It’s a scary time right now, that’s for sure. There’s a new presidency coming in that is threatening to shake things up. They’re threatening to cut 70% of the government’s workforce or something crazy like that. Elon Musk is talking about cutting jobs at the FBI and other governmental organizations. Meanwhile, the country is divided– with half the country rooting for change and the other half hiding under their desks. In addition to all this, there’s a brewing class war with the Luigi assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of a big insurance company. A growing number of people are assembling on the internet that are praising him as a modern day hero. People are calling for him to not be prosecuted because this murder was some form of a justified killing. It just feels like a spark is all it would take to ignite this into some sort of overthrow or crumbling of our country.
It’s a weird time. And I’m sitting here, in my little corner of the world, trying to keep my head down, work hard, put money away and invest intelligently in the market to grow my wealth and I can’t help but think, fuckin’ shit! This is a crazy time to be investing, there’s so much insecurity, the whole government is on the verge of collapse, we could go to war with Russia or China or some country in the middle east at any second. Our national debt is a number I don’t even know how to write in numbers, it’s inconceivable and poised only to grow in the coming years. it’s a whirlwind and who the fuck would invest at a time like this?!
But at the same time, we’re in the middle of a technological revolution, the likes of which the world has never seen, they’re using tech to develop new tech, they’re using AI to develop new AI, it’s exponential growth. No scratch that, it’s exponential explosion and sitting on the sidelines would be sitting out on the biggest investment opportunity in history.
But then again, that type of greed and gimme gimme gimme, that sort of FOMO and tossing money around with no, know how and still making money, it’s like they say, everyone is a genius in a bull market. Look back at the dot com boom though, cash was free flowing and millionaires were minted daily and overnight. And if you were investing during that time, it was an elevator that only went up, or so it seemed, but just take a little stroll through the dot com cemetery– remember Dogpile.com and Myspace.com and Askjeeves.com? Exactly and if you were investing at that time, unless you had some sort of a crystal ball, you lost your ass! And the greed in this market rivals the dotcom greed save for one detail– we have social media now dividing the country into red shirts and blue shirts with a thirst for blood from the other team. “Did you know that in Florida they’re actually…?” “Can you believe California just passed…?” It’s the best and worst time in history at the same time and who the hell can figure out what the intelligent course of action is?
Amidst all this pros and cons of it all, when I’m trying to find my way through the noise and make sense of what sort of steps I should make as an aspiring cool, collected, disciplined and agnostic investor I have two concepts I can’t help but think about. 1.) The lindy effect. The lindy effect is basically the idea that the longer something is in existence, the more likely it is to continue to exist. This country has been doing business for a long time and while past success is not a guarantee of future results, it is an indicator that history is at least somewhat likely to repeat itself.
And 2. chicken little syndrome. This is the idea that fear mongering can illicit a response from others that the sky is falling, when in fact it isn’t. If I can resist the temptation to panic while everyone is running away from the impending doom, I can make really sound decisions and even capitalize on the irrationality of the market. And looking back, every generation seems to think that their generation is the one that will be “lucky” enough to see the fall of civilization. Generation after generation has said that social security is going to run out, that medicare will fall apart, that the dollar will collapse, that world wars will blow up the planet, and yet, if they just calmly kept their money tucked away incubating in the market, they’d be very happy with the result.
So that’s my plan– put my gas mask on, walk back into the burning building and just keep dollar cost averaging and tucking my hard earned US dollars away, invested in the US economy.
And, if I’m wrong and the dollar does collapse or the US economy does implode, well then I’ll be waiting in line for bread with everyone else.