysis when you give it the Contract Address. Ask it to highlight any risks in investing in the token.

When To Sell

1.       Make a decision on buying and selling prices and ranges - what can you afford to lose? What is the price you would be willing to sell at? Some of this will come from experience so the sooner you can start doing the work, the easier it will be to almost effortlessly know these things

2.       Decide on a portfolio strategy or approach. Meaning if you have $1,000 available for meme token investing to reduce risk for example, - you would allocate 50-60% for the "blue-chip" memes whether these are OG ones like DOGE or SHIB or the "newer" blue-chip memes - 20-30% for medium risk - those with a certain MC - 10-20% much riskier <$5m MC

a.       Part of this will depend upon you and your Risk Profile – are you willing to go all in or are you more conservative and want to take it slowly?

b.       Now, I actually have created a Base Blue Chip Meme Coin Portfolio for you on the Glider platform which you can find here:

                                                                              i.       glider.fi/portfolio/t496uiei

                                                                           ii.        You can deposit into this portfolio – and also create variations of this yourself using ETH or USDC on Base and for every $1 you deposit, it will be split 20% each into the following major Base Meme Coins:

1.       Degen, Noice, Brett, Toshi and Ski Mask Dog.

2.       You don’t need to buy the individual tokens and the strategy will automatically rebalance so that it is always 20% of the total in each token. Meaning that if one token goes above the 20% of the total, it will partly be sold off and the capital redeployed.

Finally, use something like Koinly to track your meme token purchases and wallets so that you can understand the changes that you are experiencing as well as calculating the tax you need to pay on hopefully all of the major profits you will be making!

Summary

You can now see how much time and effort it will take in learning and getting good in meme coin investing. There is the time needed to really learn about many different meme tokens and how they work.

However, with some time, dedication and experience, you too can get good at this and hopefully be very successful during the 2026 Bull Market!

Investing in your health is the most important investment you can ever make. Most people don't even realise this and perhaps make some vague intentions to go to the gym or eat a little bit healthier and so on and so forth.

We all know that without health, all the wealth and material things in life will be a waste.

How do you then actually invest in your health and what does that mean in practical terms? In this article, I would like to share with you some of the principles I have been using which will help you make tangible and realistic changes to your health which as we have said, will be the best investment you can ever make.

Step 1: Measuring Your Health

The first step is to take health measurements. Without measuring, you cannot know how healthy you are now and where you are headed in terms of your health. For most people, measurement means random goals such as doing a 10K or bench pressing a certain weight in the gym.

We want to do this differently and more scientifically whilst also keeping this easy and convenient to do consistently in your daily life.

The Specific Measurements

Here are the main ways you can measure your health on a consistent basis:

• Do six monthly full blood and urine test checkups. This is in a place such as Randox Health in the UK or equivalent places in the United States or other countries.

• There are multiple providers who can do this for you normally privately outside of health insurance where you go on a regular basis and have blood taken which will measure all kinds of results from full blood count, diabetes, liver health, bone health, infection and inflammation and so much more.

• This will give you a foundation of understanding as to where you are right now and where you need to improve. It will indicate where the results are slightly out of kilter with what is expected for someone of your peer group.

• You can then take this to your doctor and review this or even use something like ChatGPT to review the results if you feel secure doing that. The most important thing is that you can see in just about every area of your health where you are. And, what needs to be worked on.

• There are other tests you can do depending on what your requirements are such as an annual health assessment from your employer where there are checks with your mobility and flexibility.

• It is also worth getting pelvic health and heart health checks and assessments as these can tell you how healthy your heart is and what kind of work needs to be done. Many people think they have healthy hearts only to be rudely reminded that is not the case later on

• For these tests you do need to go to a specific centre and to get the results done from a reputable place and then take those to your medical practitioner for a review.

• The nice thing is that after a few months and years you will have a consistent body of results that you can then use to see where you are headed and what you need to change in terms of increasing your health.

• The next testing is something very few people do and is called strength testing. This is not how many pushups you can you do in the gym or what can you bench press but it is in working with an Exercise Physiologist or someone of that stature who can test the strength of your different muscles both individually to assess any imbalances, how strong you are against your peer group of your age and gender and can then test this over time.

• Here it is important to use the correct equipment which is actually quite expensive and needs to be used in a correct manner by a trained professional.

• Most personal trainers do not offer this kind of strength testing and not doing any strength testing at all or doing this incorrectly can have major impacts on your long term health.

• What we are looking for is to test your strength every quarter to see if the strength and conditioning plan given to you by your coach is actually working and also which changes need to be made.

• For example, I was working my programme when my strength and conditioning coach had a suspicion that I had tendinopathy and we worked with the physiotherapist in the clinic who actually assessed that this was indeed the case.

• This then led to the Coach giving me an updated programme in order to strengthen the area which had been affected.

• Again, almost no personal trainers can do this kind of assessment and give you this kind of advice so, you will need to find a clinic which has both physiotherapists, sports doctors and strength and conditioning coaches all within the same facility to help you test your strength and create a programme to build up your strength in this area

• Alongside this strength testing you also need to test your VO2 Max or your cardiovascular fitness to understand what level you are at right now, where you stand against your peers in your age and gender group and what kind of training you need to do to increase this.

• There is a lot of research showing that the VO2 Max levels are really really important in terms of predicting your future health. Again, I have seen very few personal trainers doing this kind of testing never mind teaching you how to improve it

• The next testing is to go to a DEXA Scan which is a medical device which measures your level of body fat, muscle and bone density and most importantly where that is spread across your body.

• So, I have used this to understand that I had a very high body fat percentage including a dangerous amount of visceral fat and the DEXA Scan technician gave me the number of calories I needed to consume each day plus the amount of protein I needed in order to reduce the body fat levels.

• Without this measurement, I would not have known exactly what I needed to work on. The other thing is that the machines one can see in gyms to do body fat testiglnf are just no good. You need something like the gold standard which is the DEXA Scan.

• The next testing is to test your sleep every night and to do that I would recommend either the Oura Ring or the Whoop Strap. Basically, I wear the Oura Ring every night before going to bed and in the morning it tells me exactly how long I have slept, how often I woke up in the night, my sleep score and recovery score.

• By having these accurate measurements I can then try different things to improve my sleep and find out what is working and what is not working.

• The other measurement you can use is something like a Garmin Connect or a FitBit to track your steps and your activities during the day. I only track my steps taken as this is a really useful way of helping me understand how much movement I am making as well as I really love the fact that the watch tells me when I need to stand up and move which is a critical part of health and longevity work

It can seem like there is a lot to track and yes there are even more things you can add such as glucose monitor testing, food intolerance testing and many other forms of testing but for now if you work with the ones I have given you, this is a great foundation before we start the next step.

Improving Your Health

Now we get on to the actual work of improving your health:

Mental Health

1. We start with working on stress and removing this or at least reducing this from your life. The first area and most important area is in healing the traumatic stress stored in the body also known as childhood trauma or developmental trauma.

2. This is the stress which is underlying and difficult to remove without doing the deep healing work needed to reach this kind of stress. Get the book 'The Body Keeps The Score" by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and work through this. It is quite a lot of work and it is a quite complex area so I will not go into it too much detail here but there is a lot of content online and in the book I have just shared with you so please start with this as soon as you can.

3. You next need to work on reducing the environmental stresses in your life which includes people, places, activities which provide massive amounts of stress to you.

4. Simply take a piece of paper and draw a line in the middle of the page. On the left side of the page write out what stresses you and on the right side of the page what relaxes or calms you.

5. Those things which stress you need to be removed or you need to remove yourself from that situation which could include changing city, country or even job or partner. It can be quite difficult but that is what needs to be done.

Physical Health

We then move on to the physical health aspects which involve you working with a Strength and Conditioning Coach ideally with an Exercise Physiology degree and doing the testing we already spoke about on your strength and your VO2 Max levels. Work with them to develop a programme for both strength training and cardiovascular fitness. Please ignore all of the online fitness gurus who tell you that cardio training is not needed.

You can then follow this programme and every two or three months get tested for your updated strength and cardiovascular fitness levels plus you may also need to visit the physiotherapist on the recommendation of your strength and conditioning coach if there are any physical imbalances or weaknesses such as for example with your rotator cuff or other issues which need further support.

On top of this, we need a relaxation or recovery layer which will involve stretching-at least 10 minutes of stretching after each physical training session and then a weekly or fortnightly Assisted Stretching session for 50 minutes at an Assisted Stretching studio in order to help you with recovery, range of motion, flexibility and more.

Finally, please do one Reformer Pilates Class per week starting with the Beginner's Class and building up.

I would also add in one monthly Sports Massage as a way of assisting you with the recovery of quite a demanding programme.

This training is the foundation for two to three years of work to build a base before you can then look at other types of exercise or activities that you really enjoy. Please do not neglect this work as it is so critical and pivotal.

Diet and Nutrition

We then come to your diet and nutrition. After going to have the DEXA Scan, you will know the amount of calories you need to consume and the amount of protein. By doing all the work in reducing your stress- both traumatic and environmental stress-you will automatically start to eat healthier. The issue is that many of us need to eat unhealthily in order to deal with the stress that we face every day. By proactively addressing the stress, you will need less medication so to speak from food or other sources such as drinking or smoking etc.

So, with food we take it step by step and start by cutting out one or two bad things e.g. sugar or alcohol and then building from there.

Let's start with breakfast and making this really healthy with oats and blueberries and protein powder and cashew nut butter etc.

You can then start to add in a healthy lunch and a healthy dinner and healthy snacks so for example I make my own protein bars these days but, to be fair I have done this over time. I have not just gone from really unhealthy to very healthy overnight. It takes some time and you need the space to do it which is why all the other work we have talked about comes first.

When you do the blood and urine testing every three to six months, you will also see the difference that the diet is having and if there are any vitamin or mineral deficiencies which you need to address either in your diet or with supplements.

The supplements which one should consider include Vitamin D3, creatine, turmeric shots and other relevant supplements. It might be worth seeing a nutritionist and having some tests done to check what you need or what might be missing but most importantly are there any foods or drinks or things which you are allergic to or have an intolerance to because those are the things you need to remove.

I am sure you are very well aware that over time you can start to reduce the processed foods you eat and start to eat at places where you can eat very healthily and also eat at home. There are many services such as Factor in the US or Frive in the UK where you can actually order very healthily pre-prepared meals in bulk and then have them ready for the week ahead. There are also very healthy fast casual places with organic foods that you can also frequent.

At a high level, in the long term you can start to make all your foods organic, if you eat fish to make sure that it is wild fish and not farmed fish, to switch to an Ayurvedic diet and to take all the actions you need to do to reduce inflammation in your body because that is probably the most worrying thing that needs to be addressed.

With diet, there are so many things you can do but we just need to focus on the 80/20 Rule which is for example the number of calories and the protein to be consumed plus of course eating very healthily such as unprocessed foods, organic foods and Ayurvedic style foods.

With water, we need about two to three litres of water a day and it might be worth having something like electrolytes such as LMNT electrolytes added to this in order to help you feel hydrated.

Dental Health

The next thing is your dental hygiene. The most important thing is of course to visit your dentist every six months but even more important than that is to go and see your dental hygienist - which can be your dentist himself or herself- every three months for a full cleaning and training on how to brush your teeth or to clean your teeth.

The process is to use a tongue cleaner, then an electric toothbrush for two minutes with the recommended toothpaste, then dental floss- not the floss sticks - and to do this properly, then the interdental brushes and finally to use an alcohol free mouthwash.

My dentist also recommends brushing one's teeth after a main meal including perhaps carrying a manual toothbrush and toothpaste with you. This may seem a lot but it actually gets quite easy with practise and it is well worth going every three months for a full clean. Your gums and your teeth and even your breath will thank you for this.

Sleep Health

Next, we come to sleep. Start by wearing the Oura Ring and measuring your sleep for one or two weeks to see how you are doing. Then just ask yourself what's stopping you from sleeping really well? Is it that you're going to bed too late or that you're getting up a lot during the night or it's too hot or whatever.

You can then start taking action- step by step to improving your sleep by addressing those specific issues. I am now at the stage where I go to sleep and wake up at the same time each day and night. I also stopped eating by a certain time and I think my body is now tired at that time and I'm looking forward to go to sleep. I have also been seeing specialists for different things to see if they would help me sleep better and the best approach is im seeing what works and what doesn't.

For me, most importantly, healing the traumatic stress has been the thing which has helped me the most to sleep the best. I released a lot of issues and stored tension in my body which has really helped me relax and sleep better. Trust, as you deal with the trauma and issues you have, you will less likely need stimulation and excitement and be more comfortable with relaxation, silence and stillness.

Summary

The most important thing is as I have said to measure everything and then see the results over time. I have now shown you exactly what you can do in many different areas of your health so that you now know what to do.

Of course all of this costs money which is why I am saying this is an investment in you and an investment in your health and this is just the foundation. There are so many things you can add on top of this as you progress including going out in nature, spiritual work, competitive team sports and so much more.

What is the point or the purpose of investing? Why do we do this and not just spend all of our money and income and enjoy our day to day?

The future is always the answer I think of - from having money to cover us for any emergencies as well as to hold on to our purchasing power to offset the steady increase in inflation and weakening of our fiat currencies. Plus, to buy certain things whether to pay off loans, put a deposit down on a property, give gifts etc.

However, the key reason is ultimately to give us income so that we never have to work again. This is the ultimate purpose of course a pension when we retire, providing us with a monthly or annual income. With investing, we don’t even have to wait until retirement to obtain income producing assets and start replacing our day job with other sources of revenue.

To reach these goals, we need a portfolio.

What Is a Portfolio?

What is a portfolio? According to Dictionary.com, it is “the total holdings of the securities, commercial paper, etc., of a financial institution or private investor”.

Investing can seem confusing and that is why it is good to break down everything into the main parts which include:

• Property or Real Estate - this is usually a residential home with the mortgage partly or totally paid off. It can also include commercial real estate such as holdings in offices

• Cash or Cash Like - this is your savings fund to dip into as needed. You can have some Market Money Funds or just pure cash in a savings account

• Pension - single or sometimes multiple pensions held with different employers, or self-employed pensions

• Stocks - these can be either individual stocks e.g. Amazon or Nvidia or Index Funds such as the S&P 500. These are sometimes held in tax efficient vehicles e.g. ISAs

• Bonds - these are either Government or Corporate issued promises to pay the bearer a specific amount or interest or both

• Illiquid Assets - this includes things such as art, collectibles etc

• Intellectual Property - this is where the investor owns the rights to patents, artistic content e.g. movies and music which provide residual or recurring income

• Commodities - these can include precious metals such as gold or silver as well as ownership of or access to raw materials such as copper,cocoa etc.

• Business Ownership - separate to stocks, this includes the businesses that the investor themselves owns or runs. They might have founded it and continue to run it

• Angel Investing - I have included this as a separate category but, really it fits within stocks. This is when you as an individual investor get to put in between $25,000 to $50,000 in a brand new venture e.g. think Uber or AirBnB when they were still tiny.

• Crypto - this is such a big area that it is hard to categorise it into a small category. We have

• The Big Assets - Bitcoin and Ethereum - likely to be the digital gold and digital oil of the financial system. Whether held in self-custody, on exchanges or in funds

• Altcoins - from SUI to SOL - high-quality tokens representing Layer 1s or other innovative offerings such as HYPER and PLASMA etc.

• Memecoins - these are risky but as we have seen with PEPE, SHIB and of course DOGE, they can go to multi-billion dollar valuations

• Stablecoins - holding USDC or other stablecoins for use in Yield Farming, Polymarket i.e. prediction markets, saving, borrowing etc.

• Specific Use Cases - such as Real World Assets (RWAs), Robotics, AI etc.

  
  

The key thing about these assets is that they are all something you own. They will either increase in value i.e. appreciate over time - greater than the rate of inflation primarily because they are scarce assets meaning a limited supply with high demand such as Gold or Bitcoin.

The other option is that they provide income such as bonds, intellectual property and more. Dividends are one way that stocks can provide an income to investors.

What does a strong portfolio look like?

The Traditional Version

The ultimate strategy is to have a well structured portfolio which in the long-term will shield the value of your total ownings and grow to cover you for retirement and to hopefully pass on to friends, family and of course the non-profit benefactors to help the world in the future.

What should such an asset allocation look like?

For this, I will turn to the experts including David Swensen, the former manager of the Yale University Endowment portfolio.

This is in the following structure from his book Unconventional Success:

• 30% U.S. Stocks (domestic equities for growth)

• 15% Developed International Stocks (for global exposure)

• 5-10% Emerging Markets (for higher potential returns with added risk)

• 20% Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) (for income and inflation hedging)

• 15% U.S. Treasury Bonds (for fixed income and safety)

• 15% Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) (to guard against inflation)

The idea behind this portfolio is that it allows for a lot of diversification and can be easily set up using Index Funds and other managed funds. (Just be careful of the costs of any managed funds). Rebalancing can be done if a particular sector grows in comparison to the others e.g. if US stocks surge they could grow to 40-50% of the total portfolio so to keep to this structure, you would simply sell some of the US stocks you own and purchase other funds to get back to the level above.

In this portfolio allocation, it is essentially made up of stocks, stock indices, Treasury Bonds etc.

My Version

So, when I think of a portfolio, I would add in everything key to us but not included in the Swensen Model of Asset Allocation which includes Crypto holdings, residential property after the mortgage costs are calculated. In my own example, Crypto is a much heavier element of my portfolio as I see the future value of that asset class whereas others see this as more risky.

You can also look at including gold.

Where to Begin with Portfolio Investing?

1. Start with Maxing the Pension Contributions

The first thing is to start easy by maxing out your pension contributions. You may have a pension with your employer or could create a self-employed pension if you work for yourself.

14-15% as a minimum of your salary into your pension is a great start and is often easier than expected to do. Your employer (and/or your own company) can match the pension contributions plus you can make pension contributions which will then reduce your current tax obligation.

The big benefit is not just the tax implications but also the long-term savings and investing horizons. Over 30-40 years, you can make incredible returns and as we have seen earlier, this is all a benefit of what is called compound effect or compound investing - any profits made are re-invested in the following year so you are getting profits on top of profits.

Now, with the pension - please make sure you are not just depositing the money there and then leaving it. The pension is just a “wrapper”. You still need to invest in it. Usually employer provided pensions have simple schemes such as Balanced - Conservative and Aggressive, something like that. Speak to the financial advisor provided by your firm or your own one and make a decision. It is worth getting this right.

For me, after speaking with the financial provider provided by my firm, I firstly increased the amount I was investing which is great as it has ballooned the amount in my pension and reduced my tax burden. I then switched to the Aggressive Scheme - i.e. more shares than bonds. Before then I decided to invest myself with a mix of US large, small and international shares plus some commodities within the pension wrapper. My plan is to just look at this once per year max - and “set it and forget it”. It has taken some time plus some nerve wracking moments e.g. when the tariffs were announced recently and everything fell.

It did take some getting used to but as you practice and spend a bit of time working on this, it will get easier to do. The sooner you can start and the more you can put in, the better. Some countries also have state provided pensions so be sure you are providing those funds so you will get access to the funds later.

As the pension financial advisor I spoke to said, with the returns on the pension, you are looking for gentle and consistent returns over a long-time rather than the exciting returns

2. Then Come the Conservative Investments

The next thing is to invest in the consistent steady assets you can invest in outside of the pension and hopefully in a tax friendly environment such as the ISAs in the UK. You can sign up for a local stockbroking account and set up an account usually in something like the S&P 500 Index which you can then invest into automatically each month.

Before that, I start each month with around $500 per month into a savings account which I can use as needed. There is then of course the mortgage if you have one. I also look to overpay each month into the mortgage so that the capital is paid off sooner and the mortgage term is actually shorter. By doing this, then the property element of the monthly costs are reduced, which means more income for investing.

I also put something into Premium Bonds which is like a government supported savings account where the interest is used to provide a lottery-like prize each month. The maximum prize each month is £1m ($1.5m or so) with smaller prizes also available. I did see on the UK FIRE Reddit sub-thread that a young guy around 26 years had actually won the £1m prize which gave me the idea to start investing in this each month. Basically it is like playing the lottery each month but you can keep your capital (minus value lost to inflation).

Obviously, paying off any debt is also part of this side of things whether student loans, mortgage, credit card and other loans as well. Paying those off will help avoid negative compound interest affects.

The main point of all of these investments in the conservative investments category is a bit like the pension investing - they are “set it and forget it.” You can use the Swensen Model of Asset Allocation we have already seen or just keep it simple using the S&P 500 Index or one of the Vanguard Funds so you don’t need to think about it.

3. Increasing Your Income over the Long-Term

One of the absolute best ways of investing and improving your portfolio value is simply to increase the amount of income you earn each year. This can be from your salary and improving your earning power through commission or changing job or role, getting promoted etc.

On top this can be in a “side-hustle” or starting your own business with the aim of long-term income provision as well as building multiple streams of income. This has the benefit of offering you more income to invest after tax plus the ability to reduce the risk if you lose your primary source of income i.e. your full-time job.

By learning skills and more importantly, developing your network both within your firm, industry and more widely through things like social media, you can get access to higher paid opportunities whether a full-time job or gigs or customers and clients.

I have done this through my crypto investing “work” which has included exploring multiple new assets from the Base App to Polymarket to learn how to get good in these areas to generate income as well as for potential airdrops in the future - where new protocols send tokens to their earliest users and community members. I have also been posting a lot on X and the Base App and meeting people there to learn and share experiences with.

I am also in my personal life working on mental and physical health and all of this I would like to develop into content through YouTube and courses etc.

For you this could be anything from coding new products to developing a social media presence and doing modelling etc as one former colleague is now successfully doing.

4. Active Investing - Finding Your Passion

Now that we have gotten the main bits of the investing work out, we now look at where you actively work on with your investing. This is the side where you are actually interested and eventually passionate about and are exploring and getting better at.

The point with this area is you are using very small amounts of your total capital, anything from 1-10% depending upon your risk profile. You are using this capital to learn and explore and to get good in this area before you “scale up” once you have proven you can be successful.

This is the area where you are providing what is called “sweat equity” - you are learning more than other people and are therefore getting good and better than other people in the market.

So, what are these areas? These are areas you are naturally drawn to. First, find the areas and then explore areas you can invest in. In the book Laughing at Wall Street by Chris Camillo and One Up On Wall Street by Peter Lynch, these very successful authors talk about how they find and invest in companies and areas early - when they are starting as trends and before they become household names and “Wall Street” - i.e. financial institutions have found out about them.

They talk about how most of the Wall Street analysts are middle-class, white urban males and so they miss things which are youth, women and minority/rural driven trends. Not just that area, they miss things being pushed early on TikTok and other social media as well as the areas you personally may be passionate about. From fitness to clothing, travel to consumer goods. Also, you may notice things in the area you work e.g. 10 to 15 years and people using Salesforce could have profited from seeing how these CRM systems were replacing the existing systems.

You could have just been a customer and then investing in the stock. Looking and being more observant of the world around you and then following the framework can help you find these areas to invest in.

Similarly, you might love property or art and be able to invest in those areas and find properties to invest in or REITs etc.

You may also like crypto or love crypto and other areas like that. I just play and explore and within that huge ecosystem, I find areas I understand and like and then go all in there. E.g. as I have mentioned, I am looking at Polymarket, the prediction market and then going all in on soccer predictions. Other people are looking at Elections, or Mention Markets etc.

Investing is ultimately about self-expression and as Peter Lynch says in One Up On Wall Street, it is more an art than a science so you don’t need complicated algorithms or spreadsheets - unless you love working with those - in which case, go ahead.

In investing, it is hard to beat someone having fun i.e. who loves the area as they will automatically and naturally outwork and out-think everyone else, regardless of AI assistance. (Or, they will work even better with AI to generate these results).

Whatever this is, look at the portfolio elements we discussed earlier on in this article and see which areas might interest you. Then, do a search on YouTube to find introductory videos on those areas. You can find videos which will outline how to invest or at least explore those categories including for your area or region.

Then, as you hopefully get better in these areas, you can generate returns and use the risky to conservative strategy by parlaying the profits into the safer more long-term assets and build your portfolio.

5. From Risky to Conservative Portfolio Allocation

One thing often overlooked is that there is a kind of cycle where a small portion of the portfolio is held in riskier assets e.g. memecoins in crypto or individual stocks and as they appreciate in value, they are “rebalanced” into some of the more conservative and less volatile assets e.g. index funds or property.

This is also the case as the size of the portfolio increases, less risk needs to be taken and smaller percentages of return are adequate e.g. 10% of $1m is a lot more than 10% of $1,000 meaning that the millionaire may be okay with a smaller return on investment versus the $1k asset holder who may need to take more risks to grow their portfolio.

Back in 2021, when I seriously started looking at crypto investing (after initially starting in 2018), I had some money to invest but realised that the altcoins I was interested in were too expensive given my capital size and the returns they would offer, perhaps 2-5x whilst great compared to stocks for example, just would not do much for my portfolio.

I realized I needed to be focused on much riskier assets where smaller bet sizes could generate outlandish returns also known as “asymmetric bets” - a critical term to learn and to work with. So, I started looking at meme coins, which the “traditional” crypto market looked down on.

By doing that and being early I was able to generate a 150,000% return on the SHIBA INU or $SHIB meme coin with a small amount of capital. I then rotated this into more “conservative” crypto assets i.e. Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Similarly for you, you may have 80% of your assets in more conservative options such as property or index funds and then work with the 10-20% of assets in riskier - but at least with some logic - assets to hopefully get the higher returns.

Over time, you will hopefully need less riskier assets and can build substantial sizes in other asset classes.

Summary

The point is investing can be fun - a lot of fun and does not have to be daunting or difficult even if it seems that way - especially because many financial advisors and companies want to make a lot of money off you.

With some simple reading, thinking, talking with AI and experts, you can start your portfolio building journey today.

Where is the 2025 Crypto Bull Market?

I am writing this article as much to get my thinking together as to explain to you what some of the brightest minds in crypto finance are saying.

The background is that we all through we had crypto figured out. Every four years is a crypto bull market as in 2013, 2017 and 2021 and then there is a four year crypto winter where everything is in a bad state for many years. As in this diagram of the crypto market:

There are certain reliable indicators such as the Bitcoin halving and when the cycle of growth goes from BTC to ETH to Altcoins to Memecoins and then just about anything else. When retail gets involved and your grandmother is calling you about investing in “Unicorn Fart Dust” for example. We also had fresh catalysts such as ICOs in 2017 and NFTs in 2021.

So, 2025 should have been the bull market but even though the market is higher than in 2021, it just doesn’t seem to have happened as we had expected. BTC still dominates the market with a 58% value of all CoinGecko recorded cryptocurrencies and BTC and most alts have not really exploded.ETH has crashed from its ATH of almost $5k in August 2025 and just when the market seems to be gaining momentum, something happens to crash it.

So, is the bull market - as many on X and YouTube are saying - not going to happen, has already happened e.g. with all of the inflows into the ETFs, institutions and Governments buying or could it in fact be something else?

Introducing the Wen Banana Zone Thesis

This is where I have to rely on the ex-Goldman Sachs banker and now CEO of Real Vision Raoul Pal for his analysis. (I am not sure if he was the first to come up with this thesis but he is the one I see the most talking about it).

Whilst I thought that it is the Bitcoin halving and general crypto market maturity and more people coming into the market was the reason for the crypto bullmarkets, what Raoul Pal says is that the real reason is liquidity in the global money supply.

It gets a bit complicated but includes everything from M2 which according to ChatGPT is “how much spendable money exists in the system”.

So, in the U.S., M2 ≈ Cash & coins in circulation, Checking deposits (M1), Savings deposits, Small time deposits (e.g., <$100k CDs) and Retail money-market funds.

When M2 rises, there’s more “ready-to-spend” money in bank accounts and funds. When it falls or grows slowly, liquidity is tighter.

You can then include all of the liquidity which comes from Central Banks and the Treasury Department and other Financial institutions.

The correlation between Bitcoin price and this liquidity is 90%. The reason for the four year market cycles are because this is the typical length that government debt is scheduled for.

Now, what Raoul Pal is saying that whenever the debt has to be refinanced, the authorities ease financial conditions such as interest rates cuts or the infamous Quantitative Easing etc. to make it easier to refinance, it leads to liquidity increasing especially M2 and a lot of this going into assets which pump up the market as has happened before and is demonstrated with the correlation of BTC to this liquidity. Retail and institutions have easier access to credit and with lower interest rates, they also need more riskier assets to invest in to get the same returns.

So, there is the perfect storm of conditions leading to a dramatic spike in asset prices - especially crypto.

The reason this has not happened yet is because of Covid, the debt contracts were extended longer meaning as much as 5 years and therefore the real “Banana Zone” as Raoul Pal calls it, will happen in Q1 to Q2 2026.

We can also see what is about to happen according to this tweet from Shanka Perera.

He basically says that there is $7.4 trillion stored in what are called money market funds. These are Treasury Bills earning 5%+. He is saying that when the US Federal Reserve eventually cuts interest rates as is expected. You can see that on Polymarket, the expectation is between 3 interest rate cuts in the US in 2026 totalling 75 basis points (bps).

What the tweet is saying that when these interest rates cut happen, the Money Market Funds (MMFs) go out hunting for higher rates of return and therefore riskier assets which will then flood into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Summary - The Good Times are About to Role

To cut a long story short, the upcoming refinancing of debt is going to lead to an easing in the financial conditions from reducing interest rates to quantitative easing which will lead to an increase in M2 the global money supply to spend which will - along with the Money Market Funds seeking higher rates of return will flood into the market and then give us our full 2021 style bull run but, this time more likely in the first half of 2026 because of the fact that during Covid the previous debt had a longer maturity cycle.

I don’t understand all of this but, it looks pretty compelling. It then lets me have the confidence to be buoyed up by Alex Becker and other crypto influencers that the good times are still to come plus it makes logical sense when you see the charts and the previous crypto v financial liquidity market cycles.

What do you think? How are you preparing for early 2026 and the crypto market?

How much money do you need to spend to get good?

How much should you bet and when should you do this?

How to Start

Firstly, let's take a step back and approach Polymarket as a place to learn and be curious and to have fun and explore, rather than just to make money.

Polymarket is becoming ever more important so it is a great idea to just explore and play with it.

Have a look at the major categories at the top of the Polymarket landing page and see what interests you.

We have Sports, Elections, Mention Markets, Earnings, Culture, Weather and many other categories.

Polymarket or prediction markets just like all investing is a form of self-expression of knowing yourself and then applying discipline and rules to investing.

My Interests

For me, I love competition and I love soccer so that is one of my main areas that I focus on. After a lot of experimentation, I came down to “heavy favourites” whereby either in domestic European Leagues such as the Premier League or in international matches I would bet on those very giant teams e.g. Liverpool or Bayern Munich against much weaker teams. The same for countries e.g. four time World Cup winners Germany to beat Northern Ireland.

Another area I found I really liked is in Elections. I have taken part in the New York Mayoral Election as I had been following this on YouTube and then the Democratic Presidential Primary.

I even took part in the Bolivian and Japanese elections after reading articles about them in magazines such as The Economist.

Your Strategy

For you, it is about finding what falls to you. There is a Greek software developer who loves the mention markets e.g. how many times will Trump say a particular word in his speech. There is a woman who bet on the Taylor Swift markets.

For some of these, you may know the markets already whereas for others, you will need to play and find this. There are so many markets that you may not find your passion for them until you have explored them a lot.

How Much To Bet

You can start with a small amount $50 to $100 and then start putting small bets of $2 to $5 as you learn.

As someone said on X - a critical place for you to be, just click buttons and try things. This is the best way to learn. By starting really small, you are reducing the risk and can focus on getting a lot of bets under your belt.

It is all about “Thinking in Bets” as Annie Duke, a former professional poker player says in her book of the same name.

You can either calculate probabilities and Expected Value and things like that or work more intuitively. This is going to depend on you - how you tend to work and your mathematical and statistical expertise and experience.

It is crucial once you have gotten 10-20 bets to go through each of them and ask why you made them, what was your thesis, whether it worked or not and why not. Sometimes your calculations were off and sometimes it is luck.

For example, my very first bet was Inter Milan v Udinese in an Italian soccer league game. I had bet for Inter to win but I already knew that Udinese was a very good team and sure enough they went on to win the game.

By reviewing all of your bets, you will start to see patterns. I put this in a spreadsheet and you can do the same as well.

Doing Your Research

As you get more experience, you will start to automatically improve your research plus start to “know” and feel things.

For football, I started using a website called FBRef and would check the League positions and the Head to Head in previous match ups. Did the big team always beat the weaker team or was the weaker team actually pretty good against them?

I then started going into Expected Goals and things like that which I had read about in a book about this last year.

Similarly for you, you can look at how things have gone historically in your chosen market? One woman on X talked about how she spoke with some Swifties to find out what Taylor Swift generally talks about on late night talk shows etc.

You can use AI and ChatGPT and explore and watch previous Earnings Calls or speeches to see what is usually said there. For sports, you can look at League form and understand if certain players are injured etc. Try and find good sources.

Another way is going to X and following accounts talking about Polymarket and specific markets you are interested in and maybe talking with them on X and/or Discord Groups etc. (Just beware of scams and never go to links or unofficial pages).

Putting it All Together

After a few weeks, you should have an idea of how you are doing. Where are you regularly making money and where are you losing? How can you improve?

You can then start scaling up and increasing bet sizes as you hopefully make yourself a good history on Polymarket.

I hope this article was of interest. I am kalchopra1 on Polymarket