Natalie Pace Blogs
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.jpg) Warren Buffett at the 2015 SelectUSA Investment Summit. Wiki Commons. Used with permission. Berkshire Hathaway: Should I Just Invest in the Icon? Investors Ask Natalie. Dear Natalie, Warren Buffett has proven himself to be one of the greatest investors of all time – a true GOAT. So, shouldn’t I just buy BRK.A or BRK.B and allow his magic to increase my wealth? Signed, Just Want to Make it Easy Dear It’s Only Easy When It Works, There is no question that Warren Buffett is a GOAT investor. However, having Berkshire Hathaway as your one and only love on Wall Street is not the best plan. There are many reasons why it’s a better idea to have an age-appropriate, diversified strategy that you rebalance 1-3 times a year. That plan is easy. It also earned gains in the Dot Com and Great Recessions and outperformed the bull markets in between. Berkshire Hathaway tends to shadow the S&P500, sinking when it plunges and rising when it recovers. BRK.A dropped by half during the Great Recession and financial crisis to $750/share on March 3, 2009, down from the previous all-time high of $149,200 (Dec. 10, 2007). Berkshire Hathaway was not one of the companies that was bailed out, and it still had a wipe-out. It took four years to crawl back to even – slightly sooner than the S&P500 (18 months). Didn’t everything take that long to recover? No. At the bottom of the Great Recession, some of our ETFs were super performers… The iShares Chile ETF (ECH) rocketed off a low of under $30/share to $80/share between Dec. 2008 and Dec. 2010, for gains of 167%. The iShares Australia ETF (EWA) scored similar gains (143%) over the two-year period. Having a slice or two of something that is hot adds performance to our plan. Those two natural resources rich countries performed better than financials and insurance in the wake of the developed world’s financial crisis. (Our analysis revealed this strength in time for our readers and retreat attendees to take action.) Having an age-appropriate, diversified plan that we rebalance 1-3 times a year is important because if we just own one thing, we might think that one company is the problem, especially if we see gold, crypto, copper or another industry/company shooting the moon. We might be tempted to sell low, just as now you’re tempted to buy Berkshire Hathaway at an all-time high right now because the story is slightly more interesting than an S&P500 index fund. Many investors sell low in recessions. Our emotions prompt us to do the wrong thing in investing, until we master them with a solid plan. Here are the 10 things I’ll cover in this blog. Individual Companies vs. Funds Diversification Matters Warren Buffett is 94 years old The L.A. Fires and Berkshire Liability Berkshire Has a Lot of Cash on the Sidelines Losses of $22.8 Billion in 2022 Bull Markets Bear Markets Country Diversification Dollar Cost Averaging (vs. Buying High) What’s Your Rebalancing Plan? And here is more information on each point. Individual Companies vs. Funds Anytime we invest in one company instead of a fund (many companies), we are putting ourselves at greater risk. Boeing is the most recent example – a company that has lost -57% in share price since its highs of 2019, at a time when Wall Street has been on fire. However, there have been plenty of other examples of Wall Street darlings for performance or dividends, where that trajectory reverses direction and plunges before investors can react. It’s called a gap down. Click for a history lesson of General Electric (a former dividend darling), Boeing and more. Because individual companies are more vulnerable, investors must have their radar up on the news and should be conducting frequent analysis on the forward trajectory. (There’s guaranteed to be bad news for Berkshire in the coming years when Warren Buffett passes.) Keeping up to date requires a lot of work and expertise. When we have a fund, the number of companies smooths out the volatility of any one component. If you don’t have the extra time and experience to evaluate your holdings, or if you’re trying to make things easy, funds are a more appropriate choice than putting all of your eggs in one company. Diversification Matters Having said that, it’s better to diversify into 10 funds than to just purchase SPY. The above examples of Chile and Australia illustrate that, as does the extraordinary performance of Bitcoin over the past two years.  It’s also important to remember that without the spectacular gains of the Magnificent 7*, the S&P500 would have performed at half the speed. (Click on the blue-highlighted words to learn more.) Berkshire’s impressive gains pale in comparison to many of our trillion-dollar technology companies, which is why we want to have large cap growth stocks (Nvidia, AI, technology), in addition to large cap value (Berkshire Hathaway, financials+). *Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla  Berkshire Hathaway (blue) versus Nvidia (pink) over the last 3 years. MSN.com/Money. (c) Microsoft. Used with permission. Value might offer stability if stocks were on sale and dividends were offering us income without compromising our principal investment. With U.S. stocks at an all-time high and value stocks full of credit risk and low-yielding, we’re using international value replacement funds in our sample pie charts. (We talk about this in greater depth at our Financial Freedom Retreat.) Over half of the S&P500 is at or near junk status. Berkshire Hathaway has a great credit rating, at AA, but doesn’t pay a dividend. Berkshire has flat sales growth (1.65%), while the Fantastic 5 all have revenue growth of 10% (Amazon) to 78% (Nvidia). When we think of this in terms of what we are buying from the company, how much more insurance, ice cream or See’s Candy are we going to consume? Most of us are heavily reliant on technology, which is finding ever more ways to monetize our addiction. Value means “on sale,” however, Berkshire Hathaway is trading at an all-time high (expensive). Email [email protected] with Berkshire Hathaway and Magnificent 7 SRC in the subject line for updated Stock Report Cards. Having an age-appropriate, diversified plan that we rebalance 1-3 times a year is a “capture gains” plan that keeps our wealth growing in the bull markets and protected from the bears. As I mentioned above, our 2009 hot fund picks more than doubled within 24 months, while U.S. stocks took twice as long (or more) to recover lost ground. There are certain assets that will do better in the launchpad off the bottom. This is why we have four hot slices in our diversified wealth plan. At the top of the market, at a time when the economy is expected to slow down, investors might even consider a safe haven hedge for one or more of their hot slices, while overweighting a little more safe. In my recent interview with Howard Silverblatt, the senior index analyst of the S&P500, he encouraged investors to consider small caps which typically outperform large caps. Check out our Sample Pie Chart below.  Sample Pie Chart c/o NataliePace.com. This will make more sense if you read The ABCs of Money (6th edition) and attend our online Financial Freedom Retreat. Warren Buffett is 94 years old The man who built Berkshire Hathaway is 94 years old. While Warren Buffett has faith in Berkshire Hathaway’s C-Suite and succession plan, the executives have yet to prove themselves. You’re investing in a man who will not be a part of the strategy going forward. The L.A. Fires and Berkshire Liability Berkshire Hathaway is the largest property and casualty insurer in the U.S. According to their 2024 Annual Earnings Report, the company expects $1.3 billion in pre-tax losses due to the January 2025 wildfires in Southern California. This could start showing up in the 1st quarter 2025 earnings report, which will be released at the beginning of May. Wall Street moves fast and furious these days. A bad earnings report can tank a share price. Berkshire Hathaway Has a Lot of Cash on the Sidelines Stocks are expensive. So, it’s not a surprise that Warren Buffett’s company has a lot in cash and short-term treasuries, as he’s one of the most famous value investors of all time. It’s a reminder that we should all have an age-appropriate plan and the proper amount safe. Having a lot on the sidelines could also slow down the performance of Berkshire Hathaway stock going forward. Flat year over year revenue growth doesn’t get investors excited.  Losses of -$22.8 Billion in 2022 Insurance companies can have very volatile earnings reports and tend to plunge in recessions due to the amount of money they invest in stocks and other risky investments. Berkshire Hathaway had losses of -$22.8 billion in 2022. When the S&P500 dropped -19.44% that year, many of the companies that Berkshire held sank in share price. AIG, one of the largest annuity providers, reported a net loss in half of the past eight years. Manulife and Prudential both lost $1.5-$1.65 billion in 2022. Bull Markets If you look closely at the 3-year chart below, you’ll see that Berkshire Hathaway and the S&P500 were dancing together on Wall Street, moving up and down in tandem. It was only in the last month that Berkshire Hathaway decoupled and rose.  It’s a reminder to never confuse a bull market with wisdom, particularly since we don’t receive a warning before a correction. Everything dropped precipitously in the pandemic – in just one month’s time… including Berkshire Hathaway. The same thing happened in the Great Recession. Everything is on fire on Wall Street today, with prices at all-time highs – very expensive. Investors are happy. Bear Markets Corrections, recessions and bear markets are a normal part of a business cycle. It’s hard to remember that because we’ve essentially been in a secular bull market since the Great Recession. The pandemic was papered over with trillions of Stimmy Money, which contributed to the inflation mess and debt crisis we are navigating today. We don’t get forewarnings on recessions and bear markets. Economists are terrible at predicting them, and politicians duct tape their mouths until the crisis demands the truth (such as a TARP bailout). By the time recessions are called, we are far closer to the bottom and would be selling low.  Country Diversification Part of the reason that we have style diversification is for the income. With stock prices so high, the yields of many U.S. value funds are pretty low. (Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t offer income, only, potentially, share price gains.) The U.S. is no longer a AAA-rated country. We are substituting other countries for our value funds, many of which offer more income, sometimes with less risk. Australia is a AAA-rated sovereign, and many of the banks held within the fund are rated higher than U.S. banks. In the case of the Australian ETF EWA, we’re getting almost twice the yield of a U.S. large cap value fund for lower risk. Copper has been called “The New Oil” by Goldman Sachs. This is one of the reasons that Peru is also one of our country value substitutions. Learn more about these countries by clicking on the blue-highlighted links. Dollar Cost Averaging (vs. Buying High) Berkshire Hathaway, like many stocks, is trading at an all-time high. If you still wish to own it as an individual stock (rather than just in a fund) even after all that I’ve said, then first personalize your own age-appropriate, diversified sample pie chart (using our free web app), and then dollar-cost average into the appropriate percentage of your large cap value slice. That way you are not just buying at an all-time high. You are also leaving room for the hots and other size/style choices. If you’d like to personalize your own sample pie chart, email [email protected] for a link to our free web apps. What’s Your Rebalancing Plan? When we invest in just one company, we’re tempted to use momentum, technical analysis or graphs as our gauge on buying and selling – all rearview mirror, rather than crystal ball, data. People often say, “I’ll just monitor the price.” However, doing that can inspire us to do the opposite of what we should be doing. As I’ve already mentioned (but it bears repeating), having just one company in our plan, even one that shadows the markets as Berkshire Hathaway does, is quite likely to jack our emotions in the wrong direction. When the price is high, we want to ride the gains and are enticed to buy more (as you are doing today). When the price drops, we might worry that Warren isn’t around to fix things, and we want to sell low. Wall Street pros have a mantra: Stick to your knitting. This means: do what your system tells you to do and take the emotions out of it. (No Wall Street insider or economist would ever say, “Just invest all you’ve got in one company,” although a salesman might.) Rebalancing 1-3 times a year is a way to capture gains and always have a diversified, age-appropriate plan. If our slices are too large, they are prompting us to sell high. When markets drop, slices become slivers and remind us to buy low. No one, not even pros, are able to market time the exact top or the exact bottom. Instead, we make sure that we have a plan that scores gains in bull markets and protects our wealth from bears. Rebalancing regularly with an age-appropriate, properly diversified plan does just that. Click to take our Rebalancing IQ Test. Bottom Line Buying at the most expensive price ever, hoping to sell higher down the road, praying for fair weather (no recession or correction), while riding a horse that is at the end of his life… Yes, I know that Berkshire Hathaway has many companies under its aegis with experienced, successful CEOs… Geico, Dairy Queen and all of Berkshire Hathaway’s automotive and oil/gas companies will likely stay in business for a while. Yes, I’m exaggerating and probably shouldn’t have used the horse in the metaphor. But it does help to see the illustration more vividly, and all of the other conditions in that set-up are spot on. Warren Buffet’s achievements at Berkshire Hathaway are truly impressive. However, the company’s stock is not immune to recessions, and it hasn’t performed anything close to the Magnificent 7 – the companies that are responsible for more than half of the gains on Wall Street over the past 2 years. Most value stocks and funds pay a dividend, whereas Berkshire Hathaway does not. (If you’re looking for income, you’re not going to get it from this stock.) Additionally, most individuals are not equipped with the time and experience necessary to own an individual stock in their personal wealth plan. Owning just one company isn’t a time-proven 21st Century strategy, while our pie charts with 1-3 times a year rebalancing is. This system is less time and money than most people spend – particularly in troubled times when FUD* sets in. When an “easy” plan has so many ways that it can go wrong, it's really not as effortless or painless as we are hoping it will be. *Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. Join us at our online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025 (online) and our Stock Masterclass (learn the strategies that earned me the ranking of #1 stock picker) on May 3, 2025. If you'd like a life-changing adventure of a lifetime, be our guest at a royal manor house in Cornwall, England, March 12-19, 2027. (With just nine rooms available, this exclusive, private, bucket-list adventure sells out a year in advance!) Call 310-430-2397 or email [email protected] to learn more. Your friends and family can get the best price for the April 25-27, 2025 Retreat when they register together. Request testimonials at [email protected]. You can also view some on the flyer page of the retreat. Learn how to: * Invest in hot industries, such as Nvidia, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, * Hedge against a weaker dollar, * Invest and compound your gains, * Green your retirement plan, * Easy and efficacious nest egg strategies, * Get hot and diversified (including in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and crypto), * Evaluate stocks, * Avoid capital gains and financial predators, * Keep an age-appropriate amount safe, and, * Know what's safe in a Debt World. You'll even discover how to save thousands annually with smarter big-ticket choices. Yes, it's a complete money makeover. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more and register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. "Ten minutes into the first day I was already much smarter about investing than I ever thought I would be in my life and I knew I was in exactly the right place at this retreat. I am amazed at how EASY and FUN it is to make my money work for me and those I love. I think this kind of information should be compulsory in schools. I wish I'd learned this sooner." CM If you’d like an unbiased 2nd opinion on your current wealth plan, email [email protected] for pricing and information.  Join us for our Online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details.  Join us for our Restormel Royal Immersive Adventure Retreat. March 2027. Email [email protected] to learn more. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details. Register now to receive the best price, the best room and six private, prosperity coaching sessions (value $2,400). There are only 9 rooms available. This retreat includes an all-access pass to all of our online training for a full year for two. Considering the perks, you're paying to learn the life math that we all should have received in high school, and receiving the room for free. Email [email protected] to learn more. 2025 was sold out in 2024! Yes, it's a great idea to register and start transforming our lives now!  Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of The ABCs of Money (6th edition) and The Power of 8 Billion: It's Up to Us, and is the co-creator of the Earth Gratitude Project. She has been ranked as a No. 1 stock picker, above over 835 A-list pundits, by an independent tracking agency (TipsTraders). Her book The ABCs of Money remained at or near the #1 Investing Basics e-book on Amazon for over 3 years (in its vertical), with over 120,000 downloads and a mean 5-star ranking. The 6th edition of The ABCs of Money and the 2nd edition of Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is (2nd edition) are the most recent releases of these books. Follow her on Instagram. Natalie Pace's easy as a pie chart nest egg strategies earned gains in the last two recessions and have outperformed the bull markets in between. That is why her Investor Educational Retreats, books and private coaching are enthusiastically recommended by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary S. Becker, TD AMERITRADE chairman Joe Moglia, Kay Koplovitz and many Main Street investors who have transformed their lives using her Thrive Budget and investing strategies. Click to view a video testimonial from Nilo Bolden. Check out Natalie Pace's Substack podcast on Apple and Spotify. Watch videoconferences and webinars on Youtube. Other Blogs of Interest Should I Have a Money Manager? The Cleanest Cities in the World. Can Altadena, Pacific Palisades and Gaza Become Edens? Rebuilding Gaza. American Companies Will Benefit. Top Dividend/Income Strategies for 2025. 2025 Crystal Ball: Who Will be the Superstars of Wall Street? Gold & Crypto IRAs and the Risk of Fraud and Losses. 10 Rules of Successful Investing. Quantum Computing. Paper Losses. Another Warning About Long-Term Bonds! 2025 Investor IQ Test. 2025 Investor IQ Test Answers. Apple iPhone Sales Plunge in China. Indonesia: Rich in Nickel with Ambitions of Becoming an EV Battery Hub. RoboTaxis. AI. The Magnificent 7. Charitable Giving. Nonprofits that are Worthy of Supporting. The DJIA Plunged 1100 Points After the Dec. 2024 FOMC Meeting. Why Are So Many Safe Investments Losing Money? A Bargain-Priced AI Company. Canadian, Australian and U.S. Banks. Are Any of Them Safe? Ireland. Rich in Technology, Biotechnology and Agribusiness. Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sweepstakes. Robo Investing and AI. No, They are Not Foolproof. Stocks Soar as Nvidia Joins the DJIA. Copper. Peru ETF Outperforms the S&P500. 4 Ways to Celebrate World Sustainability Day, Oct. 30, 2024. Will There be a Santa Rally or will the Election Ruin Everything? Will Insurance Companies & Homeowners Weather the Hurricanes? 9 Money Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Housing & Budgeting Solutions. Arkansas Sues Temu for Data Theft. We Must Be the Boss of Our Money. Why? Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Plastic Clothing. Atacama Desert Waste Dumps. Can Crowdstrike Recover from its Colossal Catastrophe? Featuring a Cybersecurity Overview. Fintechs and Brokerages that Fail are Not FDIC-Insured. 5 Green Tips for Clean Beaches Week. So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Retiring Soon? Start Planning Now. 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. May is National Bike Month. Paris and Amsterdam are the Stars. Vacations that Color Our World Forever. 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. The Underperforming DJIA, Full of Fossil Fuels and Forever Chemicals. The Best ROI* (Almost 40%!) & 7 Life Hacks That Save Thousands. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. 13 Lifestyle Choices to Reduce Waste, Pollution & CO2 & Save a Boatload of Dough. China Bans Apple 11-Point Green Checklist for Schools. 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Fiat. Crypto. Gold. BRICS. Real Estate. Alternative Investments. BRICS Currency. Will the Dollar Become Extinct? Why We Are Underweighting Banks and the Financial Industry. Save Thousands Annually With Smarter Energy Choices Is Your FDIC-Insured Cash Really Safe? Money Market Funds, FDIC, SIPC: Are Any of Them Safe? My 24-Year-Old is Itching to Buy a Condo. Should I Help Him? The Bank Bail-in Plan on Your Dime. Important Disclaimers Please note: Natalie Pace does not act or operate like a broker. She reports on financial news, and is one of the most trusted sources of financial literacy, education and forensic analysis in the world. Natalie Pace educates and informs individual investors to give investors a competitive edge in their personal decision-making. Any publicly-traded companies, funds or projects mentioned by Natalie Pace are not intended to be buy or sell recommendations. ALWAYS do your research and consult an experienced, reputable financial professional before buying or selling any security, and consider your long-term goals and strategies. Investors should NOT be all in on any asset class or individual stocks. Your retirement plan should reflect an age-appropriate, diversified wealth plan, which has been designed strategically, with the assistance of financial professionals who are familiar with your goals, risk tolerance, tax needs and more. The "trading" portion of your portfolio should be a very small part of your investment strategy, and the amount of money you invest into individual companies should never be greater than your experience, wisdom, knowledge, patience and diversified strategy. Information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. However, NataliePace.com does not warrant its completeness or accuracy. Opinions constitute our judgment as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument.
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 AI Generated Image. Managed Portfolios. Investors Ask Natalie Pace. Dear Natalie. ___ Investments has been reaching out to me. I've had a conversation with them. I think they mostly invest in stocks. I'm leaning towards thinking that they are not for me but wanted to get your thoughts. Thank you! Signed, Doing my Due Diligence! Dear DD (smart move), All brokerages (and insurance companies, fund companies, banks, crypto exchanges, etc.) want to get bigger. They want to have hundreds of billions of assets under management and be considered a major player. The person who is reaching out to us to gain our business is a salesperson who might earn a fat commission if they bring us in. This is the first thing that we must always keep in mind, especially when they act like they are inviting us into some exclusive, private club. “Now that you are worth a million dollars, you qualify to have us manage your money!” (Standard sales line…) Sometimes they might say that you’re on the low end of their threshold, that they’re making an exception to even consider taking you at all, and that the only way they can do that is if you contribute monthly at XYZ level. Sound familiar? So, how do you know if the opportunity is truly right for you? Is the managed plan as great as the salesman makes it sound? Below are a few considerations before making your choice. Performance vs. S&P 500 for the Past Six Years (Pandemic) and Since 2007 (Great Recession) Interview With the Questions Outlined in the “Brokers are Salesmen” Chapter in Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is (2nd edition) Who Makes the Decisions? Are You Informed in Advance? There Are a Lot of Cautionary Tales And here is more color on each topic. Performance vs. S&P 500 for the Past Six Years (Pandemic) and Since 2007 (Great Recession) Managed plans are going to take a percentage or a fee. So, they should be performing above what an index fund would do to make it worth your money. Therefore, it is important for you to understand what their track record is, which is quite easy to do. Simply ask for a performance of their portfolio compared to the S&P 500. You are going to need two different time periods. One chart should cover six years (or start in 2019). Five of the last six years were spectacular bull markets, while one was a pretty steep bear market. The 2-year average of the S&P500 in 2023 and 2024 was about 51%. In 2022, the index dropped -19.44%.  How did the managed plan do over that 6-year period? Did it just perform with the S&P 500? Does the chart factor in fees? You must read the fine print to know. Read it, don’t just take someone’s word for it. I’ve seen far too many cases when a client was told one thing, and a very different story (the truth) was printed on their statement. You’ll also see the March 23, 2020, pandemic low, when the S&P500 dropped almost -38% in one month – between Feb. 19 and March 23, 2020. (If you are reading this after 2025, then you’ll need a longer timeframe to see the pandemic.) Many managed plans shadow the markets, but perform 2% below, due to the fees. In that case, you’re paying to underperform. We also want to look at the performance since 2007, so that we see how the portfolio did in the Great Recession. Again, if you’re just riding the Wall Street rollercoaster and performing at par, it’s better to avoid the 2% annual fees and the stock plunges, particularly as we get closer to retirement. If their portfolio follows the index, it might not be age-appropriate or properly diversified, putting our wealth too much at risk in recessions. While no recession is predicted for 2025 or 2026, economists are terrible at forecasting them. When we wait for the headline that we’re in one, it’s too late. If you’re concerned about the economy, overweight a little more safe. Sometimes overperforming statistics are a red flag, too, particularly in today’s world of AI, where it is quite easy to mockup a fake return. Sadly, outstanding returns can be a red flag for fraud… Have you done a BrokerCheck on the person who contacted you? Have you searched for information on the company online using the terms “scam,” “complaints” and “fraud?” When I did a search using the word “complaint,” I saw quite a lot of troubling reports on the company you inquired about. It’s important to remember just how much money is lost to fraud each year. (Check out my blog and take the SEC’s Fraud IQ test.) Lesser reported are the complaints that are not at the level of fraud but are troubling examples of people receiving a different outcome than they were promised. Most of us can self-direct easily and affordably, using our easy-pie-chart system with 1-3 times a year rebalancing. This is a time-proven 21st Century strategy that earned gains in the Dot Com and Great Recessions and outperformed the bull markets in between. Few managed plans can boast of this… You can read about it in The ABCs of Money 6th edition, you can learn and implement these strategies at our April 25-27, 2025 Online Financial Freedom Retreat. You can also receive an unbiased 2nd opinion from me personally through our private coaching. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more now.  Interview With the Questions Outlined in the “Brokers are Salesmen” Chapter in Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is (2nd edition) I have a chapter entitled, “Brokers are Salesmen Not Surgeons” in Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is (2nd edition). It’s important for us to interview our financial advisors as if our life depends upon it because our future and our lifestyle does. The questions that are outlined in that chapter are designed to help you with that process. I provide suggested answers that will help you to discover just how well-designed (or not) their portfolio might be. Also, you’ll start learning how to separate sales pitches from a true strategic personalized plan. Remember that a good salesman will use all of the tricks of the trade to make the sale. Their mantra is ABC – Always Be Closing. Who Makes the Decisions? Are You Informed in Advance? A lot of managed plans hand the control over to the broker-salesman (and their brokerage). Sometimes, the plans don’t even allow you to see how things are invested. Bernie Madoff was notorious for that, and almost every hedge fund has a lockup period and terms that might make it difficult to regain control of your money in a timely manner. But there are also many private credit and equity funds that have a similar policy. These can be part of your managed plan – even if you are receiving statements with a list of your holdings. To make matters even more complicated, some opportunities become illiquid when you purchase them making it difficult to get your money back without losses (or before an extended period). This can be hard to deduce before signing with the firm because (and I’ve seen this on too many occasions) you sign with the brokerage and then they put you in a series of investments, some of which can lose money and/or become illiquid the moment you purchase them – all under the guise of “earning income.” Sometimes when clients question the strategy, they are placated with the amount of income that they are earning, without being advised that they lost on the principal, and there is a question mark about when they will be able to access their money again. All told, when the losses are factored in, the income can be half of what we’d earn in a short-term Treasury Bill. Be sure to read my blogs on “Paper Losses” and “Why So Many Safe Investments are Losing Money.” The links are directly below. There Are a Lot of Cautionary Tales Here are just a few – beyond the headlines of the ones you already know. Paper Losses https://www.nataliepace.com/blog/paper-losses#/ Why So Many Safe Investments Are Losing Money https://www.nataliepace.com/blog/why-are-so-many-safe-investments-losing-money#/ They Trusted Him. Now He Doesn’t Return Phone Calls. https://www.nataliepace.com/blog/they-trusted-him-now-he-doesnt-return-calls#/ Bottom Line In short, it’s important that we are the boss of our money and that we conduct the same level of due diligence for the managed plan that we would if we were hiring a CFO for our billion-dollar business. A lot of folks have their ego stoked for finally “qualifying” for a managed plan. This puts us in a position of proving ourselves worthy of the brokerage, when it should be the other way around. (It’s our money!) I’m not seeing many compelling reasons to go with a managed plan these days, particularly since an age-appropriate, diversified strategy is so easy and effective. Sadly, I’m seeing far too many cases of people regretting the choices and terms that they are being sold into – and this is in a bull market! Imagine what happens if the economy and liquidity become tight. Join us at our online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025 (online) and our Stock Masterclass (learn the strategies that earned me the ranking of #1 stock picker) on May 3, 2025. If you'd like a life-changing adventure of a lifetime, be our guest at a royal manor house in Cornwall, England, March 7-14, 2025. Only one room is available (due to a last-minute cancellation at this sold out retreat). Call 310-430-2397 or email [email protected] to learn more. Your friends and family can get the best price for the April 25-27, 2025 Retreat when they register together. Request testimonials at [email protected]. You can also view some on the flyer page of the retreat. Learn how to: * Invest in hot industries, such as Nvidia, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, * Hedge against a weaker dollar, * Invest and compound your gains, * Green your retirement plan, * Easy and efficacious nest egg strategies, * Get hot and diversified (including in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and crypto), * Evaluate stocks, * Avoid capital gains and financial predators, * Keep an age-appropriate amount safe, and, * Know what's safe in a Debt World. You'll even discover how to save thousands annually with smarter big-ticket choices. Yes, it's a complete money makeover. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more and register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. "Ten minutes into the first day I was already much smarter about investing than I ever thought I would be in my life and I knew I was in exactly the right place at this retreat. I am amazed at how EASY and FUN it is to make my money work for me and those I love. I think this kind of information should be compulsory in schools. I wish I'd learned this sooner." CM If you’d like an unbiased 2nd opinion on your current wealth plan, email [email protected] for pricing and information.  Join us for our Online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details.  Join us for our Restormel Royal Immersive Adventure Retreat. March 2027. Email [email protected] to learn more. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details. Register now to receive the best price, the best room and six private, prosperity coaching sessions (value $2,400). There are only 9 rooms available. This retreat includes an all-access pass to all of our online training for a full year for two. Considering the perks, it is much more affordable than you might think. Email [email protected] to learn more. 2025 was sold out in 2024! Yes, it's a great idea to register and start learning the life math that we all should have received in high school now.  Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of The ABCs of Money (6th edition) and The Power of 8 Billion: It's Up to Us, and is the co-creator of the Earth Gratitude Project. She has been ranked as a No. 1 stock picker, above over 835 A-list pundits, by an independent tracking agency (TipsTraders). Her book The ABCs of Money remained at or near the #1 Investing Basics e-book on Amazon for over 3 years (in its vertical), with over 120,000 downloads and a mean 5-star ranking. The 6th edition of The ABCs of Money and the 2nd edition of Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is (2nd edition) are the most recent releases of these books. Follow her on Instagram. Natalie Pace's easy as a pie chart nest egg strategies earned gains in the last two recessions and have outperformed the bull markets in between. That is why her Investor Educational Retreats, books and private coaching are enthusiastically recommended by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary S. Becker, TD AMERITRADE chairman Joe Moglia, Kay Koplovitz and many Main Street investors who have transformed their lives using her Thrive Budget and investing strategies. Click to view a video testimonial from Nilo Bolden. Check out Natalie Pace's Substack podcast on Apple and Spotify. Watch videoconferences and webinars on Youtube. Other Blogs of Interest The Cleanest Cities in the World. Can Altadena, Pacific Palisades and Gaza Become Edens? Rebuilding Gaza. American Companies Will Benefit. Top Dividend/Income Strategies for 2025. 2025 Crystal Ball: Who Will be the Superstars of Wall Street? Gold & Crypto IRAs and the Risk of Fraud and Losses. 10 Rules of Successful Investing. Quantum Computing. Paper Losses. Another Warning About Long-Term Bonds! 2025 Investor IQ Test. 2025 Investor IQ Test Answers. Apple iPhone Sales Plunge in China. Indonesia: Rich in Nickel with Ambitions of Becoming an EV Battery Hub. RoboTaxis. AI. The Magnificent 7. Charitable Giving. Nonprofits that are Worthy of Supporting. The DJIA Plunged 1100 Points After the Dec. 2024 FOMC Meeting. Why Are So Many Safe Investments Losing Money? A Bargain-Priced AI Company. Canadian, Australian and U.S. Banks. Are Any of Them Safe? Ireland. Rich in Technology, Biotechnology and Agribusiness. Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sweepstakes. Robo Investing and AI. No, They are Not Foolproof. Stocks Soar as Nvidia Joins the DJIA. Copper. Peru ETF Outperforms the S&P500. 4 Ways to Celebrate World Sustainability Day, Oct. 30, 2024. Will There be a Santa Rally or will the Election Ruin Everything? Will Insurance Companies & Homeowners Weather the Hurricanes? 9 Money Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Housing & Budgeting Solutions. Arkansas Sues Temu for Data Theft. We Must Be the Boss of Our Money. Why? Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Plastic Clothing. Atacama Desert Waste Dumps. Can Crowdstrike Recover from its Colossal Catastrophe? Featuring a Cybersecurity Overview. Fintechs and Brokerages that Fail are Not FDIC-Insured. 5 Green Tips for Clean Beaches Week. So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Retiring Soon? Start Planning Now. 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. May is National Bike Month. Paris and Amsterdam are the Stars. Vacations that Color Our World Forever. 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. The Underperforming DJIA, Full of Fossil Fuels and Forever Chemicals. The Best ROI* (Almost 40%!) & 7 Life Hacks That Save Thousands. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. 13 Lifestyle Choices to Reduce Waste, Pollution & CO2 & Save a Boatload of Dough. China Bans Apple 11-Point Green Checklist for Schools. 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Fiat. Crypto. Gold. BRICS. Real Estate. Alternative Investments. BRICS Currency. Will the Dollar Become Extinct? Why We Are Underweighting Banks and the Financial Industry. Save Thousands Annually With Smarter Energy Choices Is Your FDIC-Insured Cash Really Safe? Money Market Funds, FDIC, SIPC: Are Any of Them Safe? My 24-Year-Old is Itching to Buy a Condo. Should I Help Him? The Bank Bail-in Plan on Your Dime. Important Disclaimers Please note: Natalie Pace does not act or operate like a broker. She reports on financial news, and is one of the most trusted sources of financial literacy, education and forensic analysis in the world. Natalie Pace educates and informs individual investors to give investors a competitive edge in their personal decision-making. Any publicly-traded companies, funds or projects mentioned by Natalie Pace are not intended to be buy or sell recommendations. ALWAYS do your research and consult an experienced, reputable financial professional before buying or selling any security, and consider your long-term goals and strategies. Investors should NOT be all in on any asset class or individual stocks. Your retirement plan should reflect an age-appropriate, diversified wealth plan, which has been designed strategically, with the assistance of financial professionals who are familiar with your goals, risk tolerance, tax needs and more. The "trading" portion of your portfolio should be a very small part of your investment strategy, and the amount of money you invest into individual companies should never be greater than your experience, wisdom, knowledge, patience and diversified strategy. Information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. However, NataliePace.com does not warrant its completeness or accuracy. Opinions constitute our judgment as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument.  10 meters - Nazaré - Portugal. Photo by Carlos Eduardo Joos. Wiki Commons. Used with permission. Can Altadena, Pacific Palisades, and Gaza Become the World’s Cleanest Cities? You may say I’m a dreamer… "The rule whether you’re on a horse or a wave is the wilder is gets the further out you fix your gaze. Looking down is seldom helpful for anything," Laird Hamilton, legendary big wave surfer Our hearts and our prayers continue for Altadena, Gaza, Pacific Palisades, and any person who is affected by natural disasters, war, poverty, and the many other challenges that so many humans face. The trauma and the endless to do list for anyone recovering can be overwhelming. It is quite easy to feel like all we can do is solve problems that are directly in front of us or maybe a few feet ahead. If we allow that to happen, these cities will be designed by outside interests, rather than the wisdom and desires of the locals. (This is already happening. We’ve seen the headlines.) We could end up with last-century communities, filled with gridlock, poor air quality and asphalt everywhere, rather than what we know is healthier -- student gardens, walking/bikeable streets, parks for R&R, wonder and inspiration, and trees for shade, which can also reduce city temperatures by up to 14 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius). If the denizens of our communities come together with a vision that is larger than just their own home — it’s easy to be myopic on our own challenges and not see the bigger picture unless we rise up together — there is a possibility of recovering better than things were before and creating an Eden for our families and children. If we don’t, we may end up with an urban plan that is not in our best interest and plays into the pockets and profit of the powers that be, while polluting our air, water and food and draining our household budgets. There are communities all over the world that are taking great pains to destroy the old to make way for the new — a more sustainable and enjoyable community life — with native landscaping that can withstand the local climate threats. This is expensive and requires butting heads with the status quo, which always slows the process down. When it works, health (mental, physical, fiscal, spiritual) and quality of life are improved. The only silver lining in these communities that have been wiped out is that the canvas is now blank. What Eden do we envision? What are we willing to create? Will we come together to make sure that it happens? I’m listing a number of the organizations in the resources below that can help. These cities will get rebuilt. The question is, “Can we come together to make them more beautiful, more sustainable and more equitable, with built-in protections against natural disasters?” I believe we can, but only if we come together to dream and plan the future, even while we allow ourselves to experience the grief of what we have lost. Below are the resources and important information to consider in the planning process. With a blank slate for these areas, can we create Edens that become exemplar destinations? Are you aware that most Europeans have 1/3 the CO2 footprint (per capita) of Americans, Australians, Canadians and people living in the Middle East? That has a lot to do with single-occupancy vehicles, which:
Transportation is a leading source of CO2. Many European cities have public transportation and walkable neighborhoods, whereas areas with the highest CO2 per person embrace car culture and SOVs. In “A universal framework for inclusive 15-minute cities,” by M. Bruno et al., Bruno identified the World’s Top 50 Most Walkable Cities. Milan, Italy was #1. Germany had 12 of the 50. Europe had 42. The U.S., Australia, Canada and the Middle East had none. Russia, Belurus, Japan, Taiwan and Nepal had 1 or 2 walkable cities. (See below for the Top 10 and an aggregate by country.)  Here’s a wish list for creating Eden in all areas that have been impacted by natural disasters or war, along with the organizations that could provide the blueprint for best practices. Of course, all cities can begin the process of transitioning, as Amsterdam did in the 1970s and Paris is doing now.
Creating Eden in Altadena, Pacific Palisades, Gaza and Our Own Hometown
If you have something important to add to this wish list, please email me at [email protected]. Here are a few organizations that can assist with the time-proven systems. EARTHDAY.org. The largest environmental organization in the world, which partners with other green orgs and individuals worldwide. A great resource for all things sustainable. Sustainable City Planning: Poundbury (Duchy of Cornwall) and Leon Krier, Amsterdam Student Gardens: The Edible Schoolyard Project The Regenerative Landscaper by Erik Ohlsen Mark Nelson, Ph.D. water expert and author of The Wastewater Gardener. Eden in Iraq project. Parks & Trees: The Nature Conservancy, TreePeople, Central Park Conservancy. Highgrove Gardens. Water Refill Stations (no plastic bottles): Eau de Paris. Municipal Composting: San Francisco (since 1996), Seattle (since 2005) Regenerative Agriculture: Kiss the Ground Sustainable Local Materials for Housing and Construction: Plant Prefab Santa Monica, CA Powers 100% Renewable Energy & is Water Independent  Santa Monica, California powers 100% with renewable energy and is transitioning to shared roads and public transportation. Cities: The World’s Most Walkable Cities   Thank you. Let’s dream. Let’s come together. Let’s create something worth telling our grandchildren about. Let’s look 100 years down the road. Most of the organizations mentioned in this blog are featured in the Earth Gratitude 5-part docuseries and free ebooks. Visit EarthGratitude.org. If you're interested in greening your wealth plan, join me at my April 25-27, 2025 Financial Freedom Retreat. Join us at our online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025 (online) and our Stock Masterclass (learn the strategies that earned me the ranking of #1 stock picker) on May 3, 2025. If you'd like a life-changing adventure of a lifetime, be our guest at a royal manor house in Cornwall, England, March 7-14, 2025. Only one room is available (due to a last-minute cancellation at this sold out retreat). Call 310-430-2397 or email [email protected] to learn more. Your friends and family can get the best price for the April 25-27, 2025 Retreat when they register by Feb. 28, 2025. Request testimonials at [email protected]. You can also view some on the flyer page of the retreat. Learn how to: * Invest in hot industries, such as Nvidia, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, * Hedge against a weaker dollar, * Invest and compound your gains, * Green your retirement plan, * Easy and efficacious nest egg strategies, * Get hot and diversified (including in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and crypto), * Evaluate stocks, * Avoid capital gains and financial predators, * Keep an age-appropriate amount safe, and, * Know what's safe in a Debt World. You'll even discover how to save thousands annually with smarter big-ticket choices. Yes, it's a complete money makeover. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more and register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. "Ten minutes into the first day I was already much smarter about investing than I ever thought I would be in my life and I knew I was in exactly the right place at this retreat. I am amazed at how EASY and FUN it is to make my money work for me and those I love. I think this kind of information should be compulsory in schools. I wish I'd learned this sooner." CM If you’d like an unbiased 2nd opinion on your current wealth plan, email [email protected] for pricing and information.  Join us for our Online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by Feb. 28, 2025, to receive the best price. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details.  Join us for our Restormel Royal Immersive Adventure Retreat. March 7-14, 2025. Email [email protected] to learn more. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details. Register now. There is only 1 room available. This retreat includes an all-access pass to all of our online training for a full year for two, and three 50-minute private, prosperity coaching sessions. Much more affordable than you might think. Email [email protected] to learn more. (2025 had a last-minute cancellation for this sold-out retreat. Should that room be yours? Email [email protected].)  Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of The ABCs of Money (6th edition) and The Power of 8 Billion: It's Up to Us, and is the co-creator of the Earth Gratitude Project. She has been ranked as a No. 1 stock picker, above over 835 A-list pundits, by an independent tracking agency (TipsTraders). Her book The ABCs of Money remained at or near the #1 Investing Basics e-book on Amazon for over 3 years (in its vertical), with over 120,000 downloads and a mean 5-star ranking. The 6th edition of The ABCs of Money and the 2nd edition of Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is (2nd edition) are the most recent releases of these books. Follow her on Instagram. Natalie Pace's easy as a pie chart nest egg strategies earned gains in the last two recessions and have outperformed the bull markets in between. That is why her Investor Educational Retreats, books and private coaching are enthusiastically recommended by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary S. Becker, TD AMERITRADE chairman Joe Moglia, Kay Koplovitz and many Main Street investors who have transformed their lives using her Thrive Budget and investing strategies. Click to view a video testimonial from Nilo Bolden. Check out Natalie Pace's Substack podcast on Apple and Spotify. Watch videoconferences and webinars on Youtube. Other Blogs of Interest Rebuilding Gaza. American Companies Will Benefit. Top Dividend/Income Strategies for 2025. 2025 Crystal Ball: Who Will be the Superstars of Wall Street? Gold & Crypto IRAs and the Risk of Fraud and Losses. 10 Rules of Successful Investing. Quantum Computing. Paper Losses. Another Warning About Long-Term Bonds! 2025 Investor IQ Test. 2025 Investor IQ Test Answers. Apple iPhone Sales Plunge in China. Indonesia: Rich in Nickel with Ambitions of Becoming an EV Battery Hub. RoboTaxis. AI. The Magnificent 7. Charitable Giving. Nonprofits that are Worthy of Supporting. The DJIA Plunged 1100 Points After the Dec. 2024 FOMC Meeting. Why Are So Many Safe Investments Losing Money? A Bargain-Priced AI Company. Canadian, Australian and U.S. Banks. Are Any of Them Safe? Ireland. Rich in Technology, Biotechnology and Agribusiness. Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sweepstakes. Robo Investing and AI. No, They are Not Foolproof. Stocks Soar as Nvidia Joins the DJIA. Copper. Peru ETF Outperforms the S&P500. 4 Ways to Celebrate World Sustainability Day, Oct. 30, 2024. Will There be a Santa Rally or will the Election Ruin Everything? Will Insurance Companies & Homeowners Weather the Hurricanes? 9 Money Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Housing & Budgeting Solutions. Arkansas Sues Temu for Data Theft. We Must Be the Boss of Our Money. Why? Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Plastic Clothing. Atacama Desert Waste Dumps. Can Crowdstrike Recover from its Colossal Catastrophe? Featuring a Cybersecurity Overview. Fintechs and Brokerages that Fail are Not FDIC-Insured. 5 Green Tips for Clean Beaches Week. So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Retiring Soon? Start Planning Now. 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. May is National Bike Month. Paris and Amsterdam are the Stars. Vacations that Color Our World Forever. 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. The Underperforming DJIA, Full of Fossil Fuels and Forever Chemicals. The Best ROI* (Almost 40%!) & 7 Life Hacks That Save Thousands. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. 13 Lifestyle Choices to Reduce Waste, Pollution & CO2 & Save a Boatload of Dough. China Bans Apple 11-Point Green Checklist for Schools. 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Fiat. Crypto. Gold. BRICS. Real Estate. Alternative Investments. BRICS Currency. Will the Dollar Become Extinct? Why We Are Underweighting Banks and the Financial Industry. Save Thousands Annually With Smarter Energy Choices Is Your FDIC-Insured Cash Really Safe? Money Market Funds, FDIC, SIPC: Are Any of Them Safe? My 24-Year-Old is Itching to Buy a Condo. Should I Help Him? The Bank Bail-in Plan on Your Dime. Important Disclaimers Please note: Natalie Pace does not act or operate like a broker. She reports on financial news, and is one of the most trusted sources of financial literacy, education and forensic analysis in the world. Natalie Pace educates and informs individual investors to give investors a competitive edge in their personal decision-making. Any publicly-traded companies, funds or projects mentioned by Natalie Pace are not intended to be buy or sell recommendations. ALWAYS do your research and consult an experienced, reputable financial professional before buying or selling any security, and consider your long-term goals and strategies. Investors should NOT be all in on any asset class or individual stocks. Your retirement plan should reflect an age-appropriate, diversified wealth plan, which has been designed strategically, with the assistance of financial professionals who are familiar with your goals, risk tolerance, tax needs and more. The "trading" portion of your portfolio should be a very small part of your investment strategy, and the amount of money you invest into individual companies should never be greater than your experience, wisdom, knowledge, patience and diversified strategy. Information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. However, NataliePace.com does not warrant its completeness or accuracy. Opinions constitute our judgment as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument.  A Google Maps location of the Gaza Strip, which is prime real estate along the Mediterranean Sea. Rebuilding Gaza. American Companies Are Likely to Benefit. On Sunday morning, Israel delayed releasing the 620 Palestinian prisoners that were part of the Ceasefire Deal. Israel has fresh demands, including an end to the “humiliating ceremonies” that Gazans conduct when welcoming them home. Almost daily there is a new snag, a fresh complaint, and yet, at least so far, the ceasefire has moved forward, albeit on a bumpy road. Negotiations on the 2nd phase of the peace deal have been delayed since February 4, 2025, and have been frozen by Hamas until the 620 prisoners are released. The Israel-Gaza Ceasefire is fragile. And yet, as the world is keenly aware, there is now a debate over who will rebuild Gaza. The American President and Israeli Prime Minister want the U.S. to turn Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East, removing Gazans in the process. Leaders from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar met in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Friday, Feb. 21, 2025, to come up with a counterproposal that would allow Gazans to stay and progress toward a two-state solution. Each country has a horse in this race, and a reason why their plan is best. Which will ultimately be the path forward is still to be determined. However, there are a few things that are almost assured. The Arab World has the money. U.S. companies are likely to be involved in the rebuild. Since whale investors like to be early, which companies might be contracted to rebuild Gaza? Should you invest now to anticipate a rise in share price? Here are the topics we’ll cover in this blog. Roads, Buildings, Water, Elevators Single Digit Revenue Growth (or Declining Sales) Expensive Stock Loaded Up With Debt DJIA vs. S&P500 vs. Magnificent 7 Can Gaza (Pacific Palisades and Altadena, Too) Become the World's Cleanest City? And here is more information on each point. Roads, Buildings, Water, Elevators Everything will have to be rebuilt. In my infrastructure Stock Report Card, I looked at 3 Dow Jones Industrial Average components: Honeywell, Caterpillar and Sherwin-Williams. I also included Granite Construction, Otis Worldwide, Deere & Co. and Pentair (water). If you might be interested in receiving a copy of my Infrastructure Stock Report Card, email [email protected]. If you have another company to suggest, email as well. Single Digit Revenue Growth (or Declining Sales) Many of the companies mentioned above have single digit or flat revenue growth year over year, with the exception of Caterpillar and Deere & Co., which saw revenue decline -5.01% and -30.18% in the most recent quarter, respectively. The estimated cost of the rebuild has been pegged at $50 billion, which will be spread out over multiple companies and projects. If a smaller company, such as Granite or Pentair, lands a contract, this could definitely bump up their revenue. So, it’s worth having our radar up for more details on this project as it unfolds. A rebuild project for Caterpillar might help revenue become more normalized, while Deere & Co. will still need more help to crawl back to the 2023 & 2024 revenue levels. Expensive Stock With the exception of Caterpillar’s 15.41 P/E, the companies I examined all had elevated equity prices, ranging from P/Es of 21.72 (Deere & Co.) to 32.67 (Sherwin-Williams) and 33.46 (Granite). The historical average of P/Es (since 1936) is in the 17.74 range. For context, Sherwin-Williams had a net profit of $2.68 billion in 2024, while the company’s market value is $86.61 billion. (Wouldn’t you love for your company to be worth that much more than you earn!) While stocks can certainly go higher, whenever we have very lofty valuations, the slightest bit of bad news can prompt oversized plunges in price. High expectations are already built in. In the case of all the companies that I examined, buying now would be purchasing close to an all-time high. Loaded Up With Debt Otis Worldwide, Sherwin-Williams and Pentair are all rated BBB – the lowest rung of investment grade. Honeywell’s A rating is on negative watch. These infrastructure companies are all loaded up with debt – with debt-equity ratios ranging from 1.67 (Honeywell) to 2.86 (Deere & Co.). Over half of the S&P500 companies are at or near junk status, so this isn’t that surprising, particularly since older companies tend to be the ones with flat growth and massive debt. DJIA vs. S&P500 vs. Magnificent 7 The Dow Jones Industrial Average has only 30 companies. While it now includes 3 of the Magnificent 7 companies* (Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia), it also has a great deal of last-century companies that are heavily indebted with low profit margins, and slow or negative earnings growth. The index has been severely underperforming the S&P500, as you can see in the chart below.  Source: MSN.com. (c) Microsoft 2025. Used with permission. *Magnificent 7 companies: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp), Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.  The Magnificent 7 companies were responsible for over half of the gains of the S&P500 over the past two years. The S&P500 had 25.02% total return in 2024, and 26.29% in 2023. If you don’t have large cap growth, but are instead focused on DJIA funds, you’re missing out on a lot of Wall Street’s gains. In our sample pie charts, we look to international substitutions for our value funds, where we often get a higher yield, and sometimes for a lower risk. (Warren Buffett has also been shopping outside the U.S. for his investments of late.) Natalie’s Note: Tesla is down -31% since its Dec. 2024 high and is no longer so magnificent. Learn why in my 2025 Crystal Ball blog, which includes information on EVs and other select industries, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and crypto. Can Gaza (Pacific Palisades and Altadena, Too) Become the World's Cleanest City? You may say I’m a dreamer… However... With a blank slate for these areas, can we create Edens that become exemplar destinations? Are you aware that most Europeans have 1/3 the CO2 footprint (per capita) of Americans, Australians, Canadians and people living in the Middle East? What would it take? Check out my blog on Creating Eden in Gaza. (Click to access.) Bottom Line It’s easy to fall into the trap of shopping the headlines for Wall Street opportunities. However, a deeper dive into at least some of the U.S. companies that stand to benefit from rebuilding Gaza (and after the L.A. Fires) reveals that:
So, now is the time to make sure we know what we own, rather than jumping into a Gaza Rebuild hot tip or headline. Having said that, if you hear about specific companies that are part of the deal, be sure to email us at [email protected]. As I mentioned, the project could be a bump for smaller companies. Join us at our online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025 (online) and our Stock Masterclass (learn the strategies that earned me the ranking of #1 stock picker) on May 3, 2025. If you'd like a life-changing adventure of a lifetime, be our guest at a royal manor house in Cornwall, England, March 7-14, 2025. Only one room is available (due to a last-minute cancellation at this sold out retreat). Call 310-430-2397 or email [email protected] to learn more. Your friends and family can get the best price for the April 25-27, 2025 Retreat when they register by Feb. 28, 2025. Request testimonials at [email protected]. You can also view some on the flyer page of the retreat. Learn how to: * Invest in hot industries, such as Nvidia, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, * Hedge against a weaker dollar, * Invest and compound your gains, * Green your retirement plan, * Easy and efficacious nest egg strategies, * Get hot and diversified (including in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and crypto), * Evaluate stocks, * Avoid capital gains and financial predators, * Keep an age-appropriate amount safe, and, * Know what's safe in a Debt World. You'll even discover how to save thousands annually with smarter big-ticket choices. Yes, it's a complete money makeover. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more and register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. "Ten minutes into the first day I was already much smarter about investing than I ever thought I would be in my life and I knew I was in exactly the right place at this retreat. I am amazed at how EASY and FUN it is to make my money work for me and those I love. I think this kind of information should be compulsory in schools. I wish I'd learned this sooner." CM If you’d like an unbiased 2nd opinion on your current wealth plan, email [email protected] for pricing and information.  Join us for our Online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by Feb. 28, 2025, to receive the best price. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details.  Join us for our Restormel Royal Immersive Adventure Retreat. March 7-14, 2025. Email [email protected] to learn more. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details. Register now. There is only 1 room available. This retreat includes an all-access pass to all of our online training for a full year for two, and three 50-minute private, prosperity coaching sessions. Much more affordable than you might think. Email [email protected] to learn more. (2025 had a last-minute cancellation for this sold-out retreat. Should that room be yours? Email [email protected].)  Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of The ABCs of Money (6th edition) and The Power of 8 Billion: It's Up to Us, and is the co-creator of the Earth Gratitude Project. She has been ranked as a No. 1 stock picker, above over 835 A-list pundits, by an independent tracking agency (TipsTraders). Her book The ABCs of Money remained at or near the #1 Investing Basics e-book on Amazon for over 3 years (in its vertical), with over 120,000 downloads and a mean 5-star ranking. The 6th edition of The ABCs of Money and the 2nd edition of Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is (2nd edition) are the most recent releases of these books. Follow her on Instagram. Natalie Pace's easy as a pie chart nest egg strategies earned gains in the last two recessions and have outperformed the bull markets in between. That is why her Investor Educational Retreats, books and private coaching are enthusiastically recommended by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary S. Becker, TD AMERITRADE chairman Joe Moglia, Kay Koplovitz and many Main Street investors who have transformed their lives using her Thrive Budget and investing strategies. Click to view a video testimonial from Nilo Bolden. Check out Natalie Pace's Substack podcast on Apple and Spotify. Watch videoconferences and webinars on Youtube. Other Blogs of Interest Top Dividend/Income Strategies for 2025. 2025 Crystal Ball: Who Will be the Superstars of Wall Street? Gold & Crypto IRAs and the Risk of Fraud and Losses. 10 Rules of Successful Investing. Quantum Computing. Paper Losses. Another Warning About Long-Term Bonds! 2025 Investor IQ Test. 2025 Investor IQ Test Answers. Apple iPhone Sales Plunge in China. Indonesia: Rich in Nickel with Ambitions of Becoming an EV Battery Hub. RoboTaxis. AI. The Magnificent 7. Charitable Giving. Nonprofits that are Worthy of Supporting. The DJIA Plunged 1100 Points After the Dec. 2024 FOMC Meeting. Why Are So Many Safe Investments Losing Money? A Bargain-Priced AI Company. Canadian, Australian and U.S. Banks. Are Any of Them Safe? Ireland. Rich in Technology, Biotechnology and Agribusiness. Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sweepstakes. Robo Investing and AI. No, They are Not Foolproof. Stocks Soar as Nvidia Joins the DJIA. Copper. Peru ETF Outperforms the S&P500. 4 Ways to Celebrate World Sustainability Day, Oct. 30, 2024. Will There be a Santa Rally or will the Election Ruin Everything? Will Insurance Companies & Homeowners Weather the Hurricanes? 9 Money Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Housing & Budgeting Solutions. Arkansas Sues Temu for Data Theft. We Must Be the Boss of Our Money. Why? Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Plastic Clothing. Atacama Desert Waste Dumps. Can Crowdstrike Recover from its Colossal Catastrophe? Featuring a Cybersecurity Overview. Fintechs and Brokerages that Fail are Not FDIC-Insured. 5 Green Tips for Clean Beaches Week. So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Retiring Soon? Start Planning Now. 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. May is National Bike Month. Paris and Amsterdam are the Stars. Vacations that Color Our World Forever. 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. The Underperforming DJIA, Full of Fossil Fuels and Forever Chemicals. The Best ROI* (Almost 40%!) & 7 Life Hacks That Save Thousands. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. 13 Lifestyle Choices to Reduce Waste, Pollution & CO2 & Save a Boatload of Dough. China Bans Apple 11-Point Green Checklist for Schools. 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Fiat. Crypto. Gold. BRICS. Real Estate. Alternative Investments. BRICS Currency. Will the Dollar Become Extinct? Why We Are Underweighting Banks and the Financial Industry. Save Thousands Annually With Smarter Energy Choices Is Your FDIC-Insured Cash Really Safe? Money Market Funds, FDIC, SIPC: Are Any of Them Safe? My 24-Year-Old is Itching to Buy a Condo. Should I Help Him? The Bank Bail-in Plan on Your Dime. Important Disclaimers Please note: Natalie Pace does not act or operate like a broker. She reports on financial news, and is one of the most trusted sources of financial literacy, education and forensic analysis in the world. Natalie Pace educates and informs individual investors to give investors a competitive edge in their personal decision-making. Any publicly-traded companies, funds or projects mentioned by Natalie Pace are not intended to be buy or sell recommendations. ALWAYS do your research and consult an experienced, reputable financial professional before buying or selling any security, and consider your long-term goals and strategies. Investors should NOT be all in on any asset class or individual stocks. Your retirement plan should reflect an age-appropriate, diversified wealth plan, which has been designed strategically, with the assistance of financial professionals who are familiar with your goals, risk tolerance, tax needs and more. The "trading" portion of your portfolio should be a very small part of your investment strategy, and the amount of money you invest into individual companies should never be greater than your experience, wisdom, knowledge, patience and diversified strategy. Information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. However, NataliePace.com does not warrant its completeness or accuracy. Opinions constitute our judgment as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument.  Wiki Commons. Used with permission. Top Dividend (Income) Strategies for 2025 Everyone wants to earn income on their money, not just the explosive gains of crypto, gold and the Magnificent 7, but also dividends, which most of those assets don’t offer. But is “income” bait for investments that might lose our principal investment, particularly in a Debt World? What are paper losses? Does it all wash out in the end, since yields rise when share prices fall, or is that just another sales pitch? Here are the topics we’ll discuss in this blog. The Rising Yield, Sinking Stock Myth No Blind Faith Keep the Terms Short Never Reach for Yield Keep the Creditworthiness High Read the Fine Print Underweight Bond Funds and Money Market Funds Rolling Maturity Dates & FDIC Limits And here is more color on each point. The Rising Yield, Sinking Stock Myth Broker/salesmen have many stock sales phrases. Clients can be sold into high-yield dividend stocks, such as commercial real estate, with the assurance that if the stock price sinks, yields rise, which is true – at least for a short period of time. However, the yield rarely makes up for the share price losses, and if the company is in real trouble, the dividend will get slashed, and the share price will plunge even further. We saw this with General Electric in 2017-2018, with the banks in 2020, and more recently with many office building REITs. Incidentally, Warren Buffett dumped all of his GE stock just a few months before the company cut the dividend on Nov. 13, 2017. We had been warning that the higher the dividend, the higher the risk since 2012, using GE as the poster child for this market secret. (It was outlined in the 1st edition of The ABCs of Money, which was released in 2012.) With over $101 trillion in total U.S. debt and loans, an unprecedented level, we live in a Debt World.  Sadly, we don’t know what is true (unless we’ve done our own due diligence prior) until we leap in and discover that the sea of gains we were promised is actually a mudhole of muck and losses. Recently, I was asked for a second opinion on a “conservatively” managed portfolio. The client was told that he was earning above 5% income. The statement showed that the ROI was barely 2%, when you factor in fees and paper losses. Some of the losses were in long-term junk debentures that were illiquid and didn’t have to be paid back until 2075! The minute the asset was purchased, the value sank, with no buyer on the other side of the table to offload the asset onto. No Blind Faith Long-term bonds lost more than stocks in 2022 and again in 2024. Conservative portfolios are not as safe as we’re being told. In short, we cannot have blind faith that someone else is protecting our future for us (even if we think that our broker is our friend). We must walk through our financial home to make sure it is sound and fix the leaks while the sun is still shining. I’ve outlined a few tips below to assist in this. It’s a better idea to do this before the headlines, while we still have a chance to protect our assets and wealth, capture gains and adopt a crisis-proof portfolio.   So, what is a good strategy for income in 2025 and going forward? Keep the Terms Short Short-term Treasury bills and FDIC-insured Certificates of Deposit are paying close to the same yield as long-term, illiquid bonds, as you can see in the Treasury Bill chart below.  The longer the period of time that someone has to pay us back, the more things that can go wrong. Thus, duration adds risk, particularly when over half of the S&P500 are at or near junk status, including a lot of banks and financial services corporations.  Never Reach for Yield If a 2-year FDIC-insured CD or U.S. Treasury Bill pays 4.3% and a 30-year only pays 4.7%, we just aren’t getting paid to take on the extra risk. (Will we even be alive 50 years from now, when the company or country has to pay us back?) I’ve seen high-yield bond and dividend funds that charge fees of 3-5%, taking the yield even lower than 2-year T bills, offering half the income that is advertised. High-yield means greater risk, and is often just called “junk.” So, again, why take on risk when you don’t have to? In every marketplace, there are opportunities. The best buying bargains occur in recessions. However, if we have too many losses (paper losses are losses, too) or our money is tied up in long-term, illiquid obligations, then we can’t take advantage of lower prices. Most people don’t buy low because they can’t. Capital preservation and the ability to access our money are very important strategies for a Debt World. Keep the Creditworthiness High The U.S. is no longer a AAA rated country. Meanwhile, Australia is. Australian ETFs often pay double the yield of U.S. dividend funds — offering more income for less risk. This is one of the reasons why we are using value substitutes in our diversified sample pie charts. It pays to do a little due diligence and know the creditworthiness of the asset! While qualified banks are FDIC-insured, I’d still want to buy my Certificates of Deposit from a creditworthy bank rather than one that is almost a junk bond. Read the Fine Print Because there is so much debt in the world, and so many creative Wall Street executives trying to manage this, there are many new opportunities being offered to investors. Some of them have alarming terms. Blackstone’s private credit offering is opague, ties up our money, has high fees and would likely scare off anyone who reads the disclosures. Here are a just a few of the more troubling terms…
I’ve seen a retiree who had blind faith in the broker that sold them into private placement REITs that promised a high yield, who lost $18,000 of their investment. This was more money than they really could afford to lose. Are we really getting paid to take on the extra risk of this particular investment? Is it as safe as the broker-salesman (who might be making tens of thousands of dollars on the sale) is telling us? How much yield above the lower-risk, short-term money is it really offering, particularly if we subtract the management fees and expenses? You can read D&T’s REIT Loss story in their own words in the blog below. Underweight Bond Funds and Money Market Funds Investment grade bond funds can have up to 20% in junk bonds. The yield of money market funds goes down when interest rates get cut. Funds are not FDIC-insured (because brokerages that offer them are not banks). Many bond funds have lost money – something that can wipe out any interest or income we’re receiving. Money market funds can get into trouble in recessions. Here are some of the concerns that the Federal Reserve outlined in the Monetary Policy Report that they submitted to Congress on Feb. 7, 2025. (MMFs are money market funds.) Some open-end bond mutual funds remained vulnerable to significant withdrawals, as they are required to permit daily redemptions despite holding assets that can suffer losses and become illiquid under stress. While the 2023–24 SEC reforms on MMFs have mitigated some vulnerabilities associated with prime MMFs, structural vulnerabilities remained in certain other short-term investment vehicles. Moreover, assets in these alternative vehicles, including prime-like offshore MMFs, as well as stablecoins which are also vulnerable to runs, grew notably in the second half of 2024. Bond and loan funds remained susceptible to redemptions during periods of stress, with more severe pressures possible if assets become more illiquid or redemptions become unusually large. In addition, life insurers continued to rely on a higher-than-average share of nontraditional liabilities. Rolling Maturity Dates & FDIC Limits Economists are terrible at forecasting recessions. They are almost always late in even admitting that the economy is in trouble. As you can see in the charts below, most of the stock losses occurred months before the headlines that the economy was in a recession.   This is another case for shorter terms and rolling maturity dates. We want to be able to take advantage of opportunities when they arise, rather than having our money locked up in low-yielding, long-term, illiquid investments. Having a steady stream of money that keeps maturing allows us to take advantage of investment opportunities that might arise. Be sure to observe the FDIC limits. Read the fine print. Having multiple CDs or Treasury bill lots helps us with the rolling maturity dates, and also the FDIC limits – particularly if our CDs are at several creditworthy banks. Only 5 banks collapsed in early 2023 – not the entire industry. While those banks were taken over, it’s important to remember that uninsured depositors are not always going to be protected. Silicon Valley Bank’s emergency umbrella for depositors who were above the FDIC-insurance limit was a special exception. Bottom Line Earning dividends and income is tricky in 2025 without losing principal. If we don’t ask the right questions, read the fine print and do a forensic examination of our brokerage statements, we might not be aware that the real return of our wealth plan could be half or less of what we believe that we are earning. We might have debentures that don’t have to pay us back until after we die. And our safe side, which is supposed to keep our principal intact and provide us with income, might actually be losing -26%, as it did in 2022. When there is so much risk, concentrated in assets that are supposed to be “safe,” we must be the Boss of Our Money, and learn the basics in order to move past the sales-speak (and potential underperformance or losses) and into a time-proven 21st Century strategy for a Debt World. Understanding what we own is not a second job. It’s the life math that we all should have received in high school. We are literally drowning in financial noise and oftentimes misinformation. Tuning it out is good for our mental and physical health. Tuning into time-proven systems requires learning them. However, thereafter, we can move into a sound Financial Home that only needs Spring Cleaning once or twice a year. You can learn what’s safe at our Financial Freedom Retreat. Join us! Your friends and family can get the best price for the April 25-27, 2025 Retreat when they register by Feb. 28, 2025. Request testimonials at [email protected]. You can also view some on the flyer page of the retreat. Join us at our online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025 (online) and our Stock Masterclass (learn the strategies that earned me the ranking of #1 stock picker) on May 3, 2025. If you'd like a life-changing adventure of a lifetime, be our guest at a royal manor house in Cornwall, England, March 12-19, 2027. Only nine rooms are available. Call 310-430-2397 or email [email protected] to learn more. Learn how to: * Invest in hot industries, such as Nvidia, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, * Hedge against a weaker dollar, * Invest and compound your gains, * Green your retirement plan, * Easy and efficacious nest egg strategies, * Get hot and diversified (including in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and crypto), * Evaluate stocks, * Avoid capital gains and financial predators, * Keep an age-appropriate amount safe, and, * Know what's safe in a Debt World. You'll even discover how to save thousands annually with smarter big-ticket choices. Yes, it's a complete money makeover. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more and register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. "Ten minutes into the first day I was already much smarter about investing than I ever thought I would be in my life and I knew I was in exactly the right place at this retreat. I am amazed at how EASY and FUN it is to make my money work for me and those I love. I think this kind of information should be compulsory in schools. I wish I'd learned this sooner." CM If you’d like an unbiased 2nd opinion on your current wealth plan, email [email protected] for pricing and information.  Join us for our Online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by Feb. 28, 2025, to receive the best price. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details.  Join us for our Restormel Royal Immersive Adventure Retreat. March 12-19, 2027. Email [email protected] to learn more. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details. Register now. There are only 9 rooms available. This retreat includes an all-access pass to all of our online training for a full year for two, and three 50-minute private, prosperity coaching sessions. Much more affordable than you might think. Email [email protected] to learn more. (2025 had a last-minute cancellation. Should that room be yours? Email [email protected].)  Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of The ABCs of Money and The Power of 8 Billion: It's Up to Us, and is the co-creator of the Earth Gratitude Project. She has been ranked as a No. 1 stock picker, above over 835 A-list pundits, by an independent tracking agency (TipsTraders). Her book The ABCs of Money remained at or near the #1 Investing Basics e-book on Amazon for over 3 years (in its vertical), with over 120,000 downloads and a mean 5-star ranking. The 6th edition of The ABCs of Money and the 2nd edition of Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is are the most recent releases of these books. Follow her on Instagram. Natalie Pace's easy as a pie chart nest egg strategies earned gains in the last two recessions and have outperformed the bull markets in between. That is why her Investor Educational Retreats, books and private coaching are enthusiastically recommended by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary S. Becker, TD AMERITRADE chairman Joe Moglia, Kay Koplovitz and many Main Street investors who have transformed their lives using her Thrive Budget and investing strategies. Click to view a video testimonial from Nilo Bolden. Check out Natalie Pace's Substack podcast on Apple and Spotify. Watch videoconferences and webinars on Youtube. Other Blogs of Interest 2025 Crystal Ball: Who Will be the Superstars of Wall Street? Gold & Crypto IRAs and the Risk of Fraud and Losses. 10 Rules of Successful Investing. Quantum Computing. Paper Losses. Another Warning About Long-Term Bonds! 2025 Investor IQ Test. 2025 Investor IQ Test Answers. Apple iPhone Sales Plunge in China. Indonesia: Rich in Nickel with Ambitions of Becoming an EV Battery Hub. RoboTaxis. AI. The Magnificent 7. Charitable Giving. Nonprofits that are Worthy of Supporting. The DJIA Plunged 1100 Points After the Dec. 2024 FOMC Meeting. Why Are So Many Safe Investments Losing Money? A Bargain-Priced AI Company. Canadian, Australian and U.S. Banks. Are Any of Them Safe? Ireland. Rich in Technology, Biotechnology and Agribusiness. Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sweepstakes. Robo Investing and AI. No, They are Not Foolproof. Stocks Soar as Nvidia Joins the DJIA. Copper. Peru ETF Outperforms the S&P500. 4 Ways to Celebrate World Sustainability Day, Oct. 30, 2024. Will There be a Santa Rally or will the Election Ruin Everything? Will Insurance Companies & Homeowners Weather the Hurricanes? 9 Money Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Housing & Budgeting Solutions. Arkansas Sues Temu for Data Theft. We Must Be the Boss of Our Money. Why? Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Plastic Clothing. Atacama Desert Waste Dumps. Can Crowdstrike Recover from its Colossal Catastrophe? Featuring a Cybersecurity Overview. Fintechs and Brokerages that Fail are Not FDIC-Insured. 5 Green Tips for Clean Beaches Week. So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Retiring Soon? Start Planning Now. 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. May is National Bike Month. Paris and Amsterdam are the Stars. Vacations that Color Our World Forever. 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. The Underperforming DJIA, Full of Fossil Fuels and Forever Chemicals. The Best ROI* (Almost 40%!) & 7 Life Hacks That Save Thousands. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. 13 Lifestyle Choices to Reduce Waste, Pollution & CO2 & Save a Boatload of Dough. China Bans Apple 11-Point Green Checklist for Schools. 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Fiat. Crypto. Gold. BRICS. Real Estate. Alternative Investments. BRICS Currency. Will the Dollar Become Extinct? Why We Are Underweighting Banks and the Financial Industry. Save Thousands Annually With Smarter Energy Choices Is Your FDIC-Insured Cash Really Safe? Money Market Funds, FDIC, SIPC: Are Any of Them Safe? My 24-Year-Old is Itching to Buy a Condo. Should I Help Him? The Bank Bail-in Plan on Your Dime. Important Disclaimers Please note: Natalie Pace does not act or operate like a broker. She reports on financial news, and is one of the most trusted sources of financial literacy, education and forensic analysis in the world. Natalie Pace educates and informs individual investors to give investors a competitive edge in their personal decision-making. Any publicly-traded companies, funds or projects mentioned by Natalie Pace are not intended to be buy or sell recommendations. ALWAYS do your research and consult an experienced, reputable financial professional before buying or selling any security, and consider your long-term goals and strategies. Investors should NOT be all in on any asset class or individual stocks. Your retirement plan should reflect an age-appropriate, diversified wealth plan, which has been designed strategically, with the assistance of financial professionals who are familiar with your goals, risk tolerance, tax needs and more. The "trading" portion of your portfolio should be a very small part of your investment strategy, and the amount of money you invest into individual companies should never be greater than your experience, wisdom, knowledge, patience and diversified strategy. Information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. However, NataliePace.com does not warrant its completeness or accuracy. Opinions constitute our judgment as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument. Photo of Natalie Pace by Sunil Rampersad. 2025 Crystal Ball: Who Will be the Superstars of Wall Street This Year? Cloudflare, a cybersecurity company, lit up Wall Street, this week, with 26% gains since announcing the company’s 4Q 2024 earnings. Is there anything beyond AI, cybersecurity, the Magnificent 7, crypto and gold to get excited about? What about Chinese competition? Will quantum computing breakthrough and reward Tier Zero investors? Will the markets soar or tank? We’ve been leaning into the Magnificent 7* for years. Bitcoin was our 2024 Investment of the Year. These industries were the rock stars of the last two years, with a 59% 2-year return for the Magnificent 7 and a 5+-fold increase in Bitcoin’s value, from $16,627 to $95,629. *Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.   Which investment will be the super performer of Wall Street in 2025? Will Bitcoin and the Magnificent 7 continue to dominate? Will stocks slide or cave in, like they did in 2022 after a spectacular 2021?  Will gold shoot the moon? Can AI, cybersecurity and the Magnificent 7 maintain their expensive equity prices? Below are the topics we’ll cover in this blog. If you’re interested in updated Stock Report Cards on these industries, email [email protected] with SRC and the industry in the subject line. The Magnificent 7 Artificial Intelligence Crypto Cybersecurity Quantum Computing EVs Smart Phones Gold/Silver Dr. Copper The Spring Rally Macro Economics: What Will Mr. Market Do? And here is more information on each point. The Magnificent 7 The Magnificent 7 truly are spectacular. Many of the companies are leaders of the hottest industries, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud services, quantum computing R&D, smart phones and electric vehicles. These industries are the daily bread of business, which is why they have dominated the returns on Wall Street. Many of the companies have strong sales growth year over year, impressive profit margins and a treasure trove of cash. However, not all companies in the Magnificent 7 are created equal. 2025 could be a year where the Fantastic 5 stay strong, while Apple and Tesla face intense competition, particularly in China. DeepSeek has also raised concerns about the very lofty valuations of Nvidia and other artificial intelligence leaders. The reason why Tesla and Apple might have a more difficult year is that the Chinese have begun to compete in a very meaningful way in smart phones and electric vehicles. Many Chinese products are banned in the United States, but that doesn’t keep them from increasing market share in the world’s largest marketplace – China. Americans don’t have a plethora of electric vehicle options to choose from, like the Chinese consumers do, including very cheap models, as well as fierce competition in the higher end market where Tesla is still a market leader. I’ll discuss this more in the EV section below. The smart phone situation is quite similar. Both Tesla and Apple have just single-digit sales growth, at 2% and 4%, respectively. Meanwhile, all of the other 5 Magnificent 7 companies have double-digit sales growth year over year and industry-leading profit margins. There is one vulnerability of the Magnificent 7. Without exception, these companies are trading at very lofty stock prices. Tesla had just $7.13 billion in net profit in 2024 but sports a $1.08 trillion market value. Nvidia’s net profit was $30 billion. The AI leader’s Wall Street valuation is $3.21 trillion. It’s important to have a slice of large cap growth in our wealth plan, and to consider adding an extra hot slice of a specialized breakthrough technology ETF, such as iShares TECB. Otherwise, we are missing out on the explosive growth of the Magnificent 7. If you already have these holdings, then it might be time to capture gains. If you don’t, be sure to dollar cost average in, so that you are not just buying at an all-time high. Artificial Intelligence The Western World thought the U.S. had hit the jackpot with its artificial intelligence prowess, until DeepSeek dropped on Jan. 20, 2025. According to Reuters, “DeepSeek's AI Assistant, powered by DeepSeek-V3, has overtaken rival ChatGPT to become the top-rated free application available on Apple's App Store in the United States.” It took less than a week to achieve this. Nvidia dropped 18% after the DeepSeek news, but has recovered some ground and is currently trading down -14% from its all-time high. Investors are pricing many of the AI companies at valuations that make sense two or three years down the road if American companies continue to dominate, but are exceedingly expensive today. The worry about Chinese companies isn’t just that they can compete, but that they can do so at a fraction of the cost of U.S. business. Whenever prices get too far afield, the slightest surprise can spark rapid selling. We’ve had a spectacular two years, and many people have forgotten the pain of 2022, when technology stocks tanked.  That’s why it’s very important to have an age-appropriate, properly diversified plan that we rebalance 1-3 times per year. If we have made a lot of gains on Nvidia or another AI company, now is a great time to keep those gains – capture them and trim the slice back to where it should be. Our pie chart system is not based on all or nothing. It’s a simple strategy that manages volatility and helps us to be on the right side of the trade. The iShares ARTY fund is an artificial intelligence and robotics specialized selection of publicly traded companies. It’s not as rich in the Magnificent 7 as TECB is, which is why some investors opt to have both funds as hot slices of their diversified wealth plan. All of the Magnificent 7 companies are leaders in AI. So, if you have a large cap growth fund that is rich in them, you have exposure to the explosive growth of this industry, too. Crypto Crypto has pulled back from the highs that we saw in January of 2025, when Bitcoin soared to $109,358/coin. As I mentioned in my Safe Haven blog last week, if we follow the history of Bitcoin halving events, the high for Bitcoin could come in late April of this year. (The Spring Rally is also positive for this outcome. Keep reading.) However, we’ve also seen deep Crypto Winters two years after the halving event. This is another example of how the pie chart system, and having a hot slice or two of crypto, and capturing games when our slices become five or six, helps to keep us growing our wealth instead of getting frozen in the Crypto Winters. One other key tip for Bitcoin and Ethereum is that we can now hold this asset in our IRAs, where we are protected from capital gains taxes. Select your fund company well – one that is well-capitalized, with an excellent credit rating and history of doing business for more than 25-30 years. iShares (owned by Blackrock) has Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs (symbols: IBIT and ETHA). Cybersecurity Cloudflare soared 22% after reporting earnings on Feb. 6, 2025 and receiving analyst upgrade upgrades. Sales growth is impressive in almost all of the cybersecurity companies, with the exception of Cisco. At the same time, many are still cash negative and trading at very high valuations. Cybersecurity is so important to online businesses that the blue screen incident with Microsoft and Crowdstrike on July 19, 2024, was just a small blip. Crowdstrike is already back to an all-time high. However, we’re also in a bull market where analysts are recommending outlandish valuations for companies. If the blue screen event had occurred in 2022, when technology stocks were being sold en masse, investors might have abandoned Crowdstrike in droves. It’s a reminder that owning an individual company means that we have to babysit our investment. We must be immune to headlines and base our decisions on a sound and accurate reading of the company’s Stock Report Card and forward outlook. For most of us that is far more work than we can realistically do. (Even analysts limit their coverage to about a dozen companies.) ETFs like IHAK give us exposure to cybersecurity companies without all of the extra work. In the past, individuals used industries like utilities and consumer staples to hedge against a stock market downturn or recession. (Neither of these are forecasted for 2025. However, economists are terrible at forecasting recessions.) Utilities have proven to be a lot more vulnerable today, largely due to a plethora of natural disasters that everyone wants to blame on them. Will cybersecurity prove to be buoyant during troubled times – a better choice than utilities? Just as individuals must have power, companies cannot get rid of this essential expenditure. Having said that, if we already had Cloudflare, Crowdstrike, or IHAK, now (or at the end of April) could be a great time to capture gains (keep that money) and trim our slice back to an age-appropriate, diversified plan. Quantum Computing Be sure to check out my recent Quantum Computing blog. This is an exciting industry. However, it is very early stage with numerous expensive challenges to sort out before the possibilities can be realized. (A lot of the younger companies are flying very close to the trees, in terms of their liquidity.) Be very careful of investing in Tier 0 opportunities. They can be very expensive lessons. Some may even be pump-and-dump schemes… Whenever anything becomes a buzz word, the scam artists come out of the woodwork. EVs Tariffs. Competition. Price Wars. Tesla is a beloved brand worldwide. However, because there are literally hundreds of brands competing in the Chinese marketplace and other markets as well, Tesla has had to lower prices. The net profit for Tesla in 2023 was $15 billion. In 2024, the net profit dropped to just $7.13 billion. As the competition intensifies, the sales of the company could be flat in 2025. Revenue growth was just 2.15% in the 4th quarter of 2024. Tesla’s CFO Vaibhav Taneja warned that the company’s topselling Model Y has a new model, which all of the factories are transitioning to making. Taneja warned that “This changeover will result in several weeks of lost production in the quarter. As a result, margins will be impacted due to idle capacity and other ramp-related costs, as is common in any launch but will be overcome as production is ramped. We will be introducing several new products throughout 2025.” With such high valuations (and intense competition), investors can be quick to sell when a weak earnings report shows up. Tesla will announce their 1Q 2025 earnings around April 23, 2025. One trend that we are seeing is that Chinese smartphone leaders are launching their own electric vehicle. Huawei and Xiaomi both have EVs. This seems like a very smart strategy. Will Tesla launch a smart phone to link to its S3XY models? Elon Musk says there is no phone planned, and that Tesla’s plate is full with autonomous driving, robotaxis, humanoid robots, solar and batteries.  Photo: Waymo robotaxi. (Google technology in a Jaguar.) 21.4% of Tesla’s sales come from China, which is the #1 EV market, by far. This is down just -1% from 2023. However, tariffs, fierce competition, price wars and a thriving list of Chinese-based EV makers could weigh on Tesla’s growth and margins in 2025. Let me be clear. EVs are still the fastest growing vertical in automobiles, and Tesla’s Model Y is the bestselling vehicle in the world. However, there are numerous headwinds, including all of the ones mentioned above and a consumer wallet that has all of the extra cash drained from it, which steel tariffs could make even worse. This makes a $1.14 trillion market value for the company hard to justify, particularly since we’ve seen the price drop to under $150/share (from today’s $356/share) twice over the past two years. Smart Phones Apple is another brand that is beloved worldwide. It is also one of the most expensive smart phones. For more than a decade, Samsung was the worldwide smartphone leader by units. Apple regained #1 status in the 4Q of 2024. However, we also saw that the Chinese smartphone makers had explosive sales, including Huawei, which is the company that competes directly with Apple in China.  Apple’s sales growth has slowed down to just 3.95% year over year. The company lowered prices in January 2025 to compete against Huawei. As you can see in the chart below, China accounts for about 15% of Apple’s sales. In 2023, China accounted for 19% of Apple’s sales.  In the past, Apple has been very successful in shutting down competition, including getting Huawei banned in the U.S. and some European countries. However, “This past quarter was particularly remarkable for the largest Chinese smartphone vendors: Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, Huawei, Lenovo, realme, Transsion, TCL, and ZTE. They achieved a historic milestone as they shipped the highest combined volume ever in a quarter, representing 56% of the global smartphone shipments in Q4,” according to Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for EMEA Client Devices, IDC. Both Samsung and Apple experienced year-over-year declines in device sales and market share in the last quarter of 2024. Gold/Silver Gold is at an all-time high and silver is gaining in value. When stocks sink or people lose faith in the dollar, gold tends to benefit. However, the swooning can be far more short-lived than many people realize. I strongly encourage you to read the Safe Haven blog that I published last week about how to do gold and silver in your portfolio. The Cliff Notes of that article are that we want to treat all Safe Haven assets as a hot slice or two of our age-appropriate, diversified wealth plan. Silver is a better value, so you might want to consider a silver trust from a trustworthy and creditworthy fund company, like iShares SLV. Be careful of all the ads that are so abundant hawking gold IRAs. If you are late to the party to buy some gold, considered dollar cost averaging in. Dr. Copper Copper prices are still at all-time highs. The commodity is nicknamed Dr. Copper because this metal is usually the first to drop before a recession occurs. Copper is essential all things in the clean energy movement, including EVs and electricity transmission. However, projects get cut when money becomes tight. We’ve been leaning into a Peruvian ETF, iShares EPU, because Peru is the second largest exporter of copper. (Chile is the first. However, Chile’s copper mines are nationalized.) EPU is trading near a 5-year high with a yield of 5.7%. Again, if your hot slice of Peru or another copper company has become two slices or more, now (or the end of April) is a great time to capture gains and keep that wealth. The Spring Rally After the spring rally is an optimum time to do our rebalancing. Outside of the pandemic, which saw stocks drop about 38% in a 1-month period between mid-February and late March, the Spring Rally has been very reliable. 20-year average annualized gains for March and April are a combined 2-month total of 3.18%. Macro Economics: What Will Mr. Market Do? Whenever stocks are high, everyone has hopes that prices will just keep going higher and higher. However, economic growth in the US is expected to slow down in 2025 to just 2.1%. There are areas of vulnerability, including commercial real estate, and the financial services companies that loan to them (particularly life insurance companies). Rather than worrying and reading headlines every day (a worrier dies 1000 deaths) why not have an age-appropriate, properly diversified plan that protects us from a market downturn, while allowing us to benefit from the super performance that we’ve seen, particularly in technology? FYI: the gains on Wall Street in 2023 and 2024 were much more robust than was expected. How many people were still spooked by the pandemic and sitting on the sidelines, missing out on a 51% total return in the S&P500? That’s why a winning plan is one where we go with a time-proven strategy and just “stick to our knitting.” In today’s world, we also need to know what safe because many assets that are being sold as safe, are experiencing losses. Paper losses are not as benign as we are being told. Be sure to read my blog from Jan. 19, 2025, on paper losses. If we are worried about the economy, rather than just sell everything and move into cash, which would then make us vulnerable to the losses on the safe side, it’s a much better idea to remember that we are still going to need our smart phones, our Word and Excel documents, our Google searches, our cybersecurity, our food, our toilet paper, our Wi-Fi and electricity, and so much more. Instead of selling everything, if we really are worried, consider overweighting a little more safe and acting a little older than we really are. Here’s what overweighting safe looks like for a 30-year-old.  Here’s what overweighting safe looks like for a 50-year-old.  Bottom Line Stocks are expensive. However, analysts keep setting ever more lofty target prices, which lures investors into believing that buying high will work out. All the assets listed above, with the exception of electric vehicles, American smart phones and quantum computing, are contenders to be included as a hot slice of our age-appropriate, diversified wealth plan. (Be careful of Chinese equities; they are very out of favor at this time with U.S. institutional investors.) If we already own industries that have seen interstellar performance, then we should consider capturing gains to trim the slices back to where they should be. If we neglected to include these opportunities, then it might be a great idea to consider dollar cost averaging into them. If you have not rebalanced your wealth plan recently, or if you have questions about those paper losses, or how to add in the Magnificent 7 and other exciting industries like artificial intelligence, consider joining us at our April 25-27, 2025 Online Financial Freedom Retreat or receiving an unbiased second opinion from me privately in my coaching program. Email [email protected] to learn more. Proper diversification, regular rebalancing and dollar cost averaging are time-proven 21st Century strategies. Your friends and family can get the best price for the April 25-27, 2025 Retreat when they register by Feb. 28, 2025. Request testimonials at [email protected]. You can also view some on the flyer page of the retreat. Join us at our online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025 (online) and our Stock Masterclass (learn the strategies that earned me the ranking of #1 stock picker) on May 3, 2025. If you'd like a life-changing adventure of a lifetime, be our guest at a royal manor house in Cornwall, England, March 12-19, 2027. Only nine rooms are available. Call 310-430-2397 or email [email protected] to learn more. Learn how to: * Invest in hot industries, such as Nvidia, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, * Hedge against a weaker dollar, * Invest and compound your gains, * Green your retirement plan, * Easy and efficacious nest egg strategies, * Get hot and diversified (including in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and crypto), * Evaluate stocks, * Avoid capital gains and financial predators, * Keep an age-appropriate amount safe, and, * Know what's safe in a Debt World. You'll even discover how to save thousands annually with smarter big-ticket choices. Yes, it's a complete money makeover. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more and register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. "Ten minutes into the first day I was already much smarter about investing than I ever thought I would be in my life and I knew I was in exactly the right place at this retreat. I am amazed at how EASY and FUN it is to make my money work for me and those I love. I think this kind of information should be compulsory in schools. I wish I'd learned this sooner." CM If you’d like an unbiased 2nd opinion on your current wealth plan, email [email protected] for pricing and information.  Join us for our Online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by Feb. 28, 2025, to receive the best price. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details.  Join us for our Restormel Royal Immersive Adventure Retreat. March 12-19, 2027. Email [email protected] to learn more. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details. Register now. There are only 9 rooms available. This retreat includes an all-access pass to all of our online training for a full year for two, and three 50-minute private, prosperity coaching sessions. Much more affordable than you might think. Email [email protected] to learn more. (2025 had a last-minute cancellation. Should that room be yours? Email [email protected].)  Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of The ABCs of Money and The Power of 8 Billion: It's Up to Us, and is the co-creator of the Earth Gratitude Project. She has been ranked as a No. 1 stock picker, above over 835 A-list pundits, by an independent tracking agency (TipsTraders). Her book The ABCs of Money remained at or near the #1 Investing Basics e-book on Amazon for over 3 years (in its vertical), with over 120,000 downloads and a mean 5-star ranking. The 6th edition of The ABCs of Money and the 2nd edition of Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is are the most recent releases of these books. Follow her on Instagram. Natalie Pace's easy as a pie chart nest egg strategies earned gains in the last two recessions and have outperformed the bull markets in between. That is why her Investor Educational Retreats, books and private coaching are enthusiastically recommended by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary S. Becker, TD AMERITRADE chairman Joe Moglia, Kay Koplovitz and many Main Street investors who have transformed their lives using her Thrive Budget and investing strategies. Click to view a video testimonial from Nilo Bolden. Check out Natalie Pace's Substack podcast on Apple and Spotify. Watch videoconferences and webinars on Youtube. Other Blogs of Interest Gold & Crypto IRAs and the Risk of Fraud and Losses. 10 Rules of Successful Investing. Quantum Computing. Paper Losses. Another Warning About Long-Term Bonds! 2025 Investor IQ Test. 2025 Investor IQ Test Answers. Apple iPhone Sales Plunge in China. Indonesia: Rich in Nickel with Ambitions of Becoming an EV Battery Hub. RoboTaxis. AI. The Magnificent 7. Charitable Giving. Nonprofits that are Worthy of Supporting. The DJIA Plunged 1100 Points After the Dec. 2024 FOMC Meeting. Why Are So Many Safe Investments Losing Money? A Bargain-Priced AI Company. Canadian, Australian and U.S. Banks. Are Any of Them Safe? Ireland. Rich in Technology, Biotechnology and Agribusiness. Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sweepstakes. Robo Investing and AI. No, They are Not Foolproof. Stocks Soar as Nvidia Joins the DJIA. Copper. Peru ETF Outperforms the S&P500. 4 Ways to Celebrate World Sustainability Day, Oct. 30, 2024. Will There be a Santa Rally or will the Election Ruin Everything? Will Insurance Companies & Homeowners Weather the Hurricanes? 9 Money Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Housing & Budgeting Solutions. Arkansas Sues Temu for Data Theft. We Must Be the Boss of Our Money. Why? Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Plastic Clothing. Atacama Desert Waste Dumps. Can Crowdstrike Recover from its Colossal Catastrophe? Featuring a Cybersecurity Overview. Fintechs and Brokerages that Fail are Not FDIC-Insured. 5 Green Tips for Clean Beaches Week. So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Retiring Soon? Start Planning Now. 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. May is National Bike Month. Paris and Amsterdam are the Stars. Vacations that Color Our World Forever. 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. The Underperforming DJIA, Full of Fossil Fuels and Forever Chemicals. The Best ROI* (Almost 40%!) & 7 Life Hacks That Save Thousands. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. 13 Lifestyle Choices to Reduce Waste, Pollution & CO2 & Save a Boatload of Dough. China Bans Apple 11-Point Green Checklist for Schools. 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Fiat. Crypto. Gold. BRICS. Real Estate. Alternative Investments. BRICS Currency. Will the Dollar Become Extinct? Why We Are Underweighting Banks and the Financial Industry. Save Thousands Annually With Smarter Energy Choices Is Your FDIC-Insured Cash Really Safe? Money Market Funds, FDIC, SIPC: Are Any of Them Safe? My 24-Year-Old is Itching to Buy a Condo. Should I Help Him? The Bank Bail-in Plan on Your Dime. Important Disclaimers Please note: Natalie Pace does not act or operate like a broker. She reports on financial news, and is one of the most trusted sources of financial literacy, education and forensic analysis in the world. Natalie Pace educates and informs individual investors to give investors a competitive edge in their personal decision-making. Any publicly traded companies or funds mentioned by Natalie Pace are not intended to be buy or sell recommendations. ALWAYS do your research and consult an experienced, reputable financial professional before buying or selling any security, and consider your long-term goals and strategies. Investors should NOT be all in on any asset class or individual stocks. Your retirement plan should reflect a diversified strategy, which has been designed with the assistance of a financial professional who is familiar with your goals, risk tolerance, tax needs and more. The "trading" portion of your portfolio should be a very small part of your investment strategy, and the amount of money you invest into individual companies should never be greater than your experience, wisdom, knowledge and patience. Information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. However, NataliePace.com does not warrant its completeness or accuracy. Opinions constitute our judgment as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument.  Do Safe Haven IRAs (Gold/Crypto) Expose Us to Fraud and Losses? We’re told that they hold their value and will perhaps be the only thing of value when the dollar collapses. Is that true? Or is it just a marketing ruse to sell us into a scam? Fraudsters are adept at telling us that one exact thing that’s going to bait us into their scam. Almost every day I hear and see advertisements on social media and national television networks promoting gold and silver as assets that never go down in value, or crypto as the only thing that’s going to be worth anything when the dollar becomes worthless. Oftentimes, there is a paid spokesperson front and center – typically someone famous – while finding the founders of the firm requires a lot of digging. This is a red flag. We’ve seen a lot go south over the years, including when Tom Brady promoted FTX, when Kim Kardashian was fined for splashing EthereumMax on her social media, and when countless young YouTube stars promoted stable coins such as Terra-Luna. While owning a hot slice of these assets in our wealth plan can add a great deal of performance, particularly if we know how to minimize taxes, capture gains and avoid the fraud, betting the farm on a safe haven can also put us far more at risk than we have been told. Since there were 69,000 crypto fraud complaints in 2023 with losses of at least $5.6 billion, and a laundry list of Ponzi-scheme Gold IRAs, it’s important to heed this investor alert before taking the bait.  Here are the things we’ll cover in this blog: Bitcoin Gold Silver Income-Producing Bonds, Dividend Stocks and Private Credit or Equity Opportunities Real Estate And here is more on each topic. Bitcoin Bitcoin was by far the best performer of 2023 and 2024 with gains of 158% and 115%, respectively. The returns dwarf stocks, which also had spectacular years. The S&P500 saw total return of 57.88% over the same two-year period, with over half of those gains concentrated in just 7 trillion-dollar technology companies. Whenever an asset gets hot, fraudsters harness the power of our FOMO and greed (or desperation) to fleece us. It’s human nature to want to buy at the top of the market. However, that is rarely a great idea. Recently, a family member was taken in by a scam artist who promised crypto and gold pie in the sky returns and even mocked up a falsified broker statement that showed extraordinary gains within a short period of time. As soon as this person contacted our office with details of the “investment,” we were able to expose the fraud – hopefully preventing even more losses. Sadly, it’s much easier to give your money to a shyster, or even to borrow money at high interest rates to invest, than it is to recover funds that have been stolen. So, how could these substantial losses have been avoided? Always grade your guru before you listen to anything that he says or writes. The person behind the scheme mentioned above was easily found online, alongside his lack of credentials and sketchy past. Other challenges for Bitcoin and crypto investors include Crypto Winters, when the asset can lose 80% of its value in a very short period of time. In 2022, Bitcoin lost -67%, dropping from a high of $69,000 in Nov. 2021 to a low of just $15,600 in Nov. of 2022.  The high for Bitcoin was $109,358 on Jan. 19, 2025. By February 7, 2025, the price was down to $95,745 – a loss of -12.44%. At $2,570, Ethereum is down -37.44% from its December 2024 high of $4,108. As I indicated in my 2024 Investment of the Year blog on March 24, 2024 when I named Bitcoin as the super performer, after a Bitcoin halving event (April 2024), the high is often a year later. Within two years, it is common for Bitcoin to bottom out again. (Click to access that blog.) Instead of riding the volatility up and down and watching our net worth and FICO score tank for 18 months or so during Crypto Winters, our simple pie chart plan with regular rebalancing helps us to stay on the right side of the trade. You can read about this age-appropriate, diversified plan in The ABCs of Money, 6th edition, or learn and implement it at our Financial Freedom Retreat. Gold Have you heard an ad touting that gold never loses its value? I was shocked to hear that claim on an ad on a major television station last week. Gold IRA ads are popping up everywhere. However, many of the claims are far from the truth. After the high of $1895 set in September of 2011, gold dropped to a low of $1062 by November 2015, for losses of -44%. A million dollars sank to a value of just $560,000. Gold didn’t crawl back to $1900/ounce until October of 2020. Losing half of our wealth for a decade can be devastating. In 1980, after hitting a high of $800/ounce, gold prices plunged to $300/ounce by 1982 and stayed in that range for a quarter of a century. Finally, in 2005, gold prices started to climb again.  Gold is yet another example of why it’s never a great idea to bet the farm on anything. Here again, the pie chart diversification strategy with 1-3 times a year rebalancing prompts us to capture gains at the high and buy at the low – something we’re incapable of doing if we moved all in at the top of the market, as many investors do when gold prices soar. Most people don’t buy low because they can’t. Just as we saw $5.6 billion in crypto fraud in 2023, gold IRA ruses can be rampant. According to a report from the Securities and Exchange Commission: Fraud promoters who want to engage in Ponzi schemes or other fraudulent conduct may exploit self-directed IRAs because they permit investors to hold unregistered securities and the custodians or trustees of these accounts likely have not investigated the securities or the background of the promoter. There are a number of ways that fraud promoters may use these weaknesses and misperceptions to perpetrate a fraud on unsuspecting investors. When we watch an advertisement, receive an email or listen in on social media, the person is benefiting from whatever they are selling. Influencers are marketers not economic geniuses. Often, they are paid to promote – even those who are as famous as Kim Kardashian and Tom Brady. False statements can look quite real. The adage, “When it looks too good to be true it probably is,” can be a great rule of thumb. Do your due diligence or get a 2nd opinion from a trusted expert – before taking action. Silver Silver often runs in tandem with gold. However, since 2011’s high, silver has been rather subdued. At $32.23/ounce, silver is still down -34% from its 2011 high of almost $50. That is why we’ve been leaning into silver in our sample pie chart wealth plan over gold. Since its low of $11.62 on March 18, 2020, the iShares Silver Trust (symbol: SLV) has almost tripled, whereas the Gold Trust (GLD) has almost doubled. Both clearly are super performers. Here again, we want a plan (that pie chart plan I keep mentioning) that allows us to capture gains during periods of great performance and buy low when the asset price tanks. Income-Producing Bonds, Dividend Stocks and Private Credit or Equity Opportunities More and more we’re seeing conservative investors who are sold into risky investments as safe, including hedge funds, illiquid private equity or loans, debt-laden “income-producing” publicly traded equities, and long-term bonds. While we all hear about the $36.4 trillion in public debt, few of us are aware that there is actually $101 trillion in total debt and loans, when you factor in corporate, consumer and financial services debentures.  We live in a Debt World. Loaning money, particularly long-term, is a very risky strategy. As I’ve mentioned frequently, long-term bonds lost more than stocks in 2022. Bonds lost again in 2024. The mantra for a Debt World is: Keep the terms short and the creditworthiness high.  Many of the long-term bonds and private credit or equity opportunities lose value the moment we purchase them and often become illiquid – something we can’t easily get out of. Many of the dividend stocks are losing value – a great deal more than the rise in yield can wipe out. One client was told he was earning a 5% yield, when his own brokerage statement showed just 2.1%! Technically, the income he earned was 5.2%. However, when you factor in the fees and the lost principal value of the investments, the true return was barely above breakeven. This was at a time when the S&P500 returned a total return of 58% over a 2-year period. It’s difficult to earn money in a Debt World without losing principal. That’s why we spend one full day at our Financial Freedom Retreats educating everyone on avoiding risk and losses, understanding the fine print, and leaning into safer opportunities with a reasonable dividend. Remember the important adage of Will Rogers, “I’m more concerned with the return of my money than the return on my money.” Having said that, if you keep the terms short and the creditworthiness high on your CDs or T-Bills, you should earn almost as much as an illiquid, long-term junk bond. Real Estate We can only build equity when prices rise. If prices fall, we could end up with a mortgage that is higher than the value of the property. In that event, all kinds of problems emerge. As you can see in the chart below, over 20 million homes were lost in the Great Recession.  Today, home prices are higher than ever, and unaffordable to most Americans and Canadians.  The solutions for a world where housing costs can eat up 30% or more of our salary require thinking differently. There are many case studies to start learning about creative solutions for a 21st Century world that doesn’t add up in the Real Estate section of The ABCs of Money, 6th edition. Join us for our Real Estate Master Class on June 14, 2025. If you’re interested in all of our courses, we offer a bargain-priced 12-month all-access pass. Email [email protected] for additional information. Bottom Line Whenever something gets hot, the fraudsters come out in full force with all kinds of savory lies to bait us into buying their scam. Broker-salesmen might offer us income-producing opportunities that cost us principal, limit our ability to get our money back, are higher risk than we realize and have fees that reduce our income by half. The solution is that we must be the boss of our money. We must know exactly what we own and why and read the fine print of the opportunity – before we sign on the dotted line. Having blind faith that someone else is protecting our future in a Debt World, where “safe” assets might lose money and become illiquid, can be a very expensive lesson. At the same time, because safe haven investments can be super performers and offer a hedge against a market downturn, we include them as sample options for a hot slice or two of an age-appropriate, diversified nest egg strategy. Your friends and family can get the best price for the April 25-27, 2025 Retreat when they register by Feb. 28, 2025. Request testimonials at [email protected]. You can also view some on the flyer page of the retreat. Join us at our online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025 (online) and our Stock Masterclass (learn the strategies that earned me the ranking of #1 stock picker) on May 3, 2025. If you'd like a life-changing adventure of a lifetime, be our guest at a royal manor house in Cornwall, England, March 12-19, 2027. Only nine rooms are available. Call 310-430-2397 or email [email protected] to learn more. Learn how to: * Invest in hot industries, such as Nvidia, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, * Hedge against a weaker dollar, * Invest and compound your gains, * Green your retirement plan, * Easy and efficacious nest egg strategies, * Get hot and diversified (including in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and crypto), * Evaluate stocks, * Avoid capital gains and financial predators, * Keep an age-appropriate amount safe, and, * Know what's safe in a Debt World. You'll even discover how to save thousands annually with smarter big-ticket choices. Yes, it's a complete money makeover. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more and register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. "Ten minutes into the first day I was already much smarter about investing than I ever thought I would be in my life and I knew I was in exactly the right place at this retreat. I am amazed at how EASY and FUN it is to make my money work for me and those I love. I think this kind of information should be compulsory in schools. I wish I'd learned this sooner." CM If you’d like an unbiased 2nd opinion on your current wealth plan, email [email protected] for pricing and information.    Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of The ABCs of Money and The Power of 8 Billion: It's Up to Us, and is the co-creator of the Earth Gratitude Project. She has been ranked as a No. 1 stock picker, above over 835 A-list pundits, by an independent tracking agency (TipsTraders). Her book The ABCs of Money remained at or near the #1 Investing Basics e-book on Amazon for over 3 years (in its vertical), with over 120,000 downloads and a mean 5-star ranking. The 6th edition of The ABCs of Money and the 2nd edition of Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is are the most recent releases of these books. Follow her on Instagram. Natalie Pace's easy as a pie chart nest egg strategies earned gains in the last two recessions and have outperformed the bull markets in between. That is why her Investor Educational Retreats, books and private coaching are enthusiastically recommended by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary S. Becker, TD AMERITRADE chairman Joe Moglia, Kay Koplovitz and many Main Street investors who have transformed their lives using her Thrive Budget and investing strategies. Click to view a video testimonial from Nilo Bolden. Check out Natalie Pace's Substack podcast on Apple and Spotify. Watch videoconferences and webinars on Youtube. Other Blogs of Interest 10 Rules of Successful Investing. Quantum Computing. Paper Losses. Another Warning About Long-Term Bonds! 2025 Investor IQ Test. 2025 Investor IQ Test Answers. Apple iPhone Sales Plunge in China. Indonesia: Rich in Nickel with Ambitions of Becoming an EV Battery Hub. RoboTaxis. AI. The Magnificent 7. Charitable Giving. Nonprofits that are Worthy of Supporting. The DJIA Plunged 1100 Points After the Dec. 2024 FOMC Meeting. Why Are So Many Safe Investments Losing Money? A Bargain-Priced AI Company. Canadian, Australian and U.S. Banks. Are Any of Them Safe? Ireland. Rich in Technology, Biotechnology and Agribusiness. Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sweepstakes. Robo Investing and AI. No, They are Not Foolproof. Stocks Soar as Nvidia Joins the DJIA. Copper. Peru ETF Outperforms the S&P500. 4 Ways to Celebrate World Sustainability Day, Oct. 30, 2024. Will There be a Santa Rally or will the Election Ruin Everything? The Chips are Down. ASML, Intel and Super Micro Computer Plunge. Is Nvidia Next. Will Insurance Companies & Homeowners Weather the Hurricanes? 9 Money Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Housing & Budgeting Solutions. Will Boeing Be Booted Out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average? Arkansas Sues Temu for Data Theft. We Must Be the Boss of Our Money. Why? Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Plastic Clothing. Atacama Desert Waste Dumps. Can Crowdstrike Recover from its Colossal Catastrophe? Featuring a Cybersecurity Overview. Fintechs and Brokerages that Fail are Not FDIC-Insured. Stocks Keep Hitting New Highs. Are You Thinking "Capture Gains?" 5 Green Tips for Clean Beaches Week. So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Retiring Soon? Start Planning Now. 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. May is National Bike Month. Paris and Amsterdam are the Stars. Vacations that Color Our World Forever. 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. The Underperforming DJIA, Full of Fossil Fuels and Forever Chemicals. The Best ROI* (Almost 40%!) & 7 Life Hacks That Save Thousands. Portugal Eliminates Tax Advantages for Ex-Pats. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Cruise Ships Give Freebies to Investors. Should You Take the Bait? Should You Take a Cruise? Bonds. Banks. The Treacherous Landscape of Keeping Our Money Safe. 7 Rules of Investing 13 Lifestyle Choices to Reduce Waste, Pollution & CO2 & Save a Boatload of Dough. China Bans Apple 11-Point Green Checklist for Schools. 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Fiat. Crypto. Gold. BRICS. Real Estate. Alternative Investments. BRICS Currency. Will the Dollar Become Extinct? Are There Any Safe, Green Banks? 7 Ways to Stash Your Cash Now. Lessons from the Silicon Valley Bank Failure. Which Countries Offer the Highest Yield for the Lowest Risk? Why We Are Underweighting Banks and the Financial Industry. Save Thousands Annually With Smarter Energy Choices Is Your FDIC-Insured Cash Really Safe? Money Market Funds, FDIC, SIPC: Are Any of Them Safe? My 24-Year-Old is Itching to Buy a Condo. Should I Help Him? The 12-Step Guide to Successful Investing. The Bank Bail-in Plan on Your Dime. Important Disclaimers Please note: Natalie Pace does not act or operate like a broker. She reports on financial news, and is one of the most trusted sources of financial literacy, education and forensic analysis in the world. Natalie Pace educates and informs individual investors to give investors a competitive edge in their personal decision-making. Any publicly traded companies or funds mentioned by Natalie Pace are not intended to be buy or sell recommendations. ALWAYS do your research and consult an experienced, reputable financial professional before buying or selling any security, and consider your long-term goals and strategies. Investors should NOT be all in on any asset class or individual stocks. Your retirement plan should reflect a diversified strategy, which has been designed with the assistance of a financial professional who is familiar with your goals, risk tolerance, tax needs and more. The "trading" portion of your portfolio should be a very small part of your investment strategy, and the amount of money you invest into individual companies should never be greater than your experience, wisdom, knowledge and patience. Information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. However, NataliePace.com does not warrant its completeness or accuracy. Opinions constitute our judgment as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument.  10 Rules of Successful Investing Should we just buy and hold or wait and see when real estate and stock prices are at all-time highs, and those paper losses are a lot more problematic than we’re being told? Did you know that homeowners are worth 38X more than renters, or that investing well is the only way to escape the rat race? Consider the difference between saving and investing in the chart below.  We’ll talk more about how to make a successful investment in our home in our Real Estate Masterclass, and there is an entire section on real estate in The ABCs of Money, 6th edition. I encourage you to check out both of these resources because buying high or purchasing more than we can afford can cause a financial nightmare that lasts for years. (You can only “build equity” when prices increase; if they plunge, you could go underwater on the mortgage, which causes our FICO score to plunge and other significant problems.) Below is a step-by-step guide for the liquid (cash, paper) side of our wealth plan. This time-proven plan is literally as easy as a pie chart when we follow the 10 Rules of Successful Investing that are listed below. 2023 and 2024 were gangbuster years for equities, with gains of 24.23% and 23.31%, respectively in the S&P500. If you started with $100,000 in large cap stocks in January 2023, you might have had $124,230 at the end of 2023 and $153,188 at the end of 2024.   Of course, it’s also important to know that the S&P500 lost -19.44% in 2022, which is why an age-appropriate, diversified plan needs to be rebalanced 1-3 times a year. This is a buy low, sell high plan that takes the emotions out of investing and keeps us on the right side of the trade. Some of the best performers of 2021 (another gangbuster year on Wall Street) were the worst of 2022, including the Magnificent 7 companies*. *Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp), Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla.   You’ll also see that in 2022, long-term bonds lost even more than stocks, with losses of -26%. Bonds lost again in 2024. These “paper losses” are far more problematic than our broker/salesmen might be telling us, which is why we really must know what is safe in a Debt World. While public debt of $36.2 trillion is what we hear about in the media, corporate debt is double what it was before the Great Recession and total debt of $100 trillion is in the nethersphere – at unprecedented levels.  10 Rules of Successful Investing 1. Tithe 10% to your Buy My Own Island Fund. 2. Keep a percent equal to your age safe, not in stocks. 3. Overweight or underweight safe based on market conditions. 4. Know what is safe. 5. Diversify into 10 funds. 6. Underweight the bailouts & vulnerable companies or industries. 7. Get hot. 8. Rebalance 1-3 times a year. 9. Use limit orders to capture gains, not stop losses. 10. Be the boss of your money. Bonus Tips: Real Estate Fix the Roof While the Sun is Still Shining And here are more details on each step. 1. Tithe 10% to your Buy My Own Island Fund Remember to put 10% of your gross income into tax protected retirement accounts. (Rich people don’t put money in jars.) We want our investments in retirement accounts so that it grows without us having to pay capital gains taxes. These plans are also financial predator proof. (Debt collectors can’t put a lien on your retirement accounts). It’s been reported that billionaire Peter Thiel has $5 billion in a Roth IRA. Match our employer’s contribution in the 401(k) or RSP, but not more, IMHO. The employer’s contribution is free money. The bad news about employer-sponsored retirement plans is there is not very much freedom of choice. That’s why it’s important to also contribute to our Health Savings Account (Americans), our own IRA or TSFA (Roth, SEP and/or traditional), our kids’ college or dependent IRA funds, etc. (The college funds should be coming out of our education fund. Learn more about that in the Thrive Budget section of The ABCs of Money, 6th edition.) Self-directed IRAs typically have freedom to invest in the universe of stocks and funds. This is where you can add in hot industries and countries that might not be found in your employer-sponsored selections. I put the best performing funds (hots) in my Roth IRA. Name your funds with goals. That will make it more exciting to do our regular rebalancing, as we see just how much progress we are making toward the desired destination. 2. Keep a percent equal to your age safe, not in stocks. The rule of thumb is to always have a percentage equal to our age safe, not in stocks, equity funds, mutual funds, etc. Most people have far more at risk than they realize. The last two recessions have lost investors more than ½ of their at-risk investments. Simply keeping the proper amount safe protects our wealth from these devastating drops. Of course, in a Debt World such as we are experiencing in 2025, it’s also important to know what’s safe (#4 below). 3. Overweight or underweight safe based on market conditions. In 2025, the U.S. economy is expected to grow at 2.1% GDP. That’s significantly slower than 2024’s 2.8% GDP growth. No recession is predicted for 2025. However, economists are lousy at forecasting recessions, and tariffs are a wild card that could impact growth. When the economy is expected to contract, overweighting safe is a good idea. (This is something we encouraged before the last three recessions. Yes, the data is that reliable.) Today, there is an added risk of equities being very expensive, which means if there is a shock or recession, the plunge could be hard and fast. During the pandemic, equities lost almost 40% in just one month. In our sample pie charts, we are overweighting 20% safe. During years like 2021 when the economy was expected to outperform (GDP growth of 5.9%), it can be smart to overweight into equities (stocks). There are other considerations, including valuations. However, the important point is that we don’t want to wait until a shock happens. When we wait for headlines, we’re late. Basing our strategy on data is far better than running with our emotions, such as those risk tolerance questionnaires that many broker salesman will give us. Our emotions are rarely our friend in investing, particularly at the beginning of our journey. Most people have a lot of risk tolerance when stocks are high. Market tops are when we want to capture gains (sell high) and make sure we protect our wealth (while remaining age-appropriate and diversified). Few people have any tolerance for risk at the market bottom because they feel that we are in an Apocalypse. Often, they’ve already lost a lot of money and must hope and pray to recover losses, rather than having any ability to buy low. However, the market bottom is the time when we could be thinking about leaning into risk, particularly if the recovery is looking strong. 4. Know what is safe. We live in a world of debt, where many things are very highly leveraged. That adds credit risk to the “safe” side of the traditional retirement strategy. At the same time, bond durations have become quite long – creating duration risk. So, even though interest rates might get cut a little in 2025 and 2026, we still have credit and duration risk in bonds. Bonds are traditionally thought of as safe. However, today they are vulnerable to capital loss, and they can also be illiquid. (Look again at the 2022 losses chart.) Also, the higher the yield, the higher the risk of losing principal. Investment grade bond funds often allow for up to 20% junk bonds (below investment grade). The safest investments, which were yielding above 4% as of the publishing date of this blog, are ones that many broker/salesmen are not incentivized to sell us. So, if we say we want a conservative plan, we might actually be loaded up with risky investments that are very vulnerable to capital loss -- many which we can't get rid of easily. Getting safe in 2025 is so tricky that we spend one full day on it at our Investor Educational Retreat. If you have a lot of bonds and wonder if you might be more vulnerable than you know, then I strongly encourage you to read the What’s Safe section of The ABCs of Money (6th edition). Consider getting an unbiased second opinion from me personally or attending April 25-27, 2025 Investor Educational Retreat. We host retreats at least three-four times a year, so check out the NataliePace.com homepage for an upcoming retreat. Call 310-430-2397 or email [email protected] for pricing, testimonials and additional information. 5. Diversify into 10 funds. Diversifying into 10 funds makes our investment strategy as easy as a pie chart to manage. 10 funds are all we need for proper diversification. If we have pages and pages of holdings, chances are we only have 2-4 slices, rather than the 10 funds. (That many holdings is a red flag.) What are the 10 funds we should be diversified into? Small, medium and large, value and growth, and four hot industries or countries. See the sample pie chart below.  FYI: the target date retirement funds are not well-diversified, are a Buy & Hope product, and typically underperform the market index (or even lose money). They do not allow us to rebalance regularly, which is an essential strategy in today’s world.  2025 Vanguard Target Date Retirement Fund (VTTVX) compared to the S&P500 (pink) over a 5-year period, ending Feb. 4, 2024. Chart by MSN.com. (C) Microsoft 2025. Used with permission. 6. Underweight the bailouts & vulnerable companies and industries. Over half of the S&P500 is at or near junk bond status. There are companies that have very strong revenue growth, almost no debt and a boatload of cash (such as Nvidia, Google, Meta and many other large cap growth technology firms). There are also companies that have been borrowing from Peter to pay Paul for a very long time, have credit ratings that could be cut to junk, have more debt than the company is worth, and are either losing revenue or have flat revenue growth. Boeing, Ford, many U.S. banks, and other companies that were founded more than 50 years ago can be prone to one or more of these challenges. General Electric, Boeing and many CRE companies are proof of what happens when we invest in highly-leveraged companies for the dividends. So be careful of our value and dividend funds, in addition to bond funds. We address that as well at the Investor Educational Retreat, where we discuss using international funds for higher dividends and sometimes even higher credit ratings.  7. Get hot. Have you been tempted to leap into the crypto craze, or the Magnificent 7, AI, or quantum computing, particularly after seeing the spectacular gains over the past two years? We all know the market aphorism, “Buy low, sell high.” However, our emotions always want us to join the party when prices are high and avoid the crash when prices plunge. Whatever we think is going to Shoot the Moon this year, whether it is crypto, gold, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence or the nascent field of quantum computing, add a hot slice or two to our strategy, but don’t bet the farm. It’s always a great idea to have four hot slices in our diversified wealth plan. However, as we’ve seen with Nvidia losing half a trillion in market capitalization (and investors who purchased at $153.13/share just a few months ago losing 1/3 of their investment) after China’s DeepSeek AI caused ripples of fear in the U.S. domination of this industry, capturing gains when equity prices are elevated and having a plan to purchase without buying high are both important. This is where the pie chart system and dollar cost averaging put us on the right side of the trade. (Even with the pullback, Nvidia’s P/E is 47.) Hot slices in our nest egg can increase performance and wealth. However, because shooting stars can drop back to Earth, the pie chart system and regular rebalancing prompts us to do the right thing. If our slice of Bitcoin becomes 5-6 slices, as it might have done over the past few years, the pie-chart system is prompting us to sell high and trim your overexposure back to one or two slices, keeping that money. This affords us the opportunity, liquidity and emotional fortitude to buy more at a lower price, if the asset value tanks (and we still think it’s hot). Each Bitcoin fever has been followed by a Crypto Winter. Gold has a very volatile price history. As I mentioned earlier, the Magnificent 7 were actually the Terrible Tech losers of 2022. 8. Rebalance 1-3 times a year. Rebalancing 1-3 times a year is one of the most important things that we can do. Every year we get older and should have more on the safe side. In a bull market, our wealth increases. Most of our stock slices swell in size. In recessions, the slices become slivers. When we compare a sample pie chart of what we should have with what we do have, rebalancing becomes easy and quite visual. If the slice is bigger than it should be, it is prompting us to sell high. Conversely if a correction has plunged prices and our slices are slim, they are prompting us to buy low. In this way, the system puts our emotions on the right side of the trade, whereas brokerage statements do quite the opposite, with losses in red (Stop! Look how much you have lost!) and gains in green (Go, go, go! You’re winning!). The safe side (with overweighting) protects us from a rout on Wall Street. Market timing doesn’t work. When we feel like selling, that’s usually the best time to buy, and vice versa. As I’ve mentioned previously, rebalancing regularly is a buy low, sell high plan on auto-pilot. It’s important to remember that the reason people don’t buy low is that they cannot buy low. If they have suffered massive losses, they have no liquidity – no money on hand to take advantage of opportunities. (They might have a boatload of other financial challenges as well, which could include trying to rescue a home.) When we keep an appropriate amount liquid, as the pie chart system instructs us to do, we have the capital to buy low when no one else is doing it (or can do it). 9. Think “capture gains,” not stop losses. Think capture gains, not stop losses. A lot of people think they should be using stop losses to prevent themselves from losing money. Because of the volatility in equities, bonds and real estate, if we set stop losses we will be losing over and over again. Our best protection from a correction is keeping a percent equal to our age safe. Overweight a little more (act older than we are) if we think the economy is weak. If we simply changed our strategy to a “capture gains” system, which is what an age-appropriate, properly diversified plan with 1-3 times/year rebalancing is all about, then every time the markets shoot the moon, we’re selling high. Every time stocks tank, we’re buying low. Having the right mindset is key to this process. We talk about this at the retreat as well. 10. Be the boss of your money. Our accountant should be well-versed in tax strategies. Our broker-salesman should be helpful in setting up new accounts, answering questions, helping us to make a contribution or roll over a 401(k) into an IRA, and other brokerage transactions. Be careful getting stock tips or strategies from “financial advisors” (who are most often hired as salesmen and are selling what they are told to sell) or accountants (who should be buried in tax strategies, not equity analysis). There are still a lot of brokerages and broker-salesman that adhere to the last-century Buy and Hope strategy, which has been a disaster in 21st-Century recessions. Be the boss of your money and realize that these professionals work for you (not vice versa). Now is the time to know exactly what we own and why, and to take ownership of our investments and wealth strategy. Adhere to the time-proven 21st-century strategy of proper diversification and 1-3 times a year rebalancing. Our financial team works for us. It’s our money and our future at risk, not theirs. Once we know what a healthy nest egg looks like, we can take charge, rather than having blind faith that someone else is doing the right thing for our money. Select our financial team as if our life depends upon it because our lifestyle does. Real estate is part of your wealth, but not part of your liquid assets (nest egg). When we are constructing our sample Nest Egg Pie Chart, do not include the equity we have in our home or any other hard asset in the line that asks for our liquid assets. Real estate and other hard assets are an important piece of our wealth. However, we want liquidity (savings, stocks, bonds) and stability (hard assets), rather than being property rich and cash poor (or vice versa). Owning our own home is one of the best ways to build wealth – unless we purchase at too lofty of a price or buy more than we can afford. For important real estate strategies, read the Real Estate section of The ABCs of Money. This is also covered in our Investor Educational Retreats. My June 14, 2025, Real Estate Master Class will feature:
Fix the Roof While the Sun is Still Shining We wouldn’t wait for the rain to see whether our roof was leaking. We want to make sure our house is secure before any natural disasters occur. The same holds true for our financial home, particularly in a world where financial and natural disasters are occurring regularly. Stocks and real estate are at all-time highs. It’s very easy to be complacent when everything is going well and wait until something is broken to fix it. However, that means that we could lose up to half of our wealth and take years to recover. Stocks and real estate can’t keep shooting the moon forever. Recessions are a normal part of a business cycle. In the 21st-century, the corrections sink swiftly and deeply – long before the headlines that the economy is in trouble. (We’re already using extraordinary means to pay bills in the U.S.; the next headlines about the Debt Ceiling will happen in spring or summer.) So, make sure that your wealth is properly diversified, hot and protected now. Fix the roof while the sun is still shining. Bottom Line Buy & hope is a last-century strategy that has lost more than half in 21st Century recessions. On this plan, investors have to use the bull markets to make up losses, rather than build their wealth. That is not a financial plan; that is a Wall Street rollercoaster. The easy-as-a-pie-chart nest egg strategy with annual rebalancing earned gains in the last two recessions and has outperformed the bull markets in between. It’s less time and less money. It’s easy and logical. It works. You can personalize your own pie charts using our free web apps. Simply go to NataliePace.com and click on the app badge. Or you can email [email protected] with the subject line, “I want my free web apps.” Many people are losing money on the safe side, so it's important to know what's safe in a Debt World, in addition to capturing gains and getting age-appropriate on the at-risk side of our wealth plan. This will make more sense if we take the Rebalancing IQ Test and the Investor IQ Test, and attend the next Financial Freedom Retreat to learn the life math that we all should have received in high school. FYI: Your friends and family can get the best price for the April 25-27, 2025 Retreat when they register by Feb. 28, 2025. Request testimonials at [email protected]. You can also view some on the flyer page of the retreat. Join us at our online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025 (online) and our Stock Masterclass (learn the strategies that earned me the ranking of #1 stock picker) on May 3, 2025. If you'd like a life-changing adventure of a lifetime, be our guest at a royal manor house in Cornwall, England, March 12-19, 2027. Only nine rooms are available. Call 310-430-2397 or email [email protected] to learn more. Learn how to: * Invest in hot industries, such as Nvidia, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, * Hedge against a weaker dollar, * Invest and compound your gains, * Green your retirement plan, * Easy and efficacious nest egg strategies, * Get hot and diversified (including in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and crypto), * Evaluate stocks, * Avoid capital gains and financial predators, * Keep an age-appropriate amount safe, and, * Know what's safe in a Debt World. You'll even discover how to save thousands annually with smarter big-ticket choices. Yes, it's a complete money makeover. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more and register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. "Ten minutes into the first day I was already much smarter about investing than I ever thought I would be in my life and I knew I was in exactly the right place at this retreat. I am amazed at how EASY and FUN it is to make my money work for me and those I love. I think this kind of information should be compulsory in schools. I wish I'd learned this sooner." CM If you’d like an unbiased 2nd opinion on your current wealth plan, email [email protected] for pricing and information.  Join us for our Online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by Feb. 28, 2025, to receive the best price. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details.  Join us for our Restormel Royal Immersive Adventure Retreat. March 12-19, 2027. Email [email protected] to learn more. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details. Register now. There are only 9 rooms available. This retreat includes an all-access pass to all of our online training for a full year for two, and three 50-minute private, prosperity coaching sessions. Much more affordable than you might think. Email [email protected] to learn more. (2025 is sold out.)  Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of The ABCs of Money and The Power of 8 Billion: It's Up to Us, and is the co-creator of the Earth Gratitude Project. She has been ranked as a No. 1 stock picker, above over 835 A-list pundits, by an independent tracking agency (TipsTraders). Her book The ABCs of Money remained at or near the #1 Investing Basics e-book on Amazon for over 3 years (in its vertical), with over 120,000 downloads and a mean 5-star ranking. The 6th edition of The ABCs of Money and the 2nd edition of Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is are the most recent releases of these books. Follow her on Instagram. Natalie Pace's easy as a pie chart nest egg strategies earned gains in the last two recessions and have outperformed the bull markets in between. That is why her Investor Educational Retreats, books and private coaching are enthusiastically recommended by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary S. Becker, TD AMERITRADE chairman Joe Moglia, Kay Koplovitz and many Main Street investors who have transformed their lives using her Thrive Budget and investing strategies. Click to view a video testimonial from Nilo Bolden. Check out Natalie Pace's Substack podcast on Apple and Spotify. Watch videoconferences and webinars on Youtube. Other Blogs of Interest Quantum Computing. Paper Losses. Another Warning About Long-Term Bonds! 2025 Investor IQ Test. 2025 Investor IQ Test Answers. Apple iPhone Sales Plunge in China. Indonesia: Rich in Nickel with Ambitions of Becoming an EV Battery Hub. RoboTaxis. AI. The Magnificent 7. Charitable Giving. Nonprofits that are Worthy of Supporting. The DJIA Plunged 1100 Points After the Dec. 2024 FOMC Meeting. Why Are So Many Safe Investments Losing Money? A Bargain-Priced AI Company. Canadian, Australian and U.S. Banks. Are Any of Them Safe? Ireland. Rich in Technology, Biotechnology and Agribusiness. Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sweepstakes. Robo Investing and AI. No, They are Not Foolproof. Stocks Soar as Nvidia Joins the DJIA. Copper. Peru ETF Outperforms the S&P500. 4 Ways to Celebrate World Sustainability Day, Oct. 30, 2024. Will There be a Santa Rally or will the Election Ruin Everything? The Chips are Down. ASML, Intel and Super Micro Computer Plunge. Is Nvidia Next. Will Insurance Companies & Homeowners Weather the Hurricanes? 9 Money Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Housing & Budgeting Solutions. Will Boeing Be Booted Out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average? Arkansas Sues Temu for Data Theft. We Must Be the Boss of Our Money. Why? Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Plastic Clothing. Atacama Desert Waste Dumps. Can Crowdstrike Recover from its Colossal Catastrophe? Featuring a Cybersecurity Overview. Fintechs and Brokerages that Fail are Not FDIC-Insured. Stocks Keep Hitting New Highs. Are You Thinking "Capture Gains?" 5 Green Tips for Clean Beaches Week. So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Retiring Soon? Start Planning Now. 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. May is National Bike Month. Paris and Amsterdam are the Stars. Vacations that Color Our World Forever. 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. The Underperforming DJIA, Full of Fossil Fuels and Forever Chemicals. The Best ROI* (Almost 40%!) & 7 Life Hacks That Save Thousands. Portugal Eliminates Tax Advantages for Ex-Pats. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Cruise Ships Give Freebies to Investors. Should You Take the Bait? Should You Take a Cruise? Bonds. Banks. The Treacherous Landscape of Keeping Our Money Safe. 7 Rules of Investing 13 Lifestyle Choices to Reduce Waste, Pollution & CO2 & Save a Boatload of Dough. China Bans Apple 11-Point Green Checklist for Schools. 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Fiat. Crypto. Gold. BRICS. Real Estate. Alternative Investments. BRICS Currency. Will the Dollar Become Extinct? Are There Any Safe, Green Banks? 7 Ways to Stash Your Cash Now. Lessons from the Silicon Valley Bank Failure. Which Countries Offer the Highest Yield for the Lowest Risk? Why We Are Underweighting Banks and the Financial Industry. Save Thousands Annually With Smarter Energy Choices Is Your FDIC-Insured Cash Really Safe? Money Market Funds, FDIC, SIPC: Are Any of Them Safe? My 24-Year-Old is Itching to Buy a Condo. Should I Help Him? The 12-Step Guide to Successful Investing. The Bank Bail-in Plan on Your Dime. Important Disclaimers Please note: Natalie Pace does not act or operate like a broker. She reports on financial news, and is one of the most trusted sources of financial literacy, education and forensic analysis in the world. Natalie Pace educates and informs individual investors to give investors a competitive edge in their personal decision-making. Any publicly traded companies or funds mentioned by Natalie Pace are not intended to be buy or sell recommendations. ALWAYS do your research and consult an experienced, reputable financial professional before buying or selling any security, and consider your long-term goals and strategies. Investors should NOT be all in on any asset class or individual stocks. Your retirement plan should reflect a diversified strategy, which has been designed with the assistance of a financial professional who is familiar with your goals, risk tolerance, tax needs and more. The "trading" portion of your portfolio should be a very small part of your investment strategy, and the amount of money you invest into individual companies should never be greater than your experience, wisdom, knowledge and patience. Information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. However, NataliePace.com does not warrant its completeness or accuracy. Opinions constitute our judgment as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument.  Quantum Computing. Have you been hearing about the next big thing in investing: quantum computing? Should you jump in now? Below are the topics we’ll cover in this blog. What is Quantum Computing? Challenges: Errors and Heat Applications and Security Leaders vs. Opportunists First Mover Advantage Tier Zero Opportunities Quantum Funds & Individual Stocks More information on each point is listed below. What is Quantum Computing? Perhaps the best way of understanding quantum computing was offered by tech unicorn and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen after Google’s Willow Quantum Chip reportedly demonstrated “error correction and performance that paves the way to a useful, large-scale quantum computer.” Google’s announcement was made on Dec. 9, 2024. Andreessen addressed the breakthrough on Instagram, trying to put the astonishing feat into an analogy that regular folks would understand, saying, “The most enticing thing of what they said is that in theory the lab demonstration is doing a computation that the entire universe that we live in, if every atom were turned into a giant computer, that computer couldn’t solve that problem before the universe dies… We live in a multiverse.” Quantum computing is seeking to solve challenges that normal computers simply cannot by tapping into what are believed to be parallel universes. Challenges: Errors and Heat It’s important to understand that quantum computing is still prone to errors and is not accurate or reliable enough to be useful. The Dec. 9, 2024, breakthrough is an important step on the path to applications that could be 5-15 years away. Our brains have to go interstellar to begin to comprehend how quantum is pulling in parallel universes to solve problems that are impossible to crack here on Earth. An interesting quirk is that quantum computers function at temperatures that are colder than outer space. Energy costs are another prohibitive expense for companies that seek to be the game-changer in this nascent industry. Progress is being made on the temperature challenge front, too. Professor Yoseob Yoon, an assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern University, has “discovered a way to create atomically thin transducers that could one day enable quantum computing at room temperature.” The Willow and the room temperature experiments were both published in 2024. Peer reviews continue, as will innovation. Applications and Security According to Hartmut Neven, the founder and lead at Google Quantum AI, Quantum computation will help us “discover new medicines, design more efficient batteries for electric cars, and accelerate progress in fusion and new energy alternatives.” Quantum computing, once achieved, will be a gamechanger for many industries beyond those mentioned by Neven. One can conceive of benefits in everything from food production, to space travel, to financial services and everything in between. It will also be a nightmare for cybersecurity, allowing anyone with the quantum capability to crack encryption codes quickly and efficiently. Companies that offer cloud services, including Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft, are already training their clients to be Quantum Safe and Quantum Ready. Leaders vs. Opportunists Apple was born in a garage with Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak. Google incubated at Stanford University with Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Who will be the famous names we remember most for quantum computing? Are they already working on a Magnificent 7 project, in a university lab, or are they hiding in a garage somewhere, with supportive parents or friends who complain endlessly about the electric bills? Will it come in through open source? Most companies and projects are encouraging open source contributions. D-Wave Quantum (symbol: QBTS) was founded 26 years ago and has partnered with Google, NASA and Lockheed Martin. As is the case with all quantum computing companies and projects, D-Wave is in cash burn mode. The company’s net loss in the most recent quarter was -$22.7 million, with only $29.3 million left in cash and cash equivalents (at the end of Sept. 30, 2024). That’s flying very close to the trees – something that all investors should be concerned with before investing in an industry that is not yet close to lift-off. Some projections say that quantum computing applications will be viable by 2035-2040. (Others predict within five years.) The downside of AI is that the minute we search for quantum computing, we’re going to be handed over to marketers and advertisers. The predators come out in force whenever any industry gets hot. Be VERY careful with hot tips, whether they come from friends, emails or on social media. Ruses can be very convincing these days. First Mover Advantage The company that cracks the code is the one that will become ten times more valuable overnight. This recently occurred with Nvidia. Nvidia’s stock has soared over 10-fold above its 2022 low point and is one of the biggest companies in the world today, with a market value of $2.9 trillion. The same occurred after Apple introduced the smart phone in 2006. Today’s share price of $230 makes the 2006 price of $5 look like a rounding error. However, there is more to the story. (Keep reading.) Tier Zero Opportunities Investors are encouraged by newsletter writers to jump in on Quantum Computing as a Tier Zero opportunity, with analogies of just how rich early-stage investors became on Nvidia, Amazon, Apple and more. Stocks are at all-time highs and investors are elated. It’s easy to think that everything will just keep going up, since technology stocks have been on fire for two years now. However, just three years ago, these same innovators were some of the worst performers on Wall Street. In 2022, Nvidia’s share price was cut in half, while Tesla, another game changer, lost 2/3rds.  Nvidia dropped -17.6% on Jan. 25, 2025, when it was reported that China’s DeepSeek app could challenge U.S. artificial intelligence. Apple wasn’t immune to the Great Recession, even though the company had launched the smartphone only a year prior. The company’s share price sank by -50% between Oct. 2007 and March 2009. While it might be easy to say, “I’ll just ride it out or wait and see,” that is ignoring just how hard it is when we lose so much, and how long it might take to recover. Our net worth plunges, along with our FICO score and our ability to capitalize on opportunities to buy low. Dot Com stocks were Tier Zero opportunities in 1999. Between March of 2000 and October of 2002, the NASDAQ Composite Index dropped -78%. (A million-dollar investment sank to a value of just $220,000.) Many of the Tier Zero opportunities (eToys, Pets.com, eXcite, AskJeeves) of the Dot Com Bubble went bust by 2002. It took the NASDAQ Composite Index 16 years to reach the highs set in March 2000 again. Investing in Tier Zero opportunities can be expensive in recessions, particularly if we purchase at the top of the bull market. While dollar-cost-averaging into a hot slice of an age-appropriate, properly diversified nest egg helps to smooth out the volatility, it doesn’t eliminate the problem of trying to pick the next Steve Jobs or the risk of investing in an early-stage quantum computing fund. Quantum Funds & Individual Stocks At our investor retreats, we encourage attendees to lean into funds over individual stocks, particularly now that the market is being driven by just seven companies. ETFs allow us to target very specific areas. There are more than a dozen technology options offered on iShares (owned by BlackRock), including cybersecurity, AI, self-driving, 5G and beyond. If you’d like an Artificial Intelligence Fund, there’s ARTY or TECB (breakthrough technology, rich in the Magnificent 7). You can even purchase an iShares Bitcoin or Ethereum ETF. iShares doesn’t offer a Quantum Computing ETF yet. However, currently the best option for investing in quantum lies in the Magnificent 7 companies (TECB). BlackRock is an AA- rated company that is publicly traded with a market value of $158 billion. QTUM is a quantum computing ETF that is offered by Defiance, a privately held ETF company that was founded in 2018. Interestingly, Sylvia Jablonski, Defiance’s CEO & CIO, and the company’s chairman Matthew Bielski, came from a company that I often use as a cautionary tale of privately held fund companies: Direxion. The problems of Direxion can be summed up with a chart of Direxion’s 2X Bull Gold Miners’ Fund (NUGT) that speaks much louder than words.  Source: MSN.com. (c) Microsoft. Used with permission. As you can see, this fund has lost investors a great deal of money even though gold prices are at all-time highs. The 2X Oil ETF chart of investor losses is very similar to NUGT. Both funds were 3X leveraged in Jan. of 2020, before the pandemic. For the sake of brevity, the most important lesson taught by this chart is that it matters who you purchase your funds from. Reliance, like Direxion before it, comes up with sexy names for their ETFs, such as QTUM (Reliance), DRIP and GUSH (Direxion Oil Bear and Bull ETFs). However, I would not trust my investing dollars with executives who had burned so many in the company they were responsible for just a few years ago. Ms. Jablonski was a managing director at Direxion from Nov. 2009 through Dec. 2020. Look for well-capitalized, creditworthy fund companies that have been in business through a few business cycles (more than 25 years). Bottom Line If we are invested in Google, Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft or IBM, we are invested in the potential of quantum computing. These companies are found in large cap growth and breakthrough technology funds, such as iShares TECB. Consider having both in your diversified, age-appropriate wealth plan. While it is true that the innovation could come from a young hot company outside of these giants, the cost of the R&D makes smaller companies very vulnerable until there are monetizable applications. Remember the lessons from the Dot Com Crash. We did eventually shop online, with malls becoming empty, as was predicted, but not before the entire industry was decimated. Only the strong survived, after a lot of slog and struggle. The cash burn is highly prohibitive at this stage, which is one of the reasons why few fund companies are offering exposure to the quantum small caps, such as IONQ and Quantum Computing. It could be worth it to put some of the researchers mentioned in this blog, along with IONQ, QUBT and QBTS, on our radar and watch them for any breakthroughs. Innovation often comes from upstarts in garages. Let the VCs, who are trained to sort the pearls from the straw, take on the early stage, where most fail. There will be quantum opportunities for those of us who don’t get slaughtered in the first phase of creative destruction, which is a frequent bedfellow in innovation, to invest. Join us at our online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025 (online) and our Stock Masterclass (learn the strategies that earned me the ranking of #1 stock picker) on May 3, 2025. If you'd like a life-changing adventure of a lifetime, be our guest at a royal manor house in Cornwall, England, March 12-19, 2027. Only nine rooms are available. Call 310-430-2397 or email [email protected] to learn more. Learn how to: * Invest in hot industries, such as Nvidia, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, * Hedge against a weaker dollar, * Invest and compound your gains, * Green your retirement plan, * Easy and efficacious nest egg strategies, * Get hot and diversified (including in artificial intelligence and EVs), * Evaluate stocks, * Keep an age-appropriate amount safe, and, * Know what's safe in a Debt World. You'll even discover how to save thousands annually with smarter big-ticket choices. Yes, it's a complete money makeover. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more and register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. "Ten minutes into the first day I was already much smarter about investing than I ever thought I would be in my life and I knew I was in exactly the right place at this retreat. I am amazed at how EASY and FUN it is to make my money work for me and those I love. I think this kind of information should be compulsory in schools. I wish I'd learned this sooner." CM If you’d like an unbiased 2nd opinion on your current wealth plan, email [email protected] for pricing and information.  Join us for our Online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by Jan. 31, 2025, to receive the best price and a complimentary 50-minute private prosperity coaching session (value $400). Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details.  Join us for our Restormel Royal Immersive Adventure Retreat. March 12-19, 2027. Email [email protected] to learn more. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details. Register now. There are only 9 rooms available. This retreat includes an all-access pass to all of our online training for a full year for two, and three 50-minute private, prosperity coaching sessions. Much more affordable than you might think. Email [email protected] to learn more. (2025 is sold out.)  Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of The ABCs of Money and The Power of 8 Billion: It's Up to Us, and is the co-creator of the Earth Gratitude Project. She has been ranked as a No. 1 stock picker, above over 835 A-list pundits, by an independent tracking agency (TipsTraders). Her book The ABCs of Money remained at or near the #1 Investing Basics e-book on Amazon for over 3 years (in its vertical), with over 120,000 downloads and a mean 5-star ranking. The 6th edition of The ABCs of Money and the 2nd edition of Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is are the most recent releases of these books. Follow her on Instagram. Natalie Pace's easy as a pie chart nest egg strategies earned gains in the last two recessions and have outperformed the bull markets in between. That is why her Investor Educational Retreats, books and private coaching are enthusiastically recommended by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary S. Becker, TD AMERITRADE chairman Joe Moglia, Kay Koplovitz and many Main Street investors who have transformed their lives using her Thrive Budget and investing strategies. Click to view a video testimonial from Nilo Bolden. Check out Natalie Pace's Substack podcast on Apple and Spotify. Watch videoconferences and webinars on Youtube. Other Blogs of Interest Paper Losses. Another Warning About Long-Term Bonds! 2025 Investor IQ Test. 2025 Investor IQ Test Answers. Apple iPhone Sales Plunge in China. Indonesia: Rich in Nickel with Ambitions of Becoming an EV Battery Hub. RoboTaxis. AI. The Magnificent 7. Charitable Giving. Nonprofits that are Worthy of Supporting. The DJIA Plunged 1100 Points After the Dec. 2024 FOMC Meeting. Why Are So Many Safe Investments Losing Money? A Bargain-Priced AI Company. Canadian, Australian and U.S. Banks. Are Any of Them Safe? Ireland. Rich in Technology, Biotechnology and Agribusiness. Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sweepstakes. Robo Investing and AI. No, They are Not Foolproof. Stocks Soar as Nvidia Joins the DJIA. Copper. Peru ETF Outperforms the S&P500. 4 Ways to Celebrate World Sustainability Day, Oct. 30, 2024. Will There be a Santa Rally or will the Election Ruin Everything? The Chips are Down. ASML, Intel and Super Micro Computer Plunge. Is Nvidia Next. Will Insurance Companies & Homeowners Weather the Hurricanes? 9 Money Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Housing & Budgeting Solutions. Will Boeing Be Booted Out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average? Arkansas Sues Temu for Data Theft. We Must Be the Boss of Our Money. Why? Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Plastic Clothing. Atacama Desert Waste Dumps. Can Crowdstrike Recover from its Colossal Catastrophe? Featuring a Cybersecurity Overview. Fintechs and Brokerages that Fail are Not FDIC-Insured. Stocks Keep Hitting New Highs. Are You Thinking "Capture Gains?" 5 Green Tips for Clean Beaches Week. So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Retiring Soon? Start Planning Now. 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. May is National Bike Month. Paris and Amsterdam are the Stars. Vacations that Color Our World Forever. 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. The Underperforming DJIA, Full of Fossil Fuels and Forever Chemicals. The Best ROI* (Almost 40%!) & 7 Life Hacks That Save Thousands. Portugal Eliminates Tax Advantages for Ex-Pats. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Cruise Ships Give Freebies to Investors. Should You Take the Bait? Should You Take a Cruise? Bonds. Banks. The Treacherous Landscape of Keeping Our Money Safe. 7 Rules of Investing 13 Lifestyle Choices to Reduce Waste, Pollution & CO2 & Save a Boatload of Dough. China Bans Apple 11-Point Green Checklist for Schools. 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Fiat. Crypto. Gold. BRICS. Real Estate. Alternative Investments. BRICS Currency. Will the Dollar Become Extinct? Are There Any Safe, Green Banks? 7 Ways to Stash Your Cash Now. Lessons from the Silicon Valley Bank Failure. Which Countries Offer the Highest Yield for the Lowest Risk? Why We Are Underweighting Banks and the Financial Industry. Save Thousands Annually With Smarter Energy Choices Is Your FDIC-Insured Cash Really Safe? Money Market Funds, FDIC, SIPC: Are Any of Them Safe? My 24-Year-Old is Itching to Buy a Condo. Should I Help Him? The 12-Step Guide to Successful Investing. The Bank Bail-in Plan on Your Dime. Important Disclaimers Please note: Natalie Pace does not act or operate like a broker. She reports on financial news, and is one of the most trusted sources of financial literacy, education and forensic analysis in the world. Natalie Pace educates and informs individual investors to give investors a competitive edge in their personal decision-making. Any publicly traded companies or funds mentioned by Natalie Pace are not intended to be buy or sell recommendations. ALWAYS do your research and consult an experienced, reputable financial professional before buying or selling any security, and consider your long-term goals and strategies. Investors should NOT be all in on any asset class or individual stocks. Your retirement plan should reflect a diversified strategy, which has been designed with the assistance of a financial professional who is familiar with your goals, risk tolerance, tax needs and more. The "trading" portion of your portfolio should be a very small part of your investment strategy, and the amount of money you invest into individual companies should never be greater than your experience, wisdom, knowledge and patience. Information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. However, NataliePace.com does not warrant its completeness or accuracy. Opinions constitute our judgment as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument.  Paper Losses. Were You Assured Your Money Was Safe When It Wasn’t Properly Protected? Should You Buy into the Bond Selloff? What About Those High-Yield Opportunities That Are Popping Up Everywhere? What the Broker/Salesman Might Not Be Fully Disclosing, Including a Warning on Those Losses That They Claim are Just on Paper. Also, Are High Yields in a Low-Yield Market Too Good to Be True and Too Dangerous to Touch? The Retail Apocalypse Continues: Bankruptcies Are at the Highest Level Since 2010 694 companies declared bankruptcy in 2024, up 9.3% year-over-year, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. That marks a 14-year high not seen since the 828 bankruptcy filings in 2010. Retail was the most problematic (Big Lots), while industrials (Spirit Airlines) came in second.  This is very relevant for anyone who is suffering from paper losses. When companies restructure their debt, or countries must be bailed out, bondholders lose money. After the Greek bond crisis in 2011, MF Global was forced to take 1/3 of the principle it had invested. That put MF Global out of business. (There’s a Wiki page on this.) How long is the term on your holdings? Will you be alive when the company (or country) has to pay you back? What are the odds that the bond will be part of a restructuring proceeding and you recover far less than you invested? Orange County declared bankruptcy in 1994, while cities like Stockton and Detroit did in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Is the coupon illiquid because sophisticated investors already know that the term is too long and the creditworthiness is too low? These are just some of the ways that we can lose money in a conservative portfolio. Those pesky paper losses are far more problematic than most of us are being told – and few of us are warned before we are sold into these risky assets (which we might be told are conservative). We can’t hold a bond to term if the company goes bankrupt, and we can’t sell it to someone else if there are no buyers. With paper losses, our wealth plunges and our FICO score sinks because our debt to assets ratio is no longer attractive. If a better investment opportunity comes along (lower risk and higher yield), we won’t be able to take advantage of it. (Most people don’t buy low because they can’t.) So, how can we earn income in a Debt World without paper losses, risk or illiquid holdings? Here are the things we will cover in this blog. Why Conservative Plans Are Not Conservative What the Broker/Salesman Might Not Be Disclosing Should You Buy into the Bond Selloff? High Yield in a Debt World Misleading “Expert” Salesmen, Blogs and Webinars And here is more information on each point Why Conservative Plans Are Not Conservative A person who is risk-averse to stocks recently asked me for an unbiased second opinion. He had been told that he was avoiding the losses of stocks from the pandemic, while earning 5 to 10% income on his investments. The broker/salesman had misinformed him because stocks have been on fire, with gains of 24% in 2023 and 23% in 2024. As you can see in the chart at the top of this blog, the 10-year returns of large cap stocks (including the losses in 2022), are 13.1%. The Magnificent 7 companies (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla) doubled in 2023 and led market gains in 2024. Meanwhile, long-term bonds and many bond funds have lost value (money) over that period. 2022 was a terrible year for bonds, when long-term government bonds lost -26%. (Remember that 5 banks failed in early 2023.) Things haven’t improved measurably for fixed income.  Saying that this client was earning 5-10% yield on his bonds was excluding the fact that he had paper losses, which reduced the performance to under 2%. One of his holdings was a junk bond with a term of over 50 years. The investor had lost money the moment he purchased the bonds, and, as they were illiquid, it was questionable whether or not he could exit the high-risk investment and get a better, more protected return. What the Broker/Salesman Might Not Be Disclosing Another client was sold into multiple annuities without being informed that the insurance company who sells them is not FDIC-insured, nor that up to 9% of their money would be lost the moment they purchased the annuity. They were not told about surrender fees prior to owning. Instead, they were told that there was no way they could lose money. Surrender fees are paper losses, too, that you have to earn back over up to 10 years. If the financial advisor can buy and sell without consulting us, we might be sold into whatever their boss (brokerage) is telling them to sell. And any commission-based broker/salesman is going to be tempted when the commission is higher, as is the case with annuities and private placements. 6% commission on $250,000 is $15,000 to the broker/salesman. Be sure to read, “They Trusted Him. Now He Doesn’t Return Calls.” Should You Buy into the Bond Selloff? Another troublesome development is the funds that are flowing out of bonds. If you look at the liquidity chart below, you’ll see that short-term bonds are very liquid, as are S&P 500 stocks and gold. On the other hand, corporate stocks, even investment grade, along with Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks are not very liquid. (The same is true for U.K. gilts and German Bunds).  I recently read an article where the writer was encouraging people to go on the buy side of this trend. The writer noted that when interest rates get cut, bonds benefit, which is true in a normal world, but is ignoring the risks of a Debt World. The greatest risks to loaning money in a Debt World are duration and credit risk. While interest rate cuts help a little bit, they don’t eliminate those danger zones. Interest rates were cut to zero in 2008, and that didn’t prevent the bankruptcies of Stockton and Detroit, the liquidation of Washington Mutual, or the debt restructurings of General Motors and Chrysler.  Par Yield Rates. Source: Treasury.gov Additionally, at 4.5%, we’re not paid to take on the risk. We get paid almost the same amount for short-term, creditworthy, and more liquid fixed-income products than we do for long-term, illiquid, negative-yielding assets. High Yield in a Debt World Have you been approached by someone telling you that you can earn double what the current climate offers? I recently came upon a YouTube advertisement where the CEO of a brand-new company was offering 9-13% annual yield. Remember that this is more likely a red flag, then an opportunity. If it sounds too good to be true it often is. High-yield is quite risky in the world where we’re seeing so many bankruptcies, which is why high-yield is referred to as junk. The commodity behind the investment that this person was offering has a very volatile price history. We have to ask ourselves, “If BBB corporations can still borrow at under 6%, why am I being offered 13%?” Misleading “Expert” Salesmen, Blogs and Webinars The CEO mentioned above who is offering 9-13% yield has no prior experience in finance. He is an engineer by trade. The company has only been around since 2022. Engineers are not trained in capital markets. Their expertise lies elsewhere. Grade your guru before listening to anything s/he says, and certainly before watching her YouTube pitch. Another misleading sales tactic is that investors are being advised that when the corporate share price goes down, the yield goes up. While this is true, there are problems with this concept (such as Detroit, GM, Stockton, Silicon Valley Bank and many commercial real estate REITs). The yield does not go up enough to cover a plunge in share price. The second is that when the price goes down and the company is really getting into trouble, the first thing they do is cut the dividend. When that happens, the share price will plunge even further before investors can sell. (It’s called a gap down.) We’ve seen that in many high-profile corporations, including General Electric in 2017. Prior to General Electric’s dividend cut and share price plunge, the company had been one of the Dividend Aristocrats on Wall Street. (Click to access the blog I wrote in Nov. of 2017.) FYI: I had been warning about GE in my books, retreats and blogs for years before the dividend cut. The company was one of the most egregious at borrowing and was a poster child for the mantra, “The higher the dividend, the higher the risk.” FYI, that is another problem of sales pitches. They come up with sexy names like Dividend Aristocrats to seduce investors, even if the truth is far afield of the name. A better not-so-sexy characterization to remember is that we live in a Debt World, with leverage that is unprecedented in history – far above what it was in the Great Recession. Even today, the long-term debt to equity at GE is 106% (very high).  Bottom line Insurance companies and homeowners are learning the true risk and cost of natural disasters with all of the catastrophes of late. Bond owners are now feeling the paper cuts of loaning money to heavily indebted corporations for 30, and sometimes even 100 years. In an increasingly risky world, it pays to be informed and to be the boss of our money and future. We must understand the danger before we make the purchase, otherwise we jeopardize being a day late and a dollar short. How can you take ownership of your wealth plan? With regard to bonds: Keep the terms short. Keep the creditworthiness high. Consider FDIC insurance levels. Read the fine print. Diversify across banks and with Treasury bills. Have rolling maturity dates. Know the risk before signing on the dotted line and plunking down any money. We might also understand how safe income-producing hard assets that we purchase for a good price might offer the best yield in today’s Debt World. (There are some areas of interest other than just real estate and income property.) We cover what’s safe for one full day at our Financial Freedom Retreat. Join us April 25-27, 2025, online. Register by January 31, 2025, to receive the best price and a private prosperity coaching session with me personally (value: $400). Join us at our online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025 (online) and our Stock Masterclass (learn the strategies that earned me the ranking of #1 stock picker) on May 3, 2025. If you'd like a life-changing adventure of a lifetime, be our guest at a royal manor house in Cornwall, England, March 7-14, 2025. Only one room is still available. Call 310-430-2397 or email [email protected] to learn more. Learn how to: * Invest in hot industries, such as Nvidia and artificial intelligence, * Hedge against a weaker dollar, * Invest and compound your gains, * Green your retirement plan, * Easy and efficacious nest egg strategies, * Get hot and diversified (including in artificial intelligence and EVs), * Evaluate stocks, * Keep an age-appropriate amount safe, and, * Know what's safe in a Debt World. You'll even discover how to save thousands annually with smarter big-ticket choices. Yes, it's a complete money makeover. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more and register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register with friends and family to receive the best price. "Ten minutes into the first day I was already much smarter about investing than I ever thought I would be in my life and I knew I was in exactly the right place at this retreat. I am amazed at how EASY and FUN it is to make my money work for me and those I love. I think this kind of information should be compulsory in schools. I wish I'd learned this sooner." CM If you’d like an unbiased 2nd opinion on your current wealth plan, email [email protected] for pricing and information.  Join us for our Online Spring Financial Freedom Retreat April 25-27, 2025. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by Jan. 31, 2025, to receive the best price and a complimentary 50-minute private prosperity coaching session (value $400). Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details.  Join us for our Restormel Royal Immersive Adventure Retreat. March 12-19, 2027. Email [email protected] to learn more. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details. Register now. There are only 9 rooms available. This retreat includes an all-access pass to all of our online training for a full year for two, and three 50-minute private, prosperity coaching sessions. Much more affordable than you might think. Email [email protected] to learn more. (2025 is sold out.)  Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of The ABCs of Money and The Power of 8 Billion: It's Up to Us, and is the co-creator of the Earth Gratitude Project. She has been ranked as a No. 1 stock picker, above over 835 A-list pundits, by an independent tracking agency (TipsTraders). Her book The ABCs of Money remained at or near the #1 Investing Basics e-book on Amazon for over 3 years (in its vertical), with over 120,000 downloads and a mean 5-star ranking. The 6th edition of The ABCs of Money and the 2nd edition of Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is are the most recent releases of these books. Follow her on Instagram. Natalie Pace's easy as a pie chart nest egg strategies earned gains in the last two recessions and have outperformed the bull markets in between. That is why her Investor Educational Retreats, books and private coaching are enthusiastically recommended by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary S. Becker, TD AMERITRADE chairman Joe Moglia, Kay Koplovitz and many Main Street investors who have transformed their lives using her Thrive Budget and investing strategies. Click to view a video testimonial from Nilo Bolden. Check out Natalie Pace's Substack podcast on Apple and Spotify. Watch videoconferences and webinars on Youtube. Other Blogs of Interest 2025 Investor IQ Test. 2025 Investor IQ Test Answers. Apple iPhone Sales Plunge in China. Indonesia: Rich in Nickel with Ambitions of Becoming an EV Battery Hub. RoboTaxis. AI. The Magnificent 7. Charitable Giving. Nonprofits that are Worthy of Supporting. The DJIA Plunged 1100 Points After the Dec. 2024 FOMC Meeting. Why Are So Many Safe Investments Losing Money? A Bargain-Priced AI Company. Canadian, Australian and U.S. Banks. Are Any of Them Safe? Ireland. Rich in Technology, Biotechnology and Agribusiness. Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sweepstakes. Robo Investing and AI. No, They are Not Foolproof. Stocks Soar as Nvidia Joins the DJIA. Copper. Peru ETF Outperforms the S&P500. 4 Ways to Celebrate World Sustainability Day, Oct. 30, 2024. Will There be a Santa Rally or will the Election Ruin Everything? The Chips are Down. ASML, Intel and Super Micro Computer Plunge. Is Nvidia Next. Will Insurance Companies & Homeowners Weather the Hurricanes? 9 Money Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Housing & Budgeting Solutions. Will Boeing Be Booted Out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average? Arkansas Sues Temu for Data Theft. We Must Be the Boss of Our Money. Why? Oil Prices Tumble. Why? Sweepstakes for the Release of The ABCs of Money. 6th Edition. Should You Go Conservative or Aggressive? Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Plastic Clothing. Atacama Desert Waste Dumps. Can Crowdstrike Recover from its Colossal Catastrophe? Featuring a Cybersecurity Overview. Fintechs and Brokerages that Fail are Not FDIC-Insured. Stocks Keep Hitting New Highs. Are You Thinking "Capture Gains?" 5 Green Tips for Clean Beaches Week. Nio Sales Expected to More Than Double in 2Q 2024. So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Retiring Soon? Start Planning Now. 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test. May is National Bike Month. Paris and Amsterdam are the Stars. Vacations that Color Our World Forever. 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. The Underperforming DJIA, Full of Fossil Fuels and Forever Chemicals. A Spectacular Year for 3 of the Magnificent 7. The Best ROI* (Almost 40%!) & 7 Life Hacks That Save Thousands. Portugal Eliminates Tax Advantages for Ex-Pats. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Cruise Ships Give Freebies to Investors. Should You Take the Bait? Should You Take a Cruise? Bonds. Banks. The Treacherous Landscape of Keeping Our Money Safe. 7 Rules of Investing 13 Lifestyle Choices to Reduce Waste, Pollution & CO2 & Save a Boatload of Dough. China Bans Apple 11-Point Green Checklist for Schools. 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Fiat. Crypto. Gold. BRICS. Real Estate. Alternative Investments. BRICS Currency. Will the Dollar Become Extinct? Are There Any Safe, Green Banks? 7 Ways to Stash Your Cash Now. Lessons from the Silicon Valley Bank Failure. Which Countries Offer the Highest Yield for the Lowest Risk? Why We Are Underweighting Banks and the Financial Industry. Save Thousands Annually With Smarter Energy Choices Is Your FDIC-Insured Cash Really Safe? Money Market Funds, FDIC, SIPC: Are Any of Them Safe? My 24-Year-Old is Itching to Buy a Condo. Should I Help Him? The 12-Step Guide to Successful Investing. The Bank Bail-in Plan on Your Dime. Important Disclaimers Please note: Natalie Pace does not act or operate like a broker. She reports on financial news, and is one of the most trusted sources of financial literacy, education and forensic analysis in the world. Natalie Pace educates and informs individual investors to give investors a competitive edge in their personal decision-making. Any publicly traded companies or funds mentioned by Natalie Pace are not intended to be buy or sell recommendations. ALWAYS do your research and consult an experienced, reputable financial professional before buying or selling any security, and consider your long-term goals and strategies. Investors should NOT be all in on any asset class or individual stocks. Your retirement plan should reflect a diversified strategy, which has been designed with the assistance of a financial professional who is familiar with your goals, risk tolerance, tax needs and more. The "trading" portion of your portfolio should be a very small part of your investment strategy, and the amount of money you invest into individual companies should never be greater than your experience, wisdom, knowledge and patience. Information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. However, NataliePace.com does not warrant its completeness or accuracy. Opinions constitute our judgment as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument. |
AuthorNatalie Pace is the co-creator of the Earth Gratitude Project and the author of The Power of 8 Billion: It's Up to Us, The ABCs of Money, The ABCs of Money for College, The Gratitude Game and Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is. She is a repeat guest & speaker on national news shows and stages. She has been ranked the No. 1 stock picker, above over 830 A-list pundits, by an independent tracking agency, and has been saving homes and nest eggs since 1999. Archives
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