The Story of How a University Lecturer Named Benson Earned His First Pot of Gold on Futubull

Benson used to work at a listed company after graduating from university, and it was at this point when he started investing in stocks. While he has no lack of financial literacy, he is nevertheless a newbie investor. 

Looking back on his past investing experience, Benson recalled that he used to buy a few stocks and sell them at small gains while not knowing when to stop loss in the case of losing money. As a newbie investor, he admitted that he did have his time of being harvested like leeks. What’s more, the commission charged by the broker he chose then was quite high, adding up to a bigger loss from which painful lessons were learned.

Knowing that Benson is passionate about investing, his family introduced Futubull to him in 2018. When first using Futubull, Benson was doubted about the app as his past impression of brokers remained as charging expensive commission while providing unsatisfactory services. But soon Futubull changed his views. After experiencing the app, he now believes that Futubull is an easy-to-use investment platform and becomes an active user who opens the app almost every day.

Benson mainly invests in HK and US stocks and derivatives. He also bought some thematic funds on Futu Money Plus. As he teaches ESG-related modules in university, ESG-related funds were also part of his portfolio.

Admittedly, Benson paid for the lessons learned when he first started trading. But he gradually formed a set of his own investing philosophy by applying academic and financial expertise to investing.

Given his field of research and teaching experience, he usually analyzes the market from a political and economic perspective to find if there are any chances of seeing an explosive growth in a particular sector, which is caused by a strategic shift in the structure of such sector or demographics during a certain period. “I’ll buy a stock at the market price. Once the market trend proves that my judgement is correct, it’s very likely that I’ll continue to buy more,” said Benson.

As he teaches ESG-related modules in university, it’s just natural for him to pay close attention to the related topics. “Take last year for example, the concept of green energy was brought up by many countries. During that period, you could basically achieve great returns on a related stock regardless of when and at what price you bought."

As Benson put it, he’s not good at short-term trading. Instead, he prefers long-term investment strategies. He found that short-term trading would occupy a lot of his time and the odds for him to make money were also small. As a result, he would rather focus on making long-term investments based on detailed analysis. “In short-term trading, I may need to stop loss immediately when a speculation fails. But in long-term investing, even if I suffer a loss of around 10% to 20% in the short term, I am confident that there will be a rebound.” Benson added, "Even if I made a fortune in short-term trading, I would reinvest the money through long-term trading.”

When it comes to the style in portfolio building, Benson tends to invest in both high-growth industries and conservative industries. As he said, he prefers investing in the TMT (Technology, Media, and Telecom) sector because this is a high-growth sector. He also invests in some real estate stocks, because he enjoys doing political and economic research, which will help him figure out the value of the real estate industry and the timing to buy and sell. Benson is a firm believer in Warren Buffett’s famous saying, which goes “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” For him, the TMT and real estate are industries with which he is more than familiar.

With his own investing philosophy, Benson has achieved impressive returns on Futubull. According to him, he achieved a yield of around 200% during the period spanning from last year to the beginning of this year, but the yield declined a little bit due to market adjustments in the middle of this year.

In the recent months, he seized the trading opportunities in times of market fluctuations by buying some derivatives to hedge his investments, making his yield surge to around 400% to 500%, a record which he also shared on Futubull Community.

As Benson put it, his first pot of gold earned on Futubull is enough to make the down payment for a place in Hong Kong. However, he said that he may not use the money to buy an apartment. Instead, he would like to reinvest the money in the stock market for greater gains so that he can pursue his dreams freely in the future.

Benson said that he would like to travel around the world and develop his own business in the future. Becoming financially free is his ultimate pursuit, a goal that he will make continuous efforts to realize.

As an expert in finance who has achieved a high yield, Benson believes that Futu has been an engine empowering his investment journey.

In his view, Futubull’s interface is user-friendly and the app is frequently updated to deliver better user experience, which has helped him to better track the market trend and conduct analyses. “I have grown with Futu in the past several years, and I’m happy to see that both Futu and I have made continuous progress along the way,” said Benson.

Features like News, Quotes and Futubull Community on Futubull are useful tools for him to sense the market trend. As he stated: “With Futubull, you can browse news, communicate with others, and read financial reports of listed companies. In the past, you could only view stock prices and execute trades using banking services. Futubull offers a one-stop solution to all investors. It makes investing easier. It also provides some financial analytics, and these are useful trading tools for me to refer to."

Although Benson is a university lecturer in economics and has quite a lot of financial knowledge, he believes that there’s still a lot to learn on Futubull. “It is true that I teach economics, but that doesn’t make me an expert in everything. The investor education materials on Futubull looks interesting, and I would even like have a try,” said him.

Like many of his peers, the young man’s heart was won by Futu’s branded products, and there are a lot at his place. He told us that he has collected the whole range of Futu branded products launched after 2018. These adorable products add more fun and sparkles to his investment journey.

“Happy 9th anniversary to Futu! I wish you a thriving and prosperous future!” said Benson.