What if you’re right?

My mom asked me today: ‘What if you’re right?’

She meant what if I was right about my prediction that the stock market would collapse. What would that do for you?

It’s hard to know. I’ve never guessed a market crash before. Other people do that, and are usually wrong. I may be wrong in the end because the future is never how you intend it. Ever. Even if I say a market crash is going to happen and it happens, what happens?

Well the US is in trouble. Inflation might explode. The market will be much lower for several years. They just announced a stimulus bill and may print even more money if companies and big banks were to fail. That’s a lot. There will be congressional hearings, there will be blame placed on banks and hedge funds, universal basic income will start to become much more accepted, and millions will lose their jobs. That’s a terrible time in America.

Yet my life could change forever. I could be introduced to people I would never have thought of. I could get a new audience of people who follow what you do and are now interested in what you have to say. What does that mean to me? I hope nothing. I hope I continue to be as honest as possible with myself. But fame changes you. Eyeballs change you, as much as I don’t want to believe it will.

You become interested in numbers, and metrics, and views. That’s a toxic path to go down because then you’re not truly being creative. Being creative is being the authentic you, no matter what. The public stuff will continue to be opinions that I want to be known in public, but my personal writing will be strictly for me. No one really cares about you at the end of the day, which is liberating.

Just create. Walk your walk. Live your life. Be your authentic you. Spoke to someone today catching up at another venture firm who’s been in VC for 5 years now just about the last few months in Covid. It was really nice but she said something that stuck with you. She said ‘Anish, you’re a really cool person, we should do this more often.’

That was so nice to hear, and so liberating. Because I finally feel unguarded and free to share what I’m doing. It was touching because someone noticed. A lot more people will notice soon. Who cares though? All of their opinions will never be worth more than the opinion of you.

Had a debate with my boss today about what I wrote and he said ‘although I liked what you wrote, I disagree because this was like 2000.’ It’s not. We didn’t have social media. People couldn’t coordinate trades and go against shorts. They couldn’t act in unison to flip the system on itself by just holding stocks. People in 2000 were day traders who lost everything when the market corrected. Right now people have access to information they never had before.

Reddit is so smart. So many people are in that community who give such solid diligence. They do so much research into what’s happening and want to share that with others. Everyone feels like they’re contributing to the cause. And it’s these people all over the world acting together against the institutions, in the game where it hurts the most. Money.

If AMC and Gamestop’s situations unfold with people holding their shares for a very long time, these things are going to get extremely out of hand. Trillions of dollars in value is going to disappear. That’s scary because a lot of people will lose tons. People don’t know what it’s like to live through a market crash where 40% of their assets disappear. To be honest, it’s mostly rich people because those are the ones who are mostly invested.

Poor people and the middle class will mostly continue living the way they are. In fact they’re a bit better now because of the stimulus checks coming in. Hopefully they hold it and keep it, because things are about to start getting a lot more expensive. The oil crisis in the 70s was a prime example where the rich continued to grow their wealth while everyone else was holding the bag and suffering from their dollar getting eroded. It’s going to happen now.

I’ve said this before but this next decade is America’s demise as the leader in the world. There are a lot of issues in America because of capitalism and overconsumption that are extremely hard to reverse. Unless rich people fall in line and contribute far more of their money to the government, the US will suffer grave consequences. San Fran has a massive homeless and crime problem, a lot of major cities do, and this may only expedite if they go through another market crash. Especially if people are over-leveraged.

A housing crisis could come in the next few years because rates are so low right now so everyone is house flipping and trying to upgrade their lifestyle. They’re able to get free money from the bank. But as rates go up, are they going to be able to afford their mortgage? I hope they are but it could be bad if unemployment starts to rise.

What’s the answer? Taxation is an easier one for the US government, but I’m not sure they can course correct that much to not let China take the lead in the rest of the world. The West is still looking to America because of China’s communist government, but the world may be forced to look to China. They’ve set it up that way. They’ve been playing the game of Risk around the world for decades. That’s how their system was set up.

It’s the Chinese philosophy. Ray Dalio spoke so much about it in a LinkedIn post about China – here. They play long-term games and because the government controls everything, they can run it like a company. When they run it like a cutthroat company, they become mega successful. But this is assuming everyone in the country doesn’t rebel. Right now it looks like that’s not happening because they’re enjoying so much economic growth. They’ve built such a strong domestic economy, they don’t need anyone else to survive. Because of their manufacturing capacity they’ve invested in for 20+ years, they export a ton. The world is reliant on them.

Look at 5G. This is going to change everything, and China is far ahead of anyone. Their government invests so heavily in technological innovation and the US is lagging behind. If they can’t create it, they just steal it. Look at all these hacks that have happened all over the world. They’ve probably hacked many places without people even knowing.

The interesting paradox about having too much knowledge is you know too much. You have an opinion about everything. Yet everything is super interesting to learn about because I want to be proven wrong. I want to be told my views are completely wrong. I want to be challenged because how else am I going to improve?

This is why investing is the best job in the world. You get paid to learn. Full stop. That’s it. If you can be a constant learner about the world, you can make more money than you know what to do with. This is how life’s a game. If you invest in yourself and your education while you’re young, every single day, for decades, you have such an advantage on the rest of the world and can leverage that making money. The market also reminds you you’re never as smart as you think you are.

People who have been in investing careers for years are terrible at their job. They can’t beat the market. Mostly because of human psychology. They don’t understand themselves well enough, particularly their own subconscious. They’re not well read, they’re egotistical, and they’re stuck in their ways. Eventually you’re going to be holding the bag. Even if it has worked for me for 25 years, I’m happy to be proven wrong. I’m happy to learn about something completely new.

Evolve or die as Bob Iger says. Investing is the same. Sure you could do what Buffett and Munger do thinking, reading and looking at journals of companies' old financial statements. That worked well for them. 

But have your own strategy. You can play options if you want to. Always remember though that’s super risky and you have to have a lot of confidence in what you’re investing in. But you’re going to make a ton of mistakes. That’s good. It’s part of the journey. Just keep taking asymmetric upside bets.

Right now is the biggest bet of them all with AMC and the market. If all goes well, I’ll make more money than I thought was possible. That goal I wrote about earning ___ million dollars by the time I’m 40, I’m on the right path.

Insane. I could flip what I make this year into potentially ___ million dollars by the time I’m 30. Imagine that. Imagine. It’s hard because that doesn’t exist. It could but a lot has to go right. And we know life never works the way we intend.

Keep taking risks. Keep making your voice heard. People will not understand you in the moment. They won’t see what you see. But in the future, if some of your bets come true, all of a sudden you have a very different view.

What if you’re right? Buckle up, your life could change forever.