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A Public Service Announcement
Dec. 12th, 2017 12:27 pmI hope that none of my readers have sunk any money they can't afford to lose into the current Bitcoin bubble. On the off chance that I'm wrong, though, may I offer a friendly piece of advice?
Get out.
Now.
These days, most people in the final stages of a speculative bubble know perfectly well that it's a bubble, They're convinced that they can get out just before the peak, cash in their gains, and walk away with a pot of money. You know what? Isaac Newton thought that, too. He invested a lot of money in the South Sea Bubble back in 1720, and he lost it all, because when the market turned down, he was convinced it was just another dip and the market would keep going up. You are not as smart as Isaac Newton, folks, and you have even less of a chance of knowing when that decline is going to turn into a plunge that will erase the bubble, your dreams, and your financial future.
There's a better option. You've heard of a family named Kennedy, right? The reason you've heard of that family is that that old bootlegger and Boston Irish mob kingpin Joseph P. Kennedy, one day in the late 1920s, got a stock tip from his shoeshine boy, realized that this doesn't happen in a sane market, and pulled every dollar he had out of stocks. I don't happen to know where he stuck them, but it was something that wasn't affected by the gargantuan stock market bubble that ended in 1929. The result was that when everyone else lost their shorts, he was sitting pretty, and could snap up a very solid portfolio for pennies on the dollar. (After things bottomed out in the early 1930s, remember, you could buy a share of General Motors for $9 and change.) That wealth was what boosted the Kennedys out of the Boston Irish mob and into the political elite.
Right now, according to some sources, people are taking out second mortgages on their houses to invest the money in the Bitcoin bubble. That doesn't happen in a sane market. Don't try to time the market. Don't think that you'll be safe if you go to a different cryptocurrency, either, because they're riding the same bubble and will plunge at the same time. There's only one way to survive a speculative bubble:
Get out.
Now.
Get out.
Now.
These days, most people in the final stages of a speculative bubble know perfectly well that it's a bubble, They're convinced that they can get out just before the peak, cash in their gains, and walk away with a pot of money. You know what? Isaac Newton thought that, too. He invested a lot of money in the South Sea Bubble back in 1720, and he lost it all, because when the market turned down, he was convinced it was just another dip and the market would keep going up. You are not as smart as Isaac Newton, folks, and you have even less of a chance of knowing when that decline is going to turn into a plunge that will erase the bubble, your dreams, and your financial future.
There's a better option. You've heard of a family named Kennedy, right? The reason you've heard of that family is that that old bootlegger and Boston Irish mob kingpin Joseph P. Kennedy, one day in the late 1920s, got a stock tip from his shoeshine boy, realized that this doesn't happen in a sane market, and pulled every dollar he had out of stocks. I don't happen to know where he stuck them, but it was something that wasn't affected by the gargantuan stock market bubble that ended in 1929. The result was that when everyone else lost their shorts, he was sitting pretty, and could snap up a very solid portfolio for pennies on the dollar. (After things bottomed out in the early 1930s, remember, you could buy a share of General Motors for $9 and change.) That wealth was what boosted the Kennedys out of the Boston Irish mob and into the political elite.
Right now, according to some sources, people are taking out second mortgages on their houses to invest the money in the Bitcoin bubble. That doesn't happen in a sane market. Don't try to time the market. Don't think that you'll be safe if you go to a different cryptocurrency, either, because they're riding the same bubble and will plunge at the same time. There's only one way to survive a speculative bubble:
Get out.
Now.
