If you usually trade stocks, just casually open the shareholder list of a large company, isn't there always a BlackRock among the top ten? This company manages over $10 trillion in assets globally. With subsidiaries in dozens of countries, how is it harvesting the world? You might be hearing about it for the first time, but look at the chip in your phone; Nvidia's second-largest shareholder is BlackRock. The second-largest shareholder of your Apple phone is also them, and even Musk's Tesla has BlackRock as a major shareholder. Even Taiwan's TSMC has them as its second-largest shareholder. You might think that's it, but let's look at our own territory: Tencent's fourth-largest shareholder is them, JD.com's fourth, Alibaba's third, and Baidu's third. Even in Ping An of China, BlackRock's shadow lurks as the fifth-largest shareholder. Anyway, just randomly flip through a well-known company, one with a larger scale in stocks, and see if BlackRock is among the top five shareholders. They are so powerful—it’s not just an investment company; they are essentially the shadow boss of global enterprises.
BlackRock only split off from the private equity giant Blackstone in 1988. Starting with $5 million, it took less than 40 years to reach the top of the world. How does it operate? The pandemic in 2020 is a ready example: the market was very bad. At that time, the Federal Reserve was printing money like crazy. BlackRock was responsible for taking over U.S. Treasury bonds, printing $5 trillion in just three years, which directly pushed global prices to a new height. During those years, the whole world suffered; inflation in the UK broke 10%, Germany hit 8.8%, and Sri Lanka went bankrupt. But what about the U.S.? They issued money with zero interest, combined loans with stock buybacks, effectively shifting the crisis to the entire world. Behind this wave of operations, BlackRock held 88% of the stocks in the S&P 500, which is not an exaggeration to say it was the stabilizing force of the U.S. stock market. In 2022, when the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, international capital was scared and rushed to the U.S. At this time, BlackRock had military stocks in one hand and technology stocks in the other, perfectly balancing both sides. More interestingly, back in July, they set up a zero-cost purchase fund in Ukraine to directly buy national assets. After the wildfires in Maui, Hawaii, BlackRock had already increased its stake in local real estate in the second quarter, and now even power aviation is in their hands. Speaking of China, it gets even more exciting. In 2016, BlackRock acquired Debon Fund to test the A-shares, and in 2020, took advantage of the pandemic to obtain a public fund license, resulting in the A-shares slapping them in the face for three consecutive years, causing them to lose 1.3 billion. Fund managers were furious, saying that the A-shares were a garbage dump, but guess what? They only liquidated small funds; the main troops were still quietly bottom-fishing, right? Before the Spring Festival, when the market dropped to 2600 points, it could very well be BlackRock picking up blood-stained chips. Now you should understand why it is often said that the more chaotic the world, the richer BlackRock becomes. When they harvested Japan and bottom-fished in the burned islands of Hawaii, it was always this routine—wherever there is a crisis, there they are. Finally, let's talk about how ordinary people's money can generate more money. Whether for hedging or risk assets, it is essential to control the allocation ratio and pay attention to the pullback period. I especially recommend a combination allocation. If you don’t have strong capabilities and don’t want to take risks, you can learn from the professionals and allocate to globally invested dividend-type combinations, which not only protect the principal but also yield dividend compounding. For example, if you buy in at 40 years old with 500,000 and invest for two years, after five years, you can steadily earn 50,000 each year. By the time you hit 60, the pension point arrives, and the total dividends already received will be 800,000, with compounded growth reaching 2.65 million. By age 70, the compound account will have reached 4.56 million, a 5.8-fold increase, soaring exponentially as time goes on.
