welcome

I'm Hagai. I have been investing privately for over 20 years, in stocks, real estate, startup companies, and more.

I made many mistakes (some of which you can read about below) and learned expensive lessons, and all of this led me to develop a very simple and clear investment strategy - and from this, the FOUNDATIONS project was born.

Where Did It All Begin?

​Somewhere around 2003 was the first time in my life I had disposable money to invest. Sometime that year, my father sat me in front of the computer and said, "You now have money, you need to invest in the stock market."

He certainly deserves all the credit for introducing me to this world. On the other hand, this was pretty much the only guidance I got. There were no explanations, clarifications, or additional information.

No tips, Do's and Don'ts, guiding principles, nothing.

So I invested in a mutual fund based on the Tel Aviv 100 index (RIP, which has since become Tel Aviv 125), without knowing what the Tel Aviv 100 index was. I didn't know exactly which stocks the fund was investing in, what management fees I was paying, or how much the bank was charging me for my investment portfolio.

But most importantly - I didn't know what my investment goal was, how long I wanted to invest, or what to expect.

After a few days, I checked my fancy investment portfolio and saw that it went up. I didn't understand how or why, but of course, I understood that it was good. More money is better than less money. I think I even invested an additional amount.

Soon after, God forbid, the index also dropped. And then I did what every seasoned investor with months of experience would do: I sold everything!

Later, I made my comeback, this time armed with the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of big and sophisticated investment managers: I opened a managed investment portfolio at a prestigious investment house. I'll never forget how the investment advisor asked me seriously, "Are you ready to lose 50% of your money?!?!" and thus made me invest most of the portfolio in bonds. I was 21 or 22 (🤦).

Fortunately, my strategy remained incredibly short-term (if it even deserves the term strategy, probably not), and it wasn't long before I had much better ideas of what to do with my money; travel abroad, buy a car, buy a motorcycle, and go study in university. So I closed that portfolio in the end.

Meanwhile, I also invested independently based on in-depth research that included reading analyst recommendations and making impulsive investments.

The peak of my achievements came a few years later when I had to call the investment house, whose trading system I was using at the time, to ask them what the hell I was supposed to do with some stocks of an oil and gas resources company, whose value had dropped to almost 0 but not quite, and now I had stocks worth a few cents that no one wanted to buy. The oil and gas resources company (...wait for it) had found neither oil nor gas, and my dream of getting rich quickly ended abruptly.

Further down the path of my winding investment journey, I made several rather exotic mistakes, such as investing directly in a few startup companies (spoiler: no exit), chasing hot trends like hydrogen stocks, some of which rose tenfold (!) but I, like every wise investor, did not take out any profits, but rather waited for them to crash back to their original value and only then sell.

The process described in the paragraphs above cost me a lot of money. Directly, in the form of losses I incurred (that is, I caused myself with my own two hands). But much more than that, because if only I had a clearer strategy when I started, if only I knew what to expect, what I would have to deal with, what to do and what not to do, I would not only have avoided some of the losses I experienced. I would have also earned much more. Much, much more.

And this, for better or worse, I learned the hard way. Because alongside this chain of events, there were also successes, and a lot of independent learning and research. And the more I learned, the more confident I became in ignoring some of the advice that various advisors, experts, and bankers tend to give.

If once I would have accepted their advice as is, at this stage I started to change my approach. I no longer accepted sitting in a meeting with one advisor or another and doing what they recommended, even though I didn't really understand what they were explaining. I asked simple but direct questions. I started asking "why?".

I started reading and researching independently. And getting to the core, to the essence itself, to what's at the basis, after all the buzz words, after all the marketing talk. To information sources that can't lie: research, statistics, data.

And the more I delved and accumulated knowledge, the simpler and clearer my strategy became. One that doesn't require almost any time and energy on an ongoing basis. Just patience and persistence. And that's something absolutely anyone can implement.