You can't discount the impact this will have on global stock markets and what that may do to both individuals and, more importantly, pension funds, as a large swath of people are retiring
Damage is unavoidable, we can only hope that it happens to someone deserving. Innocent individuals and pension funds still have time to retreat; if they don't it will be their fault.
We are moving towards gerontocracy - if pension funds will have large losses it’s very likely that young, working age people will be taxed extra heavily to keep the QOL of pensioners.
That would likely lead to a revolution: Millennials are 30-45 and they’re not in a good place; neither is Gen Z.
We’re already seeing revolutions elsewhere — and it’s likely that trying to loot them further by generations who sold out the nation will simply lead to social collapse.
Have you ever battled an 87-year-old wearing mechanized battle armour? They're crazed, hopped on speed, eyes goggling in their sockets
A pack of 3 oldies burst through our perimeter one winter night... the screaming woke me up. Outside my tent the forest was lit up red by our laser blasts, trying desparately to take them out.
We thought that a revolution would be a good idea, but an upside-down population pyramid is a hell of a thing when you're on the bottom.
Yes but this is by design. Wealthy people want bubbles, when they pop, you can gobble up all the value at all time lows. Then you hold until you don't feel like it anymore as the market goes back to growing. You see this as how private equity has bought up real estate across the USA to turn into rentals after 2008, for example.
Aren’t extremely wealthy people that wealthy due to the valuation of their stock? IIRC generally the higher the networth, the higher share is kept in stocks
And they don't spend money, they take debt against their existing assets to fund projects and investments. So long as they can service the loans across economic downturns, they don't particularly have to feel the effects of a recession, outside of the mentioned opportunities to buy the market at a discount.
I suspect $$ is just a number for them. Being able to control more resources is the ultimate game. You gotta have zillions of $$ to join the tournament, though.
Person A has a net worth of 2B
Person A has a loan at 500M backed by their holdings
Stocks drop 50%, Net worth is now 1B
Person A buys $500m of stocks
Market Recovers 100%
Person A now has 2B original holdings and 1B gains, $500m owned = 2.5B
Very simple example, and not the only way to do it - but people need to remember net worth being 500B is not 500B in the bank, and at some point the number doesnt matter
More importantly you keep the portfolio semi-balanced.
Just using Google / Gold as a comparison [1].
Assume you have 100 units of each.
In late 2021, Googs gone up ~100% so you have to rebalance because you have $200 in Goog and $92 in Gold. So lets say you rebalance to 80 Goog (160$) and 144 Gold ($130).
In late 2022, Googs gone down ~40% so you have to rebalance because you have $96 in Goog and $141 in Gold. So lets say you rebalance to 100 Goog ($120) and 118 Gold ($112).
So over the course of 2 years Goog has gone up 20% and Golds gown down 5% but your investments are overall up 16%. Obviously a 100% Goog investment is higher but with more risk.
If you didn't do any rebalancing then you have a gain of 7.5% (100*1.2 + 100*0.95 = 215)
There was an article here recently about alpha school that mentioned this is how of of its backers made a lot in the aftermath of the dot com bubble - picking up companies with products that happened to implode in the bust. He's not the only one and that's not the only bubble that had that happen
