Friday December 18, 2020; 9:31 AM EST
Back in the early 90s, I was doing pretty well in business and life. My company merged with another, and we went public. I left shortly after the merger. I was writing software and riding my bike around Menlo Park, CA. I had a pool. Things were clicking. Life was good. #- I tried a lot of things with the proceeds from the company I sold. Most of them lost all the money I put into them, highly speculative stuff -- learning experiences for sure. One investment stood out among all others, it went up, consistently -- the S&P 500. I wanted to know why this one fund is so good at returning value.#
- Turns out the answer is really simple. Presidents are evaluated on the performance of the economy, and that means the stock market, and that means one of two indexes, the Dow Jones or the S&P 500. Presidents have a lot of power to move the value of stocks relative to other ways of looking at the economy (there are lots of them, all valid). Because they are evaluated on the value of these two virtual stocks, they try to move them up. And you can go along for the ride. #
- If you hitch your wagon to the S&P train, and basically do nothing else, you'll do the same as "the market" or "the economy." If it's good times, you'll do well, and not good times you'll probably still do well. It's really weird that wealth is such a simple game, but it appears that it is. #
- This is one of those things they don't tell you on TV because the really rich people worry that if everyone knows it, the value of the indices might no longer go up all the time. But Trump, the fool, is really open about it. When he points out that the "stock market" is doing great even though thousands of Americans are dying every day he's talking to his constituents, not you. He's saying the silent part out loud. But there's nothing stopping you from listening. 💥#
- PS: This is all completely arbitrary. Just in case you're wondering. It's why "the market" can be booming in a depression. It's arbitrary and an illusion. But it does for now at least translate into living comfortably. #
