By Graham Summers, MBA | Chief Market Strategist
The Crash Callers are out in full force once again.
The problem with calling for a Crash is that you’re wrong 99% of the time. Then, once every few years, you’re correct. The whole process reminds me of a broken clock which is “correct” two times a day… but wrong the other 23 hours 58 minutes.
Remember, the purpose of investing is to make money. The easiest way to do that is to ride bull markets for as long as possible… and then get out before a bear market/ crash hits.
But what about the investors who make huge fortunes during Crashes like the Great Financial Crisis of 2008?
Let me bring you in on a dirty little secret…
Almost NO ONE made money during the market crashing in 2008. And the people who did were in situations that you or I will NEVER be in.
In 2008, there were roughly 216 million American adults over the age of 18. Roughly 60% of them had exposure to the stock market via brokerage accounts or retirements accounts (401Ks, IRAs, etc.) So, we’re talking about roughly 130 MILLION people who were involved in the stock market in one way or another.
The number of investors who got rich betting on a crash at that time is under 30. So, we’re talking about 30 people out of 130 MILLION succeeding. That’s roughly one ten millionth of one percent (0.00001%).
To put that into perspective, you are TEN TIMES more likely to be struck by lightning (the odds of that happening are one in one million).
Moreover, those few investors who DID get rich from the Great Financial Crises were all in highly unusual circumstances, none of which apply to the typical trader/ individual investor.
John Paulson is a famous hedge fund manager who became a billionaire betting on the housing crash. What you might not know is that the only reason he succeeded was because he personally had Goldman Sachs build securities that were chock full of garbage mortgages, which Goldman Sachs then sold to other clients… so Paulson could bet against them.
This was unethical and borderline illegal. And individual investors like you or I would NEVER have this opportunity (when was the last time you told Goldman Sachs to create something for you to bet against?)
Michael Burry is another hedge fund manager who got rich from betting on the housing crash. He had to LOSE money for two years before his bets worked out. And even once things went in his favor, the investment banks who sold him the securities he used to bet against the housing market refused to value his trades as profitable.
To top it off, his investors tried to withdraw their funds. When Burry refused to give the money back, they sued him. What followed was years of legal hell as well as an investigation by the FBI.
So, let us consider this…
- The odds of making a fortune betting on a crisis or some other Black Swan are less than those of being struck by lightning.
- The small handful of people who DO get rich from these situations do so either because they have A) a ridiculously unethical set up like John Paulson B) are willing to experience a nightmarish scenario for months, or even years like Michael Burry.
Which brings me back to my original point: the purpose of investing is to make money. The easiest way to do that is to ride bull markets for as long as possible… and then get out before a bear market/ crash hits.
Put another way, the Crash Callers have investing totally backwards: you need to focus on the 99% of times stocks don’t Crash, NOT the 1% of the time they do.
So obviously, investors need a tool for determining whether stocks are simply correcting in the context of a bull market… or if a legitimate crash/ bear market is about to unfold.
I’ve developed a tool that takes ALL of the guessing work out of this problem. With just one look at this tool, you can tell whether it’s a good time to buy stocks or not. I detail it, along with what it’s currently saying about the market today in a Special Investment Report How to Predict a Crash.
To pick up a free copy, swing by
Best Regards
Graham Summers, MBA
Chief Market Strategist
Phoenix Capital Research