We just had a near financial apocalypse in 2009.
What we learned is there are businesses out there built to withstand the worst economic environments. Wal-Mart did fine. Natural gas companies did fine. Health care company stocks did fine.
We can look back just a decade to see what thrived and survived and there’s only 10 years difference. It’s not like we have to go back 30 years where the fundamentals of these companies or the demographics radically shifted.
What is different today is that we stopped handing the US market to people who want to harm us.
Most of the software industry is now, really, Indian run companies based here in the US. They are starting to perform like Indian run companies (very bad at meeting customer demand, not very creative, but technically proficient). Microsoft and Google are now Indian companies, for the most part, and are managed that way. They are on the decline. It’ll take some time, but not as much as people think.
Microsoft has stopped innovating - full stop.
The opportunity, really, is a post-Chinese world. The Chinese were running a global kleptocracy, and the cucks who were getting paid off by them (nearly the entire US Congress) stood by and tut-tutted while we were getting gang-raped.
We now are one of the world’s biggest energy exporters. This means our military dollars used to keep shipping lands open can actually directly benefit our economy instead of the ones in the ME.
And screw Europe. They are having an existential crisis and unless they can get the welfare state back in hand they’re toast. France is the best evidence presently.
The automakers better figure out how to do more with less. The cost of a new car is so far beyond the realm of possible that they will have to figure out how to get it done for a sticker price 1/2 what it is today, if not lower.
Housing is going to crater. Housing is levitating. Nothing is holding up the lovely assistant any more. Also, home ownership no longer pencils out as the great long term investment it once was. Quality is down, not up. Roofing especially, and roof replacement is an equity killer.
We’ll see what 5G does. Guarantee 5G won’t be Chinese though, except maybe in Europe, and if they go that way they will be on an economic island.
I saw a great quote from on this forum from Ho Chi Mihn yesterday: “I’d rather smell French sh!t for five years, than Chinese sh!t for a thousand.”
Which comes back to privacy. The penduluum, as it is wont to do, swings back. There will be an industry for convenient security. The near universal distrust of all institutions is another opportunity the market will address. (Bitcoin was the first manifestation of that).
Very thought provoking.