Opportunity? Really?

Lately, my social media has been chock full of suspicious investment “opportunities”

Here’s how to tell when one really isn’t.  If at any time you see or hear the words, “if the market…,” then stop. Because now you’re gambling with everybody else. You don’t know what the market will do, I don’t, the computer models don’t, the chimpanzees don’t, and especially the people on Wall Street don’t–because their analysts have been documented to be wrong at least 80% of the time. So your money is being gambled with–and you are not acting like an investor. Don’t take that as an offense! If you don’t know what you’re buying, if you haven’t done the homework, if you don’t read annual reports, and you have only mutual funds or are only following “advice”, then you are not investing.

“Wait”, you say, “everybody else is doing fine. I know this guy or this woman and they’ve been doing great.” Stop. They are not. No one in America talks honestly about money. Because it’s not considered polite, and more likely they don’t know how they’ve really done. There is also the “survivor syndrome”. Sure, they’ll tell you when they’re up, but they won’t tell you when they’re down. For the last several decades, including 2008, there has been a major correction (read: bubble burst) in the market, and who gets screwed? You, the average saver. Someone trying to save in a tax-deferred program at work. Everyone else, the brokers, the Wall Street people, they’re the ones driving the foreign cars and not worrying about whether they’ll have enough to eat when they retire. I don’t want to paint too bleak a picture, but you have to wake up to this lie. You are being lied to all the time. There are entire “news” networks whose sole job is to pump up Wall Street. Las Vegas, as I’ve often said, is far more honest about the hype. You know you’re probably going to lose, but you’ll probably have more fun. I am not being paid by Las Vegas, although they ought to.

So what do you do? Those of us who woke up have to ask that question. The first thing you need to be looking for is how to eliminate the risk of loss. If you cannot afford to lose money–and who can?–you should not be gambling. But this what the mutual funds in your retirement program are doing. The misunderstood tax deferral you are getting is yet another gamble on the tax rate you are going to face in retirement. You’re also throwing away your opportunity to do something better with your money right now, long before you retire. Passing up the ability to improve yourself, to start a business, or to take advantage of something really amazing that drops in your lap. Great opportunities don’t come along every day, but you have to be ready when they do.

But you put all your money on that roulette wheel, the Wall Street game and there it sits just waiting to be lost. If this doesn’t make you feel good you can do something about it. You don’t have to be a sitting duck. Look into Privatized Banking, where the words “if the market does this” is not a part of our vocabulary.