I should tell you how I got here first so you understand my background, that I am a simple guy, and understand little about investing, especially in the stock market, so if you want to skip down to the meat and potatoes section, then skip on down.
Problem was, I only started my retirement savings a couple years ago as I got a late start in life, and as I began, I had my investment adviser telling me on what/how to invest. This seemed the easy way to go, at least for awhile. Trust the experts, right?
When we started, they were so absolutely sure that investing in things like oil pipeline contracts was the safest investment I could possibly make…I mean, lending money to companies to lay oil pipeline seems like a guaranteed thing, and that was probably true that until surprisingly, the entire oil market tanked. But surely they should have seen that oil prices were in a risky place, right?
So as my retirement account was starting to look so bad that I was going to have to work until I was 99 years old, I began to think, maybe these broker guys aren’t so smart after all, and so by being an idiot actually provides me a better chance of succeeding.
Mind you, I had absolutely zero experience investing in any sort of stock market. While learning investing seemed to be an monumental task–I’ll show you today some super simple things that you can can use to make up your own mind, and whether I am right or wrong, as the choice is always up to you.
The Macro, Big Picture, or 40,000 Foot View
I find it is important to see the big picture (macro) because most of us are too distracted by smaller and less meaningful things. The further out we can predict out future, the better chance we have in changing or minimizing risk.
I find that most people are busy discussing how arrange the chairs on the deck of the ship, but few have stopped to notice the name of the ship (“Titanic”).
Here’s a practical example of under the big picture. Some of my ancestors noticed increasing military violence being implmemented against their local groups. The ones that left, ended up here. The rest were killed in large numbers. What prevented more from leaving? The lack of seeing the long term outlook.
Multi-Disciplinary: Connecting Multiple Fields of Interest
Most people study one field. They have a deep, expert view into their field.
But only when you examining the interaction across many fields, do you realize that life is a complex spider-web, where nothing is independent. When you pull on one strand of the spider web, all other strands move, but mostly the ones closest to the one you are pulling.
Technologists dont understand sociology and sociologists dont understand technology.
This is difficult, because as knowledge deepens (vertical), there is less time for anyone to understand across multiple fields (horizontal). In other words, it is difficult to be a jack of all trades, but it is possible within limits, especially if you understand the agents of greatest change.
Macro effects:
I think a lot of science and news is focused on events and forces so small, they are less meaningful than the price you pay for a bowl of rice because someone in Asia ate a bowl and drove up the price by an infitessimally small amount.
So as families decrease in size in America and Europe, the need for wealth is declinging , and therefore pressure to work or be religions will also decline. You can see this in global trends. Can you predict the current near future of religion then?
And although I don’t have the data to prove this, the growth of Christianity/religion and capitalistic societies tends to be the best long term solution of reduction of poverty. But in the end, when wealth exceeds need, an inverse direction is likely to occur.
As both work ethic declines in conjunction with religion.
- Sociology
- E.g. culture, values, human interaction, attitudes/behavior, religion, social psychology, -isms like classism, racism, gender, etc..)
- Economic-Sociology
- E.g. capitalism, communism, materialism, modernity, etc… how economic institutions affect society, and how society affects economics and institutions.
- Political-Sociology
- E.g. Ideologies, and ruling structures such as self-governed, communist, democratic, republic, autocratic/tyrannical (e.g. communist, fascist), and other modern institutions and methods containing influence on society like news and social media.
- Science/technology
- I work in tech, and keep a regular understanding of where its headed and its implications for society.
- Business
- I have run my own business most of my life, so I understand markets, demand, and behavior.
- Macro global/historical politics
- Understanding global movements and fractures such as conflict, migration, growing retreat from globalism is undervalued,so I discuss it here. I spend a fair amount of time watching shifting global political and military pressures.
This combination gives me a unique, integrated perspective on how all these systems may be interacting.
For example, many in tech talk about the benefits of advanced computing, however, these people often are unread on how it might affect human behavior, relationships, and culture. I like to say: if there is a large momentum towards building disruptive technology today, should we now expect that technology to also be socially disruptive, and if so, how might it erode culture, norms, and local/family values over time?
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