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The Importance Of Knowing
At Peak Prosperity, we strive to help people advance in three key areas: Knowing, Doing and Being.
Doing and Being are the resilience-building steps we recommend. Helping folks develop their own personal action plans in these areas is the main focus of the seminars we run.
But Knowing? That’s the essential first part to master. Without sufficient understanding and insight to guide you, any action you take is merely groping in the dark.
That’s why Chris and I spend the majority of our time info-scouting: following the data and analyzing where macro trends are likely to head next given the latest developments.
We dedicate so much time and energy to this because it’s not the domino that’s falling today that matters. What’s much more important is: Which dominoes will fall tomorrow as a result?
And make no mistake, the pace of falling dominoes is accelerating. From the geo-politically destabilizing regime change in Saudi Arabia, to the ending of the central bank liquidity bubble, to the largest species extinction wave in millennia, to the bursting retirement dreams of the Baby Boomer generation, to the fast-worsening net energy predicament — change is afoot. The relative calm of the false ‘recovery’ that the world’s central planners engineered in response to the Great Financial Crisis has reached its terminus.
Now, more than ever in recent years, understanding where events are headed next is critical to preserving your wealth and well-being.
Being keenly aware of this, Chris and I have been working for months on solving the question: How can we better arm people with the insights and answers they need to take informed action in their lives?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Waiting Is The Hardest Part
Man, what an awful stretch of events.
When I penned last week’s article on tragedy, little did I expect something as horrible as the Las Vegas massacre would immediately follow. And nearly lost in the headlines was the untimely passing of rock legend, Tom Petty, one of my all-time favorite musicians. Sure can’t wait for this week to be over…
In memory of Tom, I’ve been listening to a lot of his and the Heartbreakers’ best hits. The lyrics to one song in particular, The Waiting, well-captures an important message today’s investors should take to heart:
The waiting is the hardest partDon’t let it kill you baby, don’t let it get to you
Those waiting for the financial markets to experience some sort (any sort!) of pullback have been waiting a long, looong time. How long?
- It has been over 100 months (more than 8.5 years) since the current bull market began in April of 2009
- It has been 15 months since the last (and very brief) drop of 5% in the S&P 500
- This past September saw record low volatility, including a stretch now claimed to be “the most peaceful days in the history of the markets”
- Since last year’s presidential election, at which point the markets were already considered dangerously overvalued, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up over 20%
- As of this article’s publishing, the Dow, the S&P and the NASDAQ are all trading at record highs
Or, to put it visually:
The stock market is now 70% higher than it was at the previous bubble peak immediately preceding the 2008 Great Financial Crisis.
Reflect for a moment how painful the crash from Oct 2008-March 2009 was. How much more painful will a crash from today’s much dizzier heights be?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Cardinal Sin Of Investing: Permanent Impairment Of Capital
Victor Moussa/Shutterstock
The Cardinal Sin Of Investing: Permanent Impairment Of Capital
The key message was: When smart analysts independently find the same patterns in the data, it’s time to take notice.
Well, many of you did, by participating in this week’s Dangerous Markets webinar, which featured Grant and Lance.
In it, both went much deeper into the structural fragility of today’s financial markets and the many reasons why economic growth will remain constrained for years to come.
The excessive build-up of debt in the system — and the absolute dependence on its continued expansion to keep the economy from imploding — is, of course, seen as the prime risk to future growth.
As Lance demonstrates here with several of his excellent charts, so much leverage has been taken on that its servicing is increasingly stealing capital that would otherwise go to savings, consumption and productive investment. Going forward, the demands of the debt service will simply result in less and less capital available left over to grow the economy:
As financial assets are (supposed to be) valued on future growth prospects, lower forecasted growth demands lower valuations. Grant calculates that, should the US see another decade of 2% average annual GDP growth (and it has averaged less than that over the past decade), stock prices should be roughly half of what they are today to be considered fairly valued:
And Lance builds further on this, explaining how this moribund growth, coupled with America’s aging demographic trend, will simply savage the nation’s (already troublesomely underfunded) pension and entitlement systems:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Federal Reserve Is Destroying America
The Federal Reserve Is Destroying America
Perhaps I should start with a disclaimer of sorts. Yes, I realize that the people working at the Federal Reserve, as well as the other central banks around the world, are just people. Like the rest of us, they have egos, fears, worries, hopes, and dreams. I’m sure pretty much all of them go home each night believing they are basically good and caring individuals, doing important work.
But they’re destroying America. They might have good intentions, but they are working with bad models. Ones that lead to truly horrible outcomes.
One of the chief failings of central banks is that they are slaves to an impossible idea; the notion that humans are free to pursue perpetual exponential economic growth on a finite planet. To be more specific: central banks are actually in the business of promoting perpetual exponential growth of debt.
But since growth in credit drives growth in consumption, the two are concepts are so intimately linked as to be indistinguishable from each other. They both rest upon an impossibility. Central banks are in the business of sustaining the unsustainable which is, of course, an impossible job.
I can only guess at the amount of emotional energy required to maintain the integrity of the edifice of self-delusion necessary to go home from a central banking job feeling OK about oneself and one’s role in the world. It must be immense.
I rather imagine it’s not unlike the key positions of leadership at Easter Island around the time the last trees were being felled and the last stone heads were being erected. “This is what we do,” they probably said to each other and their followers. “This is what we’ve always done. Pay no attention to those few crackpot haters who warn that in pursuing our way of life we’re instead destroying it.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
