Realcent.org

I'm posting this here with the hopes that he will be wrong. But Joe sure has been running that money printer quite a bit.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/us-ec ... h-lifetime

Warren Buffet also sold $28BB in stock this year...

I haven’t heard Harry Dent’s name in ages. I wonder what he’s been up to…

I clicked on this to make sure it wasn't the April Fool's thread. I think Dent has predicted a crash every year so far. To paraphrase Mel Fisher, "This year's the year!"

FWIW, he claimed in 2021 that the "biggest stock market crash of our lifetime" would hit in 2022, and then in late 2022 that "biggest crash of our lifetime is in progress" and that we'd see the bottom around the end of 2023 (i.e. right now), and it would be worse than 1973-1974. The biggest recession or a depression of our lives was supposed to happen in 2022-2023 too according to him. In late 2021, he predicted that 2024 was the year we'd emerge from the biggest crash, and recession/depression and the economy would be strong again.

One of the cool things about predicting economic catastrophe is that you can always just adjust your timeline further and further out, and eventually you'll be right.

I read some of his stuff 10-15 years. He was predicting collapse back then. The odd thing is that he had good reasons. He was pointing out the demography of the US. He said that by now more than half of the baby boomers would be retired (true) and that they would lower thier consumption (true) and switch their assets in retirement from stocks to fixed income (did not happen yet). Would result in a huge stock market collapse.

Of course he didn't anticipate 10+ years of zero interest rates which trained people not to invest in bonds.

Moral of the story is that there is always a good reason for a collapse, but the country and the economy generally rebound. BTFD has been a good strategy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0akBdQa55b4

I'm glad you guys shared that. I didn't know him from Adam.

The vast majority of us remember the collapse of 2008-09. That one, with Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. failing, was really bad. I remember Jim Cramer (of Mad Money fame) on CNBC delivering his famous “they have NO IDEA how bad it is” rant and saying on national TV that he was concerned about Bear Stearns failing. I bought a put option on Bear (betting it would go down) for $800 on Friday. Monday I sold that put for $2,600, more than tripling my money on the very next trading day! That was amazing.

On the other hand I inherited a home in bad need of repairs and in a rough area of inner city Detroit. I sold that house for a mere $1,000, since I lived out of state and mowing the lawn and paying taxes was bleeding me dry.

So that was a legitimately tough time. Guess what? We ALL (or almost all- there could potentially be a homeless person or two on this site) got through the tough times just fine!

If you can handle 2008-09, you can handle just about anything.

Also, look at the titles of Harry Dent’s books. They are not all bearish. Two bullish titles are “The Great Boom Ahead” and “The Roaring 2000’s”. I’m not gonna spend hours researching all his titles, but the one about the Roaring 2000’s jumps out right away. He wrote the book in 1999 during the big tech bubble. Tech stocks got clobbered mercilessly from 2000-2002. Many stock brokerage firms raised margin requirements so people couldn’t borrow so much when buying tech stocks. So Dent’s call became WAY OFF just about 6 months into the new decade he was bragging about.

Every title I read of his was super positive or super negative. Why? Because a title which says “The Market Won’t Do Much in The Coming Years” isn’t exciting enough to sell books.

Also, there are lots of hidden agendas out there. We need to RESEARCH stuff we read and hear about. People would love to talk down the housing market or even gold/silver. Why? Many would love to deploy some of their cash to buy on the cheap when real panic sets in.

I like to think in terms of dealing well with good or bad times. If I’m convinced the stock market is going down, I can sell short stocks or trade options. If interest rates stay high like they are now, I can make a cool 5%+ on my money for doing nothing. If rates plummet, my daughter can afford to buy a better home. So, my point is this- try to sit down with someone you trust and talk about creating a “somewhat” bulletproof strategy. It will relieve a lot of stress that you don’t really need.

Another piece to this has absolutely nothing to do with Harry Dent, but if people just learn to become more frugal and not waste money on truly non-essential stuff (like tattoos and lotto tickets, for instance), their lives will improve tremendously. I am BEYOND THANKFUL to have a wife who could squeeze a penny and make Lincoln cry! If she spent money like a drunken sailor, we would likely need either counseling or divorce. So think too about that aspect of your life.

And, without trying to dictate how anyone should live their life, a little prayer every now and then doesn’t hurt.

Sorry for the rant. This is a topic I am very passionate about.

Good perspective Steve.

Folks should take a look at long term charts too. And realize the the economy, housing market, and stock market are not the same thing. Peaks and troughs can happen at different times.

I can remember at some point in the 2000s the stock market sold off bad. I think this was the early part of the Obama years. I panicked and sold. It eventually came back up and I got back in but I made a huge mistake by selling. So think this through ahead of time. The one thing Dent is probably right about is that we are on a rollercoaster.

Some people use trailing stops. They might sell at say 25% below the stock's high. Other people buy and hold. I foolishly waited to sell until stocks were down well more than 50% and then bought back when they were up again. That was a very expensive lesson.

The best way to avoid this is to know why you bought a stock. If you bought for example Hershey or Coke because people will always want their products, then the fact that the market discounts their share price is not a reason to sell.

nice chart here
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-con ... Dec19.jpeg

And what has led to the persistent rise in the US markets over the past 50 years? Massive deficit spending by the US federal government, possible due to the US military and petrodollar control of the global economy, and related reduction in value of the US dollar. It isn't real, and it won't last. Crazy crap can last for a lifetime (this isn't the first example of it in history), but crazy behaviors NEVER last forever.

68Camaro wrote:And what has led to the persistent rise in the US markets over the past 50 years? Massive deficit spending by the US federal government, possible due to the US military and petrodollar control of the global economy, and related reduction in value of the US dollar. It isn't real, and it won't last. Crazy crap can last for a lifetime (this isn't the first example of it in history), but crazy behaviors NEVER last forever.

When I am feeling particularly masochistic, I'll take a peek at the Debt Clock.

Current federal debt per citizen: $100,954.
Federal revenue per citizen: $13,156.

There's also another $3,824 in state debt per citizen, and $7,204 in local debt per citizen. My son just started middle school, and is already theoretically saddled with six figures of debt.

68Camaro wrote:And what has led to the persistent rise in the US markets over the past 50 years? Massive deficit spending by the US federal government, possible due to the US military and petrodollar control of the global economy, and related reduction in value of the US dollar. It isn't real, and it won't last. Crazy crap can last for a lifetime (this isn't the first example of it in history), but crazy behaviors NEVER last forever.

68, what you say isn't wrong but I think it sells short the strength of American business.

The addition of debt hasn't increased economic output for the last decade - in fact, its been a drag on the economy. Yet GDP keeps ticking up 6% a year.

Growth in other countries like UK or Germany is more modest, like 3%. They have a less risk-taking attitude by businesses. You don't see many drugs being developed there for example. Germany has some great technologists but they focus on factories rather than AI, chips, or the internet.

That said, I think the S&P500 is up 30% year to date, which is untethered from what the real economy is doing. So there I would agree with you. I just don't agree that debt was the only thing causing growth.

Not debt per se, but the devaluation of the USD caused by that debt. For example, the Dow adjusted by price of gold has grown very little over 100 years. If actual value was being produced, it should have doubled in real value several multiples.

True but the same debt is being added in other countries in Europe, and our GDP continues to grow at 6% while theirs at half that rate.

I'm not a fan of debt and I understand the mechanism you describe. Its just that there are other things going on too imho.

68Camaro wrote:Not debt per se, but the devaluation of the USD caused by that debt. For example, the Dow adjusted by price of gold has grown very little over 100 years. If actual value was being produced, it should have doubled in real value several multiples.

How about silver? It was $50+ in 1980 when the Hunt Bros. were active. It got close to that level in 2011, and now, all these years later is well less than half that. Seems a bit ridiculous.

Recyclersteve wrote:

68Camaro wrote:Not debt per se, but the devaluation of the USD caused by that debt. For example, the Dow adjusted by price of gold has grown very little over 100 years. If actual value was being produced, it should have doubled in real value several multiples.

How about silver? It was $50+ in 1980 when the Hunt Bros. were active. It got close to that level in 2011, and now, all these years later is well less than half that. Seems a bit ridiculous.

What about silver? Two bubbles in 1980 and 2011 don't a trend make; however the long-term trend of silver is consistently way up, >20x the price in the early 60s. The value of the USD in terms of silver hasn't gone down as much as vs gold (suggesting that current silver is undervalued by a factor of 2-3). In terms of silver, the current USD is worth about 3-4 percent of the USD from 100 years ago (vs about 1% for gold). The price of silver has crashed a few times over history, when vast new previously unknown reserves were discovered, but there are no more unexplored mining areas that can create that kind of crash. And then again, from the late 19th century until Nixon, we weren't on a silver standard per se, we were on a gold standard. And also we didn't have the manipulated market we know we have, where price discovery is really not possible, with a silver futures market that prevents true discovery. So there are a lot of interesting things to consider and say about silver as well, but it is gold that the world had as a primary currency backer - until Nixon panicked and unofficially created the petrodollar in place of it.

Harry Dent is like Peter Schiff, they keep predicting "the end" every year. They are bound to get it right eventually (and I do admit, both guys back their yearly claims with valid data and are believable.). In short he will be wrong until he isn't. To borrow a quote I heard from Rick Rule (paraphrasing) "Harry Dent has predicted 12 of the last 2 market collapses...."

"A broken clock is right twice a day..."

Stay nimble, stack what you can.

silverflake wrote:Harry Dent is like Peter Schiff, they keep predicting "the end" every year. They are bound to get it right. To borrow a quote I heard from Rick Rule (paraphrasing) "Harry Dent has predicted 12 of the last 2 market collapses...."

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Funny quote!

That's hilarious.

and Rick Rule is legit. He got rich because he recognized that everything is cycles. When prices are high, there is overinvestment in productive capacity that causes low prices. When prices are low, there is underinvestment. In mining (which Rule specializes in) it takes several years to bring a mine on line so there are big swings before high prices come down or low prices come up.