I never slow down and gawk at accidents on the side of the road, that's the easiest way to get into one yourself. But this is different, watching the collapse of western society is like being involved in history as it's written. In the years ahead I can sit around the fireplace, or aircon in the case of global warming, and tell the grandchildren rich tales of how millions of Australians went mad in the head in pursuit of a dream based on greed and laziness.
In years to come you will tell the grandchildren how you waited decades for a nation ending event which never happened. You wasted the best years of your life waiting.....waiting....waiting. While you waited the price of gold continued to fall, due to you buying in at the peak you lost you're wealth and that of the grandchildren forcing them into a life time of poverty renting from the very people who told him he was wrong.
Title of this story, The Grand Father who lost the p(lot).
In years to come you will tell the grandchildren how you waited decades for a nation ending event which never happened. You wasted the best years of your life waiting.....waiting....waiting. While you waited the price of gold continued to fall, due to you buying in at the peak you lost you're wealth and that of the grandchildren forcing them into a life time of poverty renting from the very people who told him he was wrong.
Title of this story, The Grand Father who lost the p(lot).
Oh yes, so buy property when it seems like it is at its peak.. Got it..
I don't generally believe fringe opinion when the current state and immediate future can be adequately explained by common sense and mainstream theory.
Mainstream? Like the way the mainstream theory predicted the GFC and kept all those investors safe? Good luck with that sb.
Shadow was hopelessly wrong about the Gold Bull Market. What else is he wrong about?
I don't generally believe fringe opinion when the current state and immediate future can be adequately explained by common sense and mainstream theory.
Irrational exuberance sells houses.
ditto re the loony investor fringe
WHAT WOULD EDDIE DO? MAAAATE! Share a cot with Milton?
Exactly. Which is why I don't listen to them any more than the D&G brigade.
I've said it before: the boring, unsexy middle ground is where the market usually resides.
goldbug
13 Sep 2014, 05:32 PM
Mainstream? Like the way the mainstream theory predicted the GFC and kept all those investors safe? Good luck with that sb.
Plenty of mainstream theory predicted the GFC, in the US at least. We knew about ARMS and NINJA loans well before they were a problem. I've always stayed away from US property because it is so susceptible to wild swings.
In years to come you will tell the grandchildren how you waited decades for a nation ending event which never happened. You wasted the best years of your life waiting.....waiting....waiting. While you waited the price of gold continued to fall, due to you buying in at the peak you lost you're wealth and that of the grandchildren forcing them into a life time of poverty renting from the very people who told him he was wrong.
Title of this story, The Grand Father who lost the p(lot).
Longterm risk vs reward analyses reflect personal age, circumstances, capabilities, and vulnerabilities as well as overall national economic prospects.
To put that in very stark terms, consider the future of a (male) German citizen circa 1933. "Overall" things are starting to look pretty good after a disastrous decade of war reparations, hyperinflation, and weak government. But to a degree that would be profoundly difficult to anticipate, his future prospects depend very starkly on his age and religion/ethnicity/sexuality.
- If he is Jewish, Roma, homosexual, or crippled, he will be lucky to survive the next decade at all. Even if he does survive, unless he has been strikingly prescient in moving assets offshore, essentially everything he once owned will be gone. Eventual reparations may restore a minor fraction of that.
- If he is Aryan and of conscriptable age in 1933, he is likely to have a glorious few years economically, followed by a multi-year period at serious risk of military injury or death, and economic asset destruction, followed by some post-war economic recovery. But (depending somewhat on his age) the wealth-destruction he and his nation experience during WW2 is unlikely to be fully recovered during the remainder of his working lifetime, in real terms.
- If he is a child in 1933, and survives the war, he will endure early privation, but then participate in a multi-decade post-war economic recovery of near miraculous proportions. He will spend his economically productive years as a citizen of a country that rises from the ashes to become one of the richest and most stable economies on Earth.
* * *
My point is not that Australia will face a pre-WW2 German future, but that long-dated predictions of the success of a particular economic strategy are fraught with potential interruption by "events, my dear boy, events", as Harold MacMillan (who would know, after his Suez war strategy blew up) supposedly once phrased it.
It is of course entirely open to you or anyone to take an "all-guns-blazing" approach to investment, and to hope or even expect that many individual gains will see you through an occasional loss.
But take your gains graciously, and don't disparage those with a more risk-averse nature.
It was, after all, those unfortunately few German Jews (and others) who moved capital early to Switzerland, and moved themselves early out of Germany, who did best out of the buoyant German economy of 1933 - 1941.
My point is not that Australia will face a pre-WW2 German future, but that long-dated predictions of the success of a particular economic strategy are fraught with potential interruption by "events, my dear boy, events", as Harold MacMillan (who would know, after his Suez war strategy blew up) supposedly once phrased it.
Come now. You are surely not suggesting that nobody should ever buy anything?
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt — Bertrand Russell
Come now. You are surely not suggesting that nobody should ever buy anything?
Where did I suggest that?
What I did suggest was that Mike was way off base for disparaging more conservative investment approaches that others might take with respect to the present Australian economic outlook. The trip in the way-back machine was only intended to highlight why that might be important, not to predict a specific future outcome.
(And note, I have no truck with knee-jerk economic bears either.)
More generally, I would suggest that potentially catastrophic geopolitical developments are too casually disregarded by mainstream Australian retail investors today (and very likely by their index-conscious superfund providers as well). I know I'm not as well diversified with respect to Australian real estate market risk, or Australian stock market risk, or Australian currency risk, nor the political risk associated with Australian superfund holdings, as I should be. And I sincerely doubt most of the bulls on the forum are either.
More generally, I would suggest that potentially catastrophic geopolitical developments are too casually disregarded by mainstream Australian retail investors today (and very likely by their index-conscious superfund providers as well).
A "potentially catastrophic geopolitical development" could happen tomorrow. Or next month. Or next year. Or next decade. If "potentially catastrophic geopolitical developments" are to be taken into account, it makes purchase decisions very tricky.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt — Bertrand Russell
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