The whole system is a house of cards:

The whole stock market is a house of cards.

The US market is a bunch of derivatives.

A derivative is a financial contract between two parties, usually you and your broker, dependent on an underlying group of assets like stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, interest rates and market indexes.

Read this post on Reddit today. I think everyone who’s interested in the stock market needs to understand this (here).

Essentially the whole thing is a house of cards.

Why am I not surprised?

Many people think the stock market is always rigged for the people at the top, and turns out they’re right.

For a long time, I used to trust the integrity of the stock market. I used to believe that when I was buying shares of a stock, I owned actual shares of that company. Turns out you don’t. All of it is just a derivative based on a contract held at Cede and Co, a subsidiary of the DTCC, an American financial organization who’s essentially in charge of the integrity of the market.

Turns out it’s all a lie.

Some people knew about this years ago and yet nothing changed.

Dr. Susanne Trimbath was one of these people. She wrote a book about this exact issue (here) and how it led to the crash in 1987. 

She knew this was always going to be a problem but no one did anything about it. Why? Because Wall Street is making so much money by maintaining this illusion.

Wall Street controls the money and power for a lot of the world. They can’t let this ever get out. The integrity of the whole system breaks down.

Now the question is if you were to move to a Chinese market, would they be any better?

My worst case scenario opinion is because the Chinese government controls the whole stock market and is incorporated with every Chinese company, if you invest in their market, they could theoretically take you out at any time. Just seize all your money and assets.

Is the US any different? My sense is if you spoke out about the government, they couldn’t just seize your assets. They’d have to charge you criminally. Well I guess they could make up a bogus crime to imprison you and seize your assets, so it’s not any different.

Man, is this what happens when you find out about the world?

You realize it’s all a lie? It’s all a house of cards?

Money. Social media. Likes. Banks. Media. Governments. Institutions. Everything?

Damn, growing up kinda sucks.

That being said, if you understand all of this, you can use it to your benefit.

If you know how people act and why they act, even if you just have a better understanding than most of the world, you can win. You can use it to your advantage.

‘Like it or not, life is a game. Whoever denies that truth, whoever simply refuses to play, gets left on the sidelines.’ – Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike, in his book Shoe Dog. It’s all a game. Once you understand the rules of the game, you can exploit it in whatever way you like in your favour.

It takes a long time to figure that out and some people never do. They just go by every day, almost waiting for it all to be over. They don’t challenge themselves. They don’t realize how strong the human mind is and how adaptable it can be.

You can change your circumstances right now more than you ever could before in history. Why? Because the Internet. The internet has completely flipped the script.  As long as you’re in a country where the Internet is ‘free’, although you could argue the Internet has never been free, you can change your fortune today.

There are so many free resources available to learn about anything you want to. Most people are not doing this though. They’re wasting their time and let social media destroy their ability to sit and think. It’s destroying their ability to communicate in person and think for themselves. Once you do think for yourself though and start leveraging the Internet, there’s so much you can do.

You can become whoever you want to online, but also learn about anything you want. Khan Academy is one of the best resources on the Internet. I still use it to this day to understand complicated concepts. He does a much better job of explaining concepts to kids than teachers ever will. That dude deserves so much praise because he’s revolutionized learning for so many kids around the world.

This is why I’m so excited about the future. The more people learn about the world through the Internet, the more they can help themselves survive and thrive. We as a society have to make sure we do everything in our power to give people around the world the Internet. Starlink is doing it along with many others. These are amazing inventions for humanity. People around the world are going to have the ability to hopefully create a more sustainable and equitable future.

Most of this next generation, especially in North America, will be mind numbed by social media, but a small group of people around the world are going to change it for the better. They will understand the rules of life better than any of our parents' generations could, because all the resources you could ever ask for are available to you at your fingertips.

The house of cards that is the US stock market is going to crumble but there’s so much exciting things happening.

Short America. Long the world.