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STT, iamnotback, r0ach, deisik
While Armstrong may have a great record of predicting macro-trends, we all recognize that short-term trends are very hard to measure beyond a day or two. Very hard.
Since NO ONE knows what is going to happen, I have found it best to be prepared for as many *reasonable probability scenarios" as possible. Think about what is likely to happen, think about what COULD happen, think about effects on you for each scenario; THEN plan your strategies to cope with the future.
I have explored various scenarios in some depth at another website. The scenarios in question were all
BAD ones: various horrible things that could happen, how likely and what to do now/soon to protect oneself. For example, there are a spectrum of possibilities that could happen re "Economic Devastation". Would this be an outcome that would be a Great Depression v. 2? Would it be a tougher SHTF? Or the horrible TEOTWAWKI (
The Road, One Second After, Lights Out and others)? The severity of these different, but relatively easy to visualize, would influence choice and amounts of assets to hold, for example.
* * *
In the most extreme scenarios,
bullets may be the best single "currency" (USA), my lead stash is 9mm bullets (lots of them) for my Beretta. Along with water production systems. These cases would likely not have gold (especially) and silver valued highly, at least during the very worst parts... Still, at some point (probably..., when?), some kind of currency almost always is chosen. My *guess* is that the most probable candidate would be silver coins, remember we are talking about a long and drawn out time (TEOTWAWKI in this paragraph) when central governments might not be there. Silver will always retain some value, it is useful too (kills germs in water). Gold will be there to preserve value through a long period, like giving to your kids.
But how likely are the extremely bad scenarios? Ahh, not as likely, IMO, as the milder, but still bad Great Depression v.2 and its more uncomfortable "SHTF". So, in my own planning, I have but a couple of water filters and only a nominal amount of food stored (believing that the very ugly TEOTWAWKI will NOT be what happens). Again assuming here no HORRID scenario (no Golden Horde armies devouring everything in the landscape...), I think that gold & silver are perfectly fine as
part of a diversified portfolio of holdings.
If things DO go really bad, if the Dark Ages (let's say little/no electricity for the moment), then
Bitcoin ain't going to do the job!! Yeah I know that BTC can still function at some level without an Internet, but, it will fail in actual use...
* * *
Perhaps a "1984" scenario could occur. Crypto might work out well, but maybe not! At some point product would have to be delivered when paid by crypto (like when I bought gold with BTC). Ahh! My name and address are in the system, whoops.
Perhaps we may luck-out and get a benign scenario that features technological advance, benign governments, more freedom, less war, etc. What then?
iamnotback's advice of some time ago (education in useful skills) might be No. 1.
My point is that we don't know. As
deisik pointed out recently, we don't know which wall will hit us... Black Swans, by definition are unpredictable low-probability events, even though they have massive impact.
Note that CURRENCY (US$, FRNs in your actual possession, not in the bank) counts as a good asset to hold in almost ANY weird scenario... In the early days, a $100 FRN might get you gasoline or a meal for your family if the credit card machines are down...
So where does that leave us? Use the imagination to identify things that could happen, make a best guess to the probability, then choose assets based on that matrix (also what you can afford, how to store, etc.). Already you can see that the possibilities are nearly endless, so you must choose...
I have chosen, based on my own expectations. I value
diversity very much, that of course includes reasonable holdings of precious metals (gold holdings by far outweigh my silver -- by $-value).
Bitcoin is also in there, but I own far less (at least for now) BTC than gold. Bitcoin to me is riskier, but has a real possibility of going way up... Alts? I have too little time (non-tekkie) to spend looking into harder-to-use and riskier cryptos that are less accepted and harder to use than Bitcoin.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!