In December 2019 a friend of mine started shorting S&P 500 by buying put options (he had no previous experience with options trading). In other words, he was betting that the US stock market will go down. He believed that COVID-19 will spread around the world and the US economy and the stock market will suffer as a result.

It turned out he was right. COVID-19 affected the world’s economy and the US stock market crashed. He started with roughly $15,000 in his trading account and made more than $200,000 in just a couple of weeks. …

I highly recommend you reading these books and forming your own opinions. However, if you don’t have the time to read all of them, at least you can check these quotes that I have written down. I am sure you may find many more and different interesting ideas if you read these books yourself.

Many of these books have a bias for productivity, financial markets and psychology since these are my areas of interest.

Here is the list of books included:

• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Skin…

When I was 16, I had a real dilemma regarding the choice of my career. Should I continue running the business that I started when I was 15? Should I follow my passion and study filmmaking? Or, should I abandon both ideas and study finance instead to earn more money?

It was difficult to choose because I kept asking myself these questions: What is important to choose a career? Should I choose money or passion? Can I have a successful career if I follow my passion? What if I choose money and regret not following my passion?

These questions are…

Many people talk about real estate passive income, without actually investing their own money. I’ve always been interested in buying my own rental property so I decided to find out if real estate can indeed be a great passive income investment.

This story will show the complete process of how I purchased my first rental property, renovated it, the problems I encountered along the way, a spreadsheet for the project finances and how COVID-19 affected me.

In the end, there is a summary of key takeaways from the whole process.

I will also answer the key question — can you…

In a booming economy, it is not exciting to talk about emergency funds. We would much rather talk about investing in stocks, real estate or borrowing money to increase our return on investment (because it’s so cheap to borrow right?).

But today is different. The coronavirus is rapidly spreading around the world. More than 100 countries have introduced travel restrictions. Jobless claims have hit new records and many major stock market indices have dropped more than 20%.

There is no doubt that we are in an economic recession right now. Those who have lost their jobs or faced a salary…

Please note: I am not public health or medical professional. I usually write about personal finance or self-development. However, due to the fact that there is so much false information about COVID-19 and many people think that COVID-19 is just the flu or old people’s disease, I decided to write a summary based on facts that have been presented by respectable sources. You can also find a few useful links at the end of this article.

What is COVID-19?

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that can cause respiratory infections from a common cold to more severe diseases, such as MERS or…

When I was in secondary school, I hated books. That was mostly because teachers told me what to read and I resisted (reading benefits were clearly unknown to me).

However, when I started studying at university, a guest lecturer once said to me: “You can’t go to a job interview in finance if you haven’t read “The Big Short”. His reasoning was — if you haven’t read one of the most popular books in finance, you can’t show up to a job interview and tell that you are very passionate about finance. …

When I graduated from university, I immediately bought a car to go to work. At the time, I never really considered cycling as a viable option. When someone told me I should try cycling to work, I started thinking about all the negatives.

How can I cycle in the rain or snow? What about arriving at work drenched in sweat? Isn’t cycling very dangerous? I made excuses because I was lazy and I didn’t know the benefits of cycling.

Why I Started Cycling to Work

A couple of years ago I met a couple who cycled everywhere. I am not talking about cycling only on the…