For a young person to want to retire at 30 is an impossible dream.
For financial whiz Amer Bin Braik, 20, it is merely a goal that requires focus, discipline, truckloads of hard work and a genius idea.
Last year, Gulf News revealed the identity of the American University of Sharjah (AUS) finance student who was anonymously dispensing free financial tips to senior UAE investors on YouTube under the username investUAEmoney.
"My YouTube viewers now total more than 15,000 hits overall. When I first started the investUAEmoney videos last March [2011] I got just ten hits per day," said Bin Braik. "My top five country views come from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and the UK."
Within the space of six months, Bin Braik has seen the views of his online channel triple. He is now set to launch a financial technical analysis academy on his website, www.investuaemoney.com/academy, this week due to viewer demand. His plan for this year was to start turning a profit by charging viewers to watch his videos; however those plans have been deferred.
"It's still too early to start charging because my viewers still need that educational boost because there are not many educated investors here in the UAE," he said. "Lots of people have written to me suggesting I launch an education branch on my website to teach them the basics and that's where the idea for the academy came from."
Using open source education software, Bin Braik's investment academy will go live this week and is offering visitors the first level of the course, written by him, for free.
Software
"I write all the material and use sources from books that I used to study technical analysis," he said. "Before I was running videos no more than ten minutes long, now they can run up to 30 minutes due to requests from viewers to include certain stocks."
In his videos, Bin Braik uses software developed specifically for Middle East markets called TickerChart. The software allows him to view live movement of stocks on the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) and Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX). Subsequently his daily videos give out the free technical analysis of most stocks on the DFM and ADX for senior investors to use when trading. His website is sponsored by Thompson-Reuters, AVA FX online trading centre and the owners of the TickerChart software Uniticker, for which he now makes commission-based sales of the popular software.
"The Uniticker guys have given me a landing page and when someone clicks the advert on my website they get a 30-day free trial on the software," he said. "The only money I'm making right now is from my sponsors and from selling the software." Right now money does not seem to be the main issue for Bin Braik as he looks to build on his growing reputation as a trustworthy source.
"Until now, nobody has ever lost serious cash from my advice although I do advise people to cut their losses if they do lose," he said. "Eight out of the ten trades I predict are correct."
The Emirati with Yemeni roots is also working on another business venture with Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).
Determined to retire at 30, he does it all alone while still in his third year of university reading for an undergraduate finance degree.
