Picture this: a chicken running around just after its head has been cut off. The chicken has no sense of direction and literally, it is just running around aimlessly to save whatever life it has left. Have you ever seen chickens being killed? So brutal. Can I tell you, that is how it is when you are jumping from investment to investment trying to get rich but you have no clear direction or plan on what to do. Like a headless chicken you are running around trying to save what little of your financial life you have left.
Last year was a big year for IPOs in the Jamaica Stock Market and I know a lot of people who would jump into every IPO, put as much money as they could and hope for the best that the price would double. They would then be able to sell and make a ton of money. Now the thing is, while that strategy worked for 2022, it wasn’t the best strategy for the long term. Why? Because you put a lot of money in for your application and you weren’t necessarily allocated 100%. Then after that, you were in that mad rush to hurry and sell the shares quickly to try and double your money without being sure if the price would increase from $1, which is the IPO price, to $2 or $3, or $4. It was just this never-ending headless chicken race to figure out how to quickly make money, and flip money.
So 2023 rolls around and that strategy doesn’t work anymore. Why is it not working? There have been no new IPOs since the start of the year. So, people who were banking on the IPO last year, this year are very quiet because they are wondering what’s going on. The same thing can be said for the international market. Last year, because of all of the volatility, people were in and out of trades and they were just doing these quick flips. Now while these strategies can work in the short term they can’t be used to build wealth long term and more importantly, they cannot build generational wealth. It’s very hard to repeat these strategies consistently. One little thing changes and it throws off the entire “investment plan” that you may have thought that you had.
When I work with clients what I ensure I do is create a simple process, a system, and a structure for their finances. That’s what you need at the end of the day. We want to know that no matter what season we are in, our plan still works. We want to be that confident investor that sees the difference between 2023 and 2022 and implements the strategies accordingly. We want to have a confident and feasible plan of how to pivot our finances and navigate our financial strategies to ensure that we make money.
Now with all of the scams that we see happening across the world, where is the best place to put your money now? A Lot of times the safest place to put your money can be in the ground. So strategies like real estate and private equity are becoming popular right now and these are some of the things we’ve been teaching our clients to start thinking about as they build out and implement their wealth-building strategies.
The bottom line is we can’t be headless chickens running around anymore. We need to take control of our finances. Create a plan, and become more financially aware. It’s financial awareness so use what’s left of the month of April to ensure that you become financially aware. Think about the strategies you need to be implementing. The days of running around like a headless chicken have to come to an end because that headless chicken eventually dies. Your financial strategy will die too if it’s weak. At the end of the day, you have to create a solid strategy. If you don’t know how to create that solid strategy you need to find someone who does, who can help you because that is what life is all about. Have a system, that’s what wealthy people do. They have a system and a process that they rely on year after year, day after day, century after century and it works for them. If you don’t have that, you have no chance of winning with your finances. Get yourself a solid plan to keep your wealth journey tacked.