
Sounding the Alarm: Now Is the Time to Be a Cockroach - mooreds
http://www.erica.biz/2018/cockroach/
======
rbliss
The article fails to articulate a specific reason for a market failure
besides:

1) The market is really good right now and has had a long run so we must be at
the top.

2) An appeal to their own authority for having "trained myself to recognize
the top".

This comes across as a scare clickbait piece devoid of substance. That's not
to say we won't have a market failure in the near future, but without a clear
rational, this specific article is junk.

It's good to run a cash flow positive company, it's good to have 6 months of
savings and low debt, but please post something more substantive.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Agreed, to a point.

Having been through several more recessions, since the mid 70s, all have been
different. Different symptoms, different causes, different sectors.

\+ 1970s - Oil crisis & OPEC

\+ 1980s - Deliberate govt policies and adoption of monetarism

\+ 1990s - ERM, Black Monday, US S&L

\+ 2002 - dot Com bust, post y2k contraction

\+ 2008 - Global banking crisis

The nearest I've seen to being able to "recognise the top" is some young
person, usually looking too young to drive, turning up on national TV
financial news explaining why "this time it's different", why the boom will
continue, or why the property market isn't overheated. This is usually a clear
sign that the economy is now having a Loony Tunes moment, in mid-air and not
yet noticing there's no ground any more.

~~~
nostrademons
Interestingly, I haven't seen that irrational exuberance about the economy as
a whole in a long time. Perhaps for specific sectors, like mobile in 2013 or
Bitcoin last December (both of which turned out to be market tops). But in
general people seem incredibly pessimistic today, with none of the optimism
about everything that characterized the late 90s or even the Web 2.0 boomlet
from 2005-2007. People have been predicting a (further) financial crash since
the bottom of the market in 2009.

I wonder if that's a sign that the current boom still has a while to go.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Post 2008 has been very odd. The post recession growth phase was more like
becoming bored of too long a bust than actual growth as seen previously. Some
areas and sectors barely seem out of recession even now. Especially with the
added pressure brought by austerity. In a lot of ways we don't yet seem done
with the causes of 2008.

The top could be much harder to find without hindsight. :)

------
ryandrake
This alarm has been sounded every year since at least as far back as the FB
IPO. “We must be at the top!” “This is unsustainable!” “How could CompanyX be
worth $NN billion? We are in a bubble!”

One year the person will be right and after the fact we will call him/her a
genius for seeing it. All the other people making this prediction so far have
been wrong and we have forgotten that they even made the prediction.

Same happened during the housing bubble. I distinctly remember predictions of
doom in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. The 2007 guy ended up being right.

~~~
quikoa
To be fair this is addressed in the article: “The market can stay irrational
longer than you can stay solvent,” John Maynard Keynes wisely said. Timing the
market is extraordinarily difficult.

~~~
vitaflo
> Timing the market is extraordinarily difficult.

It's doubly difficult because you have to be right twice. If you're lucky
enough to have called the top, you have to get lucky again and know when the
bottom is. If you buy back in on a dead cat bounce, you're still going to lose
a bunch of money.

------
gregpilling
I do light manufacturing in Arizona. In the last six months the prices of
steel have basically doubled. My #1 material input now costs twice as much,
and to add insult to injury, it is now becoming very hard to get in some
cases.

Last week we were scrambling to find 1/4 steel plate. A common common
material. Its as rare as finding bread in a supermarket, its one of those
staples that you never expect to see shortages of. And last week we had a lot
of trouble getting it.

I had dinner with tubing salesperson this week. He was complaining that all
the fancy DOM and high strength thin wall was in short supply - and this is
where most of his commission based pay comes from. We don't use that much DOM,
but we have noticed the price doubled this year.

Another friend sells a machine which uses hydraulic parts. He can get all the
hose he wants, but nobody has any fittings. His suppliers of hydraulic
cylinders are all out of stock and not expecting shipments until November. One
supplier told him that he laid off his whole staff since there was nothing to
sell and he wasn't sure if he could cover rent let alone employees until
November.

The tariffs have caused a two-fold reaction; industrial customers with money
in the bank have purchased 6 months or a year worth of stuff instead of a
months worth of stuff, while suppliers offshore have stopped shipping because
they don't know what the price will be by the time it arrives in port. Since
the deal is struck before the ship leaves, what happens if a 25% tariff is
added? So they ship nothing and wait.

The actual tariff itself is not the main issue, it is the market forces
reaction to it. No USA based suppliers can pick up the slack, and nobody I
knew of was hedged against a sudden tariff being applied to their main inputs.

Blue collar workers will get laid off and the effects will ripple through the
economy. This crash will be different from the last, but that doesn't mean it
won't happen.

I have no strategy other than avoiding new spending on machines and being very
slow to add new hires. Your industry segment may vary tremendously, time will
tell.

I am moving to a new factory this month, my electrician is harvesting all the
conduit and panels, because they have gone up 130% this year he tells me. I am
in fear of the invoice.

------
metamicah
A lot of this advice (pay down high-interest debt first, have an emergency
fund) is reasonable no matter what the market conditions are.

But the common wisdom is that "time in the market beats market timing." Since
these boom-and-bust cycles tend to happen over 7-10 year periods, and you
really can't predict when they'll happen exactly, I think a market-related
investment can be rational at any point in the cycle, as long as it's
considered untouchable for ten years.

~~~
ams6110
Yes. If you dollar-cost-average into funds (e.g. invest the same dollar amount
every month), you will automatically buy more shares when the market is low
and fewer when the market is high. Long term this is exactly what you want to
do, and it doesn't depend on being able to predict price movement.

I even buy gasoline this way, because prices at the pump seem to change almost
randomly. I buy $25.00 at a time. So I buy more when the price is low and less
when the price is high.

~~~
graedus
> I even buy gasoline this way, because prices at the pump seem to change
> almost randomly. I buy $25.00 at a time. So I buy more when the price is low
> and less when the price is high.

At the risk of a joke flying right over my head, I'll ask how this works.
Isn't your gas usage mostly inelastic? Are you going to drive to work less or
to the supermarket less because your tank is almost empty due to gas prices
being higher? If you're thinking about planning a road trip, do you say "nah,
only got half a tank of gas" due to your $25 not buying you as much? Wouldn't
it be easier to just look at the price of gas and decide based on that?

~~~
jtolmar
It works if $25 of gas lasts long enough to get to a different price (harder
at a bad price), and your tank has sufficient room to hold $25 of gas (harder
at a good price). Those constraints make it worse than real dollar cost
averaging, but it should still work.

You can do better if you can predict gas prices but that's sort of the point
of DCA - it's a strategy that works without insight.

Edit: this strategy has a higher sample rate when gas prices are bad. This
causes a problem if prices are temporally correlated, which they are, unless
the sample distance is large enough that the price has enough time to become
completely randomized, which is a big ask.

~~~
lucas_membrane
> a strategy that works without insight

Doesn't work if gas price changes are log-normally distributed.

------
weeksie
Point taken and I agree with the advice. That said, you never know what kind
of downturn this will be. 2001 was very different than 2008. The GFC was a
credit-driven crash and took a long time to unwind, during which all of the
scared money went splashing into tech so despite her narrative, 2008 was not a
recession for many people in the tech industry. Developers didn't get hit at
all and there was plenty of VC money sloshing around.

The next downturn will (probably, maybe) be a normal run-of-the-mill Fed move
based on raising rates to cool off inflation. That probably _will_ affect
startups. Still, you never know and it always pays to have a bunch of liquid
cash—that's never bad advice.

~~~
zamfi
Having been there in 2008 (but not 2001) I will say that 2008 did hit
developers a little bit: a number of companies (including big ones like
Google) had hiring freezes for about 6 months, and investment dried up
starting in early 2008 and lasting until nearly the end of 2008. It looked
scary for a little bit, even for developers. (Though of course nothing like
the rest of the country.)

Starting in late 2008 it was all rainbows and ponies again.

~~~
throwaway5752
Yeah, you weren't there in 2001 if you think a 6 month hiring freeze is a hit
:)

~~~
ptd
How long were the hiring freezes in 2001?

~~~
ttul
Picture SOMA with 50% office vacancy. Literally landlords would give you an
office for free just to keep people from vandalizing it. And this went on in
2001-2003. The recovery of tech took a really really long time.

I miss the tech crash. So many great people were floating around with nothing
to do. It was a good time to be starting something.

~~~
asciimo
This isn't the SOMA I remember back in the day. Even if that estimate is
accurate, "SOMA" was barely a thing. Now SOMA is literally south of market,
and a 50% vacancy would be quite different.

------
pjmorris
“Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” -
Warren Buffett

I'm a bit more sanguine than the article (No one wants another GFC, and
governments will go to ludicrous measures to avoid same), but it does seem to
me that the party can't go on too much longer. I didn't see the 2001 crash
coming, but saw the 2008 crash coming, and mostly moved out of its way. If you
want a window into the world of financial news and predictions, I find Bill
McBride at Calculated Risk [0] to be one of the better prognosticators from
the wide menu of prognosticators available.

[0] [http://calculatedriskblog.com/](http://calculatedriskblog.com/)

~~~
arbuge
Alot of the party seems to have been concentrated in a few tech stocks - the
usual FANG suspects, Microsoft, some newer IPOs, and a bunch of unicorn
private companies.

It seems to me that one possible outcome would be for that rather localized
party to end with valuations there returning to sustainable levels, while the
rest of the market is less affected.

~~~
kahnjw
FAANG and most other tech valuations have grown enormously over the last 10
years, but they've roughly followed the growth of their revenue streams and
potential monetization opportunities. There may be some short term
corrections, but the notion that the majority of risk in the current economy
is concentrated in FAANG and some tech IPOs seems overly simplistic and
probably just wrong.

The GFC was a result of individuals taking on massive amounts of debt in
aggregate. Corporate America has similarly taken on a lot of debt over the
last decade for buy backs and growth. As the author of the article notes, the
last 10 years have been great for cheap debt. Negative balances are still a
risk and rates are going up. The companies taking on the most risk in terms of
debt are for the most part not traditional tech. Think Chevron, GE, and other
industrial and energy companies. I'd conclude that the majority of the
economic risk is in fact not concentrated in FAANG or even most of tech, but
elsewhere in the economy.

That doesn't mean some tech companies won't get caught in the storm. I think
we could very easily see a couple mid-size players go the way of Yahoo (the
Snaps and Ubers).

~~~
unimpressive
>The companies taking on the most risk in terms of debt are for the most part
not traditional tech. Think Chevron, GE, and other industrial and energy
companies.

You mean, precisely what would be considered 'traditional tech' in any sane
world? :P

Industrial and energy companies have a much larger and more important impact
on the economy than information technology.

We live in the strange topsy turvy world where 'information technology' has
somehow been narrowed to "that guy who fixes your computer and administrates
the servers" and 'tech' narrowed to mean what 'information technology' should.

~~~
nostrademons
It's because growth has been concentrated in software for a decade or two, and
people only pay attention to growth.

It's actually more absurd than you note: "tech" today means "Internet tech",
and people have largely forgotten that less than a generation ago IBM, HP,
Sun, Oracle, Intel, AMD, and Microsoft were all "tech" companies. (You'd have
to go back two generations for Chevron and GE to be "tech".) But that's the
nature of psychology. Everything that was around when you were a kid is just
part of the natural order of things, while the only new and exciting
technology is the stuff you just heard of in the last year or two.

(It's pretty likely the pendulum will shift again in a year or two, and FAANG
will no longer be tech, which will be reserved for crypto[currency - this is
another good example, where if you're > 30 'crypto' means 'encryption' while
if you're < 30 it means 'cryptocurrency'], robotics, self-driving cars,
drones, and AI.)

~~~
perl4ever
I find it fascinating that your glib list of "cool new tech stuff" \-
cryptocurrency, robotics, self-driving cars, drones, and AI, seems to have a
huge characteristic blind spot.

There's a major industry that for some reason people don't mention these days
when they are imagining where the future is coming from, and I find it
entirely inexplicable that it just doesn't register.

If I told you what it is, you probably would find it too obvious in
retrospect, so I won't. I am over 30 BTW. And no, it's not green energy.

~~~
joejerryronnie
My guess is you're talking about biotech/medicine/health. This is the next
sector poised to have transformative growth over the next 20 years.

------
aphextron
>Get credit while the economy is good

So much this. If you don't have many credit cards I would highly recommend
going out and getting a few right now. I went from $0 to $30,000 in available
credit in a month, and my score jumped 100 points. The offers are crazy. It's
standard these days to get 0% for 18 months, no fee, and 50,000 bonus points.
They are literally paying you $500 to use their card for a year at 0%. As long
as you're smart enough to never carry a balance it's literally free money.
I've made over $1000 in bonuses this year on top of cash back, just by
rotating my regular daily spending over 3 different new cards.

~~~
iandanforth
Can you recommend a card or two?

~~~
mundo
Check out /r/churning for more info than you ever wanted.

~~~
Asparagirl
Yes, this! Opening credit cards now (but not using them, beyond the initial
minimum spend that’s required to get your points) is a good idea. But before
you jump into the pool, read about the tricks and gotchas, such as Chase and
their “5/24 rule”.

------
Keyframe
Sound advice(s). I'm in a unique position where I'm straddling both tech and
media. One great indicator of a coming trouble is marketing. When you see
budget cuts or downright stops in producing commercials and ad space
spending... then you know it's coming, in fact it's already there then. It has
been a true canary in the mine so far. I haven't seen that happening yet this
time around, but once it starts it's cascading fast.

------
rdoherty
>I closely watched the financial news during the last two economic expansions
and contractions, and for the last 3 months I’ve seen the same indicators I
saw at the top of those two expansions.

Anyone know what those signals are? A lot of 'end is nigh' articles I've read
have more details. Is it just too much growth in the stock market? Debt?
Speculation?

~~~
aphextron
>Anyone know what those signals are? A lot of 'end is nigh' articles I've read
have more details. Is it just too much growth in the stock market? Debt?
Speculation?

Keep an eye on total consumer debt levels, and more importantly debt-to-
income. We've already surpassed the absolute peak value of consumer debt load
from 2008 [0], but debt-to-income is still _ok_ for now. When that starts to
change we're probably in trouble.

[0] [http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-consumer-debt-
keeps-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-consumer-debt-keeps-
skyrocketing-2018-2)

~~~
jschwartzi
In this case because inflation marches steadily onward I would expect total
consumer debt levels to surpass those from 2008 at some point. You need more
money now than you did 10 years ago to buy the same things. If the ratio
changes, that would seem to be a more reliable indicator because it means
people are closer to unsustainable levels of debt.

------
devmunchies
So if I’m interviewing with some large companies and a handful of startups
(less than 20 people), it seems like the larger companies might be a better
move for the next 5 years.

~~~
outworlder
Isn't that always the case? Unless the startups are paying you (in actual
cash, not monopoly money) way more than the large company would, which isn't
usually what happens.

------
ggm
Make sure you have deep social links and honour both sides of the deal, giver
and getter. Social connectedness is strongly linked to good outcomes

------
stygiansonic
Many have (rightly) pointed out that this article is devoid of articulating a
good reason why the market is at the top right now, and hence, why you should
alter your behaviour right now.

Nonetheless, it does outline two key points from my perspective:

1\. Saving enough money for unpredictable events. While I wouldn't "put it
away as cash" for everything, having an emergency fund that can sustain you
for 6-12 months is a good idea. Emergency fund usually means liquid - so cash
or a savings account (despite the low interest rate) is your best bet -
irregardless of what other investments you may have.

2\. More importantly, I would say that this article is a great example of how
the environment that one grows up in can vastly change affect their world
views. I entered the workforce not too long before the Great Recession of 2008
began.

Seeing my initial retirement fund returns go extremely negative (> -40% for
2008) right at the beginning made me question the "conventional" investment
advice to just contribute/DCA into index funds and not look at it. Of course,
it didn't help that my first employer went bankrupt in 2009.

I haven't developed such a bearish sentiment as the author of this article,
(continue to invest in index funds, with a mix that matches my risk profile)
but nonetheless remain extremely skeptical that this bull market is some new
normal. Thankfully, I'm in a much better position now (work for a big tech
company), but I can see a marked difference between my outlook and those of my
coworkers who entered the workforce much more recently.

There are many who've only been working since 2012, and many of them see no
reason why you'd want to (immediately) sell the RSUs/equity the company gives
you as part of compensation, unless you needed to spend the cash. An argument
against this was particularly hard during the bull market of 2017 where equity
prices (especially big tech) were essentially just a sloped upward line.

I try to tell them it's about risk management/risk mitigation, but my
impression is that most people overestimate their risk tolerance until
something bad happens.

~~~
perl4ever
"Seeing my initial retirement fund returns go extremely negative (> -40% for
2008) right at the beginning made me question the "conventional" investment
advice to just contribute/DCA into index funds and not look at it."

Psychology differs. I got my first job with a 401k in 2007, and I had no
problem whatsoever investing as much as possible as the market declined. Hey,
stocks are on sale, right? But temperamentally, I get an intense desire to
cash out as the market goes _up_. When I was a kid, someone told me you
haven't made money until you've sold at a profit. Luckily, the fact that it
was a 401k meant I couldn't cash out without switching jobs.

I think a large part of dealing with risk and money management is accepting
the fact of your own psychology and biases.

------
claydavisss
Even a profound market meltdown should not cause you to change your strategy
unless you need your money really soon.

Look at the meltdown in 2000. If you were thirty years old and sold, you might
have patted yourself on the back for a while...but assuming you are reserving
most of this money for retirement when you are over sixty, you would have to
either time a re-entry in the market, or give up 3x gains since.

The only people who should be changing course due to a correction are people
who need their money soon.

If you are in your thirties now, the DJIA will probably be 50k+ by time you
retire. Does it really matter if it goes to 15k first?

~~~
ironjunkie
It all comes down if you believe in timing the market.

I know that the best advice is to not time the market, and simply invest in
the long term, riding through the market depressions.

That being said, a couple of my friends managed to successfully time the
market for 2000 and 2008. Basically, they remove their money more or less 8-10
years after the end of the last depression, and add it back in as soon as it
looks like it is going to go up again.

I believe it is more luck than skills though.

------
asciimo
> Pay off your cars. Pay off your phones. Stop buying new cars and phones.

This made me laugh. Such universal and timeless good advice.

------
jorblumesea
Having a 6 months saving account is a smart move regardless of market
conditions.

------
rdlecler1
This sounds Nietzsche’s view of ‘slave morality’. It’s actually in fashion to
say you invest in or do boaring businesses so this isn’t really all that
controversial. However, like time, there’s an arrow of technology and there’s
a reason VCs are investing in sexy startups. For instance, AI is sexy because
it really will be transformational, unlike whatever today’s latest fashion
trends are.

Corporate R&D for S&P 500 in 2018 is estimated at around $325b — compare that
to the $65b invested in U.S. VC in 2017. As corporates realize R&D is hard and
see Less and Less ROI they will continue to shift more of their budget to
acquisitions which effectively means we should see a large increase in VC
spending. They’ll have to pay a premium for picking winners. In 10 years we’ll
look back at today and ask why VCs were not investing more in tech because
that was obviously where the opportunity is until we see transporter beams,
jarvis, and molecular fabricators.

------
triviatise
The current S&P 500 P/E ratio is around 24. That is historically overvalued
(the median is around 14.7, mean 15.7). Yet the new normal might be a P/E of
around 20 (though who pays 20X one year of earnings for a business unless it
is growing like crazy).

Of course the last time we were at the mean was at the bottom of the 2010
recession.

Just to compare in the 2001 recession we hit a P/E of around 45, during the
2010 recession we hit a P/E of 65.

Obviously it is a lagging indicator as the ratio goes through the roof because
earnings drop through the floor.

The market can go sideways for a long time (and has historically). During the
obama years that is essentially what happened. Sideways with a slight increase
actually feels like a pretty decent economy (especially after 2010).

------
empath75
I thought we hit the top last year but it just keeps going. Never the less I
agree with this advice.

~~~
atmosx
Yes, because the advice is sound advice, no matter the circumstances.
Ironically, the fact that she's using _timing_ makes a sound advice laughable
in my eyes:

\- NOW you should stop spending investor's money! \- Why not two years ago?
Why not in 2025? Are we going to burst _anytime soon_ like next month or
decade?

On a more serious note, one thing that might affect greatly the world economy
is the breaking of the common European currency, the EURO. We might be closer
that scenario than most realise. I'm referring to the Italian elections and
what could they bring upon Europe, should the Italians decide to have a
referendum on the Euro.

The best case scenario would be for Brussels to suddenly democratise itself
and for European integration to continue, but with the rise of the far-right
all over Europe, I don't see that happening.

~~~
pgeorgi
> should the Italians decide to have a referendum on the Euro.

About the only way for an Eurozone member to leave is to leave the EU (since
that's a condition for Eurozone membership and the Eurozone has no leaving
procedure of its own in its bylaws).

They will at least wait to see how it turns out for the UK before trying
anything like that.

~~~
atmosx
Why should they? UK's case is totally different case.

I don't think that exiting the currency means exiting the union.

~~~
pgeorgi
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_the_Eurozone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_the_Eurozone)

"Other analysts[10] have submitted that there are basically three ways of
exiting the Eurozone: by leaving and subsequently rejoining the EU, whereby a
renewed membership in the European Union would be possible only when economic
convergence had been achieved; through a Treaty amendment; or through a
European Council decision. The amendment would involve an extension of Article
50[11] of the European Treaty that would set out the process for exiting the
euro."

1\. "Leaving the EU" is what the UK is doing right now (and Italy would want
to wait to see how messy that will be)

2\. "A Treaty amendment" requires consent by other treaty members, so not
going to happen

3\. "European Council decision" also requires consent by a significant portion
of European countries, so also not going to happen.

------
Felz
I also feel like we're in a bubble. There's so much capital around that even
fairly weak startups are getting amply funded, and we have bubbles within
bubbles (everything cryptocurrency) as investors race to get any sort of
return.

But I don't trust myself to time the market at all, so most of my liquidity is
in investments right now. My employment though is different. While I'd love to
work at a small startup... the risk involved (not to mention the pay cut) is
definitely a factor.

Speaking of, the hiring market is crazy right now. Good time to scout out a
new job, if you want one.

~~~
ttul
The dot com bubble was different. So many startups were just insane. Working
on stuff that had no chance of success. It was all buzzwords and bullshit.
Nobody knew what the internet really was going to enable, so they were funding
all kinds of ludicrous things that were difficult to comprehend.

~~~
rabidrat
You mean, like blockchain?

~~~
ttul
Good point.

------
AdamM12
S&P PE ratio isn't terribly high [1] let alone if you pull FAANG out of it
[2]. There is nothing wrong though with taking some time to reduce your
business/personal debt load even in good times.

[1] [http://www.multpl.com/](http://www.multpl.com/)

[2] [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4159229-de-faang-lower-s-
an...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4159229-de-faang-lower-s-
and-p-500-p-e-ratio)

------
mark_l_watson
Unlike some here, I agree with the basic premises of the article: it ‘feels’
like we are near the top, and that while it is always important to reduce
debt, it is even more important when a bubble might burst soon.

However, I would never write an article like this because while I am happy
making predictions for myself and taking personal actions, I would never feel
comfortable giving advice to the general public because I believe that markets
and the economy are inherently chaotic.

------
ohiovr
The Kennady family made a nice fortune selling at the top before the 29 crash
and buying somewhere at the bottom. If you can time something like that more
power to you.

------
ironjunkie
The only thing that I see more and more, is that it has been now 10 years
since the 2008 crisis and the longer it has been, the longer people start to
realize that something is going to happen eventually (Thanks captain obvious).

Beside that, there is no way to exactly know when or why it is going to
happen. If you knew, it means that you got information that the market doesn't
have (since it didn't adjust to it).

~~~
jedharris
This is theory, empirically the data says otherwise. in 2007 there was a huge
amount of evidence in plain sight that the housing market was a bubble, but
the market didn't adjust to a rational level.

See "The Big Short". That greatly understates the level of willful blindness,
since it deals mainly with CDOs, not so much the house prices themselves.

------
copperred
Always good advice, but this article has no substance whatsoever. It's reads
like any other analyst trying to time the market.

------
davidw
> The businesses I build are profitable, focus on cash flow, and sell
> commoditized services.

Wish I could figure out a good niche like that...

~~~
DenisM
[http://www.startupbook.net/](http://www.startupbook.net/)

You can thank me later.

~~~
Aegis11
First business idea: sell this author a mobile optimized site.

~~~
ericabiz
Yes, this is a "cobbler's kids have no shoes" moment. (Author here.) I have
been busy building other sites. I promise I will make the time investment on
my blog soon. :)

------
anonu
It's a good thing to save and be frugal... Essentially always be a cockroach.

But calling market tops is a fools game. You're wrong until you're right and
then you look like a genius. But article doesn't explain why the market is
going to tank other than "I feel like it's going to happen".

------
chrisco255
It's possible we're at the top of a market cycle...but I also see a lot of
technological progress that has yet to go mainstream but probably will soon. I
think the 2020's will be an absolute booming decade for the world economy,
U.S. included. Electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, process automation,
robotics, IOT, blockchain, continual cloud software growth, AR/VR
applications, space industry, medical tech, solar energy...I just see a huge
range of industries that have a long way to grow and I have a hard time being
pessimistic. Sure, a recession is possible, but I doubt we'll see the same
downturn we saw in 2008. A lot of that boom was driven by real estate
flipping, which didn't contribute to sustainable economic growth.
Technological progress, on the other hand, is both disruptive and produces
permanent gains in quality of life.

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adreamingsoul
Ditto

