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The Only Investing Video You’ll Ever Need (Start With $0)

2026-04-23 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 29:31 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Money and investing · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Sponsor segment present, Lesson from a book, His own numbers, His own products discussed

Ali's updated beginner's guide to investing: beat inflation by consistently buying a low-cost S&P 500 or global index fund instead of picking stocks, hold through crashes such as March 2020, and, as fast lane investing, put a good chunk of your money into your own skills and business.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Introduction: dreams, confusion and the fear of losing savings; the four parts of the guide

00:00:58 — Part 1: the point of investing, inflation, assets and why to focus on stocks and shares

  • ★★ Money left in a bank account loses value to inflation, Ali says; the point of investing is to put money where it makes more money, first to counteract inflation, then to compound. — 00:01:29
  • ★★ Ali defines an asset as a thing that puts money in your pocket: a rented-out house earns rental income and, usually, capital appreciation. — 00:01:59 · first in: 2026-03-03, I made my first $1,000,000 at 26. Here's how,
  • ★★ For most people just getting started with investing, Ali says, owning a house is relatively inaccessible, so they should look to other asset classes. — 00:02:57
  • ★★★ Ali advises beginners to focus on stocks and shares: they are accessible to normal people, need little money unlike property, carry less risk than crypto and need no accredited-investor status. — 00:03:26

00:03:56 — Part 2: how stocks make money, index funds and the S&P 500

  • ★★ Stocks make money in two ways, Ali explains: the company's value grows over time, and some companies, such as BT, pay part of their profits to shareholders as dividends. — 00:04:32
  • ★★★ Following JL Collins and Warren Buffett, Ali advises not trying to pick stocks: the better and safer approach is to buy an index fund. — 00:05:01
  • ★★ At the time of recording, Ali says, Nvidia makes up 7.18% of the S&P 500 (the 500 biggest US companies), Apple a little over 6% and Microsoft a little over 4%. — 00:05:31 · S&P 500, Apple
  • ★★ Money put into an index fund is spread across the companies in the index according to their weighting in it, Ali explains. — 00:06:29

  • ★★★ Ali's advice for getting started, which he says Warren Buffett recommends too: consistently buy a low-cost S&P 500 index fund and keep buying through thick and thin, then set it and forget it. — 00:06:58 · S&P 500

    “consistently buy an S&P 500 low cost index fund. Keep buying.”

  • ★★ Over roughly the last 100 years, Ali says, the S&P 500 has grown by somewhere between 7% and 9% a year on average. (hedged) — 00:07:57 · S&P 500

  • ★★ Investors should not expect to double or triple their money, Ali says: a 7 to 9% annual return is considered really solid. — 00:08:56
  • ★ The best private equity firms aim for returns of about 20%, Ali says, but normal people generally cannot access private equity. (hedged) — 00:08:56

00:09:21 — Why you shouldn't pick individual stocks: time cost, hindsight, companies too big to fail

  • ★★ Ali recalls a challenge in which Warren Buffett pitted professional stock pickers against the S&P 500: over a long enough horizon the index beats most funds most years. — 00:09:25 · S&P 500
  • ★★ Stock picking has a hidden cost in hours of research every week, Ali says, while an index fund takes 30 minutes or less to start and no time afterwards. — 00:09:54
  • ★★ Ali's friends who invested in individual stocks have basically all made less than an index fund would have given them, and some lost money overall. — 00:10:24
  • ★ Ali considered buying Bitcoin in 2013, and Disney stock when Disney Plus was announced, but bought neither. — 00:10:49
  • ★★ Having thought of buying Bitcoin or Disney stock before they rose does not make you a good investor, Ali says: unless you put your money where your mouth is it doesn't count, and you would also have had to know when to sell. — 00:11:18
  • ★★ Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975 but did not market it for fear of cannibalising its film business, and filed for bankruptcy around 2012, Ali says. — 00:12:46
  • ★★ Netflix offered to sell itself to Blockbuster for $50 million and was laughed at, Ali says; now one Blockbuster is left and Netflix is worth hundreds of billions. — 00:13:15 · Netflix
  • ★★ Younger investors are more drawn to stock picking because their memories are short, Ali says: every generation has companies thought too big to fail, such as Kodak, Blockbuster and Lehman Brothers. — 00:13:44 · Apple, Netflix
  • ★★ Lehman Brothers collapsed in a single weekend in 2008, Ali says, and people who had their retirement savings or stock portfolio in it lost everything overnight. — 00:13:44
  • ★★ Ali advises diversifying holdings across many companies rather than betting your financial future on one, even a company you cannot imagine failing. — 00:14:13

00:14:22 — How to buy index funds: stock brokers and online platforms

  • ★★ Index funds are bought through a stock broker, today an online platform, Ali says: search for a stock platform plus your country's name; Vanguard is one of the big global ones. — 00:14:42
  • ★★ Ali keeps most of his holdings split between Vanguard and Trading 212, an app he and his wife Izzy have used for years. — 00:14:42 · Izzy Sealey

00:15:00 — Sponsor read for Trading 212

00:16:40 — Part 3: what if I lose all my money; the COVID crash; why the stock market goes up over time

  • ★★ Ali worried about losing all his money until 2015, when he first read JL Collins's The Simple Path to Wealth, the book with which he got started investing. — 00:16:40
  • ★★ In March 2020, as COVID hit, the S&P 500 fell by 34% in a single month, Ali says, so $1,000 invested just before became $660. — 00:17:16 · S&P 500, COVID-19
  • ★★★ Selling in a crash realises the loss, buying high and selling low, Ali warns; holding on makes stocks much less risky. — 00:17:46 · COVID-19
  • ★★★ $1,000 put into the S&P 500 just before the March 2020 crash was back to $1,000 by August, worth $1,400 by the end of 2021 and over $2,100 by the end of 2025, Ali says. — 00:18:15 · S&P 500, COVID-19
  • ★★★ The key insight Ali took from The Simple Path to Wealth: the stock market mostly goes up over a long enough horizon; even investing just before the 2008 crisis paid off in the long run. — 00:18:44
  • ★★ The longer you leave money in index funds without touching it, Ali says, the more it compounds. — 00:19:13
  • ★★ To lose all the money in an S&P 500 fund, Ali says, the top 500 US companies would have to lose all their value overnight, which would mean an apocalypse. — 00:19:43 · S&P 500
  • ★★★ Ali thinks it a very reasonable bet that the stock market will go up over a long enough time horizon. — 00:19:43
  • ★★ Ali's first reason the market rises: human productivity compounds, as people at companies make and invent things every day, creating real value. — 00:20:41
  • ★★ Ali's second reason the market rises: the world keeps getting bigger, from about 6 billion people 20 years ago to about 8 billion now, which means more customers. — 00:20:41

  • ★★ Ali's third reason: the S&P 500 is a self-healing index, a curated list in which failing companies are replaced, like a constantly updated best-of playlist. — 00:21:39 · S&P 500, Spotify

    “it is a self-healing index.”

00:22:09 — Global index funds and how much money you need to start

  • ★★ The Vanguard FTSE All-World index fund splits money across the top 3,700 companies in 49 countries, Ali says, and shifts its weightings automatically to where the value is. — 00:22:38
  • ★★★ If you fear a US decline, Ali advises a global index fund such as the Vanguard FTSE All-World, spreading your money across companies worldwide rather than only US ones. — 00:23:07
  • ★★ Most platforms let you start investing with a dollar, $10 or $100, Ali says; google or ask ChatGPT or Claude for the best free platform in your country. — 00:23:36 · ChatGPT, Claude

00:24:35 — Part 4: fast lane investing in your own skills and your own business

  • ★★ What MJ DeMarco calls the slow lane, Ali explains, is saving 10% of a day-job income into index funds or property and becoming a millionaire decades later. — 00:24:35 · The Millionaire Fastlane
  • ★★ The slow lane of investing is very slow but totally fine, Ali says, and important as part of a diversified, balanced portfolio and life. — 00:25:04
  • ★★★ Ali reframes investing from first principles: its point is for existing money to make more money, and stocks or property are only vehicles for that. — 00:25:04
  • ★★ The fast-lane question, Ali says: $10,000 in the S&P 500 makes about $700 a year, so can it be invested elsewhere to make more? Usually, he says, yes. — 00:25:33 · S&P 500
  • ★★★ Ali's first fast-lane option is investing in your own ability to make money, such as a course that lifts a healthcare assistant's pay from $15 to $30 an hour as a phlebotomist: if you must choose, it often beats 500 US companies. — 00:27:01
  • ★★ Paying for a course or qualification is very reasonable if you can see a path to a sensible return, Ali says, though you need not buy courses: much is free on YouTube. — 00:27:01
  • ★★★ At 18 Ali started a business helping students get into medical school: it made about £8,000 in year one, about 80,000 in year two and about 150,000 in year three, then stayed at 150,000 for a few years. — 00:27:30 · 6med
  • ★★★ Ali's business revenue jumped tenfold, from about 150,000 to about 1.2 million, around 2020. — 00:27:30
  • ★★★ Ali's second fast-lane option is investing in your own business: Apple is unlikely to grow tenfold in a year, but $1,000 used to start a business could reasonably make $10,000 or even $100,000 by the next year. — 00:27:59 · Apple
  • ★★ The next year Ali's business revenue grew fourfold, from 1.2 million to 4.6 million; he cannot remember whether in dollars or pounds. (hedged) — 00:27:59
  • ★★ Some first-time founders in Ali's Lifestyle Business Academy made $10,000 within about three months, he says, and are on track for $100,000 in their first 12 months. — 00:28:28 · Lifestyle Business Academy

  • ★★★ Ali's overall advice: invest a good chunk of your time, energy and money in starting your own thing and improving your ability to make money, and the rest in something like the S&P 500, as he has done for over 10 years. — 00:28:58 · S&P 500

    “invest a good chunk of your time energy and money into starting your own thing”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: fast lane · index fund · S&P 500 · The Simple Path to Wealth · Vanguard FTSE All-World Index Fund

Also: People: Albert Einstein · Izzy Sealey · JL Collins · MJ DeMarco · Warren Buffett

Projects: Lifestyle Business Academy

Works: The Millionaire Fastlane

Organizations: 6med · Apple · Blockbuster · BT · Kodak · Lehman Brothers · Microsoft · Netflix · Nvidia · Tesla · The Walt Disney Company · Trading 212 · Vanguard

Concepts: compounding · COVID-19 · dividend · inflation · lifestyle business

Events: 2008 financial crisis

Products: Bitcoin · ChatGPT · Claude · Spotify

Also centred on fast lane: How to Invest for Beginners (2026) · 3 Bad Habits Holding You Back from Financial Freedom · I've Read 417 books. These 4 will make you financially free

Also centred on index fund: How to Invest for Beginners · 9 Passive Income Ideas - How I Make $27k per Week · Revealing ALL My Investments at 27 · How to Invest as a Teenager · How to Invest for Beginners (2026) · The psychology of making money

Also centred on The Simple Path to Wealth: Top 3 Financial Literacy Books for Students · The simplest path to wealth · This book helped me be financially free

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