When you’re dreaming of getting rich, it’s easy to overlook the downsides of having money. One major risk of having a high net worth is that, once people know you’ve got money in the bank, they’ll try and take it from you. For this reason, wealth protection strategies are essential for anyone who is practicing systematic wealth building.
Are you wondering how to protect your wealth from lawsuits and predators? Are you concerned that once you finally “make it,” you won’t ever be able to relax and fully enjoy the fruits of your labor?
Don’t worry. It really is possible to be rich and have peace of mind. To do so, you’ll likely use a collection of wealth protection strategies to reduce the risk of being sued, having your income stream dry up, or otherwise having your assets dramatically drop in value.
At the end of the day, the more assets you have, the more strategic you’ll have to be to protect what is yours. Let’s dive in and take a look at what I’ve learned over the years about the best ways to protect wealth.
Asset protection refers to various strategies you can adopt to protect your wealth and property from creditors, lawsuits, and predators. You can practice asset protection strategies both at the individual level and for any business entities you operate.
If you’re new to the world of asset protection, the whole thing might sound paranoid to you. After all, who’s going to try and take your money?
Unfortunately, the more wealth you have, the more you can expect that others will try and get a piece of the action. Asset protection should be an essential tool in everyone’s financial planning. When you practice asset protection, you can enjoy the benefits of:
You might think that asset protection strategies are only for the mega-rich. Honestly, though, if you have any assets to your name and plan on building wealth over time, it’s never too soon to start protecting your wealth.
Before we get into the specifics of how to protect your wealth, let’s start with why your wealth is at risk in the first place. I want to mention first and foremost that you should not assume that you are safe from lawsuits and accusations against you because you do everything by the book and aren’t engaged in any shady business. The reality is that people can and do make frivolous, baseless lawsuits. Even if they won’t win, it can still cost you a lot in legal fees, time, bad press, and stress.
If you’re a business owner, you probably already know that there are potential pitfalls and risks just about everywhere you turn. That being said, let's take a look at some of the risks you face when you operate and own your company or work as a business professional:
Again, you don’t have to actually be at fault for predatory people to make these sorts of claims against you. If you don’t have your business and personal finances separated, you might find that your personal assets are at stake when someone comes after you professionally.
Even if you’re retired or generally not concerned about your professional liability, you’ll still want to consider the ways that your personal wealth is at risk:
I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: the more money you have, the more likely it is that predatory people will try and take it from you. The scent of money can make people do strange things, and the apologetic person that was obviously at fault in a car accident might start to sing a different tune when they realize who you are or how rich you are. You can’t necessarily completely avoid these risks in life, but you can set yourself up with wealth protection strategies that make it so your money isn’t unguarded from opportunistic parties.
Now that we’ve looked at why you need to protect your wealth, let’s dig in to the how.
I'm a big believer in the fact that, while money is an incredibly powerful tool, it isn't the only thing that matters. Check out my complete guide to the different types of wealth you need for a meaningful and fulfilling life.
John D. Rockefeller once famously gave the advice that you should “Own nothing. Control everything.” This is an oft repeated quote in the world of asset protection and the offshore industry, promoting the idea that no one can take something from you if you don’t own it.
While it might make the purchasing process a bit more complicated, ensuring that none of your assets are owned in your name can provide serious wealth protection. You also might choose to retitle the assets you already own so that they can’t be taken from you in the case of a legal dispute. Some people also choose (in certain states where it’s advantageous to do so) to title their assets as tenants-by-the-entirety with a spouse.
Depending on the state you live in, your home equity might be safe from creditors through homestead protection. However, how much protection you really have is going to vary a great deal depending on which state you’re in.
There isn’t one go-to strategy for avoiding owning your assets outright in your own name. Here are some of the ways that wealthy people control their assets without technically owning them:
An additional benefit of avoiding owning anything in your own name is the anonymity it provides. If you purchase property with a trust or an LLC, (which, by the way, is definitely more complicated and involved than buying a house as an individual,) you don’t have to worry about the fact that your family’s home address is a part of the public record.
Are you an entrepreneur?
If so, you’ll definitely want to separate your personal assets from the assets, debts, and liabilities of your business sooner rather than later. LLCs are a popular method for a number of reasons, one of the primary of which is that creditors can’t go after an LLC owner’s personal assets in the event of the company going under or a lawsuit. Unless you act in a way that leaves a court feeling justified to pierce the corporate veil, the only assets at risk if your business is sued or creditors pursue it are those that are invested in the business itself.
Depending on the state you live in, you might be able to put some of your assets into a trust that creditors can’t access. However, this isn’t something you should try and start doing when you feel like a lawsuit is imminent. Creating trusts for your assets is something that you’ll want to do years in advance of any judgments or unpaid debts.
There are a lot of different types of trusts out there, and determining which ones are right for you should be a part of your larger estate planning efforts. Some of the types of trusts that might be applicable in your asset protection include:
In any case, I could go on. The short story is that trusts can be a valuable tool in your asset protection strategy, but they’re also pretty complicated and not something to mess around with lightly. It’s generally a good idea to work with a knowledgeable attorney who can make recommendations based on your specific circumstances.
When the name of the game is asset protection, your arsenal should be loaded with insurance, insurance, and more insurance. This is the first line of defense against liability, so this isn’t where you want to try and cut corners.
You should periodically make sure that your policy limits are in line with your current net worth and assets for insurance to serve as an effective method of asset protection. Depending on your situation, here are some of the types of insurance you might want to have protecting you at all times:
It’s also worth understanding deposit and securities insurance. For example, up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank, and per “ownership category” is insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for member banks. Using this in your favor can ensure that your money in individual accounts, joint accounts, trust accounts, IRAs, and more is protected to the fullest extent.
No matter what you’re investing in, it’s never possible to completely avoid risk. After all, even if you hide your money under the mattress, it’s just going to get demolished by inflation over time.
That being said, there are ways you can significantly reduce your risk when investing. One of the common tactics used to help preserve your capital is by diversifying your investments.
The more diversified your investments are, the less impacted your portfolio will be by market anomalies. To protect your assets from unexpected events, some of the asset classes you might consider investing in (after thorough due diligence, of course,) include:
In short, you want to invest in several different asset classes and sectors that typically react differently to various types of events. If you’re not diversified, you might not even realize how much risk you’re taking on until something catastrophic wipes out your principal. For example, imagine if you were months away from retirement with all of your capital invested in tech stocks when the dot-com bubble burst. Ouch.
Another important step you can take to protect your wealth is to diversify your business income. As they say, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
If you have a stable, high-income W-2 job, you might think this doesn’t apply to you. However, diversifying your business income is just as important for 9-5 workers as it is for entrepreneurs.
When you have several different sources of income, it can act as a hedge against income loss, provide stability, and help you systematically build wealth. In these arguably uncertain economic times, having several different irons in the fire can also help to keep you financially agile.
If something catastrophic happens, diversifying your income can mean you don’t have to go down with the ship. If everything continues chugging along as planned, having several sources of income can have a huge impact on your ability to build wealth and fund your retirement.
Diversifying your income is an important strategy that keeps the long-game in mind. Even the most successful companies can lose relevancy and go under, and even the healthiest income streams can dry up over time.
Lastly, having a number of different sources of income can help keep life interesting! It can keep you on your toes, keep you engaged, and help avoid the all-to-common disease of complacency.
Related to the need to diversify your business income, diversifying your skills can also go a long way in protecting your wealth.
In Stoic philosophy, one of the main principles is that some things in life are in your control and some things aren’t. Your main task is to distinguish the difference between these two camps. Once you’ve done that, you can work to accept the things you can’t control and focus your energy towards the things that you can control.
Unless you are one of the elite group of people in the world that have the power to directly affect change at a global scale, you likely can’t control what happens economically, politically, or geopolitically. You don’t have the power to start wars or end wars and you don’t have the power to impact the housing market in a meaningful way.
What you can control, though, is what you do. You can control the skills you choose to master.
When you have a diversity of skills, it means that you are all the more able to pivot in the face of unexpected life events or global occurrences. Mastering a variety of skills doesn’t just mean you might have the right skills to call upon in the face of a crisis, but it also means you’ll be more equipped to gain new skills when necessary. If you are constantly pushing yourself to travel beyond your comfort zone and learn new things, you’ll be able to hop back on your horse a lot faster when you get knocked off.
If you’re not convinced yet, let me also just say that building a diversity of skills also helps to keep you engaged and fully alive. It’s easy to go to your 9-5 everyday and let the days slip by without ever pushing yourself to become more. When you invest in your skills, you’ll find it helps to produce a zest for life you might have thought automatically disappears once you reach adulthood.
As you start building your net worth, one thing you’ll want to understand is that the odds of getting hit with lawsuits starts increasing exponentially the more money you have. If it’s common knowledge that you’re doing well financially, the sad reality is that there’s a good chance people will start coming out of the woodwork to try and get a piece of the action.
Don’t assume that you can avoid this outcome by obsessively doing everything by the books, being incredibly charitable with your wealth, and never uttering a harsh word to another soul. It is not beyond predatory people to make frivolous, baseless lawsuits against someone they know has some money in the bank.
For this reason, you’ll want to build an aggressive team that you can call upon at any time to vigorously defend your interests. If someone files a lawsuit against you, no matter how vulnerable you are in reality, you should never be afraid to bristle when someone threatens legal action against you.
In fact, the more vulnerable you are, the more you should fight to look less vulnerable. When someone is threatening to sue you, they are declaring war. In these instances, you’ll want to follow the advice outlined in one of the most influential strategy texts of all time, the Art of War:
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.” - Sun Tzu
This isn’t the time to play nice– the more aggressive you are against legal attacks, the clearer you make it that you’re willing to put up a fight. Lawsuits are expensive, and when you start beating your chest like a silverback (metaphorically, of course), it makes it clear that it’s going to be costly to try and take you down.
The goal here is to never appear vulnerable. Asset protection can go a long way in creating that appearance. If you have bombproof asset protection strategies in place (like utilizing management companies to keep your holding companies cash free, avoiding owning anything in your name, and being willing to contest every tiny legal detail,) lawyers will see that the legal battle likely isn’t worth fighting. Through aggressive asset protection and an even more aggressive legal stance, you can swat away anyone that even thinks about opportunistically taking your money.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where you could run around making verbal contracts and assume everything will work out alright. In reality, approaching life, business, and other people that way is probably going to burn you pretty quick.
If you’re constantly saying “I’ll take your word for it,” you’ll learn this the hard way. If you’d like to avoid this, always act from the assumption that it’s best to get everything in writing.
You likely understand the importance of contracts when it comes to business deals, real estate deals, and legal matters. (If you don’t, now is the time to start.) But getting everything in writing can also refer to things that you might not think are that important. Creating a paper trail helps to provide certainty in just about every situation for everyone involved, even if you’re not worried about there being any malicious intent.
Prenups often get a bad rap, but they are an absolutely essential tool for anyone that wants to protect their wealth. When you and your soon-to-be spouse create a thoughtful prenup together, it can help to protect both of your interests in the case of separation, divorce, or death.
However, a prenup really isn’t just a laundry list of who gets what if the marriage doesn’t work out. It can also be a way for you and your fiance to create a financial plan for married life that will actually help to avoid arguments over money and finances down the road. On top of that, it can be an important exercise before marriage to make sure that the two of you are fundamentally on the same page when it comes to wealth building and protection.
In the event that you and your spouse get divorced or one of you passes away, a prenup is a document that lets the two of you stay in control of what happens to your assets. This can save a lot of headache, drama, and stress down the road. In general, you’ll be in a much better position to make level-headed decisions about asset distribution when you aren’t actively embroiled in a divorce or grieving the death of a spouse.
You might not like this one, but the reality is that one of the best ways you can protect your wealth is by building more. Though it’s not the cheeriest news, the truth is that the more you earn, the more you can afford to pay for safety. This is an inherent part of living in a scarce-resource universe– resources allow you to have more options and more security, regardless of whether you’re talking about financial, personal, or political resources.
The more wealth you have, the more peace of mind you can buy. If you’ve ever stressed about money– and let’s be real, we all have– you know just how priceless the ability to relax really is.
On top of that, building more wealth is the most reliable path to having the freedom over what you do. The more money you have, the more ability you have to protect the most valuable asset to your name: your time.
The point of getting rich isn’t so you can spend your days cackling and counting your cash. The point is to allow you to engage with life in meaningful, purpose-driven ways. If you’ve ever lived paycheck to paycheck, you know just how impossible it can be to pursue your life goals when you’re scraping together pennies to fix your car or pay your rent.
What’s one of the best ways that you can protect your wealth from lawsuits and predators? Easy. Don’t let anyone know you’re rich.
For an in depth look at the concept of keeping your wealth a secret, check out my article on stealth wealth here. There are a lot of benefits to practicing a stealth wealth lifestyle, one of which is helping you avoid frivolous, baseless lawsuits from people who have nothing better to do than try and take your money.
When you don’t advertise that you’re wealthy through your home, car, clothes, and Instagram account, opportunistic predators will look right past you. Similarly, you can avoid the whole uncomfortable experience of second-cousins-once-removed and friends from the second grade calling up out of the blue to see if they can squeeze you for some cash.
While researching and putting in place asset protection strategies might not be everyone's idea of a good time, it’s absolutely essential to hedging against future financial disaster. On top of that, you’ll find that once you know your wealth is protected, you sleep a lot better at night.
If you’re as passionate about wealth building as I am, you’re likely also passionate about protecting your wealth from lawsuits, predators, and unexpected events of any kind.
Are you wondering why you should take my advice when it comes to something as important as asset and wealth protection strategies? You can learn more about me and my projects here.
I’m a buyer of gold and silver, but I take a different approach than most metals investors.
I don’t predict soaring gold prices - even while I buy more gold and silver every single week.
In fact, while I was acquiring large quantities of precious metals, I wrote a much-ridiculed article expressing caution over gold prices - at the peak of the gold bull market.
While everyone else was drunk on perpetually increasing gold prices, I wrote that gold was ‘expensive’ and would ‘likely’ drop ‘dramatically’ in price. Even more provocatively, I published the article on a popular Austrian economics website, which was rabidly pro-gold.
But I got the last laugh, not because I’m some kind of Nostradamus, but because following cautious, conservative principles works, over time.
Whenever you see someone who makes radical predictions be on the lookout.
Radical predictions are a byproduct of radicalism, and radicalism does not work. Just ask the people who lost their savings with bitcoin, the tech bubble of the late 1990s, real estate in 2007, and pretty much every other bubble in history.
The universe rewards conservatives, both politically and economically.
Conservatism is more than just a partisan buzzword. It’s a strategic philosophy that emphasizes caution, skepticism, realism, and historical patterns. Conservative investors are nearly always going to outperform penny stock investors, bitcoin speculators, and pretty much anyone else who is trying to get rich by gambling on a dramatic prediction.
In 2011, when gold prices peaked, I wrote an article for the Mises Institute of Canada, explaining that gold was expensive and that it was likely that the market would “dramatically overcorrect, meaning gold will essentially become cheap again.”
The price of gold peaked… that week. And it’s been dropping pretty much ever since.
If you look at the comments on the article, you’ll see a collection of people who were confused. They let their oversimplified libertarian radicalism cloud their ability to understand gold - and they believed that the only possible direction for gold prices was up.
That said, I did NOT predict the crash with any kind of time frame. I also didn’t say it was inevitable - just that it was “more likely” that it would “probably dramatically overcorrect.”
The reason I emphasize this is that while I’ve made a lot of money in my life being right about niches and markets, I never assume that something must happen. Predictions are for suckers.
The future is largely unpredictable, at least at any level beyond vague trends. This means that finding opportunity means more than looking for the most obvious play.
Just because we can identify major trends doesn’t mean we can translate that knowledge into actionable specifics. Life isn’t that simple.
As John Maynard Keynes once wrote, “The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
Conservatism isn’t about fearing radicalism. It’s simply recognizing that the universe is a fuzzy, difficult-to-understand place. Good strategy requires a healthy dose of humility and realism.
When it comes to building wealth and taking part in long-term trends, here’s how to do it:
How does gold fit in to this? Gold shouldn’t really be seen as an investment. It should be seen as an insurance policy that, if everything goes well, will lose money over time. It’s like buying a life insurance policy on a family member - you don’t win if you make money. It means something horrific occured. If gold becomes the best asset I own, it means that hell has been unleashed.
Bonus: Follow the clipper-ship strategy. I’ll be writing more about this in the future. It’s one of the most powerful ways to make money in nearly any market. Rather than trying to strike gold during a gold rush, you sell shovels to the miners.
Conservative strategy is good strategy.
When you make the right decisions, you don’t have to look for radical predictions to gamble on - you don't need the gamble at all. Cautious, skeptical, humble strategies always win out over time.
Because I use dollar-cost averaging and have a diversified portfolio and a high rate of savings, I’m unlikely to find myself in the desperate position of being close to retirement age and gambling on penny stocks because I didn’t save enough and am looking for a big payout to make up for lost time.
Legendary corporate strategist Michael Porter wrote: “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
But how do you make the right choices? Ultimately, it’s all about your mental framework. Making caution an important part of your investing strategy focuses your attention on what not to do.
That makes all the difference.
Consumerism is the ultimate scam: it never delivers on the implied promise of emotional fulfillment. It's an extremely contagious, nearly incurable cultural disease - the more you expect, the more you try to achieve that expectation, then the higher your consumption standards become. Achieving your consumption goals feel like a failure.
It's the philosophy of moving targets, trading real life for a never-ending, moving target that cannot be achieved, quenched, or fulfilled - by nature.
Consumerism isn't wanting a new phone - it's always wanting a newer phone.
Falling for consumerism begins innocently: wanting to keep up with one's social peers. Eventually, you'll find yourself risking the lives of real families so you can text-and-drive to save 5 seconds, pissed off at the high-school kid because you have mustard instead of ketchup on your sandwich, giving up spending time loving your wife because you feel she wants a bigger house more than your precious time.
This is one reason, among many, that I choose to be part of the stealthy wealthy, which is a movement of people who don't just blow their money on consumerism once they earn it.
Almost everyone rejects consumerism in theory, but in application, it's killing us socially, financially, culturally, and emotionally.
Consumerism is the orphan maker, leading to generations of children growing up with new toys but absent, distracted parents.
Consumerism is the financial annihilator, leading to financial decisions being based on spending money rather than achieving personal, family, and social goals.
Consumerism is the great culture killer, obliterating authentic cultural identity with a mindless, vague existence based on what one consumes rather than who one is.
Consumerism is the emotional executioner, directly and completely robbing people of any sense of being able to enjoy "now." We trade fulfillment for the gnawing desire for more petty consumption as a lifestyle.
Being emotionally tied to unachievable goals leads to perpetual feelings of anxiety, gnawing-but-vague regret, and an uncanny feeling that one is wasting one's life. Consumerism isn't just unhealthy - it's evil.
I've never seen a consumption-obsessed person finally hit the lifestyle that allows them to relax. Because it's not about any material, set goal. It's about the cultural obsession with more, the perpetually moving target itself.
If anything, the more one 'wins' at consumerism, the more devastating the consequences. There aren't enough fancy new coffee shops in the world to make up for a thirsty soul that can't be quenched. And no, this isn't a swipe against fancy coffee shops.
Don't confuse consumerism with markets or capitalism. Capital is important, and markets are vital, but consumerism is a different animal. Consumerism is the idea that you behave only for a transactional gain - that life is a series of accounting decisions.
If you focus on consumption, then business success won't help you - it'll destroy you. It'll lock you into a new lifestyle like a slave shackled to a luxury galley ship. That lifestyle isn't success - it's your comfy hell on earth.
I think people know something is wrong. The Internet is speeding up our strengths and weaknesses - which includes consumerism going off the rails in new life-ruining speed.
There are plenty of competing potential alternatives to consumption as a religion. I won't go into much detail here, but the simplest I've found could be seen as character-based producerism: I only consume what I need and what I symbolically appreciate because of its reflection of my values.
If I have a nice cigar in my smoking room, it's not because I always need a new, better cigar. It's because I am rewarding myself to make a symbolic statement about my own production in other areas. It's about who I am as a person. That means even if the cigar ends up being too dry or poorly constructed, it won't be upsetting - the symbolism will work.
When I bought my Cadillac CTS-V, it wasn't because I always need the latest and greatest new car. It was because I knew what it stood for: hard work, innovation, and finally achieving a set financial goal. A few months ago, it was accidentally scratched - it didn't bother me because the car wasn't the goal. Being a good man was. The distinction is one most will always miss.
Perspective - focusing on who one is and what things mean - is the simplest antidote for consumerism of which I'm aware.
You don't have to be just like everyone else. You can be more productive, more stealthy about your income, and more balanced. To learn more, check out my about page and my essays page.
Garry Kasparov, the most successful chess player in history, is a fierce opponent of Vladimir Putin. After a failed run for president of Russia in 2008, Kasparov is often seen as the lead opposition voice against Putin in the West.
In this short video for The Economist, Kasparov explains that Putin doesn't behave like a chess player, so the often-overused chess bromide doesn't quite work here. Instead, Kasparov suggests Putin's style is more similar to another popular game.
Here's the full video:
It's tempting to see a major drop in the stock market and believe that you have enough information to make a fast profit.
Right before I started writing this article, the stock market dropped well over 4%, leading to social media exploding with small-time investors saying things like, "Buy the dip!"
It sounds like sound advice. If anything, it almost sounds obvious.
After all, if you buy when stocks dip, that should, if you're guesstimating things correctly, mean that you're getting stocks just like normal over time - but at a slightly better deal.
This makes you more money, right? If stocks were a good investment yesterday, and today they're 4% cheaper, then you're just grabbing a 4% better deal, right?
Not quite.
In fact, this tempting approach is statistically more likely to cost you than earn extra. In fact, since investors started saying "buy the dip", stocks are down another 4% - and we could be on the verge of a substantial correction.
Fundamentally, "buy the dip" is a bad strategy based on an economic illusion.
As they say, "If it's too good to be true..."
"Buy the dip" has a lot of built-in assumptions that you can't statistically assume over time without getting seriously burned.
Let's break them down:
The ideas discussed immediately above are the basic assumptions of the "buy the dip" strategy. They might seem innocent but they can literally wipe out decades of savings because of several extremely important economic principles.
Let's look at the main principle that shatters these bad assumptions: the efficient market hypothesis.
Even if you find this to be mind-numbingly boring (most people would agree that it is), if you have any desire to save for retirement or find almost any level of financial independence, it's an idea you need to understand as much as possible.
This is the kind of financial and economic concept that every high-school student and college student should be deeply familiar with before they graduate. As I've written before, teaching financial concepts like this would change society completely. Unfortunately, the ideas are largely ignored.
Think of articles like this as the broccoli of self-help content. They're not fun to consume but you'll be better off if you do.
So grab a cup of coffee or tea, read the article, and feel free to contact me to discuss it further - or browse around the Internet to read some more. It's important and about way more than just "buy the dip" analysis.
Let's back up a bit.
To understand why you can't beat the market with tactics like the ones discussed above, we need to understand a concept called the "efficient market hypothesis (EMH)."
Effectively, the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) is the idea that asset prices fully "account" for all "known" information.
Without getting lost in the weeds, the hypothesis claims that, roughly, the market is already accounting for everything we know about the market.
In other words, if you think a downturn is coming, the market is already priced for what it believes is the likelihood of one - so gambling on a future bear market will probably not make money, because the market has already accounted for that prediction as well.
There's a reason Google is priced higher than a failing grocery store chain. The market is already pricing in the gamble that Google has better long-term growth likelihood than the failing grocery chain, to put it simply.
This notion of the market already pricing predictions is confusing to people.
Most tend to think that investing is about picking winners more often than picking losers. This isn't remotely true.
In fact, this isn't true any more than the idea that sports gambling is about just picking winners - if you pick winners of football matches 75% of the time, you will probably still lose money because a bunch of other gamblers made those same predictions - meaning the odds aren't always going to be 50-50. If anything, after fees, you're effectively going to almost always lose money gambling over time.
The same thing goes for stocks. You think Coca-Cola is a good bet? So do billions and billions of investor dollars. You think Google is a good bet? So do billions and billions of investor dollars.
Market prices reflect market predictions, effectively. So whenever you are gambling on the basis of a prediction you are making, so are all of the other people buying, selling, holding - or considering those things - that asset.
It's not enough to get a prediction right. There's a lot more going on. That simplistic "good prediction" understanding of investing is tempting and destructive.
No one person or organization decides what something is priced in the market. The stock market, in particular, is just a large collection of people buying and selling identical assets to other investors via bidding.
This means that prices simply reflect whatever supply and demand for the priced asset reflect at the time - if people suddenly stop selling, prices might go up - assuming there's the same number of people trying to buy with the same intensity as before.
This means that prices go up and down for individual assets on the basis of the investors trying to buy, hold, or sell the assets. So the prices reflect the desires being acted upon by the investors - market prices respond to what all of the investors think they are worth.
This understanding that markets reflect the beliefs of huge number of investors is important. Markets don't reflect random people or the average investor - they reflect the applied beliefs of investors with the most money being gambled on the asset, as well. The more exposure to the asset one has, the more one's acted-upon beliefs impact its price.
Market prices reflect what investors know about the market. Information being released impacts prices. Prices reflect known information - not just information, but known information. Or, more technically (and philosophically accurate, for lack of better word), prices reflect believed information.
This makes markets brutal, powerful, and very fast responders to events, analysis, and the learned experience of the most powerful investors. In other words, markets are elaborate social pricing machines based on known information about the assets in question.
Put simply, prices are the market's reflection of the known information about the asset at that particular time. This is important. If anything, understanding this is key to understanding everything else discussed on this page.
As information continues to spread faster and faster with innovations like the Internet, being able to have an "information edge" becomes increasingly difficult to the point of being impossible.
It would have been easier to outperform the stock market in 1940 than it is in 2018. Information simply spreads too fast and is too widely available to beat everyone else. Having an information advantage is difficult when insider trading is illegal and Indonesian street vendors have more information than the Library of Alexandria in their pocket computers.
Even Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, (which Warren Buffet based his life work on), eventually came to concede to the efficiency of public markets. He wrote in 1976, literally 42 years ago and well before the Internet made things worse:
“I am no longer an advocate of elaborate techniques of security analysis in order to find superior value opportunities. This was a rewarding activity, say, 40 years ago, when our textbook "Graham and Dodd" was first published; but the situation has changed a great deal since then. In the old days any well-trained security analyst could do a good professional job of selecting undervalued issues through detailed studies; but in the light of the enormous amount of research now being carried on, I doubt whether in most cases such extensive efforts will generate sufficiently superior selections to justify their cost. To that very limited extent I'm on the side of the "efficient market" school of thought now generally accepted by the professors.”
If Graham thought it was tough then, he would have been a vigorous supporter of the efficient market hypothesis now. As everyone should be.
Understanding markets as nothing more than an incredibly massive, incredibly comprehensive series of pricing mechanisms is the first step towards financial humility.
People who misunderstand the EMH almost always misunderstand the first step: the market is just a big pricing machine accounting for nearly all known information. So unless you have some massive, massive information advantage (like insider trading, or some kind of elaborate expertise in a particular industry mixed with the ability to understand utterly in-depth financial valuations), you won't outperform the market. Period.
So you won't do better if you buy the dip than if you don't. You won't do better if you refuse to invest during a dip. You won't do better no matter what you do - not risk-adjusted.
This doesn't mean you're helpless. Make sure to read the end of this article if you'd like to skip to the more optimistic interpretation of these concepts.
You and I aren't nearly as smart as we'd like to be. Our comically tiny ability to comprehend the Universe pales in comparison to countless investors using countless unique angles coming together in the total capital markets - with almost everyone looking for the slightest advantage.
You can't beat the stock market, risk-adjusted.
Even if you predict all kinds of things correctly, that's not the point - you'll eventually get a couple wrong and those will ruin your numbers - putting you back where you started, or worse. If you do get lucky, you didn't get lucky on a risk-adjusted level - meaning, well, you were lucky, not better informed than the market at large.
And getting lucky isn't the same thing as having a superior strategy.
Studies repeatedly confirm this EMH framework. So do surveys. So does, well, almost all known evidence. And, it's even getting worse.
This bleak conclusion makes sense - after all, the market is nothing more than a pricing machine, so the more efficient (ie, the more informed the market is - which during the Information Age is going to be pretty damned informed) the market, the less likely you are to beat it.
For anyone keeping score on how well information spreads these days, you have effectively no chance of beating the market, risk-adjusted. Period. Sorry. End of story.
'Buy the dip' sounds good, but like I wrote earlier, it's based on some assumptions that don't make risk-adjusted sense. The biggest one is that you're assuming the dip isn't the beginning of a crash. Imagine if instead of "buy the dip" we said, "buy the stocks right before the bear market wipes you out for about 10 years." Doesn't sounds as clever, does it?
Of course, almost never will the dip end up a bear market. Nine times out of ten, you'll avoid that. But it's that one out of ten that wipes out your statistical advantage. That's the part that confuses people. You're not trying to usually beat the market - you're trying to beat the market on a risk-adjusted level - which is economically impossible.
The same concept applies to the other assumption: the notion that if you can "buy the dip" then you're buying it with resources that supposedly you had access to beforehand, otherwise you would just say "buy" and not "buy the dip." The reference to taking advantage of a specific opportunity in the market and not just buying consistently suggests you've been sitting on the money.
If you sit on money you want to invest in public markets at some point because you want to outperform it, you're missing the economic point - you're never going to perform better sitting on the sides. Think about how many people thought the market was "too" expensive a couple of years ago - they've lost an incredible amount of wealth because of that view.
I spent a lot of time writing about these concepts, but i want to make sure what I'm saying isn't misunderstood as another set of arguments. Here's a quick clarification. I'm not saying anything bolded in the section below:
Avoiding mistakes is 99% of investing. But enough about the bad news. Let's look at some interesting applications of these ideas that will make you money.
Now here's the cool part. You can invest better than almost every financial genius on earth in a couple of surprisingly simple steps.
You can invest better than the billionaires, the stock-market gurus, the bankers, the college endowment investment managers, the financial planners - you can outperform almost all of them over time.
The way is simple. They're all trying to outperform the market. This, on average, causes nearly every last blasted one of them to dramatically underperform the market for the reasons explained above.
So if you just hook up your portfolio to track the market as cheaply and as consistently as possible, you'll outperform the experts - by default.
All you have to do:
Do this and you'll outperform almost every mutual fund on earth over time. You'll outperform almost every equity hedge fund. You'll outperform almost every individual investor.
And you'll do it because of your humility.
Vanguard is an organization that exists so that any 'profits' get passed back to the funds themselves, meaning they are as low fee as is legally and economically possible - in general. Their index funds just try to not beat the market - they're based on the assumption that the market is essentially always priced the best possible way based on all known info.
And it works. Vanguard slaughters the competition easily. It's almost embarrassing for the experts. I'll be writing about this more down the road. Make sure to sign up for my newsletter if you'd like to read more. It's boring, but it's powerful because it's true.
Don't try to buy the dip. Don't try to make financial gambles on the basis of your market predictions. Build a simple portfolio like the one described above. Don't fight the market - let it carry you itself.
Buy the market regularly regardless of the news. Sometimes, you'll buy while the market is rising. Sometimes, you'll buy while the market is falling. Sometimes, you'll buy while the market is flat. Regardless, over time, your portfolio will get better, and your returns stronger.
Most importantly, perhaps: use economic literacy to avoid big mistakes that you'll regret for the rest of your life.
If you're looking for a legitimate excuse on which to blame everything going wrong in your life, I've got some great news: there's definitely a legitimate excuse for your situation.
In fact, I've never met a person yet who didn't have at least a few major external reasons they weren't wherever they wanted to be with their finances, health, fitness, and/or relationships.
I'm serious. Almost everyone I know has perpetual, legitimate excuses on hand useful for rationalizing every missed goal, every dropped ball, and every small flaw in their life. Excuses on tap.
Almost everyone has major areas outside of their control which consumes their time, energy, and mental bandwidth on such a level that using those areas as excuses would be honest, understandable, and even respectable. Let's review a few common ones.
Here are some extremely common excuses that you might have access to right now:
These are just the major excuses. Smaller ones are even more plentiful and just as legitimate.
Late for something? There was someone in front of you going too slowly. Miss a morning deadline? Your computer was giving you problems for a full 20 minutes. Ignoring the emotional needs of your significant other? They were rude earlier, and it's drastically easier to just give them the silent treatment like you were raised. Going into debt every month? Eating out a few times a week is not unreasonable.
If you have a somewhat normal life, then you're probably going to have a couple of mental health issues, a couple of kids, an emotionally needy spouse, and a lack of money. These are major excuses that, if you use them, nobody will blame you for the problems they will cause. If anything, your friends will bring them up to help you rationalize things whenever life goes south.
Heck, if you called me right now and told me your situation, I'd probably even go along with the excuses. They're legit. You have tons of them. Everyone will agree.
This is why the whole social justice movement is growing so quickly with young people. Because they're right about the oppression, kind of. This is true even on the smaller level we're talking about. In almost every negative situation, something else - outside of your direct control - is causing the problem on a major, fundamental level.
In fact, the general narrative behind excuses is all wrong. Most people believe that the default is things going correctly and that when something bad happens, that's the unknown variable that caused things to go south - that's why it's the excuse. Excuses are seen as exceptional events outside of one's control.
The truth is the opposite. In the same way, some people see "privilege" everywhere, the other side of that coin is to see legitimate excuses everywhere. Bad things happen to you constantly for legitimate reasons outside of your control.
That said, the purpose of this article isn't what it might look like right now. In fact, the real lesson is the opposite of how most people take these lessons.
Obstacles are inevitable, but excuses aren't.
When something goes poorly and you have the choice to blame the external cause or find some flaw or area of potential improvement with yourself, err on the side of choosing yourself - while also learning about the external source as well.
This puts you in a perpetual position of learning from failure rather than a cycle of repeating failure.
There is no strategic value in excuses - even legitimate excuses. There is a strategic value in understanding your disadvantages. Understanding your disadvantages is good, but an excuse is when you reject understanding the disadvantage in favor of surrendering your personal narrative to the disadvantage.
That distinction is the difference between an obstacle being a problem you overcome or the defining characteristic of your ruined, wasted life.
Think of your daily life like a general who surveys a potential battlefield: only a fool would ignore the terrain, but only a bad general would see the terrain as either good or bad without considering his options for navigating said terrain. You're the general of your life. So act like it.
An excuse is when someone surrenders their entire identity of being a strong, independent, strategic human being in exchange for telling their boss someone was driving slightly slower than normal in front of them. Excuses are pathetic, strategically useless, and are, ironically, a major personal flaw that causes major life harm.
This bears emphasis: excuses - surrendering to legitimate obstacles - is a reflection of your flaw. That means that the wrong mentality takes the understandable blame and shifts it from that external cause and points it right back at you: the foolish general.
It's important to understand the obstacles you face, yes. But that's not the same as surrendering to them and believing that those obstacles are the unmovable, unchangeable catalysts of the inevitable undesired outcome.
Scroll up and look at that list of excuses. Now, look at it as a list of possible disadvantages that one can overcome. Now one's entire outlook on life shifts drastically. You become more powerful when you realize you have the power in the first place.
The point of this article isn't to somehow suggest that you should ignore when you are, in fact, being oppressed. The concepts described don't mean you shouldn't care about things like unequal pay, abusive parents, or any other situations where you truly are being victimized. That's not the point at all.
It's also not the point of this article to shame you for not "overcoming" every situation. I wouldn't have been as successful if I'd grown up as a black female in 1930s Alabama. Some things are beyond our control. That's just a fact.
It's not a mental "trick" to suggest people should blame themselves over situations for which they aren't responsible. Sometimes structural, and macro changes are necessary.
"Victim blaming" and "blame yourself first" aren't remotely connected.
In "victim-blaming", you blame the innocent person for the actions of the guilty - and entrench the problem.
In "blame yourself first", you seek to understand the catalysts of the unwanted final result, and then act to minimize the unwanted final result as much as possible - and prevent it from happening again.
That's why it's "blame yourself first" and not "blame yourself only."
If you're only partly to blame, focus on what can be done on your end to change the outcome. But don't ignore the problems caused by external sources - and don't accept blame for what is not within your control.
Of course, if you aren't to blame at all, then don't blame yourself at all. Sometimes, there's nothing we can do and we can't fix a broken situation. These ideas are about empowering you, not enslaving you to unjust blame.
Let's look at a real-world example.
If you're the CEO of a company and someone running a department makes a series of horrible decisions that severely damages their department, then you should immediately figure out what you could have done to prevent the problem, what you did to cause the problem - if anything - and what you can do to minimize the current damage.
You begin by asking yourself the following questions:
That might mean realizing that you made a mistake in hiring for the position. It might mean you didn't put the right processes in place. It might mean you should have communicated better with the department head. It might mean many things.
What it shouldn't mean is that you should just blame the department head and ignore all culpability - direct or indirect. Blame yourself first weaponizes the fact that you can only, in the end, control your own decisions - and that's where the brunt of your analysis should be for fixing problems.
Even when someone else is to blame, "blame yourself first" results in a more comprehensive, total awareness of what occurred and how to minimize the damage.
In business, this really is an effective "hack" for almost every situation.
An excuse is when someone driving slow made you late for work. An obstacle is when someone drove slow in front of you - but your day was so organized that you still made the deadline because you (almost) always have the ability to arrive a little early through good planning.
In plain English: just because there's an external cause for something negative in your life, that doesn't mean that you don't have options for getting around that cause - even if the solution might seem "extreme" to others.
Just because you're poor doesn't mean you have to stay poor. Just because you're poor doesn't mean you can't compete against wealthier people. Just because you're poor doesn't mean you can't use that experience as a leverage point when dealing with others.
Just because you didn't have a father doesn't mean you have to have the "daddy issues" of someone who didn't have a father - sometimes, those who were fatherless become the best fathers because they trained themselves to use that pain and emotional vacuum as an energy source.
Sometimes, your biggest disadvantages and obstacles can become your biggest advantages and strengths. But you have to blame yourself first in order to rule over your life well. This is the beginning of a good personal strategy.
With a good personal strategy, even our weaknesses become untraditional advantages.
A fundamental part of a high-school education in America should involve understanding personal finance, the true cost of credit, and how delaying consumption for a few years can be the difference between financial hardship and an early retirement.
I don't mean a class or two of textbook information about how credit works. I mean actually teaching the principles of financial discipline.
We need a producer society focused on creating value - not a consumer society focused on taking as much as possible. Think: thrift and productivity as a culture.
Consumerism has become one of the most destructive quasi-religious elements of modern culture. People identify themselves on the basis of what they consume - not what they do or who they are.
That's why the following should be taught as a comprehensive part of high-school - and heck, college - education. Not just a single class, but as a fundamental approach to finance whenever it comes up, referenced throughout curriculum, branding, and materials.
For example, here are some thoughts that could be developed either through in-depth explanations or specific tutorials and hands-on guidance:
Building a culture of thrift is possible, but it requires focusing on just that - culture. Finance isn't just about math. People have to begin, as early as possible, to understand that not all consumption is "reasonable." We should view consumption with suspicion.
I say this as someone who was a millionaire for years before I bought a new vehicle. I live in a small house that I renovated. My biggest luxury is an occasional $15 cigar. This doesn't mean I don't live well - I live like a king. I just don't mindlessly consume.
The crazy thing is that basic personal finance teaches us to reject consumerism and ironically helps us achieve a much better lifestyle. Rather than spending money on things we don't need, we find freedom - and more money down the road to spend on experiences and a good life.
Good personal finance turns money around so that rather than us being enslaved by the economic system, we're using the economic system to maximize our own options, happiness, and legacy. It's incredibly powerful.
Consumerism is one of the most destructive forces in modern society. It takes potentially free people and enslaves them to empty consumption, constantly increasing their standards for what they believe "normal" people should be able to consume. The end result is an impoverished society... surrounded by material wealth.
Good finance is critical to a good life. That's why so many philosophies - from the book of Proverbs to Stoic thought - emphasize contentment, self-control as something to practice like any other skill, and a lifestyle of discipline.
What better place to develop a strong culture than educational institutions? What use is an educational institution that doesn't educate on the fundamental ideas, concepts, and identities that are key to every other part of society's prosperity?
Imagine every high school student becoming intimately familiar with these concepts. It would transform the world.
Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he wants to shift Facebook away from "passive" content to more active, "engaging" content. In other words, your Facebook newsfeed will soon replace the content that you might merely click on with content that you and your friends are more likely to engage with.
In other words, the pages that post 30 times per day hoping they can monopolize the newsfeeds of their "readers" will be penalized. Facebook traffic is going to shift heavily to brands that are dramatically more engaging.
Of course, this transformation has led to instant backlash from a wide variety of internet publishers -- probably because they don't really understand what Mark was saying, why he said it, or what the consequences of Facebook's easy-to-manipulate passive content ecosystem have been so far.
I founded one of the most popular political websites in the world. It began with an important mission: speaking truth to power by giving a voice to the forgotten middle class.
In the past, I wrote headlines for articles that reached over 15,000,000 users on Facebook. From a single posting. On a single page.
I've written articles that have been read by millions and millions of people from Facebook. No, I don't mean "seen" by millions of people. I mean millions of people clicked on the actual link and read the message crafted to influence their political interpretation of the world.
My site's style focused on the sizzling elements of stories that the Wall Street Journal and even Fox News didn’t want to cover. It was a perfect marriage with Facebook's algorithm because it ignored branding and focused on whether users would click on stories.
It was good storytelling. It was fun. And it worked frighteningly well.
Realistically, my personal headlines and articles had drastically more reach than the entire "Russian interference" scandal covered by mainstream outlets like the New York Times. So when it comes to the algorithm change and the implications, I'm speaking from the position of someone who has utilized this algorithm more than almost anyone on earth.
Still, the ecosystem that allowed what I was able to do is now mostly gone - and that's a good thing.
Visionless people look for consistency regardless of context. Some want the ecosystem that existed 4-5 years ago to be all that exists going forward. That's disturbingly short-sighted.
In the past, alternative media needed a huge boost to shake up the narrative. Now we're in a weird place where those same alternative media brands acquired too much power, and we need to change things again.
I now run the Conservative Institute, a very different project. It seeks to provide reliable, trustworthy news for conservatives in an era where dishonesty has become a fundamental pillar of the right-wing media ecosystem. The goal of CI content is not to "go viral" - it's to simply tell the truth. Accuracy is the primary goal, come what may.
We don't defend Trump when he's wrong. We don't attack liberals when they're right. We only report what we believe to be important stories that should circulate on the right wing - and everywhere. A typical article will link to sources like the New York Times, federal agencies, and PDFs of actual studies.
Now, Facebook seems to be responding to the same basic issues that CI was built to combat: a social media ecosystem that replaced high-quality, investigative journalism with shallow "passive" content mostly ripped quickly from other - often just as shallow - sources.
To better understand what's happening, let's look at the following basic concepts that provide context for the Facebook change.
Never in the history of the world was it so easy to reach so many people with a message.
I know people who had no experience in marketing, journalism, research, or much of anything else, reach thousands of people with low-quality stories mostly lifted from other sources.
In fact, ripping off my projects was a pretty easy way for someone with no talent or instincts to make a healthy six-figure income. It happened frequently.
That entire system was incredibly powerful for shaking things up. Now, we're in a different situation - the balance has shifted from the Associated Press, NBC, and local newspapers to an army of smaller sites that often spread misinformation, nasty accusations, or outright lies. Another way to describe it? Fake news.
The algorithms that decided how many people would see content didn't account for "accuracy" at all. Who cares if a fake story goes viral? It was getting the clicks and shares it needed to get more and more traffic on Facebook. That's a massive design flaw, especially when alternative media became so powerful.
This was a temporary hiccup in world history. "Alternative" and "mainstream" media aren't the future - quality media is, regardless of where on the political spectrum it may fall.
Everyone has an ignorant family member known for accidentally sharing fake news stories they didn't verify. The idea that a global media distribution system should give that person just as much power as someone who isn't as gullible is absurd.
I don't mean this in a condescending manner at all. I'm ignorant of many things just like you are. But many people simply don't have the time or expertise in media and geopolitics to know what source should be considered "trustworthy" and what source is taking them for a ride.
If anything, this system isn’t even fair to the person falling for the fake news - the distribution system should minimize the lies that show up in that person's newsfeed as well.
Some will huff and puff over what I just said, pretending they deeply care about ignorant people having the right to easy access to fake and misleading news. The problem is that this is mostly bad-faith virtue signaling.
Let me be blunt: passive-content farms/publishers don't respect their audiences. They often laugh at them. It’s easy to get rich off of people who don’t know any better.
Those market incentives are largely gone, and that's a wonderful thing.
"Passive" content is content that requires no investment from the reader. You don't have to have any kind of relationship with the brand or the content. It's content that happens to be in your feed, and you just may find it interesting enough to click on and read without comment - or not. Most of the content in your newsfeed is like this.
You probably have no emotional connection to the brand and if you click on the story, you may skim it or watch some video, and then exit out and never think about it again. No comments, no shares, no personal connection - nothing. It's passive content.
"Passive content" is where fake news comes from. It's the ecosystem that allows fake news to flourish. It's the system built on a series of economic incentives that allow bad faith publishers to make money manipulating you for fun and profit.
There are a few brands that manage to engage me with almost all of their content; Tim Ferris, Ryan Holiday, Bloomberg, The Art of Manliness, etc. I engage with their community, share their links to my personal page, and have a connection to the brands themselves. They don't just happen to show up on my feed and trick me into clicking.
I have a deep appreciation of the personalities behind the content. That's vital. That's good. And that's the future.
If your business model is based on easy traffic from one website, that's your problem, not Facebook's problem.
As the founder of Axios said to the Wall Street Journal:
"Facebook is a public company that controls its own decisions... Publishers should do the same damn thing."
This isn't new. Copyblogger, (a resource any content marketer should see as kind of like a regularly updated Bible), wrote years ago:
"If you're relying on Facebook or Google to bring in all of your new customers, you're sharecropping. You’re hoping the landlord will continue to like you and support your business, but the fact is, the landlord has no idea who you are and doesn’t actually care."
The future will still have plenty of content. The future will still have plenty of news. But it won't be low-quality content lifted from other sources without any attempt at providing extra value like additional context, additional sources, or additional facts.
The future belongs to quality publishers with strong brands and vibrant communities. This is the way it's been for centuries - and this is the way it will continue to be for centuries more.
If Facebook's change is going to harm your business, then discover higher-quality, more long-term oriented workarounds. Build an online "TV" show. Launch a podcast. Write a book. Go to other platforms. But don't blame Facebook for not allowing you cheap access to a gravy train.
The Clipper Ship Strategy: to make money during a gold rush, focus on supplying a secondary demand created by a primary boom. Chances are, it'll have drastically less competition while being just as lucrative.
Cryptocurrencies have a similar situation unfolding. Everyone is trying to get rich buying the 'coins' in order to sell them to someone else later. This is extremely risky, and just as many people will get wiped out as will make money. It's one thing to buy bitcoins if you're worried about a paradigm shift (like I described in my 2013 article on Seeking Alpha). But it's another thing to buy Bitcoins hoping it's your personal gold rush.
Trying to strike gold - or its digital equivalence - is for suckers or extremely skilled speculators. Chances are, you're not one of the latter.
Here's the real way people are making money with cryptos:
Either way, whenever you see a gold rush, don't fall for the trap. Don't go for the bait. Don't become a miner. Find a way to build wealth by looking for the second opportunity - it's probably being overlooked by others and there's more room to grow and profit.
