Might I suggest that if indeed the world population were to collapse in short order, most of those who managed to survive would face bleak prospects at best; the machinery of the global economy would be effectively broken, and modern civilizations would be hard-pressed to survive. What good would it do to sell everything you own today? Investing in anticipation of the "end of the world as we know it" is a questionable exercise at best. If you are convinced we are faced with an inevitable global catastrophe, then buying plenty of guns, ammunition, food, and a private, isolated island is probably your best strategy.Read the whole thing.
I've pondered taking some of my S&P 500 money off the table and move it into safe bonds, but I think the time for that has come and gone. I wanted to pull the trigger at 2000, but I didn't. I can't imagine there will be too much more downside before the Fed contracts fiscal Ebola and begins to spray money out every orifice to stop whatever business cycle is causing them to wet their pants.
If things get too dire in the market, the Fed will save us from ourselves by manufacturing money out of thin air. Well, it will hand out free money until it can't do that any more because printed money has no value, but that looks like it's a ways off.
Beware of expecting the Fed to have the power to save the markets.
ReplyDeleteRussia, China, Iran, Argentina and a growing number of countries are making "de-dollarization" agreements. This means that one reason oil prices are falling, is that countries are leaving the oil for dollars markets.
If oil falls another $10 or so, it won't be profitable for many U.S. companies to extract oil. All sorts of weird things might start to happen as our booming oil sector hits the skids. The Fed can't counter the end of the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Keystone may have offset this, but the Buffet/Obama oil pipeline embargo forced Canada to build pipelines east instead of south. Yay for weirdo leftists and their toy choo-choo trains!
DDE, I think all of that is real, but not yet. I read a wise saying once that said you know what will happen in the market due to incompetence like this, but it always takes much, much longer to come to pass than you think.
ReplyDeleteThat's why ZeroHedge and Mish Shedlock are right in the long run, but very, very wrong in the short run.