Celine Klarer had made a living working three jobs just to pay the rent and then when Covid hit, Celine and her family, originally from Shanghai, China, faced a desperate situation.
A young woman whose family faced financial ruin during Covid-19 told how she now earns £100,000 a month.
Celine Klarer, 26, vowed to be an independent woman when her father’s hotel business was on the brink of collapse during the pandemic. He also fell seriously ill with coronavirus, leaving Celine and her mother with “very little” financially and also struggling emotionally.
But Celine found the determination to succeed despite the challenges and took on three jobs just to pay the rent and finish her studies at Switzerland’s elite École Hôtelière de Lausanne, a business university in the west of the country.
She worked long hours in a restaurant, but her big break came after teaching herself how to invest post-Covid. The graduate bought and sold shares and this success transformed her life.
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Celine said: “I bought my first shares and it did well because it was during Covid. Then my friends started asking me how I did it. I started helping them for fun and suddenly it became a real thing.
“It was also different to operate as a woman. The stock market has always felt very masculine and intimidating. That’s why I wanted to show women that investing can be intuitive, balanced and empowering.”
Now, Celine bought an eight-bedroom house in Barcelona and retired her mother at age 60. The young entrepreneur now runs wealth and wellness retreats for women in Bali and Dubai.
Celine, a Swiss-Chinese national, continued: “My life now feels calm and free. It’s a completely different kind of success. I used to spend a lot of time standing in the supermarket deciding what to buy because I couldn’t afford everything. Now I don’t have to look at prices on menus. It’s not about the money, it’s about the freedom it brings.”
Celine is now training other women to do the same: teaching them how to trade the stock market. It means he splits his time between Barcelona, Bali and Dubai and often posts pictures of his jet-setting adventures.
He highlights that the most important decision during his trip was his call to start a business without the help of men. Recalling the challenges she and her family faced during the pandemic, Celine said: “When my dad got sick, everything changed. My mom and I had very little. The hospitality industry completely collapsed during Covid and I realized that no one was coming to save me; I had to figure life out for myself.
“At that moment I decided that I was never going to depend on a man. My mother was in a similar financial situation, and things were even worse for her due to the strict Covid lockdowns. I never wanted to be in that position, so I vowed to do something about it.”
Then he doggedly held down three jobs (two in marketing and one teaching English online) before discovering the appeal of stocks. Lockdowns were still in place in some areas as the world tried to escape the shackles of Covid, and this gave Celine the time to teach herself tips and tricks about the stock market.
The graduate, who runs investment education platform The LUNA Abundance Method, added: “I started small. My first stocks did well.” Years later, he continues to successfully dabble in stocks, despite the perceived risk of an AI-driven stock bubble.
Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas of the International Monetary Fund recently explained how stock markets could “revalue sharply” in the face of the rise of AI.
