The thrill of finding the next hot tech stock or cryptocurrency can feel invigorating, but tracking down that golden goose is more “needle in a haystack” than a real strategy.
Sam Byrne, a 25-year-old investor and co-owner of Liverpool’s Block P, the self-described world’s No. 1 Air Max 95 Store, told Moneywise during a November interview that chasing hype stocks never got him anywhere meaningful. Instead, he embraced a steady-growth approach rather than gambling on the next big thing.
“People don’t want to do that because they want to go and buy Bitcoin or find the next Tesla or Amazon,” he said. “Rather than trying to buy or find the needle in the haystack, I just buy the haystack and hopefully it’ll just average over time, and I feel like that’s the smartest way to do it for me.”
But how does that strategy work for everyone else who faces adversity?
After a serious accident where he fractured his skull playing soccer, Byrne stepped away from his job and threw himself into the market. During the pandemic, he made some money by investing in stocks. But the experience taught him something bigger: investing, he says, is one of the best ways to make your money work for you. How you invest determines whether you build wealth.
Today, most of Byrne’s portfolio is in a Stocks and Shares ISA, the U.K.’s closest cousin to a Roth IRA (1). Like a Roth, you contribute after-tax dollars and enjoy tax-free withdrawals, but an ISA isn’t tied to retirement and has different rules.
“It’s a tax-free account which compounds it in time and a lot of my wealth is just in a tracker which tracks the S&P 500, which will on average go up about 8% a year over the last 50 years or so it has,” he said.
Recent performance backs him up. The S&P 500 surged 23% in 2024, powered by AI momentum and a tech-sector rally. Over the past two years, it has climbed 53%, one of its strongest runs since the late 1990s (2).
Morgan Housel, the New York Times bestselling author of The Psychology of Money, echoed the same philosophy when he recently spoke with Moneywise. The secret to building wealth isn’t outsmarting the market, he said. It’s staying in the market.
Instead of chasing the next Tesla, Housel aims to be “an average investor for an above-average period of time.” Or, as Byrne puts it, don’t waste your time hunting for the needle. Just buy the haystack.
“I don’t think anyone can outperform the market,” Housel told Moneywise.” The variable that I want to maximize with my investments is endurance and longevity.”
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Byrne still sees real value in alternative assets, especially in the one market he understands best: sneakers. Or, as the Briton in him would say, trainers.
He pointed to one example, the Air Max 95 Beetroot. Byrne bought 100 pairs at £140 each, held onto them and watched the value climb. Today, they’re worth around £310 and last holiday season he sold them for about £280 a pair, nearly doubling his investment. It wasn’t luck. It was knowing exactly what would move and why.
And that wasn’t even his biggest win.
“The most we’ve ever sold a pair of shoes for, I think, was about six thousand pounds,” he said, adding the buyer then flipped that same pair at auction for £12,000.
But not every sneaker is an investment. Sneaker investing only works if you understand what drives value (3). Condition matters, since deadstock pairs in their original box sit at the top of the market, while worn or signed shoes can be even more valuable if they’re tied to a major cultural moment. Rarity plays a huge role, too, especially with limited editions and region-exclusive colorways.
Cultural relevance can turn an ordinary drop into a collector’s item, and even size affects demand, with U.S. men’s 8 to 10 usually the strongest.
For Byrne, those nuances are why sneakers aren’t a gamble but a legitimate alternative asset class.
Being intentional with your portfolio only gets you halfway there. The other half is being honest about where your money goes when you’re not looking. Byrne says one of the biggest traps he sees, especially among younger investors, is the pull of consumerism.
“People want materialistic goods. They don’t actually want to put that money into investing it for the long term,” he said.
Dr. David Dubois, associate professor of marketing at INSEAD, told Forbes that status remains a core driver behind luxury spending even if nobody wants to admit it.
“Status is one of the key central motivations that explains why people buy luxury,” he said. “Obviously, nobody cares to admit they want to build their status by purchasing luxury goods … but status building is very important because people want respect in the eyes of others.”
The data backs that up. A recent Boston Consulting Group and Worth Media survey found that 54% of affluent Millennials openly use luxury purchases to signal wealth and achievement, while 70% worry about projecting the right image.
At the end of the day, Byrne’s approach isn’t about depriving yourself or pretending status doesn’t matter. It’s about deciding which version of yourself you want your money to serve. Whether you’re buying index funds or flipping Air Max 95s, the lesson is the same: you don’t need the needle. Buy the haystack, stay consistent and give your money the time to grow.
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The Investor’s Centre (1); Visual Capitalist (2); Timeless (3); Forbes (4; Worth Magazine (5).
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
