The Investment Scientist

The eBook version of my book “Entrepreneur Wealth Management Made Easy” is now free! on Amazon for the next three days. Go get it: https://shorturl.at/xKa8z

Note that Amazon will try to lure you into subscribing to their KindleUnlimitedwith the first big yellow button “Read for Free”, avoid that. Click the second deeper yellow button “Buy now with 1-click” instead.

This is my New Year gift for all entrepreneurs out there. Please forward to your entrepreneur friends.

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Thank you so much to everyone who responded to my recent request for your opinions. Let me cut to the chase: 45% of you want me to write about the latest academic research; 36% want to hear about cautionary tales, and 19% want both – one person even suggested  that I should be able to combine the insights from academic research with cautionary tales. 

Cautionary tales are relatively easy to write since they are direct results of f my work with my clients. I often deal with things they did before I started working with them or things I wish they had discussed with me before acting. 

It is much more challenging to write about academic research. Most academic papers are very abstract and they are scattered throughout various journals. I must first survey these journals and extract useful insights from them. 

If writing a cautionary tale is an 1-hour job, writing about academic research could take 10 hours. But I will do that since that’s what you have asked me to do. And, quite frankly, writing about these studies will help me better manage my clients’ wealth.

Here are the journals that I will survey:

I had a blessed 2021! Here are the highlights.

1) Finished all my Oxford courses.

2) Produced a Showstopper improvised musical show for my Oxford classmates at Oxford.

3) Visited the Balkans, especially “the Bridge over Drina.” Learned about its fascinating and tortured history.

4) Took my kids to many Western European cities/towns.

5) Continued my hip hop adventure with Doug. Now I can more or less rap freestyle!

6) Started learning German. With help of a fantastic teacher Kat, I can now speak broken German.

Last Saturday I completed my executive MBA study at Oxford. The whole thing actually started quite serendipitously. A client of mine who is a physician studied there and he liked it so much that he encouraged me to apply. Today I’d like to share some funny moments on my journey.

As part of the application process, I went to Oxford for an interview. I booked a student dorm room at Sommerville college, and when I checked in, I was mesmerized. The dorm room looked and smelled like it was right out of a Harry Potter movie. The adjacent canteen looked like the Great Hall at Hogwarts, with walls adorned with huge classical paintings of accomplished women alumni. 

That night I was the only resident in the entire building, and it didn’t take long for me to notice that the bathrooms were not marked by sex, and in fact there were no male bathrooms. Later I found out that Sommerville is the first girls’ college at Oxford and Margaret Thatcher herself graduated from there. 

I admit this is not exactly an investment piece. However, if you continue to read, it might yet turn out to be your best investment. Study after study has shown that what determines life satisfaction is not money, but relationships you are able to build with other human beings. Come to think of it, our lives are but tapestries of woven human connections. The stronger the connections, the happier and resilient you are. And what better way to strengthen your most important relationships than gifting meaningful songs during this holiday season. You can get a song custom-made for your loved ones on this website: http://VeryOwnSong.com. 

1, I got accepted into Oxford University Business School’s Executive MBA program. I will go to Oxford to attend classes starting in January. The program requires me to go to Oxford one week out of every five for a year and a half with a total of sixteen modules.

2, I’ve nearly finished my second book “Entrepreneur Wealth Management Made Easy.” I expect to publish it in the first half of the new year.

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DC Metro Theater Arts, the largest performing arts publication in the Mid Atlantic region, just did an article about the upcoming improvised musical show I am producing in Bethesda. Tara and Rance, the two performers from Chicago, deservingly got the lion share of coverage, but the publication did say this about me:

Their upcoming show at Imagination Stage in Bethesda will be their first in that venue and in Maryland. This opportunity landed on their radar through Michael Zhuang, a resident of Bethesda, nicknamed “The Investment Scientist” for his founding of MZ Capital Management. Mr. Zhuang has traveled the world and spent countless hours researching, studying, and practicing his love of musical improv. In 2017, he began sponsoring up-and-coming talent from the improv-comedy meccas of New York City and Chicago to perform locally, with the goal to embed musical improv into the fabric of Bethesda’s growing arts and entertainment culture.

“My vision is to see Bethesda’s performing arts scene flourish,” said Zhuang.

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Spontaneous Broadway is an hour and a half long  musical show broken into two 45-minute sections. In the first half, the audience members are asked to write down made-up song titles and put them a basket. Each actor in the cast will draw one from the basket and, based only on the title, make up a song right on the spot. Afterward, the audience will vote for the song they like the best.

In the second half of the show, the cast will create a Broadway musical that contains the song the audience picked along with many other songs, characters and a story. This, again, is done entirely by improvisation.

Just the thought of this terrifies me. That’s why I flew to San Francisco last week to participate in a workshop put on by Bats Improv Theater. The conclusion of the workshop was a public performance this past Sunday.

Oh boy! Did we (the student cast) did an awesome show?

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Well, two weeks ago I got an email from Investopedia, an encyclopedia website for personal finance and investment. The email told me that I was recognized as one of their “Top 100 Influential Advisors” in their inaugural ranking.

Let me just say I was very skeptical. I’ve gotten emails like that before, sometimes even from reputable magazines, telling me that I had been selected in their top financial advisor rankings. They then would go on to ask me to buy advertising, or make a payment to retain my listing in their top advisor rankings.

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Am I super excited about this recognition?

Hardly!

This is not the first time I’ve gotten this type of email. In the past, I have received similar emails from both strangers and people claiming to represent well-recognized publications like Barron’s and Forbes. They all told me that they wanted to recognize me as the best wealth manager/financial advisor/financial planner in the country, or in my state, or in my city, or ever born. Read the rest of this entry »

1. I went to San Francisco to study improvised musical theater and performed at the Bay Front Theater for a 45 minute set of musical story entirely improvised on stage.
2. Against all odds, I kept Storyfest Short Slam, a short storytelling contest, alive and strong at the Bethesda Writer’s Center.
3. I visited my English teacher whom I had lost touch with for 30 years. I couldn’t have accomplished this much in the US without him. I went to say thank you to him personally. I went to Guangzhou for my high school reunion and took pictures with my female classmates for the first time. (Back then we didn’t hang out with the opposite sex.) 
4. At Leadership Montgomery homecoming, I acted out Michael Jackson. Read the rest of this entry »