Hello. Welcome to the very first post on the brand new maalamalama wealth education blog. The maalamalama wealth education blog will publish numerous trend-setting, disruptive articles about wealth but unlike any other blog about wealth you have ever encountered. At malamalama and our imminent launch of our online skwealthacademy, just a few weeks away, we define wealth unlike anyone else in that we want to develop not just your financial wealth, which is the singular focus of every single “wealth building” website, but I want to also simultaneously develop your mental and your physical wealth as well. I believe that if you engage in various endeavors that build tremendous financial wealth but that introduce enormous stress, anxiety, and feelings of isolation, depression and loneliness in the process that the achievement of financial wealth in the absence of mental health is a complete failure. I believe that if you build tremendous wealth, but in the process, work 80 hours a week as is advocated by some people many universally brand as “successful”, your physical health is destroyed in the process and your body becomes so weak from lack of use, then this achievement is a complete failure as well. I further believe that the traditional definition of success as advocated in academic classrooms that solely ties to the accumulation of wealth fails not only all of humanity, but fails the individual, as each person should determine their own definition of success that suits them best that considers the balance between material, mental and physical wealth that will maximize their happiness.
In addition, since one’s level of success is determined by one’s level of education, and I believe that today most academic classrooms fail to provide the nine essential pillars of education, of which I will discuss in another coming blog post, I will also discuss, in the maalamalama wealth education blog, the deficiencies of our academic system and the role these deficiencies play in limiting our view of life to a very narrow set of options among unlimited options, and how our difference to this very narrow set of options in life negatively impacts our happiness. For those of you that were familiar with my last blog that I ran from 2006 to 2018 for thirteen years, know that I will still discuss a lot of financial topics, including precious metals as well, as ownership of precious metals will become increasingly important to everyone’s financial plan moving forward from 2019, especially when the US stock market implodes in the future, whether the implosion comes in the form of a devastating crash or a Zimbabwe like melt-up. If you asked me in 2018, which option I believed to be more likely, I would have said, without hesitation, a devastating crash. I still believe that the more likely scenario for the implosion will be a crash versus a melt-up, though a possible melt-up has gained strength as a greater possibility since the new chairman of the US Central Bank, Jerome Powell, seems intent on taking the US dollar to its intrinsic value of zero. However, make no mistake about it, a melt-up in any stock market is still as much of an implosion as a meltdown. The differences between these two forms of an implosion are similar to a nuclear fission bomb versus a nuclear fusion bomb. A nuclear fission bomb generates its tremendous power from the division of nucleus of an atom whereas a nuclear fusion bomb generates tremendous power from merging two smaller atoms together to form a large one.
However, though one process involves splitting atoms while another one involves bringing them together, both processes are undeniably destructive and radioactive. Because one process involves building larger atoms from two smaller ones does not mean it is a constructive process. Consequently, one can compare a stock market meltdown to the nuclear fission bomb while a stock market meltup, as has occurred recently in Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Ukraine and so on. Do you know why most people have no idea that the Ukraine stock market index nearly tripled in less than three years between 2016 and 2018 and that the Venezuelan stock market index nearly quadrupled during the first half of 2019? Because both stock markets melted up on the back of collapsing currencies which would also happen with the US stock market if the US dollar melted down.
Finally, as always, I will discuss why business schools are a near complete waste of time as they address and teach business, market and pricing theories and even complex models like the Black Sholes model that are completely invalid today because of technological advancements in the financial industry that has granted control of asset pricing behavior to the banker. Technology, like HFT algorithms, and fake futures markets, where hundreds of the amount of real commodity that is produced every year is traded in the form of paper derivatives every year, control prices today, not rubbish theoretical principles covered in all business school programs today. I have personally observed call: put spreads of 20:1 in Goldman Sachs stock options, in which the strike prices for the option to pay out were 15% below the present stock price with an expiration date less than four days away. I have then observed Goldman Sachs stock prices rise by 20% in four days to pay out thousand percent returns to call option holders in just a matter of a few trading days. If you believe such price movements can be predicted by complex Black Sholes formulas or theoretical principles, then you should 100% attend business school. However, if you think there are far more important elements that gave rise to these extremely out-of-the money banking call options paying out enormous profits over a matter of a few days on the day these call options expired, then pursue education, not schooling.
Education, especially in matters of business, finance and money, not schooling, will enable people, whether young or old, to truly understand market pricing mechanism that are never taught in a business school classroom, whether at a local community college level or within the halls of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Princeton campus buildings. With that said, I hope that this blog inspires you and feeds your curiosity to explore and learn more about the topics I will cover here. Welcome and please don’t forget to bookmark the maalamalama wealth education blog on your browser so you can return periodically to read our new articles.
