Become rich: what investors can learn from the super

2019-10-05T16:14:18.144Z

Among the richest people in the world are people with a variety of talents. Only one thing is common to all.

Stock market manager magazine RSS Finance - Stock Market

All articles and backgrounds

04/10/2019

From Bezos to ReimannWhat can investors learn from the super-rich?

By Christoph Rottwilm

Christoph Rottwilm

e-mail
Twitter

More products by Christoph Rottwilm

To large picture view

AFP

Richest man in the world: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is not a classic "saver"

Among the richest people in the world are people with a variety of talents. Only one thing is common to all.

Top 10: The ten richest Germans in 2019

Become rich. There may be higher goals in life, happiness for example, or at least satisfaction and well-being. But get rich? Most people would not mind if they could.

But how do you do it? A look at those who have made it, worth it: About 18 million dollar millionaires worldwide last counted the consulting firm Cap Gemini. Most of them, about 5.3 million, live in the motherland of capitalism, in the US. In Germany, the number of millionaires last amounted to about 1.4 million people.

Even the names and stories of the richest people in the world are no longer a secret. On the contrary: The US magazine "Forbes", for example, is known for the list of the richest people in the world, which publishes the paper year after year. In this country, manager magazin has this week again published its annual list of the richest Germans and 1001 largest financial assets. At the top in Germany are the coffee clan Reimann and the auto dynasty Quandt / Klatten, but richest person in the world is currently Jeff Bezos, founder of the online platform Amazon stock market chart show. In the "Forbes" real-time ranking (yes, there is really), Bezos will face $ 107.8 billion in assets this weekend, based mainly on the 12 percent of Amazon shares package he still heard. Ranked two and three worldwide: Microsoft founder Bill Gates (currently $ 104.3 billion) and France's luxury entrepreneur Bernard Arnault (LVMH stock market chart show $ 91 billion).

From Albrecht to Zollner - most German billionaires are entrepreneurs

And in Germany? Manager magazin's list of names includes names such as the well-known Albrecht family, behind the discounters Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd, to Z, such as the less well-known Zollner family, which runs Zollner Elektronik AG in Zandt, Bavaria. This year's ranking is headed by the Reimann family from the Mannheim and Heidelberg area, which holds investments in cosmetics and beverages through its JAB Holding holdings, which according to research has now accumulated assets of around 35 billion euros ,

More than 2000 billionaires worldwide list "Forbes" by name. Each of them contains at least keyword-like information about how the assets were created or what they are based on. The same applies to the list of the 1001 richest Germans by manager magazin.

On the question of how to get rich, conclusions can be drawn from this information. For example:

Especially in Germany, the foundation for the greatest fortune was laid decades ago , so that today's heir generations in particular have the task of preserving, managing and, if possible, further increasing their wealth. In the USA and in the Far East in particular, things are different . For some years now, more and more young tech entrepreneurs, who have started from practically zero, have climbed to the top of the richest lists . The best example is the already mentioned worldwide leader Jeff Bezos of Amazon. Other examples are: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (according to "Forbes" with $ 66.6 billion currently the world's number six), the Google inventor Larry Page ($ 54.7 billion, number nine worldwide) and Sergey Brin (52, $ 7 billion, number ten) and Jack Ma, who launched the trading platform Alibaba. According to Forbes, Ma owns over $ 37.5 billion, making him the richest Chinese and No. 20 in the world.
From this it can be deduced: Anyone who is not lucky enough to inherit a lot of money needs one thing above all to get to the top: the one, sparking idea. For example, Tobias Lütke from Koblenz, who noted that there was hardly any good software for online shops and decided without further ado to program some of them. Meanwhile, 600,000 companies use the services of Lütke's company Shopify in Canada - the 39-year-old, with a fortune of three billion euros already 54th in the mm-richest ranking and is one of the biggest winners of the year.
However, ideas are hard to plan, you have them or you just do not have them. Probably the most important insight that anyone can draw from Reichstenlisten is therefore another: It can be found on it people with different talents who are traveling in different corners of the economy. Retail, Financial, Pharmaceutical, Mechanical Engineering, Technology, Shipping, Real Estate - you name it. As good as all these wealthy people, however, have one thing in common: their money is for the most part in corporate interests or property , ie buildings, land and the like. What, on the other hand, is unlikely to be found on any of the world's richest lists, is someone who has spent most of his private fortune in a savings account all his life.

This fact should lead to many investors, especially in Germany. Of course, not everyone can start their own business to get ahead financially. However, participation in companies and assets is also possible in other ways. For example, on the stock market, as well as stock or real estate funds. In particular, low-cost ETFs have established themselves in recent years and offer themselves as investment vehicles also for private investors.

In the video: That's why the Quandts are no longer the richest Germans

Show video

Image: Dirk Bruniecki for manager magazin

How little such possibilities are still used in this country, however, is shown by Statista. According to a survey conducted a few months ago, savings accounts or deposits at banks and savings banks in Germany are still the most heavily used form of investment, despite the lowest or even zero interest rates. 45 percent of respondents said they use these forms of investment. In contrast, real estate and investment funds only accounted for 22 percent, direct equity investments even only 15 percent.

Christoph Rottwilm on Twitter

@Christoph Rottwilm

So the question of how to get rich may be hard to answer. There are a variety of possibilities, and in addition to diligence, discipline and perseverance luck plays an important role in most cases. Therefore, it may be more useful for investors to ask a completely different question: if Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or even someone from the German billionaire family Reimann were faced with the option of putting half of their assets or even more in a savings account - they would that probably do? This answer is already much easier.

To home page