Consultation 98.

“God, how do I become the richest person in the world through trading stocks?”

“Are you dumb? Buy low, sell high. Rinse and repeat.”

“Of course I know that, but what I want to know is the ideal price points on when to buy and sell. With how volatile the market has been recently, my profit margins are getting cut smaller and smaller.”

“Oh. Let’s see...oh… hmm…” I frowned when I looked into the future for her world.

“What is it?”

“By the way, how old are you right now?”

“24.”

“I see..”

“What’s wrong, God?”

“Well, simply put, the future isn’t looking too good for you in your world.”

“What do you mean by that? Stocks are soaring to all-time highs.”

“That’s exactly the problem.”

“How is that a problem?”

“As they say, what goes up, must come down. When too much tension is applied all at once to a system something is bound to break. The stock market is the same. It’s just a matter of how long it takes to break.”

“There’s no way that’s going to happen. When people said stocks were doomed I went against the odds and invested at the lowest point in the crash and look at me now. I’ve made buckets of money and can even book a consultation with you.

“I see, so you’re just a brat who got a bit lucky after making a big investment after the recent crash and bounce back and think you’re suddenly some sort of big shot. Look, kid, have you ever heard the saying, ‘Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time”?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Haaaaah. In the span of your lifetime alone, whether you’re aware of it or not, there have been two pretty significant crashes. There was the Dot Com Bubble in the year 2001. There was also The Financial Crisis of 2007–2008. In both cases, it took years to recover from. You just recently had your crash and think it’s already over? You’re naive, too naive. In your world, there is a theory known as Elliott Wave Theory, have you not even heard of it before?”

“Elliott who?”

“Well, I’ll put it in simple terms for you, here’s a picture of what it looks like.” I drew it out on a piece of paper and handed it to her.

“What’s this supposed to tell me exactly?”

“It’s the typical pattern you will observe in stocks.”

“So what?”

I facepalmed and said, “You’re at point B, you idiot. You’re at the point where you’re about to fall off a very steep cliff. One far worse than the last crash at point A. The two crashes I mentioned before were from 1-2 and 3-4. Though you’ve presently gone higher than point 5, that’s only because your stock market is broken and functioning entirely based upon speculation rather than what the actual economy looks like. Your stock market is not a reflection of the actual state of your economy. You’re presently on a deceptive A-B path right now., you’ve only derailed off this natural path and broken all-time highs due to external manipulation to funnel wealth to the top.”

“Speculation? What do you mean by that exactly? Investing in stocks isn’t speculation.”

“Do you actually know anything at all about what you got yourself into?”

“Of course I do, buy low, sell high. That’s all there is to stocks, right?”

“Tch. Did you ever get involved in Bitcoin by any chance?”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“I see, so that’s where your stupid notion of investing came from. Look, Bitcoin is highly speculative and volatile. What do you see right now with stocks? The exact same thing, right? They are going up and down a lot but overall are heading to the moon. Does the phrase ‘to the moon’ sound familiar to you by any chance?”

“Now that you mention it I think I have heard that before.

“Did you experience the crash at the end of 2017?”

“I… did… why?”

“Then, you should at least understand that the stock market has transformed from market evaluations based upon the revenue the company generates annually to overvaluations that are speculating on projections of what it could be generating in the future, which is quite to the contrary of what is presently being generated. Think about it carefully, with all these companies closed due to lockdowns in your world, what do you think is actually happening to revenue outside of big tech giants? It has dropped significantly. When bankruptcies begin to catch up to the actual state of the economy, debts cannot be repaid. When debts cannot be repaid it results in a ripple effect up the chain until the entire system collapses on itself in one fell swoop which is what leads to B-C in the chart I showed you.”

“Ugh. This is too complicated.”

“Haaaaaaah. Fine, I’ll dumb it down even more for you. Here’s a figure for you to take in. It should be pretty easy to understand if I explain it to you in simple terms your generation would understand.”

“The blue line you see is the price of Bitcoin from the beginning of 2017 to the end of 2018. The green line you see is what the DOW looks like up to present. I’ve overlapped the two slightly misaligned and scaled the time axis so the two are comparable and you can see an oddly similar but discernible pattern between the two. Do you see what I’m getting at now?”

“This is… no way! It can’t be! Why do they look so similar?”

“Because stocks also gradually become highly speculative during bubbles due to people acting on emotions. Do you now see what happened to Bitcoin, something that is speculative in nature? A bit of a crash, to recovery, then a gradual drawn-out decline over time. Right now Bitcoin is again on the rise, however, recently it has typically been tied and coupled to the performance of the stock market. Whenever stocks are significantly down, though there are a few exceptions, Bitcoin has similarly seen drops on those days.”

“If you get it, then you should jump ship before it crashes. You don’t want to be the last man stuck aboard that ship when it is sinking and all the life rafts have already been taken.”

“Putting it in a way your generation may better relate to, it would be best to say things are pretty sus right now. Very sus, to be correct. You know what else is sus? Among Us coming out when it did in your world. Almost like it was a message for your generation. Be sus of everyone around you, you can trust no one but yourself. The stock market itself is sus and it is not a reflection of the economic reality. If mindless speculation does not stop, you’re bound to fall into the imposter’s trap. If you don’t want to regret it, make sure to take the lesson Among Us has secretly taught your generation.” 

“I-I see. Shit! Oh, shit!  God, I have to go. I’ve got to seriously reevaluate my portfolio.”

She was too preoccupied with thoughts of her money that she didn’t bother to ask the most important question of them all before she left. 

Just who was the imposter hiding among you all in this little game?

But I suppose I’ll just keep that to myself. She never asked after all. It also wasn’t really related to her question either. Well, I may say imposter, but it should really be, imposters. You can’t trust anyone after all.

KiraMinoru

Please note, this too can be considered speculation on what's to come, do not take this irresponsible God's advice as being factual with respect to the real world. It could turn out to be completely incorrect and perhaps the idea of being too big to fail will somehow magically succeed. 

More pointless side shit on the depressing outlook for the long term future of the economy in the spoiler.

Spoiler

Maybe if interest rates are kept at rock bottom and governments are able to somehow manage their interest payments on their debts, it could avoid a complete collapse. Though, when the debt to GDP ratio reaches over 77% which many countries are already far above that danger zone, you typically will be looking at significant economic slow down as governments are strapped trying to pay off high amounts interest on their debts with the available GDP they have. They will be stuck with much less capital to invest in trying to actually grow and expand the economy. As a result, a big hike in taxes becomes inevitable.

As for when the system will be tested the most, that would likely be when lockdowns are over and money artificially pumped into the system really starts to flow again. All the money that people were putting into savings will begin to move around rapidly out of control. With a large supply of money suddenly flooding into circulation, it would result in hyperinflation meaning there would likely be a rapid increase in prices and the overall cost of living to the point people can no longer afford the bare minimum.

Well, aside from that, there are also people throwing around the idea of the great reset though... where you will effectively own nothing.

[collapse]