Happy Birthday to Me!

As you read this issue of Profit Confidential today, I will be in Rome, Italy celebrating my 50th birthday. Yes, I turn the ripe age of 50 today. 

My father, who is getting close to twice my age, says life begins at 50. We’ll see. (He told me the same thing at 40!)

 I have a lot to be thankful for in my 50 years. A great family; the best of the best when it comes to friends and to my extended family of hundreds of thousands of people who have taken it upon themselves to see what silly things I have to say each day. 

I started this business 28 years ago with nothing more than a typewriter, raw ambition, and the idea I could study the markets well enough to help other people make more money from their investments.

 What was once only one business has grown into many businesses today. We’ve grown from one employee (me) to many talented, hard-working people creating new things daily…people I truly enjoy working with and growing with every day. 

Over the years, I have been lucky to have made a series of “calls” that hopefully made my readers some money. Looking back, my call to buy gold in 2002 at $300.00 an ounce, my call to get out of the U.S. housing market in 2005, my calls to get out of the stock market in 2007 and back into it in 2009 have garnered a following of hundreds of thousands of concerned investors daily. 

My current “call” is for the stock market rally that started in 2009 to come to an end. This call, too, will come to fruition with a bang. 

Looking back, the older I get, the more I realize how easy it is for an investor to make money. All you need to do is the opposite of what the herd is doing. Over the long-term, it always works. 

If everyone is buying stocks (like they were in 2007 and again today), you want to sell stocks. When nobody wants stocks (1974, 1987, 2009), you want to buy stocks. 

When nobody wants gold, you want it. When people are loading up on houses, you don’t want them. Opportunities to truly buy low and sell high only come a couple of times every decade. But if you can position yourself properly, you’ll make enough money on those “regression to the mean” events that you will be set for life. 

Why am I in Rome today? My wife dragged me here because she says Rome was founded on my birthday: April 21.

 “According to legend, Ancient Rome was founded by the two brothers, and demi-gods, Romulus and Remus, on the 21 of April 753 BC. The legend claims that, in an argument over who would rule the city (or, in another version, where the city would be located) Romulus killed Remus and named the city after himself.” (Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia, September 2, 2009.) 

As I wander the streets of Rome today, I wonder if this is the direction America is headed? A government so big and so intrusive, it doesn’t pay to start a business; a central bank that printed so much money, it eventually became worthless so they had no choice but to adopt another currency (the euro); an economy that just reported its highest unemployment rate ever recorded; a country where the most coveted jobs are government jobs. 

Italy has Berlusconi—he’s still the most powerful politician in the country even though he is “behind the scenes,” dodging taxation and allegedly having sex with a minor. America has Obama, who says ObamaCare is just what America needs. 

Berlusconi liked to pad his own pockets. The more I learn about Obama, it seems like he wants to take from the rich and give to the poor. (In the United States today, there are more people on welfare than working. [Source: Politifact.com, last accessed April 14, 2014.] And the disparity between the rich and the poor has never been so great…just like what happened to Italy.) 

I believe it was Charles Peguy who said, “Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.” Julius Caesar and Nero were experts at this too. 

This article Happy Birthday to Me! was originally posted at Profit Confidential