Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Atacama Desert Clothing Waste Dunes. That Star-Studded Mumbai Wedding.22/7/2024 Fast Fashion. Fossil Fuels. Atacama Desert Clothing Waste Dunes. That Star-Studded Mumbai Wedding. The Circle of Waste, Plastic, Oil, Exploited Labor, Stolen Designs, CO2 & Billionaires Behind Those Fun Apps and Brands. Guess who is the number one exporter of fashion these days? Hint: it’s not France or Italy, the couture designers of the world. It’s the hottest new app, with ads splashed all over Instagram and TikTok: Temu. Temu ranks at the top of downloads in apps for both Android and iPhone. It is the fastest growing fashion brand with a revenue jump of 131% year over year in the most recent quarter. The company is so hot that if it weren’t so problematic in terms of exploitation, questionable labor practices, pollution, toxic waste, intellectual property violations, overproduction, plastic clothing, and being based in China, it might qualify as the hottest company of the year. If you would like a Fast Fashion stock report card, email [email protected]. China Based PDD Holdings is the parent company of Temu, symbol: PDD on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange. The company lists itself as a Dublin and Shanghai based company, but it is clearly a Chinese company, with an all-Asian C-Suite. The Arkansas Attorney General refers to the executives and board directors as “former Chinese Communist Party officials.” Temu is being sued and accused by Arkansas for pretending to be an e-commerce platform, while actually operating malware and spyware. This is key for investors to know because Chinese stocks have been very volatile, and many have seen their share price plummet with little hope of recovery. Fast fashion restrictions are being imposed or lobbied for in France, Ireland (oddly), Australia, the U.K., and the European Union. Former Wall Street darlings like Alibaba are trading at all time lows. China is ranked near the bottom of the Index of Economic Freedom, and is considered repressed by investors. Singapore is at the top, followed by Switzerland, Ireland and Taiwan. (Hong Kong used to be #1.) As you can see in the chart below, PDD’s share prices are very volatile. Bad news can travel fast, and there are plenty of reasons why Temu might go viral for all the wrong reasons, as SHEIN did before it. (Shein was set for a U.S. IPO, which looks to be abandoned.) If you Google “Worst Fast Fashion Brands” you’ll see Temu at the top of many lists. So be careful taking the bait on the explosive growth, or that the company is based in Ireland. If it follows the trajectory of Alibaba, it could sink back to where it started, at under $20/share. Cheap, Plastic Clothes, Made in Asia and Sold to U.S. and EU Consumers. Why are SHEIN and Temu, along with Zara, H&M, and other fast fashion brands, receiving negative publicity these days? If you haven’t already seen the clothing waste dunes in Chile’s Atacama Desert, that’s a Google search that is worth your time. According to a report from the U.N.’s Economic Commissions for Europe, “Several tens of thousands of tons of textile waste cover around 300 hectares, some of which are burned on-site. Most clothes are made of synthetic fibres, and their incineration releases heavy metals, acid gases, particulates, and dioxins, harming the health of people nearby and damaging the local environment.” Earth.org reports that 92 million tons of waste is dumped annually from the 100 billion garments produced each year. Fast fashion brands are purchasing oil-based yarn (fossil fuels), overproducing cheap, polyester (made from oil) clothes, ripping off designs, selling the exploited goods to U.S., European and other worldwide consumers on their bargain apps, and then dumping whatever doesn’t get sold. Ads bait customers with offers of shoes, dresses, pants and tops at under $15. The questions are, “Are we mindful of the true cost of cheap polyester clothing? Are we aware of which companies and billionaires are getting rich on our fast fashion purchases? Will we rethink our choices, and spread the word?” Asia’s Richest Man: Over the past month, my social media has been blowing up with images of Asia’s richest man’s youngest son’s Indian wedding. Makesh Ambani, worth $120.3 billion, is the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, an Indian oil/gas/polyester yarn+ conglomerate. Why would a polyester yarn manufacturer (what Reliance started out as) expand into owning oil and gas? Because over half of each barrel of oil is used to make plastic, polyester, vinyl, rubber, asphalt and other petroleum-based products that permeate every aspect of our lives. How many of us are aware that we wear shoes and clothes that are basically made of oil? Washing polyester clothing leaches plastic fibers into our water and soil, and back into our bodies. (Please purchase and wear natural fibers, and boycott polyester.) Makesh’s son, Anant Ambani, is in charge of Reliance’s renewable and green energy. Part of the way that company intends to become Net Carbon Zero by 2035 is by “maximizing [the] crude [oil] to chemicals conversion” (source: Reliance website). Crude to chemicals is exactly the way that polyester yarn is made. Reliance is the top producer of polyester yarn in the world (according to their website). When we understand the circular oil/shipping/fiber/sweatshop/nurdle/Atacama waste dunes of polyester it is harder to justify those cheap yoga pants. It’s easier to see the greenwashing in the job description of Anant. Our spending is the catalyst that sparks the cycle, while the 11th richest man in the world – Makesh Ambani – reaps the benefits. Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Rihanna all performed at various events for the Ambani wedding. Kim Kardashian and Nick Jonas attended some ceremonies. Everyone was dressed to the nines. SKIMS is a fashion brand with a lot of petroleum-based fabrics. It’s likely that a lot of these celebrities took private planes. (It would take most of us 600 years of living to equal the annual CO2 footprint of many of these jet-set celebrities. Click to learn more.) Deckers Outdoor Corp. and Allbirds More and more fashion designers are raising awareness on why polyester, even recycled, is so harmful to our own health, as well as the planet. Deckers Brands has many natural fiber products, as does Allbirds. Ugg, a Decker’s brand, prides itself on making shoes that are built to last. (It’s hard to imagine a pair of Uggs in the waste piles in Chile.) Clothing companies like MATE and PACT sell organic cotton activewear for affordable prices. Green designers are leaning into cotton, cashmere, wool, silk, hemp, linen, modal and viscose, and eschewing polyester. Buying less and using things longer are key to sustainability, in addition to boycotting polyester. Paying more for something that lasts ten times longer is more affordable in every way imaginable. While Deckers is nowhere near Temu’s explosive revenue growth, at just 21.25%, having a healthy, steady business model built on quality and durability has taken the company’s share price to new heights – as has a new listing on the S&P500 (as of 3.18.2024). Deckers is worth 8 times more today than it was in March 2020. (Be careful buying high, as the P/E is almost 30.) Allbirds gets great reviews from customers. (I love my weather-resistant sneakers.) However, the stock is trading below a dollar. The company has had to close stores and revenue is down -27.64% year over year. FYI: Crocs are made from ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), a polymer that comes from crude oil. If you would like a Deckers Outdoor+ stock report card, email [email protected]. Data Risks of Chinese Apps I mentioned the Arkansas lawsuit against Temu above, where Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin released a statement writing, “Though it is known as an e-commerce platform, Temu is functionally malware and spyware.” Politicians warn us that it is dangerous to give all of our personal information, including our credit card and bank accounts, to Chinese-based companies like TikTok, SHEIN and Temu. Of course, U.S. based companies are mining our data for profit, too. However, we’ve seen the Chinese government crack down on Alibaba and Jack Ma in ways that it’s hard to imagine in the Western World. Ma criticized the Chinese government just days before the Alibaba fintech spinoff Ant Group was set for an IPO. The IPO was canned. Ma ended up losing more than half of his wealth. (He’s still worth $25 billion, according to Forbes.) Ma stepped out of the public arena, and has kept a low profile since then. No matter where we stand on this debate, it’s better if we’re conscious of whom we are giving our personal information to, and what the ramifications of that might be, beyond that cute $10 polyester dress. Intellectual Property Rights Etsy designers have sued Shein and complain about Temu for stealing their work. Temu’s spokespersons say they take these allegations seriously, and remove products that violate intellectual property rights. However, designers point out that the designs can then show up on another vendor’s page of the Temu platform. No one is getting paid much to design a $5 t-shirt. Plastic-Free July July is devoted to plastic-free awareness. How many of us knew that so many of our clothes and shoes are all made from oil (as plastic is)? Are you an influencer? Can you help spread the word? Please be sure to use the hashtag #EarthGratitude. Also, if you haven’t read and reviewed my book, The Power of 8 Billion: It’s Up to Us, please do! Bottom Line Cheap polyester clothing is harmful all up and down the supply chain, and makes oil, gas and polyester yarn billionaires rich. Recycling isn’t the cure. Refusing is. Be careful jumping into the stock of hot new fast fashion brands. The share prices are volatile, and the business model is on the wrong side of history. Join us at our online Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. 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] to register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register by July 31, 2024 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 Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by July 31, 2024 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. There is very limited availability. Register by August 15, 2024 to ensure that you get the exact room you want. (There may not be an opportunity to register after August 15, 2024.) 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. ![]() Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of 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 5th 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 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?" Nvidia Volatility. Salesforce Drops. Election Years With Negative Yield Curves = ?. 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... Artificial Intelligence and Crypto Scam Alert by the SEC. Netflix Evicts Unpaid Viewers. Empty Theaters. 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. AI, Gold & Copper are on Fire. Sunpower Doubled. Sell in May and Go Away? What About the Election? Vacations that Color Our World Forever. The Magnificent 7 Drop to the Fantastic 5 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? The Reddit IPO. Meme Stock or Snap Land? Tesla's Factory in Germany Taken Offline by Activists. Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Beyond Meat's Shares Surge. Quaker Oats' Pesticide Problem. Stocks are Flying High. Why Aren't Mine? Cut Your Tax Bill in Half. 9 Tips. Celebrity Jet CO2. Green Washing. The Facts. Some Solutions. Copper: Essential to the Clean Energy Transition. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Are Amazon, Square and Other Tech Companies Ripping Us Off? Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. Don't Reach for Yield. Closed-End Funds. 2024 Investor IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Investor IQ Test. Apple's Woes Drag Down the Dow. The Winners & Losers of 2023. Ozempic, Magnificent 7 & Beyond. 2024 Crystal Ball. 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. Earn $50,000 or More in Interest. Safely. Finally. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Solutions for Unaffordable Housing. 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. Artificial Intelligence and Nvidia's Blockbuster Earnings Report Biotech in a Post-Pandemic World 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. What Happened to Cannabis? Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Lithium. Essential to EV Life. 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. Securities, financial instruments or strategies mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors.
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Can Crowdstrike Recover from its Colossal Catastrophe? Or, the reason to pick a cybersecurity ETF over investing in an individual company. Or, how happy Apple and their customers are today… (Though it’s not a good idea to gloat publicly.) Crowdstrike is having a pretty rough day. It’s difficult to be responsible for a software update that takes down Microsoft users worldwide, affecting everything from airlines to healthcare, emergency centers, shipping and finance. Flights have been canceled. Banking access has been troubled. Broadcasters couldn’t go on air. Not surprisingly, Crowdstrike’s stock opened $40 lower this morning, after an overnight -11% gap down. Microsoft lost almost 1%. Apple was steady, as was the iShares Cybersecurity EFT IHAK. The real question now is, “Can Crowdstrike recover from this colossal catastrophe?” A Glitch, Not a Hack One of the most important distinctions here is that looks like a glitch and not a hack. (That’s what Crowdstrike and Microsoft are claiming.) That’s important because a glitch can be fixed. The damage is limited to a known scope. Companies and agencies won’t have to worry about breached access or data, or malware. Some businesses, including banks and emergency service centers, have reported that they have already implemented the repair. While there will continue to be a lot of stern conversations and heated debates, both on-air and in boardrooms, the nature of cybersecurity as a 24/7 constant vigilance business, means glitches will happen. Up and down the supply chain, CTOs will be discussing an extra layer of protection to run checks on new software before it is widely distributed. Soon, there will be a refocusing of the mainstream conversation to frame it clearly as a fixed glitch rather than a breach or hack. And, the nature of the news cycle itself means that the story could easily disappear over the weekend. If the issue is a hack, that's going to be a much bigger problem. The AT&T & Ticketmaster Data Breaches: A Snowflake Crisis The data breaches at AT&T and Ticketmaster have created a crisis at another cybersecurity company, Snowflake. According to TechCrunch, Snowflake itself was attacked in one of the biggest breaches of the year, with data stolen from a number of its corporate customers, including AT&T, Ticketmaster, and others. Not surprisingly, Snowflake is one of the few cybersecurity companies that is trading close to its 5-year low. Although Crowdstrike took an 11% hit on Friday, July 19, 2024, shares are still trading at $305/share. Crowdstrike shares hit almost $400 a share on July 5th, and have doubled over the past year. Even with the pullback of Friday, shares are very expensive. A Leading Cybersecurity Company Crowdstrike is a leading cybersecurity company. As you can see in the chart below, it is ranked as a leader by the Forrester Wave, ahead of Palo Alto Networks, IBM and Cisco. Having Microsoft as your customer is no small feat. Year-over-year revenue growth was 33% in the first quarter of 2024 – another measure of how Crowdstrike is leading the industry. With an $86 billion market cap, this large cap company should be able to weather this storm, particularly if the story fades by Monday. If it were happening to a smaller company that would be more problematic. Affected? Not Affected? Keep It to Yourself. Whether you are a corporation or an individual, be careful complaining about this bug. Criminals are already calling up customers, pretending to be from Crowdstrike, in order to gain access to their computers, or to convince them to download malicious programs that they claim will fix the problem. You just don’t want bad actors targeting you, or to know whether or not you have a Windows product or a Mac product. If the glitch didn’t affect you, consider yourself lucky but remember that, “Loose lips sink ships.” ETFs Snowflake was a popular cybersecurity company because it is very famously owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire purchased shares in the roadshow at $120/share. The company is now only worth about $130 a share. It is trading very far below its IPO and it’s high of $354, which was hit on October 29, 2021. Snowflake’s troubles and today’s Crowdstrike crisis are reminders that, for most Main Street investors, it’s a better idea to minimize our risk by having an exchange-traded fund that is targeted for the industry we might be interested in, rather than investing in a hot stock. Ever since the meme stock phase, we have been seeing epic “shoot the moon” performance, followed by crash landing wipeouts. Wall Street has proven to be a very volatile marketplace over the past five years. That can be smoothed out quite a bit with an exchange-traded fund, treated as a hot slice in our nest egg pie chart system. Rebalancing once, twice or three times a year is also an important strategy. Both are core curriculum at our Financial Freedom Retreats. Bottom Line Crowdstrike will likely weather this unfortunate worldwide calamity, largely because it is looking more like a glitch and not a hack, because cybersecurity remains a top priority for all all of us, because cybersecurity companies have limited liability built into their contracts, and because the company’s leadership position in cybersecurity is very strong. In the short term, of course, the stock can take a hit, and could go lower. Shares are rather expensive, even with the 11% sell-off of today, which is another reason to consider switching over to a cybersecurity ETF. The iShares IHAK cybersecurity ETF is trading close to a 5-year high, as well. For those who have had this exchange-traded fund for a while, now might be a great time to capture gains, while trimming back the slice to an age-appropriate percentage. If you are just now starting out in a cybersecurity targeted fund, consider dollar-cost averaging. If you’d like an updated Cybersecurity Stock Report Card, email [email protected]. Join us at our online Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. 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] to register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register by July 31, 2024 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 Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by July 31, 2024 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. There is very limited availability. Register by August 15, 2024 to ensure that you get the exact room you want. (There may not be an opportunity to register after August 15, 2024.) 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. ![]() Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of 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 5th 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 Fintechs and Brokerages that Fail are Not FDIC-Insured. Stocks Keep Hitting New Highs. Are You Thinking "Capture Gains?" Nvidia Volatility. Salesforce Drops. Election Years With Negative Yield Curves = ?. 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... Artificial Intelligence and Crypto Scam Alert by the SEC. Netflix Evicts Unpaid Viewers. Empty Theaters. 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. AI, Gold & Copper are on Fire. Sunpower Doubled. Sell in May and Go Away? What About the Election? Vacations that Color Our World Forever. The Magnificent 7 Drop to the Fantastic 5 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? The Reddit IPO. Meme Stock or Snap Land? Tesla's Factory in Germany Taken Offline by Activists. Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Beyond Meat's Shares Surge. Quaker Oats' Pesticide Problem. Stocks are Flying High. Why Aren't Mine? Cut Your Tax Bill in Half. 9 Tips. Celebrity Jet CO2. Green Washing. The Facts. Some Solutions. Copper: Essential to the Clean Energy Transition. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Are Amazon, Square and Other Tech Companies Ripping Us Off? Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. Don't Reach for Yield. Closed-End Funds. 2024 Investor IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Investor IQ Test. Apple's Woes Drag Down the Dow. The Winners & Losers of 2023. Ozempic, Magnificent 7 & Beyond. 2024 Crystal Ball. 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. Earn $50,000 or More in Interest. Safely. Finally. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Solutions for Unaffordable Housing. 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. Artificial Intelligence and Nvidia's Blockbuster Earnings Report Biotech in a Post-Pandemic World 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. What Happened to Cannabis? Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Lithium. Essential to EV Life. 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. Securities, financial instruments or strategies mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors. Brokerages that Fail are not FDIC-Insured. Neither are Fintechs. Synapse failed leaving frozen funds at Evolve Bank, Synapse and Yotta. The Synapse Fintech Bankruptcy has depositors complaining of frozen funds at Evolve Bank, Synapse and Yotta. According to Techcrunch, $160 million in funds remain frozen, while there appears to be an $85 million shortfall between Synapse’s partner banks and what depositors are owed (source: Reuters). The heart of this matter is something we've been warning about for years. FDIC insurance kicks in when banks fail, but not when brokerages do. We’ve seen more than a few cases where depositors were told they were FDIC-insured, only to discover this loophole (sinkhole), including crypto brokerage Voyager Digital, fintechs Synapse and Yotta, and the crypto exchange FTX. Even technology companies that seem like banks, including Paypal and Square (Block Inc.), are using pass-through deposits and are not FDIC-insured. When Voyager Digital failed, the FDIC sent the company a cease-and-desist order for making false claims. More and more non-banks are receiving these notices. So, is your cash FDIC-insured? Be sure to read the blogs below to learn about the giant sinkholes (not just a loophole) we are exposed to when a brokerage promises FDIC-coverage, and then has to file for bankruptcy. Smaller, younger firms, which many fintechs tend to be, are more vulnerable to a liquidity crisis and restructuring or liquidation. These firms also employ gamification and other appealing marketing campaigns to attract deposits, including those promises of FDIC coverage. Is Your FDIC-Insured Cash Really Safe? Better Read the Fine Print. https://www.nataliepace.com/blog/is-your-fdic-insured-cash-really-safe-better-double-check#/ Cash held at a brokerage does have some protection through the SIPC (up to $250,000). (The SIPC cash insurance level is not the lofty cash sweep millions that many of these brokerages advertise.) Further, the solution isn't necessarily to opt for a Money Market Fund. MMFs aren’t FDIC-insured either. Neither are annuities or target-date retirement funds. Getting a safe 5% yield is so tricky these days that we spend a full day on the topic at our Financial Freedom Retreat. (There are some options available.) Money market funds were in freefall in March of 2020. The Feds stepped in with a rescue plan. However, in the event the investors withdraw en masse going forward, there can be liquidity fees imposed. (You could be charged to withdraw your money.) In the event of a fund liquidation, there will be a suspension of redemptions. Here’s another blog that spells out the differences between all of these cash options. Money Market Funds vs. FDIC & SIPC. Are Any of Them Safe? https://www.nataliepace.com/blog/money-market-funds-vs-fdic-and-sipc-are-any-of-them-safe#/ Fintechs Claiming FDIC-Insurance Chime, Block Cash, Robinhood, Quickbooks and more all claim that deposits are FDIC-insured. They entice customers in with good interest rates, access to crypto and/or games and lotteries. It is only in the fine-print where you learn of the sinkhole. What’s even more heartbreaking is that these low-fee brokerage and cash apps cater to middle and lower income and less-sophisticated customers, who might be relying on the fun, splashy marketing claims without really understanding the buried legalese. The complaints of customers at Evolve Bank, Synapse and Yotta include people who are having to borrow to make mortgage payments. Whether we are interested in newer platforms, such as Wealthfront (2016), Acorns, NerdWallet, Stash, eToro, or SoFi, or more established ones (Paypal, Venmo, Cash App), it’s important to understand that these are not banks and as such are not FDIC-insured, if they fail. Banks So, what is your best protection? Do your banking at creditworthy FDIC-insured banks and observe the FDIC insurance limitations. There are a lot of banks in the U.S. that are at the lowest rung of investment grade. It’s also important to remember that First Republic Bank was rated A- the week before it began its process of being rescued. Brokerages Hold your retirement and brokerage accounts at a creditworthy brokerage. Place a higher priority on a large brokerage with a good rating over a smaller one that has fun games. If the brokerage is publicly traded, you can even look into the liquidity and profitability. At minimum, it’s a good idea to check the company’s credit rating and track record. As two examples:
It’s also important to buy our funds from creditworthy fund companies. Avoid doing searches for crypto funds and investing with a company that you haven’t heard of before. Those companies can get into trouble, and will impose unexpected charges and fees without warning. (Their ability to do this is included in the fine print.) Email [email protected] if you’d like updated Brokerage and Fintech Stock Report Cards. How Can We Make Sure Our Cash is Safe? Getting safe in today’s world is tricky. We have to have cash and liquidity in order to pay bills, eat and stay afloat with life’s many expensive challenges. We need some cash in our retirement accounts to keep our wealth plan age-appropriate and properly diversified. Earning a 5% yield on our treasure trove requires, at minimum:
Selling businesses or real estate to get a wad of cash is risky because:
Bottom Line We have to have some liquidity. Most of us pay our bills in our country’s currency. Crypto isn’t wildly accepted yet, and you can’t really have a currency that swings between a value of $15,000 and $74,000, as Bitcoin has over the past three years. We’d like to earn 5% yield. Both of those are tricky, but doable if we know how to avoid sinkholes, phishers, the taxman, false promises, sales, and marketing gimmicks, etc. That requires learning more life math. However, it’s the only way to be the boss of our money and design a plan that works in today’s Debt World. Some of the best ways of earning a safe yield require rethinking return on investment to include bills that we can toss out the window, which can amount to savings of thousands (or tens of thousands or more) annually. There are a lot more of these options than most of us are aware of. We spend one full day on What’s Safe? at our Financial Freedom Retreat. Join us! I’ll also be updating the What’s Safe section of The ABCs of Money 6th edition in the coming months, so keep an eye out for that release. Join us at our online Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. 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] to register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register by July 31, 2024 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 Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by July 31, 2024 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. There is very limited availability. Register by August 15, 2024 to ensure that you get the exact room you want. (There may not be an opportunity to register after August 15, 2024.) 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. ![]() Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of 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 5th 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 Stocks Keep Hitting New Highs. Are You Thinking "Capture Gains?" Nvidia Volatility. Salesforce Drops. Election Years With Negative Yield Curves = ?. 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... Artificial Intelligence and Crypto Scam Alert by the SEC. Netflix Evicts Unpaid Viewers. Empty Theaters. 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. AI, Gold & Copper are on Fire. Sunpower Doubled. Sell in May and Go Away? What About the Election? Vacations that Color Our World Forever. The Magnificent 7 Drop to the Fantastic 5 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? The Reddit IPO. Meme Stock or Snap Land? Tesla's Factory in Germany Taken Offline by Activists. Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Beyond Meat's Shares Surge. Quaker Oats' Pesticide Problem. Stocks are Flying High. Why Aren't Mine? Cut Your Tax Bill in Half. 9 Tips. Celebrity Jet CO2. Green Washing. The Facts. Some Solutions. Copper: Essential to the Clean Energy Transition. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Are Amazon, Square and Other Tech Companies Ripping Us Off? Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. Don't Reach for Yield. Closed-End Funds. 2024 Investor IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Investor IQ Test. Apple's Woes Drag Down the Dow. The Winners & Losers of 2023. Ozempic, Magnificent 7 & Beyond. 2024 Crystal Ball. 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. Earn $50,000 or More in Interest. Safely. Finally. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Solutions for Unaffordable Housing. 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. Artificial Intelligence and Nvidia's Blockbuster Earnings Report Biotech in a Post-Pandemic World 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. What Happened to Cannabis? Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Lithium. Essential to EV Life. 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. Securities, financial instruments or strategies mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors. Stocks Keep Hitting New Highs! Are You Thinking “Capture Gains?” Wall Street keeps hitting new highs. What we’re feeling right now is a classic case of why buy low, sell high is so easy to say, and so hard to do. Everyone wants to buy Nvidia, AI and real estate today. Why weren’t we feeling that way in March of 2009, when everything was on sale? Because in the depths of a recession, we are worried that things will only get worse. Oftentimes, we’ve lost so much money that we can’t buy low. If we shouldn’t let our emotions be in charge of our investing, what’s a better idea? Check out the tips below. These are part of a time-proven 21st century strategy that has worked brilliantly since 1999, through three major recessions, when most people lost more than half of their wealth. It’s important to remember that 20 million Americans lost their home in the Great Recession – and those folks felt as exuberant about their winning equity lottery tickets then as homebuyers do today. Are You Tempted to Buy High, or Excited About Capturing Gains? Know What You Own and Why Rebalance Track Record Counts Blind Faith is Expensive Practice Makes Perfect. Stick to Your Knitting. 10-Point Checklist The Inflation-Busting Thrive Budget What’s Safe in a Debt World? Should You Buy a Home Right Now? And here’s more color on each point. Are You Tempted to Buy High, or Excited About Capturing Gains? When we have employed a time-proven system through good times and rough times, we will start noticing that we’re less emotional about things. A great deal of that has to do with the fact that we are in a much better financial position than everyone around us is. When most people are distressed over their losses, we’re grateful that we kept enough safe. We have a clear head, when most people want to party until dawn. A diversified plan protects us from losses before a recession, and allows us to have fun in the bull markets. The sample pie charts that we teach people at our retreats encourage us to get a lot more diversified and protected than most managed plans are. We’ve also been encouraging people to lean into technology, and underweight the Dow Jones Industrial Average. That has paid off in spades. The Magnificent 7 doubled our money last year, whereas the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up less than 14%, far less than the S&P500's 26.3% total return. Technology is more concentrated in the NASDAQ Composite Index than in the debt-laden DJIA. The returns on Wall Street continue to be heavily concentrated in the Fantastic 5 (all technology companies). Know What You Own and Why A lot of managed plans are not performing as well as the S&P500. The reason for that is that they are underweighted in large cap growth. The Magnificent 7 (now Fantastic 5) are all very large, many of them are trillion dollar plus companies, and are categorized as growth (not value). So, if we have a plan that is geared towards value, we’re getting the Dow Jones Industrial Average. If we ask for a conservative plan, not only are we missing out on the gains of Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Nividia, we might have exposure to long-term bonds, which have lost money on the safe side of our plan, where our principal is supposed to remain intact. Long-term government bonds lost even more than stocks did in 2022. It’s very important to know exactly what we own and why, rather than just having blind faith that we are properly diversified and protected. A lot of us are being told that our losses on the safe side are just paper losses. However, how many of us are going to live another 30 or 40 years to get the principal back on our long-term bonds? Are we aware that over half of the S&P 500 is at or near junk bond status, which increases the risk that we will have to take a big haircut on the principal? There is a great deal of credit and duration risk in today’s Debt World. Sadly, if we ask for a conservative portfolio, we might be overexposed to this. The truth is in the brokerage statements. However, if we’re just listening to what we’re being told and not doublechecking the fine print, we might not be aware of it. Rebalance When stocks are hitting all-time highs, it’s a great time to rebalance our nest egg, and capture those gains. It’s never all or nothing. As I outline in my private coaching, and in our 2024 Rebalancing IQ Test blog, we want to check in once, twice or three times a year to make sure that we are still properly diversified and protected. (Assets increase and decrease in value.) Using our pie chart system is quite easy, once we learn the life math that we all should have received in high school and college. It’s a buy low, sell high plan on autopilot, which puts our emotions on the right side of the trade. We offer a Rebalancing Master Class every year. The next one should be in early 2025. Prerequisite: Financial Freedom Retreat. I offer pie chart analysis and rebalancing support with my unbiased 2nd opinion and private coaching. These strategies are outlined in my books and blogs, as well. Track Record Counts Ask your financial planner or HR person for the track record of your plan’s performance compared to the S&P500 for the last 20 years. (You want to be sure to include what happened in the Great Recession.) Most people are performing on par with the index, but about 2% lower due to fees. (If your plan is performing below that, then it’s a good idea to know why, and see if you can safely improve the performance.) If we are riding the Wall Street rollercoaster, we are very vulnerable in recessions. Most people lose more than half in 21st Century recessions, and then spend most of the bull market trying to make up losses. Even in the pandemic, the S&P 500 lost over 35% in just one month. We don’t normally print up $4.2 trillion to avoid a recession. So it’s quite important that we are properly protected and diversified before the economy weakens. There is no recession on the horizon at this point. However, economists are terrible at predicting them, and policymakers don’t admit that we are in a recession until well after most of the losses have already occurred. See the charts below, and you’ll notice that the recession wasn’t officially announced until stocks had lost 40% or more in value. Blind Faith is Expensive The truth of what we own is in our brokerage statements. However, how many of us are really reading these reports. How many of us really understand them? You might have 18 pages of holdings and are being told that you are properly diversified and protected, when what you have is mostly large cap value and long-term bonds. (I do a great deal of unbiased 2nd opinions on wealth plans, and I have yet to find one that is properly diversified and protected.) As we age, we can’t afford to lose principal. If we’re properly diversified, we’re already invested in AI and large cap technology companies. Instead of being tempted to jump in now at such a high price, we’re in a financial and emotional position to capture gains, while also continuing to profit if the prices continue rising. If we missed the party, we can dollar-cost-average in, instead of arriving drunk on expectations (buying too much at too high of a price). Practice Makes Perfect. Stick to Your Knitting So how good is your own track record? Nobody bats 1000, not even Warren Buffett. However, that’s where the pie chart system comes to our aid. Instead of going crazy and all in on crypto, gold, cannabis, or anything else that we thought was hot a few years ago, we might consider them to be a hot slice of our diversified plan (not betting the entire farm). That gamble might not be as hot as we thought it was, or it might shoot the moon and then fall to Earth again. Clean energy tripled from the bottom of the pandemic (March 23, 2020) to January 8, 2021, and is back near a 5-year low. Bitcoin was at $69,000 in late 2021, and then plunged to a value of under $16,000 in late 2022. It's under $58,000 today. In 2012, when gold and silver hit all-time highs, so many were clamoring to put every cent they had into precious metals. They were the worst performers in the decade that followed. Silver is still down -38% from its 2011 high of $49.81, though it has rallied strong this year, with gains of 30.2%. Rebalancing helps us to manage the volatility and be on the right side of the trade. When one slice of Bitcoin becomes 5 or more, it’s begging to sell high. When a slice becomes a sliver. It’s prompting us to buy low. A 10% annualized return doesn’t mean that every slice is going to earn 10% and never go down. It means that the goal is an aggregate 10% annualized. Some slices will outperform, while others might be laggards. Thomas Edison said that success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. There’s a saying that practice makes perfect. On Wall Street, they say, “Stick to your knitting.” (Don’t be influenced by the noise. Keep to the plan.) What is that plan? Act age-appropriate. Diversify. Know what's safe in a Debt World. Rebalance. These are a few of the key points. Of course, the devil is in the details. 10-Point Checklist Below is a 10-point checklist that is very useful for wealth-building. Click over to the blog where I explain many of these points in greater detail. This is also something that we teach in our Financial Freedom Retreats. The retreat is a complete money makeover. Many people report earning back the price of the retreat in the first few months in budget savings alone. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. The Inflation-Busting Thrive Budget There are so many ways that we are making billionaires rich at our own expense. Smarter choices in investing, health insurance, utilities, transportation, and housing, could mean that we stop making landlords, the taxman, the utility company, the gas station, the insurance salesman, etc. rich, and start living a rich life. There is an entire section on the Thrive Budget in my book The ABCs of Money. FYI, I’m currently updating the 6th edition, and plan to publish it within the next few months. Keep your eyes out for that. Make sure you’re always getting the most recent edition of my books by visiting https://www.nataliepace.com/#/. What’s Safe in a Debt World? We can receive a 5% yield today. However, it is tricky. We have to navigate between the heavily indebted, low credit quality, long-term bonds, and the newer issuances that pay higher yields for a shorter term (less risk), and oftentimes have higher credit quality, to boot. We spend one full day on What’s Safe? in our Financial Freedom Retreats. (The next one is Oct. 18-20, 2024. Get the best price when you register by July 31, 2024.) FYI, in the wake of the Great Recession, when interest rates dropped to zero, we were warning people not to take on the risk of long-term bonds. We weren’t getting paid unless we went into speculative status. Instead, we encouraged people to find ways to invest in real estate and income property. That paid off in spades. Getting safe in today’s world is tricky, but doable. We need to have a plan that makes sense for the next decade, not just for today. Should You Buy a Home Right Now? Survey after survey keep showing up that buyer’s remorse is rampant among post-pandemic homebuyers. According to Clever, 82% of buyers in 2023 and 2024 have regrets about their purchase. 44% have had to take on additional debt, and 43% have struggled to pay their mortgage on time. If you’re tempted to purchase a home right now, read my blog from earlier this year. There is a Real Estate section in The ABCs of Money that includes case studies of smart and not-so-wise choices made in real estate. (The 6th edition is forthcoming.) Bottom Line Can stocks and real estate prices keep going higher? Anything is possible. However, the Federal Reserve Board and FOMC are working hard to tame inflation, part of which means taming shelter inflation (the cost of buying a home is included in this). Unemployment is still quite low, however, there are signs that more layoffs could be on the horizon. The personal savings rate is at an all-time low, while consumer debt is at an all-time high. All of these problems accelerate if the economy slows down or falls into a recession. Again, if we wait for the headline that we’re in a recession, we’ll be late in protecting our wealth. If we chase gains, we could be on the wrong side of the trade. The pie chart system allows us to do both – protect our wealth and participate in hot trends. The sooner we adopt a time-proven system, the faster our life transforms. Join us at our online Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. 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] to register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register by July 31, 2024 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 Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by July 31, 2024 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. There is very limited availability. Register by August 15, 2024 to ensure that you get the exact room you want. (There may not be an opportunity to register after August 15, 2024.) 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. ![]() Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of 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 5th 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 Nvidia Volatility. Salesforce Drops. Election Years With Negative Yield Curves = ?. 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... Artificial Intelligence and Crypto Scam Alert by the SEC. Netflix Evicts Unpaid Viewers. Empty Theaters. 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. AI, Gold & Copper are on Fire. Sunpower Doubled. Sell in May and Go Away? What About the Election? Vacations that Color Our World Forever. The Magnificent 7 Drop to the Fantastic 5 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? The Reddit IPO. Meme Stock or Snap Land? Tesla's Factory in Germany Taken Offline by Activists. Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Beyond Meat's Shares Surge. Quaker Oats' Pesticide Problem. Stocks are Flying High. Why Aren't Mine? Cut Your Tax Bill in Half. 9 Tips. Celebrity Jet CO2. Green Washing. The Facts. Some Solutions. Copper: Essential to the Clean Energy Transition. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Are Amazon, Square and Other Tech Companies Ripping Us Off? Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. Don't Reach for Yield. Closed-End Funds. 2024 Investor IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Investor IQ Test. Apple's Woes Drag Down the Dow. The Winners & Losers of 2023. Ozempic, Magnificent 7 & Beyond. 2024 Crystal Ball. 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. Earn $50,000 or More in Interest. Safely. Finally. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Solutions for Unaffordable Housing. 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. Artificial Intelligence and Nvidia's Blockbuster Earnings Report Biotech in a Post-Pandemic World 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. What Happened to Cannabis? Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Lithium. Essential to EV Life. 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. Securities, financial instruments or strategies mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors. Nvidia Loses Half a Trillion, while Salesforce Drops $50 Billion. The S&P500 hit a new high on June 20, 2024. However, between June 20 and June 24, 2024, Nvidia plunged by 16%, over $500 billion (the value of ExxonMobil), from $3.46 trillion value to $2.8 trillion. (Nvidia is back up to $3.05 trillion.) Salesforce lost $50 billion in market cap on May 20, 2024, after reporting earnings. What lies at the heart of this volatility? Should you be worried or steadfast? How can you protect yourself from a drop, while also profiting from stocks that are roaring to new Wall Street highs? Here are the topics we’ll cover in this blog. Nvidia Loses Half a Trillion in Value SalesForce Sheds $50 Billion in Market Cap Dow Jones Industrial Average vs. NASDAQ and S&P500 Are Stock Prices Just Too High? Nvidia Loses Half a Trillion in Value On May 22, 2024, Nvidia reported revenue that was up 265% year over year. Yet in mid-June, the company lost half a trillion in market value – about twice the value of Salesforce. The future remains overwhelmingly positive for artificial intelligence and its leader, Nvidia. The company expects the June quarter’s revenue to more than double over the same quarter in 2023, from $13.51 billion to $28 billion. Results for that quarter should be announced around August 22, 2024. So, who sold, and why?
The promise of AI had a lot of Main Street investors buying when the stock split, thinking the split alone would send prices soaring. Shares are up slightly, almost 3%, since the ten-for-one stock split on June 7, 2024. However, most people who purchased after the split are underwater. After watching Nvidia shares inflate by a factor of almost 25 over the last five years, many insiders were motivated to sell high and capture gains. So, is there a better plan than buying high, hoping to sell higher? Consider dollar-cost-averaging into Nvidia or an Nvidia-rich ETF in an age-appropriate, diversified way. (This is something we teach at our Financial Freedom Retreats.) Email [email protected] if you’d like an updated Artificial Intelligence Stock Report Card. SalesForce Sheds $50 Billion in Market Cap Salesforce saw the biggest one-day drop in share price that the company had seen in the last 20 years on May 30, 2024, after announcing quarterly earnings. The company’s revenue came in at the lower end of their guidance, at $9.13 billion, but was still up 11% year over year. That’s not bad for an economy that’s only expected to grow 2.1% this year. So, why the plunge in value? Salesforce is another company that is seeing consensus insider selling in the C-Suite. Salesforce’s 46 P/E isn’t as lofty as Nvidia’s 72. However, it Is far too high for a company with low double-digit growth. Email [email protected] if you’d like an updated Salesforce/HR Technology Stock Report Card. Dow Jones Industrial Average vs. NASDAQ and S&P500 Salesforce is one of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, as is beleaguered Boeing. Nvidia is not. Nvidia is, however, listed in the S&P 500, as well as the NASDAQ Composite Index. Look at the difference of the performance of both of those indices compared to the more debt-laden Dow Jones Industrial Average. I have mentioned many times over the past year that without the outstanding performance of Nvidia and the Fantastic 5, the S&P 500 performance last year would have been under 10%, instead of the 26.3% total return. The companies in the Magnificent 7 doubled in value in 2023. All indices are not created equal. Many large growth funds are rich in technology, while value funds tend to have more Dow components. Due to the amount of debt and leverage in the U.S., combined with a lower yield, we are suggesting value replacement funds in our Sample Pie Charts. While U.S.-based, mega, multinational technology companies have higher performance, they also have higher volatility. That can be smoothed out with rebalancing and dollar-cost-averaging. Rebalancing 1-3 times a year is an important part of our wealth plan. For many years, we have also listed artificial intelligence and breakthrough technology as hot industries. Having an extra slice of the Fantastic 5 can really add performance to our portfolio, especially when done in an age-appropriate way that includes regular rebalancing (capturing gains) and dollar-cost averaging in (instead of buying high). One of the best performing exchange traded funds is iShares TECB. Because TECB has a very high concentration of Nvidia and the Fantastic 5, all of which are leaders in artificial intelligence, the performance of this “Breakthrough Tech” fund has been much stronger than the named artificial intelligence ETF: IRBO. IRBO includes a lot of smaller companies that just haven’t performed as well yet. It also has a much smaller concentration of Nvidia and the Fantastic 5. Are Stock Prices Just Too High? The current average P/E is 28.53. The historical average is 17.66. Professor Robert Shiller’s CAPE ratio shows us an important story. The only time that stock prices were more expensive (going back to 1880) was in the Dot Com Recession. Between the high of March 2000 and the low of October 2002, the NASDAQ Composite Index (the famous Dot Com stocks) lost 78%. It took 15 years to crawl back to even. A lot of promising companies, including eToys, bit the dust. The other period of elevated equity prices was 1929, before the Great Depression. You know what happened there. According to the CAPE ratio, stock prices are even more elevated today than they were in 1929. Bottom Line Even great companies in a hot industry can see their share price sink, especially when the company’s growth potential is already priced in. A properly diversified, age-appropriate plan that we rebalance once, twice or three times a year can help us to:
You can read about our time-proven, easy-as-a-pie-chart nest egg strategies in The ABCs of Money 5th edition, you can learn and implement these strategies at our Financial Freedom Retreats, and you can get an unbiased 2nd opinion from me through my private coaching. Wisdom is the cure. Now is a great time to capture gains, while stocks are high! Yes, you can invest in hot companies like Nvidia, with a plan that doesn’t require you to buy high with the hope of selling higher (and the fear that you’ll lose). Join us at our online Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. 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] to register. Learn the 15+ things you'll master and read testimonials in the flyer on the home page at NataliePace.com. Register by July 31, 2024 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 Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by July 31, 2024 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. There is very limited availability. Register by August 15, 2024 to ensure that you get the exact room you want. (There may not be an opportunity to register after August 15, 2024.) 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. ![]() Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of 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 5th 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 Election Years With Negative Yield Curves = ?. 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... Artificial Intelligence and Crypto Scam Alert by the SEC. Netflix Evicts Unpaid Viewers. Empty Theaters. 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. AI, Gold & Copper are on Fire. Sunpower Doubled. Sell in May and Go Away? What About the Election? Vacations that Color Our World Forever. The Magnificent 7 Drop to the Fantastic 5 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? The Reddit IPO. Meme Stock or Snap Land? Tesla's Factory in Germany Taken Offline by Activists. Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Beyond Meat's Shares Surge. Quaker Oats' Pesticide Problem. Stocks are Flying High. Why Aren't Mine? Cut Your Tax Bill in Half. 9 Tips. Celebrity Jet CO2. Green Washing. The Facts. Some Solutions. Copper: Essential to the Clean Energy Transition. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Are Amazon, Square and Other Tech Companies Ripping Us Off? Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. Don't Reach for Yield. Closed-End Funds. 2024 Investor IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Investor IQ Test. Apple's Woes Drag Down the Dow. The Winners & Losers of 2023. Ozempic, Magnificent 7 & Beyond. 2024 Crystal Ball. 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. Earn $50,000 or More in Interest. Safely. Finally. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Solutions for Unaffordable Housing. 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. Artificial Intelligence and Nvidia's Blockbuster Earnings Report Biotech in a Post-Pandemic World 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. What Happened to Cannabis? Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Lithium. Essential to EV Life. 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. Securities, financial instruments or strategies mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors. Election Years With Negative Yield Curves = Recession. The S&P500 is up 15.3% so far in 2024. How will the rest of this election year play out? Will it be more like 2020 (+16.3%) or 2008 (-38.5%)? Emotions run the gamut between AI-mania, and thinking the dollar will become worthless and banks will fail. What does history teach us? What’s our best strategy? Since 2000 (-10.14%) and 2008 were both terrible election years on Wall Street, and the negative yield curve flashed a recession warning in those years (such as is happening today), it’s a good idea for us to pay attention to the economic indicators. Below are the topics we’ll cover in this blog. Election Year Performance Negative Yield Curve Effect Market Performance Riding on Just 5 Companies Real Estate Hitting New Highs Economic Phantoms Hiding in the Wings Don’t Fight the Fed Time-Proven 21st Century Investing Strategies Election Year Performance As you can see in the chart below, over the 10-year period election years look fine, with 12.9% average annualized gains. However, over the long-term, election and mid-term years are the worst in the 4-year cycle, with a mere 2-3% year-over-year gain. That has a lot to do with the Dot Com and the Great Recessions, when the S&P500 lost -38.49% (2008) and -10.14% (2000). Those two years have a few things in common with this year, including a negative yield curve. Negative Yield Curve Effect Below is a chart of the 10-year treasury versus the 2-year. When the line goes negative, that is known as a negative yield curve. It’s important to notice that there is a 100% correlation between negative yield curves and recessions in the chart. Many of those recessions started in an election year – 2000, 2008 and even 2020 (although the pandemic recession was the shortest in history, due to the U.S. handing out $4.2 trillion to every person and corporation with a heartbeat). During periods of a negative yield curve, investors are getting paid a higher interest rate on the 2-year treasury than they are on the 10-year. Here’s another chart that reflects that. (We discuss this in greater detail during the “What’s Safe” day of our Financial Freedom Retreat.) Daily U.S. Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates June 21, 2024 Since banks, insurance companies and pension providers are typically the creditors of long-term debt, and long-term debt can be illiquid and negative-yielding during negative yield curve periods, there is an elevated risk of a recession sparked from the financial services industry. (One was quelled in 2023 by the Federal Reserve Board. Keep reading.) We’ve been on recession watch for the past two years, while it is now hoped that the U.S. will stick the soft landing. There remain areas of concern for the financial services industry, particularly with regard to commercial real estate, which is why we are underweighting U.S. financials in our sample pie charts. Check out my blogs “Uh Oh. More Bank Trouble,” and the “WeWork Bankruptcy” for more information on banks and CRE. If you’re worried that banks will fail en masse or the dollar will become worthless, read, “China and Russia Double Their Gold,” and “BRICS.” There are ways to hedge against another financial meltdown. However, neither the Iraqi dinar, nor the Venezuelan bolivar, nor BRICS are the solutions (as so many infomercials have been promoting). Market Performance Riding on Just 5 Companies By now you’ve heard of the spectacular 2023 gains of the Magnificent 7, which have become the Fantastic 5 this year. The Magnificent 7 doubled last year. Without the performance of the Magnificent 7 (which doubled in share price in 2023), the S&P500 gains would have been 9.9% instead of the 26.3% total return. You missed out on these impressive returns if you didn’t have a large cap growth fund or a Breakthrough Technology ETF. When we hear of a company like Nvidia soaring over 9-fold in share price since the beginning of 2023, it’s easy to want to jump in and pray for a pot of gold. However, it’s equally important to understand that what flies high can also crash. It’s not that artificial intelligence will become less pervasive. It’s more a question of valuation. As you can see in the price-earnings chart below, the only time when stocks were more expensive than they are today was before the Dot Com Recession. The NASDAQ Composite Index dropped -78% between the high of March 2000 and the low of October 2002. Nvidia’s net profit was just $30 billion in 2023, yet investors are valuing the company at almost $3 trillion. 71 is a very high P/E even for a company that is increasing revenue at 265% year over year. Internet stocks have led market returns over the past year and a half, fulfilling the promise of the New Economy that was touted to investors in 2000 (before the Dot Com Recession). However, the superstars of 2023 and 2024 were some of the worst performers in 2022. The S&P500 dropped -19.44%. Tesla sank -66%, Nvidia lost half, and the NASDAQ Composite Index tumbled -33%. Real Estate Hitting New Highs The existing home price hit a new high in May, marking a largely unaffordable nationwide mean of $419,300 (source: The National Association of Realtors). According to AttomData, 32.3% of a person’s income is required to purchase a home. (Canadian data shows that the problem is even more severe in Canada, where 60% of income is required to buy.) Similarly, real estate was on fire before the Great Recession, hitting an all-time high for that period in 2006 of $221,900, before sinking to a low of $166,100 in 2011. By 2008, the U.S. was seeing unprecedented rates of foreclosures. Mortgage banks were going bankrupt or being rescued. Over 20 million foreclosures occurred in the Great Recession era. What’s different this time around? Foreclosures are up 56% year over year. However, they remain near historic lows, at less than 1%. That’s largely due to loan modifications, rather than a reflection of housing as a sustainable piece of the family budget (note again the high percentage of one’s income that must now be devoted to housing). As a result of the loan mod process being used routinely in lieu of foreclosure, 2.3 million mortgages are currently severely underwater, even as home prices are at an all-time high. More homeowners staying in their homes, even if they really can’t afford the payment, means fewer homes for sale, which pushes up prices. Delinquencies on CRE mortgages are increasing, with delinquency rates on CRE CLOs up “notably,” according to the Federal Reserve Board’s Financial Stability Report. However, a similar work-through is happening in the CRE market. Rather than sending a company into bankruptcy, a more widespread practice is to lengthen the term of the loan, while tacking on the fees and unpaid interest and principal to an ever ballooning amount due. The relatively low turnover in the commercial real estate market has resulted in prices declining a mere -1.3% in 2023. According to the Financial Stability Report, “These transaction-based price measures likely do not yet fully reflect the deterioration in CRE market prices because, rather than realizing losses, many owners wait for more favorable conditions to put their properties on the market.” The report concluded that “risks on loans backed by CRE properties [remain] elevated, and banks with concentrated exposure to this sector are particularly vulnerable.” We saw that in spades with New York Community Bank – the bank featured in my “Uh Oh” blog. Economic Phantoms Hiding in the Wings As we see with the negative yield curve, the market gains concentrated in just five companies, elevated price-earnings ratios in equities, sky-high home prices, and even a commercial real estate market that has yet to price in empty office buildings, there are quite a substantial amount of economic phantoms hiding in the wings. While many Main Street investors might not see these issues in the headlines (that are instead touting new Wall Street highs daily!), we all feel them and witness them in our budgets, our malls, our neighborhoods and even our own brokerage statements (which won’t reflect impressive market gains if we don’t have large cap growth, AI or technology in them). It’s no wonder that our emotions get jacked around between AI euphoria and doomsday predictions. Don’t Fight the Fed The government saved the day in 2020, preventing what everyone feared could be as bad as the Great Depression. Corporations and individuals alike were given money to get through the pandemic. Some debt was completely forgiven. Others can be paid back slowly over a great deal of time. When banks were failing in 2023, the Federal Reserve Board created a special Bank Term Funding Program where bond paper losses could essentially be marked at par. The BTFP ceased extending new loans on March 11, 2024. TARP stabilized the financial system during the Great Recession. Today, the Feds are encouraging banks to work with delinquent borrowers rather than foreclose or force the corporation into bankruptcy. The consequences of that are stubbornly high home and even CRE prices. With no bankruptcies, foreclosures or bank failures in the headlines, investors are willing to take on greater risks, which is pushing equity prices to all-time highs. The Feds will not want to “weigh in” on the election, and will do their best to keep the economic headlines as benign as possible this year. That doesn’t always work. 2008 is an example (although Bernanke and Paulsen lied about the systemic failure of the financial system for as long as they could). Even with all of the financial engineering going on, which could keep stock and real estate prices high while continuing to balloon the nation’s debt, there is a way to win, while protecting ourselves from losses. Time-Proven 21st Century Investing Strategies Doomsday predictions are nothing new. They’ve been around since recorded history. Irrational exuberance on Wall Street tends to end badly for Main Street investors, as evidenced by the Great Depression, the Dot Com Recession and the Great Recession. Two out of those three landmark Wall Street routs were in the 21st Century, which is why it is so important to have a recession-proof plan in place before the about-face happens. Business cycles tend to include periods of recessions. We don’t have the political license to print up $4.2 trillion to prevent the next recession, as we did in the pandemic, when the Debt Ceiling had been suspended. When recession risks are heightened, it’s a good idea to overweight safe – to act a little older than we are. (In today’s world of elevated debt and leverage, we must also know what’s safe in order to protect our wealth from liquidity squeezes and paper losses.) The rather simple process listed below earned gains in the Dot Com and the Great Recessions, and has outperformed the bull markets in between. As I’m fond of saying, this strategy is literally easy-as-a-pie-chart – the life math that we all should have received in high school and college. Recession-Proofing Our Wealth Plan 1. Keep a percentage equal to our age safe, 2. Overweight an additional 10-20% safe before the recession, 3. Diversify our at-risk investments to include large growth (plus mid & small caps, value replacements, and hot industries, including technology and AI), and, 4. Rebalance 1-3 times a year to ensure that we are capturing gains at the high, and adding more at the low. Bottom Line There are ample reasons to be concerned about the economy. The real question is whether or not the Feds can continue to stick the soft landing, or will one of the areas of weakness (CRE?) implode, taking elevated prices and a few financial services companies down with it. Whether we are euphoric, skeptical, ready to become a Prepper, or ready to dive into crypto, a better plan is to:
We need to fix the roof while the sun is still shining, while stocks and real estate prices are high, rather than hope and pray that we make up losses after the plunge or that our political candidate will save the day. Wisdom and time-proven systems are the cure. The time is now – if history is any accurate predictor of trends. Join us at our online Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. 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] to 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 Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by June 30, 2024 to receive the best price and a 50-minute private, prosperity coaching session (value $400). 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. There is very limited availability. Register by August 15, 2024 to ensure that you get the exact room you want. (There may not be an opportunity to register after August 15, 2024.) 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. ![]() Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of 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 5th 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 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... Artificial Intelligence and Crypto Scam Alert by the SEC. Netflix Evicts Unpaid Viewers. Empty Theaters. 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. AI, Gold & Copper are on Fire. Sunpower Doubled. Sell in May and Go Away? What About the Election? Vacations that Color Our World Forever. The Magnificent 7 Drop to the Fantastic 5 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? The Reddit IPO. Meme Stock or Snap Land? Tesla's Factory in Germany Taken Offline by Activists. Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Beyond Meat's Shares Surge. Quaker Oats' Pesticide Problem. Stocks are Flying High. Why Aren't Mine? Cut Your Tax Bill in Half. 9 Tips. Celebrity Jet CO2. Green Washing. The Facts. Some Solutions. Copper: Essential to the Clean Energy Transition. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Are Amazon, Square and Other Tech Companies Ripping Us Off? Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. Don't Reach for Yield. Closed-End Funds. 2024 Investor IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Investor IQ Test. Apple's Woes Drag Down the Dow. The Winners & Losers of 2023. Ozempic, Magnificent 7 & Beyond. 2024 Crystal Ball. 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. Earn $50,000 or More in Interest. Safely. Finally. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Solutions for Unaffordable Housing. 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. Artificial Intelligence and Nvidia's Blockbuster Earnings Report Biotech in a Post-Pandemic World 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. What Happened to Cannabis? Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Lithium. Essential to EV Life. 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. Securities, financial instruments or strategies mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors. National Clean Beaches Week. July 1-7, 2024. Are you headed for the beach this summer? We all want to frolic in clean water, and love seeing dolphins and whales playing in the waves. When we think of cleaning our oceans and beaches, plastic waste comes to mind, as does pollution runoff that can make swimming and surfing unhealthy. It can feel like other people and corporations are the polluters, especially if we already have our reusable water canteen and coffee mug. However, in fact, there’s a lot more that each one of us can do to rid our oceans of the flotsam, jetsam, gunk and toxins that none of us want to swim in – or see turtles wrapped up in. Diving deeper into ocean health has an additional upside in that it brings greater physical health to us personally (and our entire planet), and can save us a lot of money, too. 5 Tips for National Clean Beaches Week Refuse Plastic (Go Old School for Our Coffee and Green Drinks, and refuse plastic packaging) 1 RX for Toxic Waste From Storm Drains: Eat Local, Regenerative & Organic Swim, Surf, Row and Sail (instead of Jet Skiing, Yachting and Cruise Ships) Buy Less of Everything Walk and Bike More Here are a few facts that just don’t hit the news very often, along with additional information on the 5 tips for supporting healthy oceans and the diverse plants and animals who live there. Refuse Plastic (Go Old School for Our Coffee and Green Drinks, and Refuse Plastic Packaging) Less than 9% of plastic gets recycled. This is why we must refuse plastic, instead of just throwing it away in what we think is the proper bin. There are many ways we can do this with just a little preparation. I’ll discuss some of the ways that I have reduced my personal plastic footprint by 80% in my June 27, 2024 free videoconference at 3 pm PT (6 pm ET). 1 RX for Toxic Waste From Storm Drains: Eat Local, Regenerative & Organic There is a Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico that is about the size of Connecticut, where no fish or marine life can live. The cause? Industrial chicken, cattle and pig farm pollution, and conventionally grown produce toxins runoff that travels down the Mississippi River. Eating local, regenerative & organic produce and meat is one solution. Community and personal gardens are even better. Some organizations like Ron Finley, the Edible Schoolyard, Green Our Planet, and Good Neighbor Gardens offer classes and curriculum. Many are featured in the Food & Health and Kids episodes of our free Earth Gratitude docuseries. Cheap chicken, rainforest beef and pesticide produce all end up washing pollutants into our oceans. Swim, Surf, Row and Sail (instead of Jet Skiing, Yachting and Cruise Ships) Cruise ships emit two to three times the CO2 of flying, and pollute oceans with their sewage, gray water, bilge water, ballast water, hazardous waste and solids waste. Yachts get about 3-5 mpg of gasoline. A jet ski operated for two hours can produce as much CO2 as a car driven for 130,000 miles. Older models dump gallons of gasoline into the water. Buy Less of Everything An unfathomable amount of pollution occurs while shipping products made in China around the world. Many of the popular new fast fashion brands are Chinese-owned, and almost all of cheap goods are made in Asia. Walk and Bike More The 87-day oil spillage of the Deepwater Horizon, of an estimated 134 million gallons of oil, is the worst in history. Experts are still assessing the long-term damage of this spill. Many oil spills and environmental disasters are not reported nationally, unless they are truly monumental. How many of us heard that there was a 3-4 mile oil slick off of Louisiana reported on Nov. 16, 2023 – representing over a million gallons of oil? When we find ways to garage the car and walk and bike more, we are a big part of the solution of kicking our oil addiction and the pervasive pollution that results from having oil products touch so many aspects of our lives. (Plastic, polyester, asphalt, rubber, even our sneakers and CROCs are all made from oil.) Yes, EVs pollute less than ICE vehicles (in most states). However, replacing each single-occupancy ICE vehicle with an EV still has a large environmental impact, and doesn’t address the need for shade trees, walkable neighborhoods, and for reducing traffic jams, gridlock and other urban blight. Bottom Line This list is not comprehensive. However, so many of the tips from other sources are focusing on zinc-based sunscreen that I felt a strong desire to deepen the well of our wisdom, so that we might drink clean water and surf with the dolphins for seven generations to come. Join me for my June 27, 2024 free videoconference at 3 pm PT (6 pm ET) to gain even more clarity. Email [email protected] with VIDEOCON in the subject line if you’d like to join us live. Otherwise, you can watch the videoconference back at YouTube.com/NataliePace. FYI: May was National Biking Month. Learn why Amsterdam and the Paris are the superstar cities of the world in this regard in my May 2024 National Biking Month blog. Join us at our online Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. 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] to 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 Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by June 30, 2024 to receive the best price and a 50-minute private, prosperity coaching session (value $400). 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. There is very limited availability. Register by August 15, 2024 to ensure that you get the exact room you want. (There may not be an opportunity to register after August 15, 2024.) 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. ![]() Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of 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 5th 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 Nio Sales Expected to More Than Double in 2Q 2024. So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Artificial Intelligence and Crypto Scam Alert by the SEC. Netflix Evicts Unpaid Viewers. Empty Theaters. 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. AI, Gold & Copper are on Fire. Sunpower Doubled. Sell in May and Go Away? What About the Election? Vacations that Color Our World Forever. The Magnificent 7 Drop to the Fantastic 5 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? The Reddit IPO. Meme Stock or Snap Land? Tesla's Factory in Germany Taken Offline by Activists. Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Beyond Meat's Shares Surge. Quaker Oats' Pesticide Problem. Stocks are Flying High. Why Aren't Mine? Cut Your Tax Bill in Half. 9 Tips. Celebrity Jet CO2. Green Washing. The Facts. Some Solutions. Copper: Essential to the Clean Energy Transition. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Are Amazon, Square and Other Tech Companies Ripping Us Off? Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. Don't Reach for Yield. Closed-End Funds. 2024 Investor IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Investor IQ Test. Apple's Woes Drag Down the Dow. The Winners & Losers of 2023. Ozempic, Magnificent 7 & Beyond. 2024 Crystal Ball. 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. Earn $50,000 or More in Interest. Safely. Finally. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Solutions for Unaffordable Housing. 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. Artificial Intelligence and Nvidia's Blockbuster Earnings Report Biotech in a Post-Pandemic World 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. What Happened to Cannabis? Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Lithium. Essential to EV Life. 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. Securities, financial instruments or strategies mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors. Nio Sales Expected to More Than Double in 2Q. Nio is a Tesla electric vehicle competitor that is based out of China. The company announced on June 6, 2024, that they are expecting their 2Q 2024 deliveries to increase by 138% at the top end of the forecast, and that revenue will soar 90% year over year. Nio is a former meme stock darling, whose shares summited at $67/share in January 2021. Today they are trading at under $5/share. Nio’s deliveries report is expected on July 1, 2024, while the earnings report could be released at the end of August. Nio also received the greenlight in China to open up a 3rd factory. Is that enough to send investors into a buying frenzy, or are there other considerations that might keep the stock from popping? What about the fierce competition in electric vehicles, or the negative sentiment that U.S. investors have for Chinese equities? Below are the topics I will discuss in this blog. Global EV Sales & Expectations Deliveries and Revenue Expected to Double Competing with Tesla European & U.S. Tariffs Is Being Cash Negative a Problem? Valuation Will U.S. Investors Ever Love Chinese Equities Again? And here is more color on each topic. Global EV Sales & Expectations According to the International Energy Agency, global electric car sales are expected to reach 17 million in 2024. 10 million will be sold in China alone. That’s more than one in five cars sold in that country. Expectations are (based on current policies) that by 2030, 1/3 of the cars in China and 1/5 of those in the U.S. will be electric. This year, European EVs are expecting to account for one in every four sales. At least three manufacturers — Tesla, Hyundai-Kia and General Motors — now offer EVs with more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) of range for less than the cost of the average new vehicle sold in the US, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Green. Per the IEA, “In China, more than 60% of electric cars sold in 2023 were already less expensive to buy than their conventional equivalents.” EV prices are dropping due to fierce competition. The increase in driving range between charges makes them more attractive for consumers. There has also been a rapid expansion of super charging stations, where a full charge can be achieved in about 20 minutes. As I mentioned in my EV blog of March 11, 2024, China became the number one auto exporter in May of this year, above Japan. China is also the biggest consumer of EVs, by far. However, there are far too many Chinese EV automakers, and we’re already seeing bankruptcies and fallout as a result of this. Even smart phone companies Huawei and Xiaomi have EVs these days. The competition is driving down prices. The weaker companies will be forced into consolidation or annihilation in the years to come. BYD is the top selling EV manufacturer. Berkshire Hathaway is one of the largest shareholders, with a stake of 6.9%. Tesla is still competing in the top 10, but there are plenty of luxury EVs that are gunning to take Tesla’s spot, including Nio. Deliveries and Revenue Expected to Double As mentioned above, Nio’s deliveries and revenue growth should delight investors. The company delivered 36,614 vehicles in April and May of 2024, with another 19,836 expected in June. According to William Bin Li, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of NIO, “Despite the intensifying market competition, NIO’s premium brand positioning, industry-leading technologies, and innovative ‘chargeable, swappable, upgradeable’ power experience have been recognized for their exceptional competitiveness, leading to solid sequential growth in vehicle deliveries in recent months. Nio is competing for Tesla’s customers, with attractive cars that sell for a little less. Competing with Tesla While Nio’s sales and revenue are doubling, Tesla’s revenues dropped -8.69% in the most recent quarter. Tesla’s inventory increased to 28 days in the 1Q of 2024, versus 15 days in 4Q 2023. Tesla has a very strong brand worldwide, and is still the top selling EV in most markets. However, Nio has been getting noticed, too. Nio’s ET7 won car of the year in Sweden in 2023. It also won the Golden Wheel Award in Germany, and was a technological frontrunner of the year in Denmark, beating the Mercedes EQS and the Tesla model Y. Email [email protected] if you'd like an updated Auto Stock report Card. Tesla has warned that the company’s “vehicle volume growth rate may be noticeably lower than the growth rate achieved in 2023.” However, even if Tesla continues to sell slightly more cars this year, it is likely that the trend of lower revenue and profits will continue, as the price wars have forced all manufacturers to lower prices. Qualified consumers are now able to lease a Tesla for just $299/month! European & U.S. Tariffs Nio just launched a new more affordably priced SUV that is designed to compete directly with Tesla‘s model Y. According to Reuters, in May Nio unveiled the Onvo L60 SUV with a sticker price starting at 219,900 yuan ($30,300), while Tesla's Model Y starts at 249,900 yuan in China ($34,481). Nio was starting to compete with Tesla in Europe. On May 23, 2024, Nio opened an Amsterdam showroom. However, on June 12,2024, the EU slapped Chinese EVs with tariffs of up to 38.1%, which will undoubtedly stifle sales. The U.S. White House slapped a 100% tariff rate on Chinese EVs on May 14, 2024, effectively blocking the country from the U.S. market. The U.S. and many European countries sell cars in China. There have been meetings where Chinese regulators are considering a retaliation with a tariff on foreign ICE vehicles (gas guzzlers). That would be a nightmare for Germany. This is an ongoing issue. However, according to Nio‘s CEO William Lio, most of Nio‘s car sales are in China. According to Li, the impact of tariffs will not materially harm their business at this time, though it will surely impede their expansion plan. Is Being Cash Negative a Problem? Tesla was cash negative for over a decade before it turned to profit. When an innovation disrupts an entrenched industry, such as autos, they have to build expensive factories in order to manufacture that market-changing product. That’s expensive. It’s just not uncommon for these kinds of companies to be cash negative for many years. Nio has $6.3 billion in cash, some of which is restricted. The company is investing in additional factories to keep up with demand. Other areas of expansion include the launch of the Firefly model, which will be a very affordable EV priced at just $13,800 to $27,600. It is intended to be a smaller 2nd vehicle for the household, marketed initially just to the Chinese consumer. Nio is also expanding their power swap network, which includes the ability for owners to upgrade to a longer range battery pack. Valuation Tesla’s net income was $15 billion in 2023. The company has a market capitalization of $580 billion. That’s very lofty, with a price earnings ratio of 46, even given that the company’s stock has already dropped almost -40% from its 52-week high. (The historical average P/E is 17.) Tesla is not expected to grow revenue or profits this year to match the lofty valuation. Many of the younger EV manufacturers are cash negative. When we compare their price to sales ratios, Tesla is very elevated at 6.44, compared to a more reasonable 1.14 at Nio. Nio had sales of $7.8 billion in 2023 and its market cap is only 10.1 billion. (Tesla’s sales in 2023 were $96.8 billion.) So if investors do indeed get excited about the blowout deliveries report, which is scheduled for July 1, 2024, or the 2Q 2024 earnings report, which should be released at the end of August, there should be plenty of room for upside – if there wasn’t a generally negative sentiment among U.S. investors for Chinese stocks. Will Global Investors Ever Love Chinese Equities Again? Outside of a spurt of meme stock popularity in early 2021, Chinese equities have struggled to attract U.S. investors since 2018. Millennials and Gen Z are still very interested in trying to hit the jackpot with investing. However, many of them learned their lesson about due diligence in 2021, after getting burned on the wrong side of the trade on Gamestop, AMC, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Blackberry, et al. So, will a blowout earnings report by Nio be enough to attract Reddit meme mania? While anything is possible (and memes were the key to Nio’s $67 price tag in 2021), the Index of Economic Freedom’s “Repressed” ranking of the Chinese economy sums up investor sentiment about Chinese equities at this time. Bottom Line After years of supplies chain disruptions and all kinds of challenges, including fierce competition, Nio is emerging as a very well-run, beloved brand, not just by the Chinese, but also by the Europeans. (Americans aren’t allowed access to Chinese EVs at this time.) In a normal world, Nio’s share price should soar after their sensational 2Q 2024 earnings and deliveries reports. However, today’s world is anything but normal. If Nio achieves meme status, the rise and fall could be as spectacular and devastating as it was in 2021. Proceed with caution, even if the news manages to make headlines in the Western world. Join us at our online Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. 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] to 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 Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by June 22, 2024 to receive the best price and a 50-minute private, prosperity coaching session (value $400). 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. There is very limited availability. Register early to ensure that you get the exact room you want. 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. ![]() Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of 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 5th 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 So, You Think You Want to Be a B&B Owner... Artificial Intelligence and Crypto Scam Alert by the SEC. Netflix Evicts Unpaid Viewers. Empty Theaters. 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. AI, Gold & Copper are on Fire. Sunpower Doubled. Sell in May and Go Away? What About the Election? Vacations that Color Our World Forever. The Magnificent 7 Drop to the Fantastic 5 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? The Reddit IPO. Meme Stock or Snap Land? Tesla's Factory in Germany Taken Offline by Activists. Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Beyond Meat's Shares Surge. Quaker Oats' Pesticide Problem. Stocks are Flying High. Why Aren't Mine? Cut Your Tax Bill in Half. 9 Tips. Celebrity Jet CO2. Green Washing. The Facts. Some Solutions. Copper: Essential to the Clean Energy Transition. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Are Amazon, Square and Other Tech Companies Ripping Us Off? Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. Don't Reach for Yield. Closed-End Funds. 2024 Investor IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Investor IQ Test. Apple's Woes Drag Down the Dow. The Winners & Losers of 2023. Ozempic, Magnificent 7 & Beyond. 2024 Crystal Ball. 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. Earn $50,000 or More in Interest. Safely. Finally. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Solutions for Unaffordable Housing. 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. Artificial Intelligence and Nvidia's Blockbuster Earnings Report Biotech in a Post-Pandemic World 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. What Happened to Cannabis? Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Lithium. Essential to EV Life. 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. Securities, financial instruments or strategies mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors. So You Think You Want to be a B&B Owner… This is a guest blog, written by Deborah Mendelsohn, the co-owner of the Simpson Hotel in Duncan, Arizona Every inn owner’s experience is different from the next. I can speak only from my own experience in this realm. I’ve visited several other B&Bs over the years. There is not much overlap beyond the obvious differences between a B&B and a hotel, or motel. I never thought about owning an inn, until I fell in love with a historic hotel building, the tiny Southwestern town around it, and the river and mountains that framed the town. But once I happened upon that building, and that place, and began to contemplate the possibilities, I recognized that I had character traits and skills that I was going to need. I was not risk-averse. I loved old buildings and the challenges of renovating them. I had what I thought was enough money, from the sale of my last home, to finish the renovation. (I turned out to be about $100K short, due to the collapse of the sewer tie-in system, the need to replace almost all of the electrical and plumbing, and the expense of having an innovative heat exchange system devised and installed for heating and cooling. I emptied out my IRA, and went deep into credit card debt.) I understood basic bookkeeping. I had good interpersonal skills. I knew how to do market research, and I could write well. I had design training, and software, and could create all my own marketing materials. Most of all, I knew from my own life experience that people in the cities with disposable income were often looking for just the kind of place I was moving to: a tiny, charming town in a beautiful place that no one seemed to know about, only a three- or four-hour drive on a scenic highway. I believed that I would be able to build a reputation for my place because of that. I was right. Here are some of the insights that others might glean from my 17 years in the business. Should It Be a B&B or an Inn? First, do you really want to run a classic B&B, where breakfast is included in the room rate? Or would you be more comfortable running an inn, with breakfast as an add-on? Until I decided to drop the B&B label and become an inn, I viewed the breakfasts as a “loss leader” – something that I could not make money on, but that would increase traffic to my business. There really is no way to profit from serving breakfast in a small B&B unless you are able to charge handsome room rates. At low volume, grocery costs are high (you’re not going to serve cheap foods or run-of-the-mill coffee to B&B guests). You will never make enough money to cover the time you spend cooking, setting the table, serving, and cleaning up. So it’s useful to get clear on this from the start. When I brought my husband (whom I met when he walked in the hotel door) into the business, he took over the cooking right about the time I would have burned out beyond recovery. For a few years we continued as a B&B. And then we took down the sign and rebranded our business as an inn. We eventually decided to go all-vegetarian and as organic as possible on the breakfasts, and we put a hefty price tag on them. We’ve had far more takers than we were expecting. Who Do You Really Want as Guests? Second, how well do you understand the demographics of your potential market? Unless you are taking over a business that someone else has already put on the map, this is a very key question. Since I had no experience in hospitality, I started out trying to be all things to all people. I was most interested in attracting those city dwellers that I described above, but I was open to anyone who called or booked through our online reservations service (which at the time cost about $100 a month). A series of ghastly experiences with guests and then the trials of Covid changed all of that. Now we screen all potential guests by phone or email. We profile, but our profiling is not what most people think of when they hear that word. It is very important to us to have only guests who understand what our place is like, and who are comfortable with a “boutique” hotel with no TVs, and a policy of requiring vaccinations against Covid. In our situation, having hotel guests is the same as inviting someone into our home, and having them under the same roof with us. And that’s how we treat it. Once Covid slowed down, we thought and thought about what we could say on our website that would have the same sort of screening effect as our vaccination policy. We sought a different approach that would have more or less the same results in shaping our guest demographics. To date we have not been able to come up with a different approach, so we have kept the policy, making occasional exceptions. We have found that our place is now invariably peaceful. There are no more problem guests. Everyone is happy with their stay. We don’t have to work as hard. No one leaves a mess. No one brings in a semiautomatic weapon, against our wishes. No one drinks too much, and vomits on the bed. No gay guest, no guest of color, or of another nationality, or minority religious identity, has to worry about being comfortable at the breakfast table. It all just works better. We raised our rates. And, because we are the owners, we can cut whatever sort of deals we want to accommodate some guests. Engaging With the Local Community This leads to my last area of observation and reflection: to run a successful B&B or inn or hotel, how important is it to be part of the community in which you operate? From the start, I envisioned my inn with a double identity, as both a hotel, and a center for lectures, music performances, and community meetings. Those community-oriented events were a pleasure to plan and host, and the town would turn out for them. But here, again, Covid changed everything. As we lost one good friend after another to the plague, and kept adding to our tally of the dead all across our town, the great majority hardened into their anti-vaccine and anti-mask positions. I sat on the town council at that time. I could not persuade most of the public to do what they could to prevent spreading of the virus. So we closed the hotel, and I resigned from public service. A year and a half later, we reopened our business. But I have not returned to public life. I’ve learned that we don’t need the lectures and concerts and meetings to make our business flourish. Maybe one day we will do that again, if and when people return to the respect and kindness that were generally afforded in all directions when I first arrived in our little town. In the first years, I would have answered emphatically that engaging the local community was one of the keys to success. Now, I would certainly say that it is preferable at the start. But there are stages of life, I have found. Now I am an older innkeeper, one who prefers quiet, and a life of retreat from the busyness of the world. That sells too, though it is not something I market, but rather something that guests find when they come to stay. Deborah Mendelsohn Deborah Mendelsohn grew up in downtown Boston and rural western Maine as the daughter of civil rights activists. She dropped out of school at 15 and traveled the country, eventually earning a Master’s in comparative religions, while working on psych wards and for Planned Parenthood. She married twice and raised two daughters while working in music, film and television in San Francisco, and then Los Angeles. After learning how to be a TV-film producer at the major studios, she switched tracks and worked for years in broadcast news media development in Russia, Ukraine and other places. Eventually California got too crowded and expensive. She chose a tiny town in a deeply rural part of Arizona, mostly because of a meditation retreat center nearby, and partly because the verdant agricultural valley reawakened her deep love of her roots in Maine. There in tiny Duncan, Arizona, she fell in love with a dilapidated old hotel building and, a few years after she had renovated and opened the hotel, with a man who walked through the front door. Clayton Jarvis, now co-owner of The Simpson Hotel, is an artist and art collector who says he is creating the hotel as a rebellion against the suicidal ignorance of the human condition. Although he has a very interesting past, he reserves stories about that for conversations with friends and hotel guests. He brought his huge art collection into The Simpson, and began a transformation of the hotel’s dirt and chain-link fenced lot into a dreamscape of lofty shade trees, flowering vines, ponds, fountains, statuary and micro-habitats for wildlife. Deborah and Clayton are interested now in what it means to stay put in such a place, as age brings its inevitable questions. There are physical rigors of maintaining the inside and outside of the hotel. And there is the joy of breathing the fresh air of the rural river valley, drinking the water pumped from that valley, growing organic fruits and vegetables year-round, and taking regular walks along the river and the lip of the overhanging mesa. This all adds up to a profoundly salutary way of life. Doctors are an hour away at least, but some aspects of life may be more important in older age than proximity to hospitals. This is an ongoing topic of reflection! ![]() Join us for our Online Oct. 18-20, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. Email [email protected] or call 310-430-2397 to learn more. Register by June 22, 2024 to receive the best price and a 50-minute private, prosperity coaching session (value $400). 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. There is very limited availability. Register early to ensure that you get the exact room you want. 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. ![]() Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of 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 5th 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 Artificial Intelligence and Crypto Scam Alert by the SEC. Netflix Evicts Unpaid Viewers. Empty Theaters. 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. AI, Gold & Copper are on Fire. Sunpower Doubled. Sell in May and Go Away? What About the Election? Vacations that Color Our World Forever. The Magnificent 7 Drop to the Fantastic 5 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? The Reddit IPO. Meme Stock or Snap Land? Tesla's Factory in Germany Taken Offline by Activists. Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Beyond Meat's Shares Surge. Quaker Oats' Pesticide Problem. Stocks are Flying High. Why Aren't Mine? Cut Your Tax Bill in Half. 9 Tips. Celebrity Jet CO2. Green Washing. The Facts. Some Solutions. Copper: Essential to the Clean Energy Transition. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Are Amazon, Square and Other Tech Companies Ripping Us Off? Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. Don't Reach for Yield. Closed-End Funds. 2024 Investor IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Investor IQ Test. Apple's Woes Drag Down the Dow. The Winners & Losers of 2023. Ozempic, Magnificent 7 & Beyond. 2024 Crystal Ball. 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. Earn $50,000 or More in Interest. Safely. Finally. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Solutions for Unaffordable Housing. 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. Artificial Intelligence and Nvidia's Blockbuster Earnings Report Biotech in a Post-Pandemic World 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. What Happened to Cannabis? Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Lithium. Essential to EV Life. 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. Securities, financial instruments or strategies mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors. The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy (OIEA) is issuing this Investor Alert to warn investors about investment scams that purport to offer investors the opportunity to buy “pre-IPO” shares of companies. SEC staff continue to receive complaints — and to bring enforcement actions — involving these types of scams, which may be promoted on social media and websites, by phone, by email, in person, or through other means. Pre-IPO Offerings May Violate Federal Securities Laws."Pre-IPO" investing involves buying a stake in a company before the company makes its initial public offering of securities, also known as “going public.” Many stock promoters entice potential investors by promising an opportunity to make high returns by investing in a start-up enterprise at the ground floor level. But investing at the pre-IPO stage can involve significant risk for investors, including the risk that you could lose your entire investment. The early-stage company may never be successful, and the share price of the stock may never appreciate in value. In addition, the company may never go public, a market for the company’s shares may never develop, and investors may be unable to resell their shares. Further, pre-IPO offerings are not registered with the SEC. Unregistered securities offerings are prohibited under the federal securities laws unless an exemption from registration is available, and many potential registration exemptions do not permit companies relying on them to broadly offer their securities to the general public. As such, many pre-IPO offerings targeted at the general public may be illegal. Fraudsters may also use unregistered offerings to conduct investment scams. Investors should be mindful of the risks involved with an offer to purchase pre-IPO shares in a company and watch out for red flags that an unregistered offering may be a scam. As with any investment, we encourage investors to research thoroughly both the investment product and the professional offering the product before making any investment decision. Watch Out for Common Red Flags. Unregistered Investment Professionals: Unlicensed, unregistered persons commit much of the investment fraud in the United States. Before making any investment, including purchasing pre-IPO shares, you should check to see whether the seller is currently registered or licensed. You can do this quickly and easily using the free tool on Investor.gov. Aggressive Sales Practices: The organizers of pre-IPO investment scams may set up so-called “boiler rooms” and hire unregistered sales agents to solicit investors. These boiler rooms often purchase lists of investors’ contact information. An unregistered sales agent will typically start a relationship with an investor after “cold calling” them. The agent will often use a formulated script that includes answers and rebuttals to the investor’s anticipated questions. The agents may ask investors to cash out liquid investments in their 401(k) accounts and invest in pre-IPO funds. Sometimes they facilitate setting up new brokerage accounts for the investors. Social Media Solicitations: Fraudsters also may use social media to solicit victims for pre-IPO investment scams. Never make investment decisions based solely on information from social media platforms or apps. Trending Topics: Fraudsters conducting pre-IPO investment scams often pitch the securities of companies claiming to focus on emerging technologies or industries — for example, crypto assets or artificial intelligence (AI) — to entice investors. Claims About Pre-IPO Offerings May Be False or Misleading.The people and companies that promote fraudulent pre-IPO offerings often use impressive-looking websites, online postings, and email spam to entice potential investors. To lure you in, they may make unfounded comparisons between the company they are promoting and other established, successful companies. They may make claims about the timing of the IPO – for example, they may say the IPO is “imminent” or will be “this year.” But these and other claims that sound so believable at first often turn out to be false or misleading. Fraudsters perpetrating pre-IPO scams may tout that they have created investment opportunities for you (as opposed to just for the wealthy) and falsely claim that they won’t make money until you make money. You should be wary of any investment opportunity where the offering is unregistered and there are no investment limits or net worth or income requirements for investing. Those promoting fraudulent pre-IPO offerings may tell you that there are no upfront fees on pre-IPO offerings when they are actually charging you exorbitant, undisclosed markups. They may falsely claim to have a very limited amount of shares or to have shares at a lower price than the anticipated public offering price. In some cases, fraudsters may not even own the pre-IPO shares that they are offering and may use investor funds for personal use rather than to purchase shares. They may also try to hide the identity of involved individuals who have red flags in their backgrounds such as disciplinary actions by a government regulator (including the SEC) or a self-regulatory organization (including FINRA). Again, thoroughly research any investment before handing over your hard-earned money. The SEC Continues to Combat Pre-IPO Scams.Here are some cases that the SEC has brought involving alleged pre-IPO schemes:
Additional Information Social Media and Investment Fraud – Investor Alert Resources for Victims of Securities Law Violations Ask a question or report a problem concerning your investments, your investment account or a financial professional. Visit Investor.gov, the SEC's website for individual investors. Receive Investor Alerts and Bulletins from OIEA by email or RSS feed. This Investor Alert represents the views of the staff of the Office of Investor Education and Advocacy. It is not a rule, regulation, or statement of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”). The Commission has neither approved nor disapproved its content. This Alert, like all staff guidance, has no legal force or effect: it does not alter or amend applicable law, and it creates no new or additional obligations for any person. Follow the SEC on X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. The more you know, the less likely you are to be prey to a scam. Join us at our online June 8-10, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. Learn how to protect your wealth, hedge against a weaker dollar, invest and compound your gains, green your retirement plan, easy and efficacious nest egg strategies, how to get hot and diversified (including in artificial intelligence and EVs), how to evaluate IPOs and other stocks, and 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] to 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 June 8-10, 2024 Financial Freedom Retreat. 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 7-14, 2025. Email [email protected] to learn more. Click for testimonials, pricing, hours & details. There is very limited availability. Register early to ensure that you get the exact room you want. 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. ![]() Natalie Wynne Pace is an Advocate for Sustainability, Financial Literacy & Women's Empowerment. Natalie is the bestselling author of 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 5th 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 Netflix Evicts Unpaid Viewers. Empty Theaters. 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. AI, Gold & Copper are on Fire. Sunpower Doubled. Sell in May and Go Away? What About the Election? Vacations that Color Our World Forever. The Magnificent 7 Drop to the Fantastic 5 9 Inflation, Budgeting, Debt Reduction and Investing Solutions. China & Russia Double Their Gold Holdings. 2024 Investment of the Year? The Reddit IPO. Meme Stock or Snap Land? Tesla's Factory in Germany Taken Offline by Activists. Bitcoin Sets a New Record High. The Importance of Rebalancing. Beyond Meat's Shares Surge. Quaker Oats' Pesticide Problem. Stocks are Flying High. Why Aren't Mine? Cut Your Tax Bill in Half. 9 Tips. Celebrity Jet CO2. Green Washing. The Facts. Some Solutions. Copper: Essential to the Clean Energy Transition. Uh. Oh. More Bank Trouble. Are Amazon, Square and Other Tech Companies Ripping Us Off? Housing. Unaffordable. What Works? Case studies and creative solutions. Don't Reach for Yield. Closed-End Funds. 2024 Investor IQ Test. Answers to the 2024 Investor IQ Test. Apple's Woes Drag Down the Dow. The Winners & Losers of 2023. Ozempic, Magnificent 7 & Beyond. 2024 Crystal Ball. 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. Earn $50,000 or More in Interest. Safely. Finally. WeWork's Bankruptcy. Half-Empty Office Buildings. Problems in our Personal Wealth Plan. Solutions for Unaffordable Housing. 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. Artificial Intelligence and Nvidia's Blockbuster Earnings Report Biotech in a Post-Pandemic World 10 Wealth Secrets of Billionaires and Royals. What Happened to Cannabis? Bank of America has $100 Billion in Bond Losses (on Paper) Lithium. Essential to EV Life. 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. Securities, financial instruments or strategies mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors. |
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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