Prosperity in The Age of Decline: How to Lead Your Business and Preserve Wealth Through the Coming Business Cycles

Chapter 12Investing Based on Age and Trend

Some Commonalities

Both of this book's authors are registered investment advisors. What that means to you is that we know enough to be dangerous and are savvy enough to know what we don't know. Therefore, this chapter won't be about how to make your millions through investing or giving you tips on beating the market. Rather, it will teach you how to use the trends that we see coming over the next 25 years to your advantage. We don't believe in get-rich-quick schemes (unless of course, you are just plain lucky). I (Brian) once read a very interesting math book that postulated that there must indeed be a phenomenon known as beginner's luck. The book maintained that it had to exist—because why else would so many people think they can consistently beat the odds in activities such as the stock market, horse racing, cards, roulette, and the like? Many of these people must have had relatively successful initial forays into these endeavors for them to keep trying. So if you are one of these truly lucky people, feel free to skip this chapter. But read on if you want to try to improve your odds of making money by using economic trends and proven approaches.

We placed this chapter at this specific point in the book because understanding the driving economic forces that lie ahead is crucial to making money in the long term. This differs from investing for overnight wins (for people who are lucky or smarter than we are) or investing for success ...