In the past one or two years, the anxiety of the "sandwich middle-aged people" (the generation between young people and the 45-year-old middle-aged group, aged 30 to 40) has become increasingly prominent.
Betting on Bitcoin, buying up gold, reselling trendy toys... Behind a series of operations, this generation is panicking about the shrinking of assets and uneasy about the future. They are unwilling to miss any opportunity to "make money", and a secret battle to protect their wealth is unfolding tacitly among this group of people.
To the extent that on social media, every post that is suspected to be a "money-making opportunity" is filled with three consecutive questions: "What is it?", "How to do it?" and "Can I take it?"; under investment posts about technical analysis, there are always people who post their operation records and screenshots of their positions to ask for advice.
Not only ordinary people, but also some listed companies in Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States have used Bitcoin investment income as a means to maintain stock prices due to slowing performance growth, and start-ups have even used it as a bargaining chip for financing.
In a market environment where there seems to be no solution, a group of young people with a keen sense of smell have made early moves to bet on assets such as Bitcoin with their foresight.
It is precisely because they seized the opportunity to enter the market first that even if they only used the simplest strategy of "holding coins and waiting for appreciation" and did not participate in any trading operations, they still reaped great rewards for choosing the right track.
In a sense, this just reveals the core logic of current investment: after choosing the right direction, knowing how to settle down and wait is still the main theme to success.
The times will never let down those who are good at settling down. The following are their true stories:
When people reach middle age, they cannot avoid the great battle for wealth
Last year, when deposit rates of major banks collectively fell into the "1 era", 35-year-old Qin Jian and his peers all embarked on a financial breakthrough battle against inflation.
This seemingly smart game turned into an adventure full of hidden dangers in reality - just like the 40-square-meter "old and dilapidated" house that Qin Jian bought in the inner ring of Shanghai, which was once seen as a weapon to fight inflation, but eventually became a vortex that trapped cash flow.
In the Shanghai property market in 2024, small apartments within the inner ring road with a building age of more than 30 years are becoming the new favorite for investment. This type of old public housing with a total price of about one million yuan is packaged by agents as a good investment and a low-cost purchase because the monthly rent can reach 4,000 to 5,000 yuan.
Image source: (Foresight News) Content on social media about the benefits of old, dilapidated and small houses
Qin Jian did some calculations: if the rent of the old public housing unit worth 1.2 million yuan that he had his eyes on was 4,200 yuan per month as promised by the agent, the annual rent-to-sale ratio would be 4.2%, far exceeding the bank's interest rate of less than 2% for three-year large-denomination certificates of deposit. With a principal of 1.2 million yuan, he could earn 151,000 yuan in income by renting the house for three years, which is almost twice the interest on a deposit of 72,000 yuan.
Source: (Foresight News) Interest rates of various banks
But reality dealt him a heavy blow. When he finally got the old public housing unit of less than 40 square meters, he found himself trapped in the monopoly dilemma of the sub-landlord. "4,200 yuan is the market rent, but it is not the money I can get," Qin Jian said with a wry smile.
In the area he purchased, there are many sub-landlords who own hundreds of properties across Shanghai. After these sub-landlords cooperate with the agents, sub-landlords like Qin Jian, who have neither customer channels nor the ability to invest in renovations to compete, can only rent to sub-landlords for a long term at a price lower than the market price.
Taking into account the rent-free period for renovation and the loss from bargaining, Qin Jian loses at least 3 to 4 months of rent every year, and the actual rent-to-sale ratio drops sharply to 2.5%. "And I also have to bear the risk of the sub-landlord running away and asking me to reduce the rent at any time." What's more fatal is that the purchase of the house exhausted his cash flow and coupled with a salary cut, Qin Jian had to move from a 100-square-meter rental house to this old public housing as a transition.
Qin Jian's experience is not an isolated case. Financial anxiety caused by inflation, reduced investment channels, and falling interest rates has given rise to many bizarre "urban investment stories."
Customized new P2P in northern Myanmar, cross-border e-commerce, hot AI projects, short video investment and other "hot spots" are emerging one after another, not to mention "niche" investment channels such as stock insider groups, foreign exchange, and trusts, which are also ready to "strangle the wealth" of middle-aged people at any time.
Image source: (Foresight News) Various investment and financial scams emerge in an endless stream
When people reach middle age, it’s not only the physical examination report that raises red flags, but also the “financial report card”.
Why is it that the sandwiched group is always the one that gets hurt?
This generation of middle-aged people in the middle may be a rare generation in history where "the harder they work, the more confused they become."
Most of them were born between 1985 and 1995, before they became the "sandwich middle-aged people". They graduated from college and caught up with the economic growth period, and are the main force of the current "middle class". They have mortgages and car loans, but they maintain a refined life; they take their children to interest classes on weekends, and they are keen to learn financial management courses, eager to increase their wealth.
They have naturally witnessed the "overnight wealth" brought about by the new thing called the Internet. Between 2010 and 2019, a large number of Internet companies went public, and early employees achieved financial freedom through their right to choose. This stimulated their desire for wealth and was full of "opportunities" and "trends."
Image source: (Foresight News) Xiaomi listing site
Therefore, when the external environment changed drastically, this group of people trapped in "inertial thinking" finally tasted the cruelty of reality.
The first thing to collapse was the "good luck logic" they believed in.
In an era where "even pigs can fly when the wind blows", investing does not require much logic, and you can make money by just buying anything. However, they lack complete financial knowledge, and often become the main force "standing guard" at high positions after the economic downturn.
Rao Yong, born in 1991, is one of them. When he was working in a large company, "Chinese concept stocks" were booming, and he was surrounded by stories of people cashing out on stocks and options.
When the stock market was hot in 2021, he invested his savings of many years in Chinese stocks listed in the US. Unexpectedly, due to factors such as Sino-US relations, Chinese stocks listed in the US fell sharply, and his net asset value shrank severely. He has not yet "got out of the trap".
Most of his colleagues of the same age have experienced the period of skyrocketing housing prices from 2014 to 2020, and firmly believe that "buying a house is a steady profit." When the real estate purchase restriction policy was tightened in 2021, many of his colleagues believed that this was the "last chance to get on board" and "got on board" by buying houses by leveraging loans. However, they encountered a series of declines in housing prices, making it difficult to sell properties. As a result, they were overwhelmed by the high mortgage loans and their assets shrank instantly.
Image source: (Foresight News)
The next thing to collapse was the superstition about "information asymmetry".
In the portal era and the early days of mobile Internet, there were indeed elites from all walks of life sharing information on the Internet, but now the overabundance of information and the "information cocoon" created by algorithms have left the "sandwiched middle-aged people" who are tired of distinguishing things in an information desert.
In addition, this group of middle-aged people is also the group that is most eager for "financial management". They are at a turning point in their lives, usually with elderly parents and young children to take care of. They are also the first group to consider optimization when the company reduces costs and increases efficiency. After encountering obstacles in the workplace, they are more eager to open a second route to help themselves rise. Therefore, they have a short waiting time for "compound interest" and their risk tolerance is reduced. They hope to enter and exit quickly and put their money in the bag.
After the rise of short videos, many middle-aged people saw the news that "ordinary people make millions a month through cross-border live streaming" and wanted to get a piece of the pie.
Liu Xi, 34, was attracted to Yiwu by cross-border e-commerce. Yiwu is known as a paradise for entrepreneurship because of its booming e-commerce, frequent hits and abundant supply. In the famous Yiwu Trade City, Jiangbei Xiazhu and other supply distribution centers, you will encounter training courses and software advertisements for e-commerce every few steps.
Image source: (Foresight News) Yiwu is full of "business opportunities"
Liu Xi spent thousands of yuan to sign up for an inspection team in Yiwu, and then invested money in purchasing background software, renting a live broadcast room, and stocking up on goods. She fully expected to hit the jackpot and become rich overnight, but she found that the live broadcast room she built with a lot of money had no one interested in it, and the "hot products" she bought at a high price quickly became outdated, resulting in a serious backlog of goods... Even the orders sold in 3 months could not pay the monthly fees for the pirated software she bought.
In desperation, she had to make drastic measures and ended her entrepreneurial journey with a loss of 80,000 yuan, becoming one of the majority of gold diggers who failed in Yiwu.
Because they are extremely eager to grow their wealth, but lack the patience to cultivate their inner strength, they become the first target of the "sickle" - due to anxiety, their intelligence is "reduced" and they often "take money as soon as they have it".
Aren’t those projects that are packaged as “making a lot of money” actually “pig-killing schemes” targeting them in essence?
Financial management is like health, don't worry too much
In the battle to defend wealth among the middle-aged group, not everyone fails.
The strategies of many “winners” may seem “incredibly simple” to outsiders, but they all have one thing in common: a willingness to wait and a refusal to “make trouble.”
"There is no strategy, it all depends on persistence," said Yu Xiaowei, a "winner" who described her experience. When she graduated from university in 2019, Yu Xiaowei knew that she had bad spending habits and was prone to impulse shopping, so she thought about forced savings.
She did not pursue complicated investment strategies, nor did she research products on major platforms. Instead, she chose the simplest way: after receiving her monthly salary, she would set aside 1,000 yuan to invest in gold.
People around her laughed at this as a "stupid method", believing that the returns were slow and the liquidity was poor, and it was better to buy high-risk products, but she remained unmoved.
Now, 70 months have passed, and Yu Xiaowei's total "original capital" of 70,000 yuan has now become worth more than 120,000 yuan in cash as the price of gold has soared. The return is over 80%, far exceeding the investors around her who frequently change products.
Another "winner" Tan Chong took a completely different path, but it was equally effective.
As early as 2014, when he was in college, Tan Chong first came into contact with the new thing of Bitcoin when he was reading Song Hongbin's (Currency War).
"The book explains that Bitcoin is an attempt by Internet users to use mathematical thinking to solve the problem of excessive money supply, which stems from the stimulus of the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing policy after the 2009 financial crisis." Because his parents were in foreign trade and experienced the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, Tan Chong was particularly sensitive to the "excessive supply" of money. After reading Satoshi Nakamoto's concise and clear paper, he became a firm believer in Bitcoin.
Since graduating from his master's degree in 2018 and receiving his first salary, Tan Chong completed his first coin purchase through the OKX platform. To this day, Tan Chong still remembers that afternoon: "No one around me had ever heard of BTC. Their first reaction was that I would be cheated. I was also unsure, and I completed the order completely out of trust in the platform."
Fortunately, the platform he chose was reliable. After seeing the coins enter his on-chain wallet, Tan Chong felt relieved. After several transactions (Bitcoin does not need to be traded in whole coins), Tan Chong finally owned his first complete Bitcoin.
Image source: (Foresight News)
Although Bitcoin has been controversial in its subsequent development and even experienced a sharp drop in 2022, Tan Chong has always adhered to his judgment, firmly believed that cryptocurrency is the future trend, and continued to increase his holdings.
Of course, he also paid "tuition fees" in the process: in 2021, when the US epidemic was flooded with money and DeFi Summer (decentralized finance) was hot, projects with an annualized return of 2,000% emerged one after another. Tan Chong couldn't stand the loneliness and sold some BTC to arbitrage, but was strangled by "air coins" (a virtual currency with no actual value support and a project mainly for money-making).
As a person whose main job is not full-time investment, he eventually returned to his comfort zone: honestly storing BTC. He only used the platform's built-in dual-currency win, a simple option tool, to conduct currency-based cross-period arbitrage. (Currency-based: does not consider the rise and fall of the price of BTC corresponding to the legal currency, only considers whether more BTC has been accumulated)
As countries and companies continue to lay out the cryptocurrency industry, even the president has come out to endorse it, coupled with the fact that BTC production is halved every four years, Tan Chong has ushered in many favorable market conditions since 2022. "In 2018, the highest price of Bitcoin was only more than 10,000 US dollars, and the lowest price was more than 3,000 US dollars. Now the lowest price of Bitcoin has reached 100,000 US dollars." From the time he started buying to now, he has gained nearly 1,000%, outperforming all financial products in the same period.
Image source: (Foresight News)
On the operating platform, Tan Chong met many other BTC believers who held the same philosophy: whether using OKX fixed investment to hoard coins directly or using other tools similar to exchanges, as long as the platform is reliable and the risks are properly controlled, all profits are calculated in currency standard, and then you just need to wait patiently to win the battle to protect your wealth.
Image source: (Foresight News)
Therefore, everyone is particularly "insensitive" to time, "and will be prepared to hold for more than 10 years," Tan Chong said. "Many people stock up for their children, just like they stocked up for their children's full-month banquets back then."
We don’t have any complicated strategies, we just stick to it after we decide.” Tan Chong concluded. Whenever someone asked him “how did you bet on BTC” or “where is the next opportunity”, he chose to remain silent.
In his opinion, for middle-aged people who are deeply trapped in wealth anxiety, this anxiety should not become a shackle that traps themselves, but should be the starting point for reshaping their cognition and choosing long-termism.
This so-called long-termism is based on constantly updating market cognition and combining one's own risk tolerance.
(At the request of the interviewees, all names in this article are pseudonyms)
This article is reproduced with permission from: (Foresight News)
Original title: (After deleting all 100 financial management groups, I outperformed 90% of investors by using the "no-market" strategy)
Original author: Microscopic Story
"(Reprinted on holidays) After deleting all 100 financial management groups: How can I outperform 90% of investors by not looking at the market strategy?" This article was first published in "Crypto City"
