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Welcome to Financially Fluent with Ray Godleski from Southeast Wealth Partners, LLC. Whether you're already retired or planning for the future, navigating financial advice can be overwhelming. This podcast cuts through the noise, bringing real insights from experts who specialize in every aspect of a successful financial plan—including how to adapt when things don’t go as expected. Join us as Ray Godleski answers audience questions and shares actionable strategies—not just empty clichés.
Welcome to Financially Fluent with Ray Godleski of Southeast Wealth Partners. Our goal is to equip you with the knowledge and tools necessary to navigate your financial journey with greater ease and efficiency. Hey. Hey. Good morning, and welcome to the next episode of financially fluent.
I am your host, Ray Gadleski, and I'm always excited when we have a guest on the show. Our audience should know today's guest is a top selling author. And while Andres and I are gonna get into some details about trade finance, I'd really, really love for our audience to understand the importance of diversification when it comes to investing. There are many ways to invest, and I would stress the importance of having a detailed financial plan. And when you're executing a financial plan, that's when financial peace can really exist.
So whether you handle your own investments or you have a financial advisor, I do suggest you do some due diligence when it comes to alternative investments. Alts can fit very nicely into a portion of someone's portfolio, but it may not be for everybody. So thanks for listening and subscribing, and hope you enjoy today's show. Hey. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the next episode of Financially Fluent.
Today, I, have a a guest from across the pond, Andreas Schweitzer. He is the founder and CEO of Arjun Capital, artist trade and invest in Trade House. He's got twenty five years of banking experience as well as private debt, international trade, also an author of Trade Works, which was a Wall Street Journal and Amazon bestseller. So, Andreas, welcome to the show. How's your week going so far?
Thank you very much for this great reception, Ray, and a very good morning from or afternoon from London. Yes. Awesome. Awesome. You having a good week so far?
Yes. Thank you. And the closer we come to the weekend, it's getting better by the hour. So Yeah. You know, before we get into it, tell me what's your favorite month of the year, just curious, from a weather standpoint in London.
Now my favorite month of the year is April. I happen it happened to be my birthday also. So I always liked April, and I always liked Easter. But From a weather point of view in London, it's, of course, now the summer. June, July, August, we had a beautiful summer.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's like, I always think of it as kinda cold and dreary, but I guess it's not like that all year long, is it?
Yeah. Yeah. No. No. No.
It's now quite, global warming, changed also the summers even here. Well, I'm excited to have you on the show. And, what I think we'll start with is, you know, you've worked in trade and private debt, investment banking. Just curious, you know, how did you kinda land on trade finances is your mission? Really unexpected.
As a young man, in the early eighties and was in my early twenties, I did what Swiss can do. You work in banking, and you can do you can work as a Swiss, you can work in banking, watches, in cheese, or in chocolate. So I skipped the watches, and I skipped the cheese. I worked a bit in banking, and then I joined the Switzerland second largest, food company called Jacob Zuchar, chocolate and cocoa. And in 1986, they needed someone in their Panama outfit to deal with the cocoa and coffee trade, from Central And South America.
So as a 26 year old, I find myself being in trade finance. To be very honest, little did I know what I was doing. But, that's how trade finance started, and I found it fascinating from day one. If, if you buy if you sell commodities or other products, you ship them, you reship them, you sell them while they're on the ship. So the world of trade is a very, very exciting space for me.
I guess it was so exciting. You, wrote the book Trade Works. Tell me a little bit about the motivation, behind it. Yeah. This this this is then around two to twenty five years later because we then went into private equity.
And and then in 02/2010, I came back to Central Asia. And, and then in 2018/2019, just before the pandemic, we we had quite a strong Central Asia trade business. And with all the geopolitical issues, we decided, is there not also a European market which we are close to and which we understand? By looking at it, we realized that also that that what's called the trade gap, the trades that are not financed, that we talk about the $3,000,000,000,000 figure. I mean, enormous how much trade doesn't happen because it's not financed by banks, by individuals, by equity.
And I realized then also that this happens in Europe as much as it happens anywhere in, what's now called the global South or the third world. This is not a third world issue. This is a worldwide issue. And the more we researched, the the, yeah, the we didn't find much to write. So at the end, I said, why don't we put all wrap all this in a in a book cover?
We call it trade works. Mhmm. And, it's an Amazon bestseller. My other story is that, Wall Street Journal sort of made it up the letter there, but this one is on Amazon. We now have it out in English, and since we it's speaking German, we'll do an Arab version hopefully before the end of the year.
And I tried to to explain where trade came from, why there is so much trade. I mean, every toothbrush, any toothbrush, any any the software of drink has been financed at some point before you pick it up at your grocery store. The straight finance is in everything. Whatever is behind you in your office, the the chair you are sitting on, a manufacturer has manufactured it, and you buy it from the furniture store, and, financing has happened in between. So I want to explain to the nonfinancial investor, those who don't spend all their day, people with a proper job, not like me, who spends all day with doing doing finance and stuff like that.
So I tried to explain where trade is, where the risk is, where fraud is. I mean, you know, there's names like greenfield. You just have to open the world's return on financial times, and you read a lot about that, about regulations, why banks don't finance fuel, why they don't like sugar because sugar kills what's called ESG. These regulations and the capital and what we have added in the second version is also a lot about blockchain because there is a big technology opportunity to make trade safer like many other businesses by taking them on blockchain, which by the way has nothing to do with crypto. Often people think blockchain is crypto and vice versa.
This is purely a technology play for us. And I was in Saudi last November, and Saudi is one of the very important markets now in The Middle East. We also have added a big chapter about trade in and with Saudi. That's a bit the the summary of this, probably. K.
Three hour read. I mean, real quick, though, is for you know, in layman's terms, right, trade finance, what what would just the average person what should they be thinking of? Like, what does that even mean? You want you sell something to me, or I sell something to you. I sell you 100 copies of my book because you run a successful bookstore.
I want to be paid the moment I ship it. I even want to be paid ideally when you order it, and you want to you want to pay when you bought it and ideally when you sold it. So everybody wants to make the other one the bank card. You know, I want to I want to be paid as early as possible, so I need less capital. You want to pay as late as possible, so you don't need capital.
And in the middle, you finance the trade. That's where the world trade finance comes from. Okay. And they are of course, this is not about a 100 books. This is about, millions of ton of steel, of carbon, but it's also about pharmaceutical.
We finance a lot of pharma products in Europe. We finance petrol stations in Spain. So you give them the fuel on Monday, and they pay you on Friday because they have a tight cash flow and banks don't finance. So Is, LNG gas in that category too? Yes.
But LNG LNG is a government game. I mean, LNG, if you take countries like Qatar, they only deal with governments, and they make twenty, thirty year contracts. Then this is between nations. This is all the big trade companies, the boomers, the gambles, the Afrikoras, all the big names, the cargills. But this is not our category.
Our category is the Mittelstand, the SME, the small and medium enterprise who has a hard time getting financed by the banks because they have regulatory issue, they have capital requirement issues, or the business is too small for them that it's even worth dealing with it. So we we finance these niche markets at a higher margin, of course. Right. Right. So yeah.
So you got collateral. And then I guess from a turnaround standpoint, you know, how to what's the turnaround time on something like that? That depends very much the product. Some people want hundred and eighty days, other want three sixty days a whole year. We would not go beyond three months, ninety days.
So, for example, on on pharmaceutical products, our cycles were always between thirty five and ninety days. It depends depends how fast the seller sells and how fast he reorders. Fuel, if you finance fuel stations, the turnaround time is a week. You give man you give fuel on Monday. You get cash on Friday.
You give fuel on Monday again. So it's, it it very much depends. But I would say the bulk of it is sort of one and a half to three months in our case. Okay. So, you know, most of the audience is thinking about, you know, investments and diversification.
So if you were thinking about where does this line up, from a diversification standpoint, could somebody look at this, as a substitute perhaps? And if so, you know, it's correlated to the stock market, not correlated, more like fixed income. Kinda how do you how do you see it? It is. We are a subset of private debt.
Absolutely. It is a fixed income type of product because you normally know at the beginning of the trade what the result is. You give someone, you give someone a credit against interest. We'd like we prefer a profit share. So if I know I get five, ten, 30% of the margin, depends the situation.
There's no absolute figure. So I know that, I get x back after thirty five days. And if the trade is late, and this is often one of the issues, not even a risk, but an issue, you remember the situation of this huge boat which got which blocked the sewage canal a few years ago. And, I mean, that delays worldwide supply chain by weeks. So what do you do?
You just you don't have an you don't have a a nonpayment. You have a delay, and the client will pay once, the product is there. So I I like it because it's not correlated to the stock market. It's not correlated to global, politics. It's not related to wars in a way because even during wartime, you need trade.
You need your products. And, and that's why it's my favorite asset class, but I also must admit I'm really not very wise on the stock market. Yeah. If you would talk to a hedge fund manager here, they would give you a complete different vision of the situation. Right.
So we this this is it's a fixed income product backed by collateral. It's a very down to earth industry. You deal with very tangible goods. There's no derivative in it. It is a product which goes across the ocean or across the road.
Right. And I'm assuming, a ship gets you know, they they lose their load of sports cars in the ocean. There's insurance to back up the person doing this, or or is that not the case? That's the maritime insurance. Yes.
You have variance. And we we we just have a legal claim, for someone else. We we we do also quite advisory, and and there was one case where two ships collided, and one had a load of 41,000 tons of barley, and the the merchandise couldn't be saved. So they let it all go into the sea. Now with your your cars, you hopefully don't do that.
You recover them, but barley, it was a very nutritious moment for many fish there, I guess. 41,000 tons. So there, you have a product insurance. You have a maritime insurance. You you have theft insurance, of course.
Okay. You can't have fraud insurance. That's that's always a problem. You insure the buyer. So we would always take a down payment or we get a letter of credit, which says we are paid for this product at that date, so much.
Or, we we take a credit insurance on the buyer against the economic risk that date of nonpayment. So couple of follow-up questions. One would be is, I guess, from a return standpoint, you know, what might I know there's gonna be a range. What might that look like? And the second question, is really around, like, principal protection, I suppose, or or or or or even interest, like, interest rates in foreign exchange?
Like, does that have any bearing on on how these perform? Oh, yes. Means you you have all kinds of situations we happen at the moment to trade in euro in Europe and mainly in euro. We have a couple of dollar trades because commodities are often quoted in dollars. Our money is in pound, is in since in in euros.
Our investors, are also in euros, maybe Swissy. So they cover their foreign exchange risk themselves. We accept euros, and we pay back euros. And, so we I tried to avoid a a currency hedge and a currency exposure and leave this to the investor because it just complicates matters. That if you would have to, what you would do, let's say there is a trade euros against Swiss francs, you would sell your Swiss franc forward at ninety days or hundred and eighty days.
The only annoying thing is if you have a delay, then you have to renew your hedge also. So it's it's just an additional complexity which we try to avoid, but big companies, of course, have have, the financial departments who hedge this all the time. Now the principal protection or the protection in any event, as I said, on the credit insurance, you you buy something for a 100,000. You buy Bali for a 100,000. Let's say you buy, medical goods medical goods for 100,000.
You ship them. You have you have the transport risk, which is insured by transport insurance. You have, the shipping risk, which is still insured by a transport insurance. Then you have and now you are with the buyer. And now the buyer you insure the buyer.
Normally, you insure at 90 or a 100%. So it depends how big your margin is. If your margin is less than 10%, then, of course, you you can insure both. You can insure the totality at this extra premium. We know of a case of company who insures the entire thing, but I think it's it's very expensive.
It eats into your margin. It's better to ensure 90% and keep a 10% residual risk. We never had a claim yet, and we had fraud situations like many others have. Someone works, offers the money or does the wrong thing, then you have to to fight for it. So it happens in every business, but it's a it's a very it's a minor issue.
So right now, are you from a participation standpoint in this, are you seeing it mostly from institutions, or are you seeing individual investors, growing this segment? What what are you seeing right now? Yeah. It's it's it's it's an interesting market split. You don't find a lot of trade finance products in the market, at least not in Europe.
The US, I don't follow, and I I wouldn't know. But in Europe, there are not many. There are a couple of trade finance funds out there, out of Mauritius, out of Switzerland. Asia has a lot of trade finance fund, but European banks don't. In Europe, this is an institutional play because it's also not regulated.
Yes. The investors, in investors come, in depends a little bit where you're in the world. Asia has a lot of pride of trade finance funds, where private enterprise issues that and private investors invest. I'm not familiar with the distribution, in The US. We don't follow it.
We don't have a US business. In Europe, it's very much an in in, institutional driven business. And, banks, make big deals with big companies. They don't make deals with small companies. And, they don't have a retail or not even a professional investor product.
A handful of funds maybe who offer trade finance. And that's where we saw the opportunity as an alternative to have a fixed income product, a very stable fixed income product for our own assets and also for the clients that are are close to us. I've, one of the reason I could imagine is that many regulators in Europe don't think that trade finance should be regulated because it's a private debt product and maybe because it's not a retail product. So you you regulate less where the professional investor is active than where the retail investor is. Alright.
So at the moment, this is not available to American investors. No. Of course, it's available, but I don't know how much how I don't know how many retail and how many of course, you have a lot of trade finance. I mean, there was even a company in Florida. We looked up when we did the resale, and all they do, they finance they finance bicycles to Florida, residents.
So that's nothing else than trade finance. Huge business. Oh, okay. Very, very, very narrow niche. So so no.
No. That's a lot of trade finance in The US. It's a huge market, but, we are we are we are not familiar with who who is institutional and who is, retail. But we also have requests from Americans to invest with us. That's, I don't know.
US is a big For those type of investments here, usually, someone has to be an accredited investor. There's different levels. Exactly. Whether they're a, qualified client, qualified purchaser, or just an accredited investor. Do you happen to know someone wants to buy this, what level they need to be at?
Yes. In the in Europe, we only trade with professional or semi professional investors. You might call it accredited. For example, the minimum is €100,000 to invest. That's what the EU regulated alternative investment fund stipulates.
Okay. Yeah. So Yeah. That's kinda what what I thought would be. Alright.
So I guess, you know, from the type of investors that tend to be drawn to this, like, again, I guess we're looking at, hey. We're diversifying our portfolio a little bit. We're trying to get some stable income. And I guess, from appropriate standpoint, you know, are you finding that someone might be putting, you know, 3% towards this of the overall investable that were 10%? Like, do you have any just curious, any numbers behind that, what y'all are seeing?
Our investors today is obviously, we I started myself, then my company, so we put in company money, then befriended family offices came and other investors. So I have I don't know. Probably, they invest between a few 100 and a 100,000 and a few million. So this is sort of middle mid sized family offices, the single multiple family offices, individuals. We have, at the moment, not yet large, funds very large funds because we cannot it's not so easy to absorb 25 or 50,000,000 in one go.
We are going towards these tickets now, especially on, on the commodity shipment. So I'm sure people put in a few percent of their of their assets. It's it's probably they look at it as a fixed income product, as a credit insured fixed income product, and put it in the bond category. Right. Yeah.
I think from a trend standpoint, what I'm starting to see a lot of is private investments is becoming more and more democratized, and they're even becoming diversified. And so I I would I would imagine this is probably available in some of those, some of those, private investment companies right now. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's, man, our fund is is, has an c n I ISIN number, so you can put it in your portfolio.
It's not stock market listed, but it's, it's a security that can be bought through banks and booked into your portfolio. So it's, Yeah. Do you see a day in the future where somehow this would be in a possibly in a a an ETF or or a mutual fund or or probably not? No. The mutual fund, the problem is the liquidity.
You know, we we cannot run a usage model. We cannot they have daily liquidity because my trades are my trades take time. They take seven they even if they take seven days, I have seven day liquidity, thirty five, ninety days. I cannot block a lot of cash just because we, investors want to get out. That would not be very good use of the of the asset also for for the other investors.
But what one could do is make a market and and trade this on the NAV basis because it's very simple. Every day, you know what your position is. There is transparency. We have a software, and every investor can get access and look at each position we are having at any given moment. So an ETF could certainly be a model.
Probably, we'll look at that, in a year or two. Yeah. It makes sense. I and then for though there are folks out there that, you know, ESG was kind of a a movement there, and it's you know, I I don't know from a momentum standpoint how that's looking right now. But if somebody's thinking about ethical trade, is this would somebody have any idea in something like this how that's working out or or or not really?
Oh, yes. You you could, of course. If you are a large firm, you look at your supply chain and you make sure that you are ESG compliant to certain degree. I mean, now you also have even anti ESG funds because they all say this ESG sign is also a little bit hypocritical. You know?
Right. My cousins do a lot of chocolate in in Germany for many 100 millions in seventy five years. And suddenly, the bank says we can't possibly finance you anymore, says the banker while picking up chocolate in the meeting. We are not allowed to find sugar because sugar kills. You know, textile, textile from countries like Bangladesh or child labor, fast fashion, environmentally unfriendly.
I buy all that, but none of us sits in the office without a shirt because we supply we we comply with ESG. Fuel. Fuel banks for banks, fuel is a dirty product, which you can't possibly finance. Yes. But everybody pulls it in the car.
Yeah. We have to be real. But We preach water, but we are very happy drinking wine. Defense. Yeah.
I have a friend here in London who is now doing a defense fund. The other thing is going defense is, of course, the maximum and a s ESG thing, absolutely immoral, unethical to invest in defense, except if you use the tank to defend yourself and not to attack the neighbor or your rocket is defensive and not offensive. And the plane also I'm certainly not a judge of any of that. I can only observe that it's a complicated discussion, and there will be. But, you know, of course, we are not, we we to to take this back on a very, very serious note, if you if you trade sugar, you buy the sugar from a refinery, which has a good reputation and where you had to look that they really complied, and you don't have child labor in Brazil or any of these things.
So I think there is there is a even a small firm or fund like us have an obligation to provide a minimum of ESG, which goes as far as the next one who checks then the supply chain, which is the manufacturer. And today to today, there is a very strict view, and I'm all for that these parts of the supply chain are done. You know, cannabis, medical cannabis was on a higher, if you silly expression, I know, but it was on a higher a few years ago. And then it got taxed, and it it took, took a dive. Now it's all coming back.
The germs, the Swiss, the the the Brits, they all consume a lot of medical commodities, so about medication. So we are financing that again. Is this ethical? I think so. Is it legal?
Absolutely. And it's a medical product. Right. Of course, you are not you're you're not financing anything in your sort of food path, but you finance what you can put, in the category of medication. If you're looking for advice specific to your situation, then take a look at this episode sponsor, Southeast Wealth Partners.
To learn more about their team and approach, go to southeastwealthpartners.com. Southeast Wealth Partners is a great next step to be financially fluent. Well, we're gonna do a lightning around here in just a second, but one other kind of just thought I was having. So with so we have AI. Right?
You got geopolitics. We've got tariffs and reshoring. Like, anything in there you see from a trend standpoint that's gonna affect trade finance, you know, in a positive or negative way? As I mentioned before, if I take a step back from AI and go back to blockchain, which was the the flavor ten years ago of the season, Today, blockchain for us is a very important tool to put our trades on black blockchain to secure to secure them. It it makes payment flows and product flows and data flow much safer.
So technology plays a very important role. AI, we use like many of your business and yourself for research. We do a lot of research today on AI. We look at trades. We look at people.
So it's it's absolutely it was a game changer, and we try to stay very informed about about, both blockchain and AI. In an for me, if I had a magic stink, I would convert everybody into crypto because it's just faster and easier and incredibly well documented. Every payment on a in a wallet is fully transparent, contrary to some popular belief where everybody says, oh, only sort of very strange people use that. This is, of course, not the case. So but it's very difficult to convince a large companies to pay you in crypto.
It doesn't work. You know? If it hasn't been adopted by a multibillion company and their treasury just doesn't exist, and we deal we deal with, people in the money. Here in the last few months. And Absolutely.
And I really hope it will be generally adopted. It's a digital money is a great tool for us. Right. Right. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I, agree. Well, let me ask just a couple more questions here.
So, you know, like, a trade myth. Is there any trade myths that are out there maybe you'd like to bust that? Matt, probably that through trade I had this on another podcast that that that a lot of crooks in this business. Everybody Yeah. Everybody on this call, of course, particularly excluded.
But if true. If you if you Google, fraud and trade, you come up with normally very large cases. And one of the cases which has been publicized in normal is a thing called Greensill, a multi multi billion case. You have, you have the Gupta case and, which which is all over the place in the Wall Street Journal. I mean, I'm not giving away anything that is not way public.
So it's always a few 100,000,000 or few billion, so this hits the headline. But, you know, the Wall Street Journal would write fuel tank or from and to, Venezuela arrested. They don't make a big article speedboat in The Caribbean arrested. So size matters for the news line. So Right.
If you if you have a fraud because someone didn't sell or buy or do what they did, then it's 100,000. That's just normal business risk, which you have in every business, whatever you produce on service or in goods, but you simply have to be very careful like you are in any other activity. I don't think then it is more dangerous than any other activity if you really do your house homework. Put in the insurance, then put in the, the rails of what you're doing. For example, we are very involved in the trade.
We don't invest just in someone else. We don't give money away to a third party. We used to do that. Now we do the trade ourselves. So we become the owner, the title owner of the product, and we resell the product.
So I I want a collateral. You have to be very close to your money and, in this case, the product to make this as safe as prod as as possible. Okay. Well, we're gonna You have a lot of but you have a lot of fraud, sorry, in in, letters of credit, but not only in trade, but it only shows up in trade. And that's where blockchain I think once you the industry moves also the the banking industry moves, documentary credit to blockchain, it will be a much safer game for everybody.
And there are big moves. Right. The big banks, the big banks are all on this because they see the technical opportunity, to to improve the the deal. Yes. And it seems like as long from a big bank's perspective, as long as they can kinda be a part of it, they're they'll be okay with it.
But if they're not a part of it, they're gonna resist that big time, and, it's gonna slow things down for that ever happening. Would you agree? Yes. Yes. You know, we deal with a lot of midsize banks, and there are quite a few banks who give trade lines again, but you have to look for them.
It's not obvious. It's a niche market. There as the small trades as our strong and midsize trade is a niche market. The large trades is some a game for large companies with large banks for large deals. That's a different game, which doesn't need, guys like us who who run a trade fund.
But, you know, our a word may be on the returns. We had a year of '23. We did 20 we did 19% net. The '24, we did 9% net. This year, we haven't traded a lot because we we, there were changes in the fuel and in regulations.
You have to be able also to step back and and don't chase the trade like you shouldn't chase the stock. Right? Yeah. Right. So so it's better to keep the money in the bank account and keep something if the trade is not perfect.
So Right. Right. Has to be disciplined like any other investor like you, me, and anybody else who looks after own and other people's money. Yeah. It kinda it's it it reminds me of when people are talking about, you know, maybe they invested in something very private, very small, right, and the returns on it.
And it's like, you know, first of all, are you taking on more risks? I always compare things to to the stock market because the stock market, you know, if you're just in a in a stock, you can you can buy it and sell it intraday. It's super liquid and, very transparent. Right? And, but when you were comparing things to a private investment and maybe it's less liquid, you know okay.
Is it less liquid or more liquid? Okay. If it's more or excuse me. Less liquid, we I would expect more returns, but still given a level of risk. Right?
So just because something's private doesn't mean it's more or less risky than something that's publicly traded. You know what I mean? So, anyways, just kinda to to your point is when when people are thinking about all the investment choices out there, it really, to me, comes down to a a financial plan. And what is your own personal liquidity? Meaning, you know, how easy is it for me to get money for something I need for a problem or an opportunity?
Right? How easy is that? And then on the flip side, you know, you do wanna most people wanna grow their money for the long term. And so given their risk capacity as well as their risk tolerance, so, you know, I think I'm gonna kinda we're gonna do one more thing here before we go to a a trivia question. But, you know, I want I wanna kinda put the floor back to you.
If you wanna kinda sum up trade finance and who you know, what could somebody expect? Who does this really appeal to? So we kinda like to throw it back to you to kinda summarize, what we've been talking about so far. I mean, as we are not as we are not stock market listed, there is no secondary market otherwise wherein, you know, you just buy and sell the shares. Maybe we do this one day in two years or so.
We'll see. But at the moment, there's no need. So we used to have liquidity of three months and six months. But all our investors, they really come for long term gain. So what we do now, an investor commits for a year.
Okay. And if this year comes to the end, they decide if they want to renew for a year or take the money out. And the reason we need this stability is I cannot suddenly tailor supplier. You know? So sorry.
Now it's June. The money is back. I can't finance you again on Andre in October. I mean, the client is gone, and I will not get I'm just not a reliable counterparty. We have to be very reliable because the the parties rely on the financing we produce.
So we say we finance you for a year, and then we will renew or not renew. So everybody, can calculate in a in a very, very clear way. I would look at it a little bit. If you look at real estate, except you are a quoted real estate fund where you buy and sell. You have real estate is not a liquid product.
You probably are private equity. You are five years lockup normally. It's, so so we have a one year engagement, and we we just started now also a real estate initiative because there's quite some interesting real estate trade, at least in Germany, and we also do a one year lockup. It's, this is not the money. It's this is not your daily liquidity you can park with us.
It's an investment. It's not we are not a treasury product in that sense. I think you just summed it up really well, which is there's there's times when you want money, you know, quote, locked up for for a little bit. Right? Yeah.
But not super long. And so for those dollars, you know, somebody might think about it. And on the flip side, somebody that's holding money for really long periods of time, this is a shorter hold than than something that's a five year hold. Is that fair? Absolutely.
So it's a one yield. We we we decided to go on one year, and we never we didn't get any pushback to the country. People even say I leave it two. But that's so individual how how everybody Right. Right.
Okay. Well, look. I don't know if you've heard or not, but we like to do trivia at the end with for our guests. And so, hopefully, you've got another minute or two to stay with me and and answer today's trivia question. All the time.
Alright. So, I did try to I I'll I'll be honest. I used a little chat g b t today to come up with, Britain or or, UK, Europe, and and America. So your your two categories to choose from, I'm only gonna give you one question. It's either gonna be music trivia or sports.
What is your preference? Sports is certainly not what I feel strong about. Even if it's golf? Golf. Yeah.
I mean, it yeah. Golfer or music? What do you which one you wanna go with? Golf or? Or music?
Which one's your preference? I play a little bit of golf. I listen to music. I sure I will play both, but give it a try. You can take both also if you want.
Let's see. Well, I tell you what. You get let's let's start off with music. Yes. I don't know if you're gonna get this or not, but, which British rock band released the 1981 hit, don't you want me?
It's one of the best selling singles of the decade and later became a defining act of the new wave synth pop era. Any idea? I really, really would like to cheat now and ask Chet GPT. But, it's not the faintest idea. Not the faintest idea.
Tell me. I'll give the answer, and then we'll we'll try another tough one. But this one's the human league. You know? It it is a tough one.
I remember the song. I could probably play it more than I can remember the name of the group. Good. But Yeah. Alright.
Tell you what. So we're gonna yeah. We'll do one more, and hopefully maybe we'll get this one. I don't know. I will tell you it's a little tough unless you're falling off.
But in nineteen ninety five Ryder Cup, at Oak Hill, so I think that's in Europe, there's a a dramatic Sunday comeback. The Europeans beat the Americans. Which Irish golfer made the winning putt? Why why are you doing this to me? Wait.
Wait. Wait. Let's use let's use some chat BT and say, I'll tell you what. We'll we'll make this, multiple choice. How's that sound?
I'm terribly terrible at these type of things, but I'm I'm very happy to, to keep going and not providing any answers. Yeah. Alright. So Let me put it like that way. I think we are better.
We are we are better at trade finance than answering the quiz. Alright. Well, I tell you what, I want I want you I want you at least and you're you're gonna get a you're gonna get a chance. Was it a, Winston Churchill, b, Bernard Langer, c, Nick Faldo, or d, Philip Walton. What about the Irish golfer?
We are still talking about the Irish golfer. The Irish golfer. Which one of those was it? And Langner certainly was, was German. Churchill, even I know, that he probably wouldn't qualify for that.
And the other the other two names were? Nick Faldo or Philip Walton. I would go for Walton. Yes. You got it.
Yay. So you got there. You got there. Yeah. Well, thanks for playing, man.
That was fun, and it was tough. I understand. Wonderful. Wonderful. Yes.
And you should have you I should have prepared myself for a tough quiz with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no no worries.
I'll I'll probably get some feedback from my office. Like, Ray, you gotta make these a little easier. These are really tough. I just don't want to chat you to see what it comes up with. And so, that's what I came up with.
But, well, look. Thanks again for your time. This was, this has been great. Hope you have a great, weekend coming up, and, tell us one more time the name of your book. Yes.
Yes. And, so yes. And and by the way, we have, so, obviously, there is, TradeWorks. The title is tradeworks.info. We also I can send you a link.
We have a write up by Forbes. We also have a link to our web page where where artist trade invest slash insights, and there are a lot of articles on there. So we really like to publish, and we like to share know how. If anybody's interested to peep there to have a look at it, we don't ask for data or anything. It's just free for everybody who is interested.
I'll I'll drop you the links, and if you want to share them with your audience, they're all about that. That was good. That's great. Thanks, Andres, for being here. And for the audience out there, if you have any questions about financial planning on any topic, feel free to send it in to ray@scwealthpartners.com, and we'd love for you to subscribe and share financially fluent to others.
See you all. Thank you very much for a great hour. That was great inspiration, and, thank you for your interest in our exciting niche market. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Signing on. Thank you for listening to the Financially Fluent Podcast. Click the subscribe button below to be notified when new episodes become available. This communication is for informational purposes only and should not be considered tax, legal, or accounting advice. You should consult with a qualified tax professional, accountant, or legal adviser regarding your specific situation before making any financial decisions.
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