The uncomfortable reality of the market is that it has cycles. I started reading Ray Dalio’s book “Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order” months ago, but I haven’t finished it yet because I keep putting things off. Basically, the book analyzes the historical rise and fall of world Superpowers. It suggests the potential fall of the U.S. as a Superpower and the rise of China to replace it. However, recent months have shown us that the Chinese economy is in shambles as well, as evidenced by the fall of Evergrande. The point is that every economy is vulnerable to downturns, recessions, and depressions and can eventually be replaced, regardless of how robust it may be.
https://www.amazon.com/-/en/Ray-Dalio/dp/1982160276
According to my understanding of how an economic machine works, it is basically a huge and sophisticated capitalist system that delays the inevitable decline. The market has cycles. At first, it promotes growth by giving the general public access to “easy money” or credits. Then the market deflates, and the general public must pay back their debts. The wealth effect will promote spending in a bull market, and the negative wealth effect will discourage spending in a bear market. People always have a tendency to forget that following a bull market is a bear market.
The point of this essay is that there are many uncertainties, the rise and fall of empires or bull and bear markets throughout thousands of years of human history. Yet, gold and silver survived as safe-haven assets. Nothing that’s likely to happen in the near foreseeable future will diminish gold and silver’s position as safe-haven assets. Unless the Fed keeps raising the rate, but how long can they keep doing that? Will the Fed maintain its hawkish stance after the midterm elections? I would be more concerned about the value of the JPY, EUR, GBP, and every other Forex in the world than I would about Bitcoin and silver prices. We took the risk and invested in Bitcoin and silver. Sure, they are volatile, but the potential upsides of silver and Bitcoin are infinite. All the fiat currencies (of JPY, EUR, GBP, and any other Forex) are meant to be "stable" because they don’t have infinite potential upside.
