| Contents

• Disclaimer
• Copyright Page
• Preface A Journey from Numbers to Conviction
• Reading Map Your Guide to the Reading Path
• Foreword A Testimony from Readers and Fellow Travelers
• Introduction A Legendary Investor as the Guide of Your Life (A Mission to Eliminate Poverty Among Chinese-Speaking People)
• Author’s Note Why He Inspired Me So Deeply

Part One Awakening — Seeing Through Capitalism and Wall Street to Awaken the Gift of Wealth

Shifting from a laborer’s mindset to a capitalist’s, seeing through systemic exploitation, fiat debasement, and the Wall Street con, and awakening the innate gift of wealth.

Chapter 1 The Awakening — Being a Laborer Is Not the Only Script for Your Life P38

• Reclaiming autonomy and the awakening beyond the rat race
• Breaking the enslaving trap of traditional education
• Returning to your true calling, for God made man, not laborers
• The value of work lies in serving the public
• The strategic meaning of the first pot of gold
• The awakening to capitalism

Chapter 2 The Truth of Capitalism — Exploitation and the Systemic Trap P58

• Tax privileges expose the inequality of wealth distribution
• Debt bondage and the modern Jiufen miner
• Cash flow is the core of the bank’s scoring
• The middle class and its threefold concentration disaster
• The rules of the game where the rich grow richer
• Harnessing the efficiency of capitalism

Chapter 3 The Dimensional Strike of the Money-Printing Era — Financial Aggression Under Globalization P68

• The palace that never falls
• Central-bank balance-sheet expansion revalues all market assets
• The fiat trap of emerging-nation manufacturing
• The erosion of fiat cash’s purchasing power
• The IOU parable of the US village and the Taiwan village
• The dollar cycle and the Triffin dilemma
• Stablecoins strip central banks of seigniorage

Chapter 4 Breaking the Myths of Personal Finance — Breaking the Myth of Saving Money and Buying a House P80

• The inflation blind spot of cash and bonds
• Diversifying risk is a cover for mediocrity
• Short-term trading is the guillotine of compounding
• Chasing high dividends is chronic impoverishment
• The cost of property losing its liquidity
• The endgame gap between renting and investing versus buying
• The hidden physical-destruction risk of real estate
• A home’s foundation is the neighboring economic activity
• The hidden leverage in buying a home only magnifies failure
• The true ten-year return of a landlady
• The blood-and-tears financial history of an awakened retail investor
• The timeline matrix for reaching a hundred million through DCA
• The poor-nation thinking of foreign-exchange reserves
• The path to letting money work automatically

Chapter 5 The Wall Street Con — Toxic Assets and Survivorship Bias P102

• The brutal elimination rate of individual stocks
• The proof that indexes automatically cull the weak and keep the strong
• Exposing the toxic-asset trap of the financial industry
• Sunk cost looks only to the future, not the past
• The true return of investment-linked insurance policies
• Policy loans are a trap that crushes residual value
• The whitelist and blacklist of insurance
• The failure of academic financial theory
• The falseness of technical analysis
• Diligent trading is the reverse engine of wealth

Chapter 6 Wealth Is a Birthright P129

• Wealth is an innate birthright
• The seven levels of wealth
• The extreme optimism a capitalist must have
• The first principle of investing
• The art of getting rich while sleeping on the train
• The ultimate mission of financial freedom

Part Two Weapons — Market Entry, Selection, and Risk Control in Index Investing

Enter now, buy the NASDAQ-100, manage risk with Beta — forging the index into a core weapon that never burns out.

Chapter 7 The Logic of Market Entry — Right Now Is the Best Time to Enter the Market P141

• Right now is the best time to enter the market
• Overcoming the fear of buying and refusing to wait for a pullback
• The ironclad proof that lump-sum beats DCA
• The taboo when prices fall and the precise definition of buy when you have money
• Avoiding the capital trap of fixed-share investing
• Facing extreme drawdowns takes a winner’s courage

Chapter 8 Investing in Its Purest Form — Buying the NASDAQ-100 P157

• QQQ, the strongest asset-growth engine
• The financial definition of a moat company
• The organism’s metabolic mechanism of the NASDAQ-100
• The index that culls the weak and keeps the strong
• The positioning of Taiwan market-cap ETFs and 2x leverage
• 00662 need not wait for a cheap face value
• The decade-long class divide between QQQ and VT

Chapter 9 Redefining Risk — Mastering the Beta Value P177

• Beta represents volatility, not performance
• Using QQQ as the Beta 1.0 benchmark
• The double-edged sword of leveraged ETFs and convergence in consecutive declines
• Building a bespoke portfolio by your tolerance
• The fallacy of traditional benchmarks and the choice of holdings

Part Three Architecture — Quantified Allocation, Leverage Science, and Systematic Execution

Leverage decay, allocation formations, and the rebalancing system, finally internalized into independent operation — fully systematizing and automating asset growth.

Chapter 10 Leverage Decay and Beta Control — Precise Beta Control P186

• The essential difference between margin and leveraged ETFs
• The three physical properties of leveraged ETFs
• Bankruptcy backtests reveal why all-in leverage is forbidden
• Dissecting the accumulated cost of a lost decade
• The dynamic control formula for portfolio Beta
• The drawdown table of QQQ and QLD across crash levels
• Futures spreads erode the net value of leveraged ETFs
• Using a system to resist volatility decay

Chapter 11 An Impregnable Asset Allocation — The Beginner’s Threshold and the 433 Allocation P207

• The three elements of an asset portfolio
• The polarized allocation philosophy of offense and defense
• Setting the 442 and 433 golden allocations
• The advantage of 00865B over 00864B (and 00859B)
• The 613 starting path for small-capital savers in accumulation
• Allocation formations for each tier and their suitable groups
• The 345 cash rule and the unleveraged allocation
• Twenty thousand Monte Carlo simulations validate 433
• A defense built on science
• Decoding seven scenarios from 25 years of backtesting
• The extreme-backtest divide between the employed and the retired
• Upgrading to a hundred thousand simulations, from 4/3/3 to 10/0/0 as the stable zone

Chapter 12 The Autopilot System for Your Assets — Smart Rebalancing P233

• The operational boundary between never selling and rebalancing
• Four ways to rebalance
• The six categories of rebalancing and their strict taboos
• A real-world comparison of mindless versus smart rebalancing
• Dynamic rebalancing and new-capital stripping for the employed
• Downside-defense mechanisms and ICU rescue in an extreme bear
• Flexible rebalancing, an advanced variant of the 00662 community (not the main line)
• The precise method for deploying a large lump sum
• The autopilot system that lets the brain rest

Chapter 13 Building Independent Financial Intelligence — Refusing to Be a Hand-Out Beggar P255

• Financial intelligence comes from reading and insight for oneself
• The seven levels of a retail investor’s evolution
• The Dunning-Kruger effect and the confidence curve
• Making good use of the sunflower manual and AI tools
• Internalizing knowledge to distill investing conviction
• Turning questions into learning
• The action checklist for refusing to be a hand-out beggar

Part Four The Moat — Borrowing, Pledging, Tax Planning, and the Cash Fortress

Defend wealth with the wisdom of debt, cross-border tax planning, and a cash fortress, building a moat no extreme market can break.

Chapter 14 The Wisdom of Debt — The Engineering of Growing Richer in Debt P266

• The foundations of debt in capitalism
• The academic backing and safe practice of lifecycle investing
• The recognition formula and multiplier for prying open a bank’s credit line
• Borrowing sequence planning
• Lu Sir’s reminder on borrowing discipline
• Borrowing without repaying principal and maximizing the principal
• The applicable boundary of servicing debt with dividends
• A hands-on breakdown of the six mortgage types
• Debt consolidation, using long debt to eat short debt
• The defense mechanism against a personal-loan chain break
• The true multiplier of principal leverage and the Kelly formula
• An explanation of pledging for tax avoidance and borrowing tools

Chapter 15 Letting the Bank Support You for Life P304

• The survival-boundary engineering of the drawdown rate
• The trap of a reverse mortgage and the superiority of borrowing against stocks
• Borrowing against stocks to activate dead assets
• The mathematical difference between refinancing and cash-out borrowing
• The trade-down path for cash-flowless retirees
• Keeping the mother shares untouched to accelerate wealth through pledging
• The self-repaying loan mechanism and the tax moat
• The 30-year wealth gap of a safe 2% drawdown
• The bankruptcy of the 4% rule in a QQQ world
• The bank list and recognition rules for personal-loan applications
• The recognition ratios of each income category
• Converting a stock’s market value into a personal-loan line
• The labor-pension anchor of a borrowing line
• Online tools and credit inquiries
• The math-reset formula for re-navigating a securities-backed loan
• Choosing 00662 as the pledged collateral
• The safe-landing plan for the leveraged lifecycle

Chapter 16 The Maintenance-Ratio Defense Line — The Defense Line of Pledging and Its Fatal Taboos P338

• The maintenance ratio and the Taiwan-US institutional blind spots
• The credit-bureau difference between bank pledging and broker lending
• Pledge-and-reinvest is financial suicide
• The stress test of the fivefold-asset defense line
• App practice and backup financing channels
• The priority order of pledged collateral and the maintenance-ratio band
• A tabletop drill of a 2008-level systemic credit freeze
• The 11-question checklist before signing a pledge
• Must-know details in the practice of stock pledging

Chapter 17 The Local Moat for Taiwanese Investors — The Tools of the Local Moat P366

• Taiwan’s 167% maintenance ratio and the renewal crisis
• Activating capital through property debt
• The fatal tax trap of US-situs assets
• The sub-brokerage cannot pledge and the skinning trap
• The difference between buying QQQ in a US account and via Taiwan sub-brokerage
• Where the daily-return difference between underlying and leveraged comes from
• Why the core is always 00662
• The choice between 009800 and 00662
• The eligibility and order details for 2x leverage
• The long-term view of exchange-rate risk and the discipline warning on 00865B
• Cracking the sub-brokerage personal-loan activation trap
• The local tax moat for Taiwanese investors
• Making good use of QI status and 1042-S tax refunds
• The tiered plan for a 3% versus 4% drawdown rate
• The QQQI retirement cash-flow rescue tactic
• The advanced tactic of pairing a wealth-management mortgage with QQQI arbitrage

Chapter 18 Multi-Region Allocation for Cross-Border Residents — UCITS Multi-Region Allocation P394

• The double-layered risk of currency exposure and geographic situs
• HSBC Hong Kong’s 50/50 high-adequacy tactic
• The red-line contrast in fund use between Taiwan and US stock pledging
• Using UCITS to avoid heavy-tax decay
• The list of alternative holdings for each region
• The inheritance and freeze risks of cross-region investing
• The core discipline of multi-region asset allocation

Chapter 19 Retirement and Estate Tax for US Citizens and Green-Card Holders — Estate Tax and Retirement Accounts for US Persons P410

• The tax-bomb threat of traditional-account RMDs
• The painless three-step Roth conversion
• The painless conversion technique of not selling shares at a low
• The after-tax ROI shrinkage and the truth about compounding
• A basic explanation of PFIC
• The FBAR and FATCA filing obligations
• The debt deduction and exemption of US estate tax
• The priority contempt-chain of tax-saving accounts in accumulation
• Suggested directions for consultation

Chapter 20 The Moat Against Human Nature — The Cash Fortress and Its Management Strategy P423

• Cash flow is the cornerstone of personal finance
• The 15-year immunity token and its strategic standing
• Reverse asset allocation and the retirement-multiple rule
• The good and bad of debt tools and their decoupling
• The great asset cleanup before retirement
• Cash is the anchor in a crash

Part Five Psychology — Volatility Meditation, the Philosophy of Survival, and Information Distillation

The mental cultivation to pass through volatility — treating volatility as a blessing, placing survival above return, and building the information-distillation ability for the AI age.

Chapter 21 Volatility Is the Blessing of Wealth — The Outside World Is All Noise P434

• Pundits and chat groups are leek-cutting machines
• Accepting volatility as the ticket for excess returns
• Volatility is a blessing that hands the wise a fair-priced target
• Making money in the bull, turning your life around in the bear
• Do not let fear interrupt compounding
• Overcoming human instinct to become a successful investor

Chapter 22 Psychological Defenses and the Philosophy of Survival — Drawing the Boundary of Anxiety, for Staying Alive Matters More Than the Rate of Return P443

• The physical defense line of 2 hours and 8 kilometers
• Separation of tasks, for market swings have nothing to do with me
• Returning to the essence of life, for money is only a tool
• Staying alive matters more than the rate of return
• The allocation that survives 2008 is the good one
• The three extreme tests of risk
• Better to earn less than to go to zero, roughly right
• The time filter keeps the organism-index evergreen
• Wartime black swans and the fear discount coupon
• Liquidity freezes and the short-term decline of war
• The actual return of global stocks in war years
• The philosophy of survival in a single sentence

Chapter 23 The Art of Distilling Information — The First Principles of the AI Age P464

• The first principle that compute is wealth
• Asset owners versus compute consumers
• Rejecting junk information and deep verification
• Harnessing AI to distill value
• Advanced cycle observation of the five great economic cycles (optional reading)

Part Six Life — The Sublimation of Wealth, the Awakening of Legacy, and the Path to Liberation

Buying back life’s options with wealth, passing on the family’s awakening, and moving toward the separation of tasks and independent liberation.

Chapter 24 Buying Back Life’s Options — The Essence of Wealth and the Reinvention of Work P475

• Money is a tool, and life is for love
• Redefining the value of work and subliming its meaning
• Escaping the middle-class busyness and letting AI earn for you
• Time is the real asset, buying back the reins of life
• Standing on the capitalist side to enjoy the expansion dividend

Chapter 25 Expanding the Capacity to Spend — The True Test of Financial Freedom P488

• Killing your own hen versus borrowing the bank’s hen
• Expanding your capacity so living costs refill automatically
• The 10+5 dual-engine tactic as a retirement drawdown backup
• Trusting a safe drawdown to let wealth grow

Chapter 26 The Legacy of Leaving Debt to the Bank — The Awakening of the Family Tree P497

• Dispelling the utilitarian-education myth of uselessness
• Refusing cross-generational emotional blackmail
• Leaving debt to the bank reduces legacy attrition
• The three lines of defense against property fraud
• The hidden landmines of legacy taxation
• 00662 and the cross-border legacy defense line
• The awakened one who reverses the family’s fate

Chapter 27 Separation of Tasks and Independent Thinking — The Release from Human Relationships and the Place Where the Heart Finds Peace P512

• Separation of tasks, letting go of the obsession to change others
• Substance over eloquence, results over argument
• The calm method of dismantling the inner critical voice
• The endgame of separation of tasks, acknowledgment and selection
• Where the heart finds peace is my home
• Autopilot and the meditation of presence
• The awakening revolution that reverses family poverty
• Independent thinking and the graduation into liberation

Appendix

• Readers’ Action Checklist 10 Concrete Steps to Start Today
• About the CLEC Investing and Personal Finance Channel
• About the Editor, Blaise
• Glossary Notes The Tools for Mastering Capitalism
• Appendix 1 The Core CLEC Practical Toolkit
• Appendix 2 The Chengfeng Linghang Practical Strategy
• Appendix 3 The Investment Translator Practical Strategy
• Appendix 4 The Blaise Practical Strategy
• Appendix 5 Lynn’s Field Strategies
• Appendix 6 Alang’s Leveraged-2× Life Field Strategies
• Appendix 7 Advanced Allocation and Rebalancing Tactics
• Appendix 8 Lending, Tax, Property, and Retirement Practice
• Acknowledgments Gratitude for an Awakening Journey Across Time and Space