Celine Klarer had scraped a living working three jobs just to pay her rent and then, when Covid happened, Celine and her family, originally of Shanghai, China, faced dired straits
A young woman whose family faced financial ruin during Covid-19 has told how she now earns £100,000 a month.
Celine Klarer, 26, vowed to be an independent woman when her dad’s hospitality business was on the brink of collapse during the pandemic. He also fell seriously ill with coronavirus, leaving Celine and her mum with “very little” financially and struggling emotionally too.
But Celine found the determination to succeed despite the challenges and took three jobs just to pay her 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 at a restaurant but her big break came after teaching herself how to invest following Covid. The graduate bought and sold shares and this success has transformed her life.
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Celine said: “I bought my first shares and did well because it was during Covid. Then my friends started asking how I’d done it. I began helping them for fun and suddenly it turned into something real.
“It was also different trading as a woman. The stock market has always felt very masculine and intimidating. So I wanted to show women that investing can be intuitive, balanced — and empowering.”
Now, Celine has bought an eight-bedroom home in Barcelona, and she retired her mother at 60. The young entrepreneur now runs women’s wealth and wellness retreats in Bali and Dubai.
Celine, who is a Swiss-Chinese national, continued: “My life feels calm and free now. It’s a completely different kind of success. I used to stand in the supermarket for ages 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 empowering other women how to do the same — by teaching them how to work the stock market. It means she divides her time between Barcelona, Bali and Dubai, and often posts pictures of her jet-setting adventures.
She stresses the biggest decision during her journey was her call to go into business without the help of men. Recalling the challenges she and her family faced during the pandemic, Celine said: “When my dad got ill, everything changed. My mum and I had very little. The hospitality industry completely collapsed during Covid, and I realised no one was coming to save me — I had to figure life out for myself.
“At that moment I decided I was never going to rely on a man. My mother was in a similar situation financially, and things were even worse for her because of the very strict Covid lockdowns. I never wanted to be in that position, so I vowed to do something about it.”
She then doggedly held down three jobs — two in marketing and one teaching English online — before discovering the lure of shares. Lockdowns were still in place in some areas as the world tried to escape the Covid shackles, and this gave Celine the time to teach herself stock market tips and tricks.
The graduate, who runs investing education platform The LUNA Abundance Method, added: “I started small. My first shares did well.” Years on, she continues with success in ddabbling in shares — despite the perceived risk of an AI-fuelled stock market bubble.
Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, of The International Monetary Fund, recently told how stock markets could “reprice sharply” in the face of the rise of AI.
