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If you are a long term investor – have you thought much
about the people who will be buying your investments?
Welcome to The Great Retirement Experiment! This is a place where we explore the Baby
Boom’s retirement investment plans from a perspective that may be new to you –
the viewpoint of the buyers. The
younger generation of investors who will be cashing out the $44 trillion or so in paper
wealth that 50 million Boomer investors are planning on selling (the $44 trillion is calculated in the special report, here.).
For our explorations, we will use a unique approach that is
both holistic and people-based.
Holistic, because the retirement of the Boomers is going to
be an event so large that it will change everything. It will mean unprecedented changes in Social Security, Medicare,
consumer spending – and the investment markets. These changes won’t be separate experiments, but will all be
happening side by side in the same world, interacting with each other in a single Great Retirement Experiment. Together, the experiments will be creating a world and
investment environment that will be quite different for buyers, than the world
of today where 50 million Boomers are still investing.
People-based, because the buyers of your investments won’t
be impersonal mathematical forces. They
won’t have your best interests in mind as their goal. The buyers of the future
will be smart, creative, talented individual people – and their motivation will
be to act in their own self-interests.
Picture a world of 77 million Boomers who are demanding tens
of trillions of dollars from the generations behind them for Social Security,
and more tens of trillions for Medicare – even as the 50 million Boomers who
are investors seek still more tens of trillions from the expected sale of their
investment portfolios at the highest prices in history. Each demand is unprecedented in its scale,
and history has seen nothing like the combination of all the demands.
Picture a world of many tens of millions of younger workers,
entrepreneurs and investors at the peak of their own careers, using all of
their creativity and intelligence to find ways of holding onto the wealth that
they are creating, instead of passively and obediently passing it over to
retirees.
Picture your investments as part of the back and forth struggle
between the generations that will determine how the entire Great Retirement
Experiment is really going to work (instead of just the promises that the
Boomers are making to themselves today).
Picture your investments as not existing in an isolated mathematical
refuge, but being on the front lines of that struggle. Purchased by smart and very real individual
people who only buy at the prices that work for them, in a generation long
buyers market as 50 million Boomers try to sell.
Is that future part of your investment plans?
Do you think it should be?
To take a more fundamental perspective, the Boomers have
collectively promised themselves more of the wealth of the future than any of
the generations before them (albeit with the best of intentions). Wealth
that ultimately will take the form of the real goods and services needed to
support the Boomers in retirement, hopefully even in comfort. Real wealth that does not yet exist, but
will need to be created by the younger generations, in that future. Could it be that we should consider the
perspectives of the people who will be creating that real wealth, before we
make too many plans for the spending of that wealth?
From a market perspective, the problem is that when everyone buys together – prices rise. When everyone sells together – prices fall. This relationship has worked great for the last twenty-five years when the Boomers were all buying together, whether they were buying stocks, bonds, or real estate. The problem is what is coming next, the decades of all selling together – because it could mean an entire generation buying high and selling low.
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This website contains a series of educational reports, books, audio recordings and articles which are devoted to exploring the future from the perspective introduced above. Seeking to understand how intelligent buyers will act in their own self-interests in a world transformed by the many experiments that will make up The Great Retirement Experiment.
The people-based books are the core resource of this site, and build the base for actions that individuals and organizations can take to prepare for the fast approaching changes that will come with "The Great Retirement Experiment". They provide the essential key to avoiding getting swept up into an entire generation buying high and selling low. A key that requires anticipating what will happen – and taking contrary actions, that will separate our strategies from the crowd. It is through anticipating how people acting in their own self-interests will react to the many Experiments, that we will find how to protect our assets, and uncover major profit opportunities over the next decade, as well as the longer term future.
This website, including the reports, books and audio recordings,
contains the ideas and opinions of the author.
It is a conceptual exploration of general economic principles, and how
people may – or may not – interact in the future. As with any discussion of the future, there cannot be any
absolute certainty. What this website
does not contain is specific investment, legal or any other form of professional
advice. If specific advice is needed,
it should be sought from an appropriate professional. Any liability, responsibility or warranty for the results of the
application of principles contained in the website, reports, videos, books and
other products, either directly or indirectly, are expressly disclaimed by
the author.
Copyright 2006-2008 by Daniel R. Amerman, CFA