Hola, our hearts go out to Venezuela and all that they are going through. It is very difficult to see the nation go through yet another crisis.

Dios los bendiga.

Eddie

Good analogy I like to use and people that have been reading for a while will understand this.

It’s called the Lion vs Gazelle.

A Gazelle is most people, the consumer. Galavanting around eating grass with no awarness of the Lion hunting them.

They’ve gone to Walmart to get some good value items but as they walk to the checkout aisle there is a 30 ft long corridor full of overpriced trinkets, bags of chips that are half empty with no nutrition, ceramic mugs selling for $30 that were made for 30c in China. Just a whole bunch of useless crap. High margin crap, that is.

And the Gazelle falls for it. The line is long, they see the bright colours, the Lion kills them, takes their money. Ironic since they are shopping at Walmart to save money in the first place.

Psychological marketing schemes used by billion dollar corporations that spend millions of dollars to pay experts to figure out how to break through your emotional walls and make you grab a few more useless items you didn’t plan on buying in the first place.

This is the Lion. A corproation, a business owner, aware of their surroundings, tracks their income, expenses, what they are putting in the bank, and how to invest in growth opportunites and generate sales.

And you don’t have to run a business to be a Lion. A regular salaried employee can just as easily be a Lion. By treating your personal financial situation as a real, and growing, cash flow operation. Same thing applies - understand your income, your expenses, what’s left over to invest and how to increase your personal value (education, raises, compound interest, etc).

Lions, too, understand the mechanics of what the other lions (corporations) are doing to sell you useless crap and take money out of their pocket and into their bank accounts. They can easily fend them off.

I’m not saying don’t buy anything ever. Just buy things that make sense and are actually useful for you.

Along with a little bit of awareness of how the Lions hunt their prey, you can become one too.

At the end of the day, earn more, spend less, invest the difference.

Be a Lion. Don’t be a Gazelle.

PS. Help Venezuela 🇻🇪

A few of you have asked about the Lion Era T-shirts.

They’re $50 + shipping + GST. They cost me $25 to make. Every dollar of profit will go to the Hera Cares & Somos Ayuda Go Fund Me for earthquake relief in Venezuela (these are Venezuelan friends in Miami with capability to direct money efficiently to help). MJ and I have already donated $500.

If you’d like one, just reply with your size. I’ll only order if there’s enough interest. If you don’t want a Tshirt, consider donating directly yourself.

The stock market is ripping, but it’s going to crack.

Because it always does.

Don’t ask me when, I don’t know, but every couple of years it’s down 20%. And it can just as easily fall 30% and 40% too.

Things get overvalued and eventually the steam gets released.

It just happens - volatility is the price you pay for long term growth.

The point is, you need to be prepared for that to happen.

So what are you going to do?

Here’s what I do, which I learned from my time as a former money manager with $800 mln and 200 clients under management.

My portfolio is about 25% SP500, 20% Bitcoin, about 30% private real estate and private equity, and about 20 to 25% in cash, depending on the month.

If the stock market falls 20%, I’m going to deploy 5% of that cash balance.

If the stock market falls 20%, I’m going to deploy 15% of that cash balance.

If the stock market falls 30%+, I’ll be putting pretty much all of the rest, less a small reserve, into the stock market.

And the thing is, I have these targets updated frequently.

The recent high for the SP500 stock market is approx $7,600. That means:

The point of putting this in writing and updating the targets once in a while is so that when the decline actually happens and it seems like shit is hitting the fan, I actually have a good strategy in place to deploy capital when prices are low.

As long as you believe in the future of the American capitalist system, buying when things are down is a good idea.

PS. I carry more cash because my business has more lumpy cash flows. Nevertheless, I am prepared to deploy more resources should the opportunity present. If you are on a salary and judiciously dollar cost averaging everymonth, continue forth with that plan. If you are a retiree with 50% bond portfolio, you can sell the bonds to buy stocks. Your situation is different. Plan according to yours. Just thought it would be helpful to tell you mine.

“No one has ever become poor by giving”

—Anne Frank

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