Capitulation, Tribalism, and Measuring Your Wealth
I feel like I’ve been saying some version of “days like today are not easy” for 3 or 4 months. It has been a truly awful spring and summer for most risk assets. While my house which hasn’t tangibly improved from betterment projects in two years has continued to produce new “Zestimate’ highs all year, my STONKS and sh!tcoins have been massacred for about 7 straight months.
It has not been fun. Pure and simple. My portfolio is pretty well diversified for a 30-something who spent almost his entire post-grad career in the rust belt working behind the scenes in the less-than-lucrative local TV news business. Here’s a good sense of what we have tried to get exposure to:
dividend paying value stocks/ETFs
consumable commodities
precious metals
crypto
fractional/custodian-held alternative assets (vintage wine, rare art, “blue chip” sports memorabilia)
cash. Yes, even with high cost of living inflation
Because we take this diversified approach, it’s easy for us (me, since I’m managing all of this) to not fall victim to tribalism. Here’s a question; how do you really measure wealth? Is it by how many dollars you have? Or by how many “satoshis” you’ve stacked. How about how many silver coins are in your basement?
The Grave Dance
Tribalism leads to grave-dancing. It’s wild seeing all of the victory laps on social media today while a crypto meltdown commences. Gold people and STONK people just dumping all over the cryptos. I get it. There is a massive amount of scams and redundant meme-coins in the crypto space. There is also a massive amount of scams and redundant meme-STONKS in the traditional investment world. The malinvestment purge needed to happen. Who is right and who is wrong? Who cares? The only people who should probably be holding the mic right now are the energy investors:
But tribal grave dancing is happening nonetheless. I don’t hate it because the investment universe has a funny way of shutting up those who are loud. Right now, that universe is shutting up the “have fun staying poor” Bitcoin people. And deservedly so. But the universe will come for all tribes. And even those of us who claim no financial tribe can have a hard time staying humble. I know this well.
What I’m seeing on Twitter and on Stocktwits looks a lot like activity I’ve seen online when prior local bottoms were close or printed. I can finally see what I think is the beginning of capitulation in these markets. This looks like the start of capitulation:
The indiscriminate straight down selling in the broad market looks like the start of capitulation:
All that said, this isn’t over until the last person capitulates. And the last person to capitulate is probably going to have to be Jerome. Funny enough, we’ll hear from him in just a couple days. Don’t forget, it’s all the same trade.
Measuring Wealth
The one thing that stays constant no matter which financial tribe we choose is time. With this as a foundation, I think if we view our wealth by how our time is allocated, we probably have a better understanding of where we are in our journey. I see 3 major inputs to create ones own wealth metric; how much free time do you have? How healthy are you? And how much difficulty do you have feeding yourself or your family. In my view, if you have food on your plate, air to breathe, and recreational time with friends and family, you’re doing just fine. The rest of this is just a casino and we can’t take the chips with us.
Disclosure: I’m not an investment advisor. I merely share what I do and why I do it. You shouldn’t take anything I say as investment advice and always do your own research when making investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies, tokens, STONKs, and digital trinkets could all go to zero.
Your Measuring Wealth paragraph should be etched on everyone’s soul. Wise words!
I can relate about working in local TV . Yikes