Investor Round-Up With Beyond The Firewall
Jason transitioned from chef to info security, launched Beyond The Firewall, invests in ETFs, crypto, and stocks, and advises starting investments early.
I am interviewing Jason Rowe from Beyond The Firewall.
Every investor has their own way to build their wealth by investing.
The goal for this interview series is to share lessons from investors so you can build an investment style that works best for you.
We are going to learn from Jason’s journey.
Let’s get started.
Jason, can you tell us a little about yourself?
First, thank you so much for doing this. I have a pretty eclectic background. I was a chef for most of my professional career until 2020. Having a second kid on the way, I decided to leave the restaurant industry after a fairly successful career. I really got into investing around this time (I’ll get more into that later). I had tried a few side hustles the last few years of being a chef, but nothing panned out. In 2020, I tried life insurance sales, but it was just not for me. I went back to school for information security and have been in that space ever since.
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Tell us about your publication?
I’ve been doing my publication Beyond The Firewall since January 2024 and it’s really evolved to what it is today. At first I was writing what I thought was interesting. Hacker groups, exploits, AI. It was all cybersecurity but from my perspective probably not interesting to anyone other than other tech people. So late in 2024, I started my transformation. I analyzed growing publications and narrowed my focus on Data Privacy. Since then I’ve been on a mission to help people on a simple path: Reset their mindset to be aware of all the ways they are giving away their data. Then guide them through finding what data is out there, attempt to remove it, and set up a new system moving forward to prevent more data leaking. I do this through privacy focused platform recommendations, my digital products, my app the Firewall Report and one-on-one consulting.
Can you describe your investment style?
My investment style is a cross between long-term low-risk investing and short-term speculative investing.
How do you find the investments you want to invest in?
So most of my low-risk investments are in ETFs, so I automate each week when I get paid. I have standing buy orders for SPY, QQQ, NOBL, and VYM. Two of them are dividend ETFs, which I have set to auto-reinvest. I found these through Minority Mindset on YouTube and then looked into them. I’m in no way an expert, lol, but for me, these seem to make sense. As far as my speculative choices, I go with a couple of crypto, Bitcoin and XRP, which I see as being a combination of utility and public sentiment. For stocks, I go with companies I see growing in the future, so Nvidia, Tesla, things like that. Not too surprising.
How do you reduce your risk?
I am not so much worried about risk as most of my investment is long-term, so I am (Dollar Cost Averaging). For speculation, I set SL (Stop Loss) at 10%, pretty conservative, I would guess.
When do you sell?
I sell if the stop loss is hit or if I see trouble on the horizon. I’ll try to make a smart exit and watch sentiment in the overall market. Again, I’m not really a trader. I just try to intuit what’s going to be happening months out, not days.
What is your most memorable investment whether good or bad?
I lost out on Ocugen in 2021. I bought close to 3,000 shares when it was worth 36 cents or so and sold because I needed the money at the time (kids are expensive, lol). I made money on it, but months later, the stock went to $18, so I missed out on 10s of thousands of dollars. That really changed my mindset on putting more than I could let sit there. Now it’s not so much about selling for need but selling and holding cash for a better entry.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Start earlier!!
Before You Go
Thanks to
doing the interview. If you liked the interview, please consider giving the post a like, comments, restacking, following , and subscribing to Beyond The Firewall.I’d love to have you as a guest on the Investor Round-Up! Just send me a message and I’ll be happy to feature you.
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Disclaimer: The views of the guest do not represent the views of The PIMM Trader or its affiliates. The author of this post is not a financial advisor. The information provided herein is not financial advice and should not be construed as such. This content is intended solely for educational purposes and should not be used as a basis for any financial decision-making. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of your invested capital. Only invest what you are willing and able to lose.