Investment 101, and other scams

Investment advisors are all scams.  They don’t know anything that is worth you paying them money to learn.  They aren’t better at managing your money than you are, even if you just spend every nickle you have on living it up.

1.  Every money manager starts from this basic principle:  Give me your money.   Without that, they are nothing.  If you don’t have money to give them, none of their advice is any good to you.
2. If a money manager were indeed magically good with money, he wouldn’t need you to give him yours.  He would make plenty of money managing his own money.
3. Diversification is failure.  If an investment advisor tells you to “diversify your portfolio”, he is telling you, “I don’t have a clue which of your investments are bad, but if you spread them around, they likely won’t all go bad at the same time”.   if an investment advisor really knew anything of worth, he could tell you, “put your money HERE and it will make a profit”.  Diversification is planning to fail, because that is the best they can hope for since they don’t have a clue about how to succeed.  They can’t tell a good investment from a bad investment until it fails.
4. There is no secret insider information.  Even CEOs are often the last to know that their company is tanking and if they try to sell their own stock, it will signal the rest of the Lemmings to run off the cliff.
5. Most stocks are over-valued Ponzi schemes.  Once a stock price rises past its real worth into imaginary worth, the only way to realize a return on your investment is to find another investor who is more stupid than you were and sell it to them.  Thanks to the magic of 401(K) accounts, this happens every payday.  Every week, new money is pouring into the markets looking for stocks to buy.  But there aren’t a commensurate number of new stocks being created.  Supply-demand.  That’s why the stock market goes up no matter who is the president.  The stock market is not the economy.
6. Internet stocks (Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Twitter, etc)  are worse than Ponzi schemes.  They are outright fraud.  Their valuation is based on warm air and unicorn farts.  A small company with no assets goes IPO and splits a hundred billion dollars among their insiders, none of whom are trading a hundred billion worth of value.  But the market needs a billion new shares to sell to put into people’s 401(K).  CHA-CHING!!

What does matter:

1.  People you know.  Invest in people.  People will show up on a cold night to help you change a tire or hide a body deep and never speak of it again. People will watch your back, when your face is busy staring into the face of someone else.
2. You.  You matter.  Invest in yourself.  Get Lasik.  Use that gym membership.  Invest your time and energies developing skills, knowledge and ability.  Take some classes in welding, first aid, and automotive mechanics.
3. Enjoy your life.  Don’t save it all for a rainy day.  Some rains will simply exceed your ability to cope no matter how much you set aside.  No investment strategy can protect you from politicians taking it all and thumbing your nose at you.
4. Real estate.  It pays to have a roof over your head.  It pays to have a known shelter and place of refuge.  It pays to keep it in good repair.  If you eventually pay it off, you have now moved into a whole new level of wealth where you can now live on a lot less.  If you manage to keep it, you now have that gift to pass along to your children so that they can know what it is like to live without paying rent or a mortgage.  This will be hard.  Everyone is out to steal this away from you.  Medicaid wants it.   Tax men want it. Developers want it.   It is not always the best investment from one year to another, but over time, you can’t beat this.  If you are looking for a wise use of your investment dollars, you need look no further than your own feet.