How Sarwa’s Options Trading and Product Diversity Has Helped Them Scale Quickly #029

In episode #29 of Fintech Underground, our CEO, Yoshi, speaks with Mark Chahwan, Co-Founder and CEO of Sarwa about the following topics:

0:00 - Why Sarwa built Sarwa Trade as a way to give their customers more control over their own investing and trading decisions.

4:00 - Why Sarwa has focused on building a robust product suite before expanding into new markets.

10:00 - The impact of adding options to Sarwa’s product suite and how options trading has been a growing trend.

15:00 - How COVID sparked a global interest in investing and asset ownership.

19:00 - The growing trend of increasing access to markets beyond the U.S. exchange.

29:00 - What Mark feels is the hidden gem of the fintech world.

Thank you for listening to Alpaca’s latest episode of Fintech Underground. You can listen on Spotify or watch the YouTube video version here:

Full Transcript

Yoshi: Hey, thank you for joining the fintech underground. we have Mark, who is the co founder CEO of Sarwa, which is the leading UAE investing, trading, crypto, bunch of the things fintech app. welcome Mark. 

Mark: Thanks, Yoshi. Good to, good to do this. Excited for this chat. 

Yoshi: Yeah, definitely, definitely. Like, you know, we've been Discussing a lot, over the, you know, years, but, like, you know, I think, like, I just wanted to firstly start with, how, you know, has, you know, your journey has been, starting from the, you know, one investment product. And then you expanded so much already and how successful you are. 

Yoshi: what was the key, that, like, you know, that drove you, to be able to come here after the,first product launch? 

Mark: Yeah. so we're seven years in, so it's nice. It's a good time to, to reflect on, on the journey. As you said, we started basically rooted in long term investing. So think retirement planning, ETFs, diversified portfolios. And I think it was a nice place to start because you have to build trust, a trusted brand, a great service. 

Mark: Hire amazing people so that we can build a new fintech platform and have people trust us with their money. And also introduce a stable long term way of doing things. With time we learned though that people want more control and want to do their own investment and trading as well. They don't just want to give all that fun away to someone to manage it for them. 

[00:02:00] Mark: So we started getting so much inbound in terms of requests on, can I do this with my portfolio? Oh, I'd like to change that. And instead of going down the road of customizing too much, the platform, we're like, you know what, let's give,power to, to the people where they can buy and sell their own, and make their own decisions. 

Mark: And, it turned out to be, one of the best decisions we've made as today. The assets on our self directed trading platform called Sarwa Trade actually exceeded our wealth management assets, which shows, although it's a much, much more recent product. So it shows you that there's a big trend where people are, feel much more comfortable and confident in doing their own decision making when it comes to investments and trading. 

Mark: Yep. 

Yoshi: and then, like, you know, we always talk about, like, you know, the, which countries, you know, trading apps doing well or not, you know, obviously we talk about a lot about, you know, obviously Robinhood. And then we also talk about Wealthsimple in Canada. Right, like, and

both of them have a very different journey, but, like, they're very successful in, you know, on their own way. 

Yoshi: so, like, you know, these are like, you know, the, the app and the business that you kind of benchmark. so that, like, you're, you're learning a lot from for you to make decisions. 

Mark: definitely. I think these are two really strong platforms in Canada and the U. S. It was actually based on these platforms that when we started, we were trying to get our friends and family to open some accounts with them, but they would only serve Canadians and Americans. And we realized that's quite a big gap for people in the UAE and the Middle East that cannot open these accounts. 

Mark: And, are left having to revert to not investing or saving, or having to work with an offshore platform that's not really designed for someone that lives in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc. So the disadvantages of that is that they would have to incur banking fees, struggle to open an account, maintaining the accounts challenging the type of service the type of fees everything is not localized. 

[00:04:00] Mark: So so these great platforms are Are nice and it's nice to also exchange notes the worlds gotten A lot smaller, there's more and more people coming to Abu Dhabi from these firms. Before we had to like beg for a call from the UAE, just to exchange notes. I think now there's a healthy kind of, a lot of events, a lot of these players we have met. 

Mark: And have a direct relationship to exchange notes on what's worked, what hasn't worked. But the common theme across all these investment platforms is clearly that once you're trusted with one vertical, such as self directed investing or passive investing, customers really want to also use the same platform for other needs. 

Mark: So when we've SRY Invest. Trade, crypto, save. We've added commodities through ETFs as well this year for gold and precious metals. there's a lot also more that we're going to be rolling out together. And the more we add and the more people kind of praise that, innovation. The, the downside, I think to, to, that could be maybe market expansion when you're expanding your product suite so much. 

Mark: but that's something I've come to live with where I'd still prioritize, just a bigger product suite over being maybe spread too thin across too many markets. 

Yoshi: And then talking about the, product expansion, you recently launched options trading. And I think like, you know, that's a pretty big, you know, complex product. you know, how are you feeling about that? 

Mark: I love this product actually. It's, here I have this book that happened to be right on my desk that I'll, this is a book called Anti Fragile by a Lebanese, American author called Nassim Taleb, who's big on, on options trading. So, I'm very excited about this one. I think

it speaks to some, there's a lot of renowned investors that have made a lot of money through options trading in a short amount of time by making some bold bets. 

[00:06:00] Mark: And I think since we started, when we, when we first started Sarwa, we had to educate people a lot on, ETFs, passive investing. But now you, if we do the same thing, they're like, okay, we've heard it all before. Can you talk about the next thing, so people are more sophisticated, more aware of, more risk aware and to protect risk, but also to take on more risk if they've learned, if they've lived, for example, COVID or 2022 and some downturn. 

Mark: So, so that's what makes me excited about options. It gives you a lot of, well, one, it reflects that, the investment sophistication, that's growing. Bye. And two, it's a very powerful risk mitigation tool that people are starting to learn about. It's complex, it requires a bigger understanding, but one that I think shows a lot of promise for our customers and also for our business. 

Mark: As we've seen a lot of, if we take Robinhood as an example, where it makes up, you know, a strong share of their, of their top line. So I think it's, It's a very good tool and I think it's, it's one of the future tools of, of investing that we're going to see really take off. 

Yoshi: I, I firstly, I'm so like, you know, ashamed about this, but I didn't know Taleb is a Lebanese American. That's that's a big surprise to me. 

Mark: No, he, is, he speaks a lot about, in his books, et cetera, he's from a town called Amioun. And, yeah. So I know I've been geeking out a lot about his books. Glad that you, you're also aware of him. 

Yoshi: Yeah. Yeah. Because like, you know, I've read, you know, of course, like, most of his books, like, you know, I've been a big fan because, you know, I went through that Lehman crash, you know, basically, like, you know, his, his books, like, you know, the, you know, like, the firstly, I got introduced this book is like, you know, I was really. 

[00:08:00] Yoshi: Reflecting upon what happened at Lehman, right? Like, you're kind of thinking 

Mark: How did we, how did the world miss this? Yeah. 

Yoshi: exactly. And then I was in the, you know, completely in the midst of it. Like I was doing the securitization for subprimes and I was trading synthetic asset backed securities and CNBs and everything. I was, you know, there and then I just didn't see the whole big picture and his 

books were just explaining, like, you know, unbundling, like, you know, the thing that I was in it is just a part of the long cycles. 

Yoshi: It's, you know, you can kind of logicalize what happened and I was like, so shocked to read that book. And I just like, you know, kept on reading books and, you know, about like, you know, his, his writing. I was just like so many bookmarks, like literal bookmarks on the page.

Paper on the books, like in the Black Swan and like, you know, the bunch of others. So, wow, that's, that's amazing. That's a big finding for me, during this call today. 

Mark: Yeah, you mentioned that as well, You know, Black Swan is something very, something we're actually working on as well to, to think how can we help our clients, whether it's people that are investing or trading to, to hedge against these, these risks. And although there's a lot of narratives around maybe, is it Bitcoin? 

Mark: Is it gold? Is it bonds? I think each one has a shortfall, and has failed investors in the past. Bonds have, have been, quite terrible in the last few years as it, while they're meant to protect. Portfolio is when options actually have, if you know, and you know what you're doing, of course, it's, it's tougher, but it's a, it's a direct contract where the payoff is there and you don't have to base it out of a narrative. 

Mark: Bitcoin is a, is a good example. It has a very strong and still does narrative around hedging, but you know, we, every time stocks have tanked, it's gone down with it, at least more recently. So. So that's why I think options presents something more tangible, more,more assured. It's more mathematical as well. 

[00:10:00] Mark: That if you spend enough time learning it and invest that, that initial time, you end up having more tools so that you are, you are more immune to, to, to these market shocks. 

Yoshi: And like, I really, truly agree with that because, Looking at the, how like a lot of those successful hedge fund managers, including Taleb, and then of course, like looking at Citadel, you know, Ken Griffin to the Bridgewater, Ray Dalio, even like, you know, the, they all like grew up trading options, making money through options, not really trading the actual like underlying stocks, right. 

Yoshi: If they really want to become big, you know, obviously, you know, it's not easy at all. But as you say, there's so much like, Inefficiencies, and then like, you know, undiscovered something that like, you know, that not only professionals can figure out. And I think that is the reason why I feel like, you know, there's some of those emerging hedge fund managers and smart people can actually, you know, take advantage of it. 

Yoshi: to, you know, become like really big and, and it's amazing, like, you know, how, you know, you are able to add the option trading so quickly, like, you know, from the journey of like, you know, firstly, you launched your, you know, Sarwa invest, because like looking at other companies, like even like Wealthsimple or Robinhood, like, you know, that product velocity that you are scoring is extremely fast. So like, I'm just really amazed how you've, you've been doing that. 

Mark: yeah, I think kudos to the team and, I think the partnership at, with Alpaca as well. People are always surprised by how lean we are and I think a big part of it is, is, it's not Sarwa as a stand alone team. It's, you know, powered by, amazing partners like Alpaca that are also, we're all sprinting together and it creates that velocity rather than.

Mark: You know, bringing everything in house, but then you optimize maybe your costs, but you delay the launch of certain things. So we really like that, that partnership we have. We also, we also realized, I think with the regulator that, there's a very open dialogue. So, it makes it, it makes it very, know, there's a very good collaboration between customers voice. 

00:12:00] Mark: As soon as they want something, we see a trend maybe in. We talked to you about it, or you tell us, Hey, this is coming. We talked to, the ADGM, the Abu Dhabi,FSRA regulator about it. And they were, They were on board, they actually, we recently synced with them on how people that are buying options are performing and the performance is very strong, where the majority are making money and the earnings are, I think, something like five times more than the losses. 

Mark: So in terms of also looking at those that are using it, and the accounts that are using options, how are they performing, also matters and that gives more, that gives us comfort and the regulator more comfort that this is a product that, It's building and protecting well, despite, despite its risks. 

Mark: And as long as people know the risks involved and how to use it, then, and if the suitability then that's good. 

Yoshi: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Of course, like, you know, it's not for everyone. That's why, like, you know, we all together kind of making sure that this is only for the hands of the people who actually understand it well. Right. So, 

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But I think, I think it'll, it'll, it'll pick up, especially if we factor in kind of the world we live in, in terms of content, where there's like the amount of. I'm always surprised, but I didn't expect so many financial influencers and bloggers and, you know, on YouTube and Tiktok and, and, X, or Twitter. 

Mark: They're just doing so much financial content where people are actually getting up to speed. and that's not even discounting maybe AI platforms that can also help people with their, with their strategies. So I think. What seemed like a no way is this gonna pick up. It's so complex. It's now starting to look, you know, more and more accessible. 

Yoshi: yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think like, and what's so funny about it is that like looking at the stats of the trading volume, for example, into the U. S. stock market, there's only about like 15 percent of the whole trading volume is from retail investors. But, like, if you look at the, options trading side, of course, there is a lot of, like, you know, pickup in terms of the, percentage, but now it's around, like, more than 40%. 

[00:14:00] Yoshi: So, you know, of course, like, the increase from, like, 30 to 40 percent during the pandemic, and it was, like, only 20%, like, early, like, you know, like, 2010. So, it's pretty interesting to see that, that there's, like, a lot of retail participation in the options of trading, but at the same time. What's so weird has been is that, like, there's not much of the availability outside of the United States for the retail investors in terms of options trading. And that was really the, like, you know, I think, like, pretty messed up part or, like, you know, the gap that, like, you're

really closing in. And I think, like, you know, it's amazing that how you're delivering this really quickly. 

Yoshi: Because I think it's all about accessibility, right? Like, and then, like, in terms of how to be used, it's, you know, it comes after that. Because if there is no accessibility, you even cannot, like, you know, discuss those kind of things at all. So, like, it's amazing how you've been, like, you know, being able to deliver that and then, you know, providing the content and, like, you know, basically doing the teachings and, of course, like, making sure that you're communicating well with the regulators and, you know, getting the support from them. 

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I, I completely agree. And I think definitely COVID was something unlocked, in our businesses and in investing during COVID. I think it's the. it just went viral to invest. Whether it's the savings rate that was maybe more available, the, the content again, and the word of mouth around what's possible, the kind of wealth to, that you can generate with investing. 

Mark: And I think people are relying less on their incomes as well to, or are understanding that it's not the only and best way to, to build wealth. And now that it's more accessible. I remember actually what, during COVID, there was a documentary on the, the 400 richest, wealthiest people. And they showed how more than 80, something around more than 80 or 90 percent of how their wealth was created wasn't through their income. 

[00:16:00] Mark: It was through asset ownership. And that resonated a lot with me to, to, to understand why is, why is investing pickup so much in retail? And I think it's because. People are looking, okay, well, how are the wealthiest people, how have they generated their wealth? And if that's through asset ownership, then I will invest the time to, to learn about it so that I'm not just depending on my, my income to, to do that. 

Yoshi: Right. And I think like, you really use the word really well. Like, you know, you're also using the word of the asset ownership, like, not only about like the word of the investing. Right? Because like, it's really about you're allowing the people to own the assets, like, you know, not necessarily like, you know, people don't have to think about, okay, this is the investing. 

Yoshi: Yeah, like investing sounds like it's a big word, but it's really about you are allowing people to have accessibility, allowing the people to own something. And that's, that itself, it's actually, has not been easy at all. Like, especially outside of like North America, like, don't you think it's crazy? Like, it's so weird. Like, yeah. 

Mark: No, I get you. I was even, I was just reflecting recently how we take it for granted that it's, you know, in a few clicks, you can own a piece of, you know, the, the best American businesses and the largest American businesses. And it's, it's no joke, especially when the word investing can be like overused sometimes where I'm investing in my, Sometimes a purchase and like a gift to yourself can be called an event, but ultimately, no, this is, this is very tangible. 

Mark: You're owning a piece of, of, some of the, the, the, or the, or the largest, public companies out there, that are accessible to you. so, so no, it's something, it's a mission

that really excites us to, to democratize it and to, to, to bring that access. Some, some is more. Accessible than others is I think now we're starting to see when it comes to equities option anything public is there's a bit more pull 

[00:18:00] Mark: I think the challenge Still still is to overcome in terms of private markets and all that It's a it's a kind of a buzzing trend in the u.s. But I think that's going to be a bit slower 

Yoshi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think like, you know, like, you know, going into those private markets or like other things. Yeah, like, you know, it's being, it's been like amazing partnership. And then, of course, like, you know, I've been like, you've been like, super good friends to me and then like, you know, trying to. 

Yoshi: Make sure that like, you know, the friendship, you know, allows us to grow together to kind of mentor each other and, you know, I get mentored by you all the time, but, but I think like, you know, the, for us, I get exactly the same for us, like, you know, we play as a really just a platform and the infrastructure. 

Yoshi: So, like, you know, our job is to continue to build and, you know, create more optionality of the asset classes, basically, like, how the people can. Own something and that something has to be more and more and more and more types. It's not only about us stocks or, you know, the, anything like there's a fixed income, there's a bonds, like as you say, there's a, you know, private markets and there's like, you know, the stocks outside, you know, listed outside of the United States as well. 

Yoshi: And of course, like, you know, there are, you know, presidential elections affecting a lot of excitement around the U S capital markets in general, but it's always cyclical. So, you know, some attention goes to. Middle East, some attention sometimes goes to China, some attention goes to Asia, Latin, Europe. So yeah, like I think like, you know, it's exciting that, you know, 

we can continue to push more asset classes accessible. 

Yoshi: For the people to own, so yeah, like, I think, like, you know, I'm personally very excited about, you know, working on the fixed income, you know, coming up in 2025 and then also the, you know, global stock, not only for the U. S. stocks only, because I think that's also very important in terms of the accessibility wise and then, having the people to able to own the, something. 

Yoshi: So, yeah, like, you know, I'm personally very excited about that too. 

[00:20:00] Mark: Yeah, same here. We have, recently like, Talabat, which is a food, food delivery app that went, that's IPO ing and that generated, quite a lot of buzz. So I think a lot of, the team and our clients are excited about adding global stocks to, now that, you know, the local market has been heating up and growing, there's more, there's more demand. 

Mark: And I think launching that too soon could have been a mistake because it's, it's been very difficult to compete or beat the S&P 500 in the U.S. market. and it might be the case,

who knows, we can't predict the future, but, you know, any, any diversified portfolio will have a huge chunk of it in the U.S. 

Mark: and the majority in the U. S. So, so I think now that that's been, It made its way to a lot of our clients portfolios and assets. We can start to look elsewhere and start to add more additional exposure beyond the, beyond just the U. S. stock, especially on the trade side. And when we say U. S. also, sometimes what people forget is that through the New York Stock Exchange, you can have access to funds that are diversified as well. 

Mark: So it's not like you, they make it hard for you to leave the US exchange as well, but there's, there are still opportunities elsewhere that,such as in the UAE stocks that became, that will become very interesting. 

Yoshi: Yeah. How, how do you see that, like, you know, the trend, because like, no, of course you are, you have been on the ground and then of course you are traveling around in the regions, including Europe and the GCC. you know, there is definitely hype and then energy in the GCC region in general. At the same time, there is, like, as you said, U.S. capital markets continue to stay very strong. 

Yoshi: like, you know, how do you see that in the future will play out? You know, for example, 10 years later, about like, you know, how the, interest of the, like the retail investors and the money, where they go about, amongst, like, you know, all those places that, you know, we are seeing right now. 

Mark: it's a great question. I think, you know, there are some hypes that sometimes you like to see more than once. 

[00:22:00] Mark: for example, Bitcoin is something that the first time it, we were around 2017. I think there was a one of the 2017, early 2018, something like that, where it was, it was going up. And I remember that was, we started questioning, should we add it? 

Mark: And we realized the regulation wasn't quite there. we wanted to observe it a bit more and then we added it, after that, which was a very good decision because then the regulation now is, Really improved around it. other hypes, like NFTs was like from the beginning we were like, you know what, this is taking it too far. 

Mark: And,and we had very, very like zero appetite, to, to incorporate that. and I, I think as a North Star one that, one that we're using more recently is we look at the, like UBS or um. Goldman Sachs report around how do the, what does a billionaire's portfolio look like? And you'll see, okay, well, public market is still huge. 

Mark: Okay. That's great. So we've, that's a, that's an area we've covered quite well. And then you'll have fixed income is going to be, I think roughly 10%. And then you start to see alternatives is actually a big chunk. and then commodities is in there. So looking at kind of what's made its way to. someone that has all of the access.

Mark: So remove, to your point, remove access as a barrier and observe what does that look like. I think we can expect to see, you know, a billion dollar portfolio, look quite similarly to maybe a 10, 000 portfolio. once, you know, a lot of the regulatory and, and, tech work has been done to, to make things accessible with the right guardrails. 

Mark: So I think that's a nice vision. When I hear about, you know, you mentioned Europe platforms like,that are democratizing private markets. They also echo that they want to make, they're pushing for retail. Demarketization as well, and I think we'll find the right balance where maybe, maybe in certain minimums, maybe it's certain amounts and thresholds, 

[00:24:00] Mark: but I, I, I do feel like even when we, when we talked to BlackRock, we did a webinar with them, when they came out with their Bitcoin ETS and you could kind of see. that their, their vision as well as to make an ETF almost out of everything, worth owning. So, so that reality I think is getting closer and it's, it's quite exciting because, you have more control, more personalization and more accessibility into great asset classes. Yeah. 

Yoshi: I think that's interesting, right? Because like, you know, you do have this vision of like connecting a bunch of the asset classes, even looking at how the Goldman and, you know, UBS private wealth clients, portfolio, would look like in the 1 billion portfolio. And then, you know, yes, like it includes so much of the stuff, but yet, like, you know, you are making it from very, like, you know, the typical stuff first. And I think that's actually. Really smart, because I was, I was thinking about this a lot as well. Like, you know, when I was at Lehman, I was at the most illiquid asset classes that can never be in the fixed income, which is like, you know, asset backed securities to insurance linked securities, catastrophic bonds. 

Yoshi: Like, it's not really treated like, you know, the equities. And then I was thinking about, yes, but this is super, super profitable business as a, like, you know, seller. And of course, like, as a, you know, buyers of the investors, like, it's extremely like interesting asset class for the diversification. But then the reason why, like, we were able to get trust to be able to talk with the investors, like, you know, even though our team, like, you know, we're making a lot of profitability and like, you know, interesting stuff that, you know, we are making, that's what's actually built on the foundational, relationships That has been established through very typical stuff, like, which is like the U. S. stock, investing accessibility to the fixed income, selling treasury bonds, you know, money market funds, and then other teams are taking care of that. And because of that relationships, we were able to talk to those investors, you know, after gaining the trust. 

[00:26:00] Yoshi: And then talk about this more complex stuff about this is how it works. This is like, you know, diversification purpose, and they can be a part of the, you know, whole, you know, portfolio, you know, logic. So I think, like, you know, basically, like, you know, how you are thinking about that is that, right? Like, you do have, like, no super, like, strong, like, long term vision, but you're really doing it one by one, and then you're, like, not achieving that one by one.

Yoshi: So kudos to that. And I think, like, I feel like the options is also that too, right? Like, you can't just Come up with the trading app that just offers options trading. That's it, you know. 

Mark: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's, whether it's in your career or where we are now, it's just evolving with the customers, as they are evolving and growing their wealth to, to present a sequence of, you know, of products that fit where they are in their, in their lifetime and also in where we are as a market. 

Mark: Like imagine offering or talking about, savings and money market fund when the rates were, were not interesting. So, so it's also the sequencing and the macro environment matters. And that's why, That becomes actually the challenge, ensuring that you, you invest in the right product at the right time and kind of, you need to be almost ahead actually. 

Mark: and I think options comes at a very good time where we've had a very strong two years. you know, you're talking roughly, I think I was looking at it from, from the bottom, it was more than 60 percent something like that in the last two years. So. That's quite a strong performance. And while your people are celebrating a lot of milestones, and we're seeing more posts like milestones, it's still, there's a bit of nervousness around, okay, well, it's not just risk on. What are some of those tools that are there to help me in case things go down and recover? So, but it's challenging, definitely. I think there's, um To add, it's, it's, 

[00:28:00] Mark: I think the challenge and the key thing is to also not make the platform complex and to over kind of go back to the same starting point that we wanted to, to change, which is making investing easy. It's, Our initial tagline was making investing easy, now it's make money work. But it's the same principle where it needs to be simple as our core. That's one of our core value props. So, balancing choice and simplicity I think is going to be critical and why we actually favored Alpaca over so many others. 

Mark: Brokers, because we saw the DNA and the soul of the company, even from the name and the, the, the brand is very much, making it simple rather than like these very complex UI charts that where you're talking down to, to, to, to a customer or to, to your clients. 

Yoshi: appreciate that. yeah, like, thank you very much for like, all the, great inputs and, you know, you know, teachings. I think like, you know, one last thing that, I want to close it off, because of this, by the way, podcast is called FinTech Underground. The reason why is that, I always ask this 1 question about, you know, what is something that people have not noticed yet that you feel this is a hidden gem that, you know, 

Mark: I mean, I think we revealed it in, in this interview. I, I, I think, I think the, Yoshi: Yeah. 

Mark: the thinking from Nassim Taleb's books and his approach on risk should not be so niche. It should be, I would reverse it to be, it should make its way to almost every portfolio. And, or at least it's, it's something that will profoundly change how you look at,investing and risk, and options.

Mark: And I think That's something that hopefully we're going to make an impact on and bring more awareness to it. But I was quite shocked when the more I was digging into the literature and the, like, how powerful the, the, the wealth protection tools that, that Fermi advises as well, is working on, is available. 

[00:30:00] Mark: So, so I, I guess maybe, maybe it's, there's a, there's an additional. Lens from him being Lebanese that makes me more attached, but I think, I think as a thought leader, and as a, like, as a gem, I think there's a lot of wisdom that would, really improve the lives of people and their, their, their wealth by, by going through it and practicing it. 

Yoshi: And the weird part is that this cycle is getting shorter and shorter and shorter, like, you know, it's the black swans because it was like in once in the, I don't know, like, 50 years or 70 years, it's like kind of Ray Dalio, like this, like, long term debt cycle thing, right? But that thing is getting shorter and shorter and looking at like, you know, crypto, you know, bust and then hype and everything. 

Yoshi: And then pandemic capital markets going up and like, you know, down and up and down and up and down. So I think like, you know, the, because of that reason, like, you know, we will see like more frequency of like, you know, those, you know, weird situation where we should have protection, like Azure say, 

Mark: Yeah, you know, I, ever since I started investing and started the business, I, I've been kind of tuning out a lot of, people that are calling for the next crash and are bearish. Like I generally dislike being around or seeing that kind of content because generally I'm an optimist and, and I believe in investing in the long term wealth creation it provides. 

Mark: But, yeah. And the issue I had, I guess, with beyond, at the same time, you don't want to be naive. You want to take, there's some credible people that are, including Ray Dalio, that are sometimes kind of bearish and alarmist. So I feel like this type of, what, why I'm excited about kind of the Black Swan protection and option through options and these tools is that, it gives you a tool to kind of, To not having to listen to and not being, not having to worry about if there is a crash, so be it. 

[00:32:00] Mark: But I think it provides a better answer than what passive investing has done so far, which is, well, look at this chart. In the last 100 years, it's recovered. Like, yeah, great, but I don't want to wait a few years. What if I don't want to wait a few years for things to recover? And what if there is a way to avoid that,that pain? 

Mark: So, so I think. I think it's, it's pretty crazy to realize that if you ask any wealth manager of any portfolio size, you know, what happens if my portfolio goes down, or there's a big black swan, their answer is going to be, well, look at the historical performance. It's rebounded. And I think in some shape or form, they'll use kind of more fancier graphs and metrics, but ultimately it's weighted out. 

Mark: and I think it's, it's. It shouldn't be an acceptable answer. It should be, wait a minute. If there is a tool, why don't I have it? And what's blocking that? And I think it's the

commercialization piece that you mentioned where it's like beyond the US. this shouldn't be so niche. Yeah. 

Yoshi: question, like, because, like, we've been talking about, you know, Nicholas Taleb, what is the 1 book that you want, you know, basically the listeners to read so that, like, you know, they understand what you're really talking about, about, like, you know, this wealth protection options and then, like, kind of get more insights, like, fundamental insights of, like, you know, why this is important. If you are to recommend one book, buy him. 

Mark: I think, I think, if I can have two, depending on the audience, I think for a more novice intermediate investors, I would recommend anti fragile, because it touches upon finance, but also beyond that, it applies it to, to medicine, to, to, working out to many other aspects that are quite interesting.So it's, it's very holistic and it, the, the, the title is the answer itself because it's not just about getting through some of these,world events, whether it's a war or whatever it is. 

[00:34:00] Mark: It's about benefiting and coming out stronger from that experience. volatility and, and, and that chaos. I think that's a, that's a very, very nice one. And for the more, technical people, there's a book by Mark Spitznagel, called Safe Haven, that goes more into, more into the weeds around how has each asset class performed when it comes to protecting your wealth, and growing your wealth and, It's not a prescriptive around do this. That's kind of, I think the main thing I appreciate about these books is that they're, they're not, they're not salesy. 

Mark: They're not, in fact, you're almost left kind of wanting more, more guidance, that you can get elsewhere. And that's more on the commercial side of things, but you'll benefit just from more risk awareness by doing that. 

Yoshi: amazing. you know, definitely, like, this is amazing. two books I recommend. you know, I'll, let my, you know, Alpaca team members to make sure to check them out as well. 

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. They're awesome. They're good reads. 

Yoshi: yeah, it's amazing, man. But, yeah, dude, like, thank you very much for your time. And then, you know, taking your time to, like, really explain your wisdoms and then, like, your journey. you know, again, Mark, thank you very much for your time for this. 

Mark: Thanks Yoshi, really enjoyed this conversation. 

Yoshi: Thank you, man. 

Mark: Thank you. 

Yoshi: Cool!

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