Hi Do, Here are Todd’s latest fun picks to take your financial skills to the next level... I'm not concerned about the current financial crisis. Instead, I'm concerned about the recovery. The investment game changed the day the Fed went "nuclear" announcing zero percent interest rates, QE unlimited, and helicopter money via stimulus checks, PPP, and extra unemployment benefits. These "emergency" actions were universally welcomed by both political parties, questioned by nobody, and will result in a serious new problem. The key idea to understand is that risk never leaves the financial system: it just changes form. (Read that sentence twice. It's important.) So if the risk of an immediate stock, junk bond, derivatives, and then pension system collapse was mitigated when the Fed announced $4 trillion in stimulus, then where did it go? What's the problem? To find the answer you must see what others missed. Recency bias misleads you to believe investing in the future will be akin to investing in the past. You blindly believe that what held true for the last 50 years will be true for the next decade or two. Unfortunately, there are once-in-a-generation points in history where the game changes suddenly without any announcement. Unless you extensively studied economic and financial market history you wouldn't see it coming. However, I spent 12 years as a hedge-fund manager studying and researching financial markets, and I'm seeing something incredibly important that a few other people with similar experience are also noticing - we are on the precipice of an epochal change in the financial markets. No, the world isn't going to end. This is not doom and gloom, and there's no need to go stock up on guns and butter. All of this has happened before in other societies and other times, and the world continued just fine. While this situation is anything but normal, it's not unprecedented. With that said, the worst thing you can do at this point in history is to apply the strategies that worked in the past. The baton got passed to another epoch. The future will be different. And today's resources will help you prepare for this epochal investment change we are entering. These resources are not "page-turners." They are serious investment research. You'll need to set aside some time, turn off Netflix, and pay attention. But they'll take you one step closer to understanding what's about to happen (or already happening), and how to prepare your portfolio. As a hedge fund manager, one of my research breakthroughs was identifying the contra-cyclical nature of gold and the stock market. It still forms the basis of one of my favorite investment strategies to this day. Few people realize that from 1971 when Nixon ended the gold standard all the way through today that the "barbarous relic" has outperformed the stock indexes on a pure price basis (excluding dividends). More importantly, gold is one of the few assets that is inversely correlated with the stock market when measured over extended periods (decade, plus or minus), and inverse correlation is the Holy Grail of investment allocation strategy. I've seen almost nothing written about this powerful truth and how to apply it in your portfolio. This article by Dan Amerman is one of the rare exceptions. I encourage you to read it and check out the DVD offer below to better understand how this one idea can have a dramatic impact on your portfolio performance going forward. Dan Amerman (the author of the above article) offers two premium educational DVD sets that I recommend and secured a special deal for you to make them more affordable. One DVD set teaches you about the counter-cyclical role of gold in your portfolio, and the second provides unusual research showing how to strategically use mortgage debt in a very specific way to increase both safety and profits. Given recent economic changes and the fact that gold and the U.S. dollar are making new highs at the same time, you need to know what's in this "Gold Out Of The Box" DVD set. The markets are sending a clear message. Similarly, Dan's "Real Estate ALM" DVD set provides essential research for positioning your real estate portfolio for the next decade of risky markets. Big change is afoot, so you need to arm yourself with the knowledge to preserve and grow your wealth. These DVDs are NOT ENTERTAINMENT. They're serious research about the only two strategies you can use to create a synthetic short position on the dollar and transform your portfolio in adverse economic conditions. I negotiated a special 2 for 1 deal with Dan for a limited supply of 100 of these DVD sets and fewer than half still remain. Ray Dalio has studied financial market history more than most. And fortunately, he's taken the time to share his insights in a variety of articles and books. I'm recommending this particular article so you can see how our current economic progression is completely understandable based on history, and how we are just minutes before the clock striking midnight... or possible after. I chuckled at the parallel of his central bank "stimulant" analogy. I use an almost identical analogy to explain our economy as an addicted drug addict in the final bottoming stage (with the Federal Reserve as the drug dealer). Warning... this article is long, and it provides important educational background to understanding the resources I shared last week, this week, and in the coming weeks to prepare you for what's ahead. It's worth the time. Onward and upward! Todd Tresidder |