A Tale of Two Economies

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

— Charles Dickens

The opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities seem to never lose their power. There’s always a way to relate them to the times we’re living in, and today is no different.

We’re living through a tale of two economies right now.

It’s the best of times for companies like Peloton that sell fake bikes to wealthy people so they can go for a ride without having to face the world outside.

And it’s the worst of times for folks who lost their jobs and are struggling to keep the lights on and food on the table for their kids.

It’s the best of times for those of us with disposable income to spend on that vacation property we’ve always dreamed of.

And it’s the worst of times for those of us who are wondering what we’ll do when eviction moratoriums come crashing down and our unpaid rent comes due.

A headline I read yesterday really drove the point home for me:

A pool company is getting ready to list on the stock market and it’s going to get a valuation near $3 BILLION!

Why? Well, because it’s profitable. Because in one economy, people are buying new houses with pools or getting new pools put in at their current homes.

Times are good for that segment of the population. They can afford to literally dig a hole and throw money into it.

So why wouldn’t a pool company go public and garner a valuation in the billions?

Crazy Pills or Blinders?

It’s all crazy to me, to be honest. And I feel like maybe the rest of the world is taking crazy pills. We’ve got cities still suffering from spiking infections and hospitalizations along with rising unpaid bills, while the legislature is arguing about what to rename schools.

But that’s what’s important, not making sure there’s a middle class left when this thing is all over. Renaming schools that are named after people who might have done something that doesn’t jive with our current values. That’s the most important thing politicians have to deal with.

But then I ask myself… are people taking crazy pills or are they just wearing blinders? Because it’s a lot easier to pretend everything is OK if you’re not paying attention to what’s going wrong.

If you’re focused on feeling good about renaming the Washington Football Club or Roosevelt High School, you can pretend that the people in Washington aren’t on the brink of an eviction crisis and the kids from Roosevelt High School aren’t falling further and further behind every day they’re not in classes.

The old adage is “out of sight, out of mind,” but maybe the modern version is “out of mind, doesn’t matter.”

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not out here advocating for General Robert E. Lee High School to keep its Confederate flag-waving mascot. I’ve always wondered about the sense of idolizing people who fought against our country and advocated for owning people.

But I think we’ve got bigger immediate problems facing us right now than plastic bags and offensive names. It’s just that those immediate problems aren’t so immediate for those of us living safely behind the walls of gated communities in the suburbs.

We’re feeling pretty good pedaling for hours to get nowhere on our thousand-dollar stationary bikes. Heck, we just paid for the bike 10 times over with the gains we made on the stock.

Why would we worry about millions of people about to lose electricity, water, and housing when we’re so excited to try out the new pool we’re filling with water and heating with electricity at our newly bought vacation house?

I don’t think there’s a civil war coming or anything, either. That seems a little extreme. But I do see a very distinct class structure developing, and it is splitting us right down the middle.

Not into red or blue, mask or no mask, Lakers or Celtics, but into affluent and impoverished.

And as terrible as it feels to say it, I know exactly which side I (and probably you) want to be on in that split.

Zero-Sum Game

A zero-sum game is how you describe a situation in which for there to be a winner there has to be a loser. There’s one prize, and if I get it, you don’t. It’s a zero-sum game because your loss and my win net out to zero leftover in the end.

Poverty versus affluence is pretty much zero-sum. For someone to be rich, someone else has to be poor. Wealth is comparable and without comparisons, it’s just a number.

It’s like when you hear someone say, “If everyone is special, then nobody is.” If everyone is rich, nobody’s rich. And likewise, if everyone’s poor, then nobody is.

And I’m not saying you’re a loser if you’re poor, but it sure feels more like winning when you’ve got those extra commas in your bank statement.

So, I’m going out on a limb and assuming you feel the same way and the winners of this zero-sum game are those that accumulate wealth for the future.

And if you want to be a winner, and you’re already reading Wealth Daily, you know that the stock market is where this zero-sum game will be won and lost. I’m guessing that’s why you’re reading this at all.

You realize that the stock market is both the great equalizer and the great accelerator. It equalizes us in that everyone who invests and sells at the same time gets the same prices and the same percentage gains. And it accelerates our wealth by allowing us to grow it without all the effort of going into a job and just working to make money.

And if you want to be among the “winners” in this zero-sum game, you need to be invested. But not just in any companies or some broad fund that’s managed by a computer program you can’t look in the eye.

You need to take an active role in your investments and identify trends in the market that will play out for a long time. Heck, maybe pools will be a long-term thing, I don’t know about that.

But I have identified several other long-term trends that investors in The Wealth Advisory community are already profiting from.

Long-Term Trends for Long-Term Gains

One of them is 5G. It’s going to be huge. And I know you’ve heard a lot about it already, both from me and other writers and analysts. You might even be tired of hearing about it.

But we’re not going to stop talking about 5G for years to come because it’s a long-term trend that’s going to have a massive impact on our lives. And it’s going to offer incredible opportunities to investors who know the right places to put their money.

Like the “5G Tollbooth” company… it’s a name we coined for a company we uncovered that owns the nation’s largest 5G infrastructure network. It can (and does) charge whatever it wants for access to its network, like a toll collector charging for access to a highway.

And every major wireless carrier already has a deal in place and so do most of the big cable companies.

Learn more about the “5G Tollbooth” company.

Another trend is legal cannabis. I’m sure you all remember the boom and bust of the cannabis bubble a few years ago. It was as impressive on the way up as it was heartbreaking on the way down.

Some folks made millions and retired rich beyond their wildest dreams, and some lost their shirts when the bubble burst. But the legal cannabis market didn’t disappear and neither did the profits of investors who learned about a program we call “Pot Paydays.” Even as the other pot stocks came careening down to earth, “Pot Paydays” investors kept cashing check after check and watching their profits grow and grow.

It’s so successful and so popular that I wrote a special report just so people could get the information and start scheduling their own “paydays.”

Learn when the next “Pot Payday” is coming.

And a third is e-commerce. Online retail is not a passing fancy. People like the convenience of ordering stuff from their homes (or wherever they may be when they order). And it’s only going to get bigger as the years go on. It’s a very strong long-term trend.

The members of our community are making out like bandits thanks to a program we recently uncovered that, in essence, pays us every time a package leaves an Amazon facility. We call it “Prime Profits” because it’s basically like we’re profiting directly from Amazon’s wildly successful Prime membership program.

Learn how to start collecting Prime Profits.

That’s just three of the long-term trends we’re already profiting from. And we’re constantly searching for the next big one, like when we saw the value in software as a service (SaaS) and recommended our investors load up on a small firm called Twilio.

We’re just shy of a 1,000% gain on Twilio three short years later and expect that to double before the trend loses steam.

And just so you don’t think I’m simply cherry-picking our best ideas, let me give you a screenshot directly from the active portfolio page before I go:

It shows that we’ve got 29 open trades, 24 winners, five losers, and an average gain of 132.64%.

Year to date, our recommendations are up 45.57% on average.

None of the benchmarks come close. Even the high-flying, tech-heavy Nasdaq can’t touch that with a 10-foot pole:

So, if you want to be on the comfortable side of the affluent/impoverished division that’s getting starker and starker, you might want to consider joining the tens of thousands of happy (and extremely comfortable) investors who’ve joined us in beating the markets for the past 12 years and counting.

To your wealth,

Jason Williams

@TheReal_JayDubs

Angel Research on Youtube

After graduating Cum Laude in finance and economics, Jason designed and analyzed complex projects for the U.S. Army. He made the jump to the private sector as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley, where he eventually led his own team responsible for billions of dollars in daily trading. Jason left Wall Street to found his own investment office and now shares the strategies he used and the network he built with you. Jason is the founder of Main Street Ventures, a pre-IPO investment newsletter; the founder of Future Giants, a nano cap investing service; and authors The Wealth Advisory income stock newsletter. He is also the managing editor of Wealth Daily. To learn more about Jason, click here.

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