The French artist Louis Cane once said to me when he was going through a catalogue of my paintings that I should “make a lot of noise”. However, he wasn’t very specific regarding what kind of “noise” I should be making. For me, there are two kinds of noise. There is “cheap noise” and then there is “expensive noise”. “Cheap noise” is of the vulgar shouty variety. Sometimes though it can work and it has worked for several artists, but it is a slippery slope. It reeks of desperation and shameless whoring. And it runs the risk of cheapening good work. The focus ceases to be on the work. “Expensive noise”, on the other hand, is more august. This is a fine and subtle noise where stealth rather than shouting reigns supreme. In this case, you create something so powerful and profound that people naturally gravitate towards it and sometimes in a furious stampede-like way. And the artist hasn’t muttered a word.
The entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel in his book Zero To One states that competition is for losers. I sometimes thought that competition was a corrosive thing and that I was above it. After all, with my art I create my own world and that world is nobody else’s but my own. I am not competing with anyone.
But what is competition and is it a bad thing?
Within the realm of art and the art world, one could objectively and in a plain vanilla black and white way come to the not unreasonable conclusion that it is a highly competitive space. And along those lines I guess one could look at competition in two different ways;
To view competition as a healthy and positive thing. Dare I say, as something inspirational. That it is used as fuel to be not just a better and more driven and committed artist. But also to be a better person; a less self absorbed and narcissistic person who better understands other artists and what they are trying to convey rather than to just be stuck, entangled and rutted in their own world.
To view competition as a threat resulting in chronic envy whenever an artist, especially an artist you may know, becomes very successful while you find that success is always eluding you. You begin to develop negative and destructive thoughts along the lines of believing that you deserve success just as much simply because you believe yourself to be a unique artist and that “mediocre or bad art should not be rewarded”. This mindset is a one way ticket to terminal misery. It is a veritable road to perdition.
I think that being too fixated on the morality/fairness aspect of the art world is deadly; it is like drinking from a cup of slow acting poison. What is “bad/good art” anyway? As I said, getting into the shoes and mind of an artist you do not rate and whose work you think “doesn’t cut it” is far healthier than explicitly condemning them and lamenting “how unfair” and “how full of sh*t” the art world is.
We all have insecurities and having some insecurities can be good. It keeps you on your toes and ignites a fire in the soul. Too much comfort often leads to lethargy and inertia. However, being submerged in insecurities to the point where it is toxic and unhealthy, instilling bad vibes and negative energy, is not a good thing.
The art critic David Sylvester said that, “Artists must be allowed to go through bad periods! They must be allowed to do bad work! They must be allowed to get in a mess! They must be allowed to have dud experiments! They must also be allowed to have periods where they repeat themselves in a rather aimless, fruitless way before they can pick up and go on.”
Sylvester said this all in 1969. Yet, I think today, in the age of social media, his words are more important then ever. Social media platforms like Instagram can be useful vehicles for making connections and sharing our artwork and processes. However, it can sometimes breed in us a rigid perfectionism; that we must showcase the best of what we have to offer and never be encouraged to fail and take risks. This duality of what is good and bard art is unnecessary and quite destructive. Similarly is being too precious to the point where it kind of functions as a straitjacket and we don’t realise the whole totality of everything that we have to offer.
The right to make “bad art” is almost paradoxically a very emancipating, inspiring and edifying thing. To the point where it renders perfectionism a cul-de-sac.
As an artist I’ve come to the realisation that I now care less regarding whether I and/or my work is “understood”. It is of little to no importance to me since I do not paint or create works with a primary overarching mission to “be understood”. In fact, there is nothing to understand in my paintings. I don’t have any “goal” nor am I trying to make any kind of statement. If I have to say anything in relation to my work it is what I’ve said many times in the past; “I paint my feelings”. Or, more broadly, I paint my inner invisible world. And my paintings are visible artefacts of this invisible world. Thus my paintings are meant to be “felt” more than “understood”.
There are artists I admire, but there is no single artist that really influences me since essentially my core root/source is my inner world. Take the artist Jackson Pollock, for example. His paintings are not meant to be understood and its a fool’s errand to attempt to understand them. For me, his paintings are 100% about feeling. The duality of him as a person and his processes of creating are for me all about energy and feeling. No other artist matches Pollock here. And its a very permanent, primordial and universal thing; transcending the parameters of space and time.
I like to call my painting technique Spiritual Coding. In the digital world in which we currently live the word coding is used a lot. This of course refers to computer programming. A language for this age. And when I look at my paintings I am also using my own language. A language created through interacting with my ‘inner being’ and this I call Spiritual Coding. My paintings are in many ways remnants of this. Tangible photographs almost of my eternal spirit. Although they don’t capture the processes of my work they are residue formations of intense spiritual journeying and internal searching.
Making The Invisible Visible
I would like to expand further on this by saying that in my paintings I make the fleeting invisible world visible. My eternal shadow is the eternal unconscious ocean of my being. When I paint or create, I dive straight into this quarter. I hesitate to call it a vast empty quarter such as a desert, although a desert landscape can stir inside of me strong almost monolithically primordial visions and by no designs of my own. In my essay from ten years, I compared my paintings to deserts that only become alive as one becomes more connected spiritually with themselves. However, I like the metaphor of the ocean. When one dives into it it is akin to diving into the vast invisible unconscious space of our being. Roughly 70% of our planet’s surface is covered by oceans. The dry land portion of our planet is what is noticeably visible. There are hidden elements but the ocean is the true hidden portion of our world. All we see is just the skin and we are denied easy exploration. Most of the low hanging fruit is on land. When I paint I am taking a dive into this invisible and unknown unconscious world. I don’t know what I’ll discover or find and when I am painting, especially in the deeper more meditative stages of my painting process, it can feel like it isn’t me consciously painting.
Painting From The Eternal Source
Any recurring symbols or motifs in my paintings are from that same place. Like those created by prehistoric cave painters, for example. Some people say that all art is political, but I give the pollution and toxicity of politics and even culture a wide birth. It is all an anathema to the eternal source. These are ephemeral things that burn bright for just a very brief interval in the grander passage of time.
I paint at varying, alternating degrees of tempo. I don’t paint at one consistent speed. At times I attack the canvas whereas at other times I am more restrained like a cautious diligent heart surgeon carrying out a complex operation. In this moment when I decide to apply the next brush stroke is of great importance to me since by applying the stroke in the wrong place or too prematurely can alter the entire composition and metamorphization of it. Some artists say that there are no mistakes and I guess that is generally true. However, in these moments I do not have the luxury to make mistakes.
When explaining my painting process in the past I may have placed a big emphasis on spontaneity and that is a core part of my painting process. Part of “Spiritual Coding” is that direct connection to the eternal source with no external fleeting elements standing in the way. However, there are times when I have to look and observe at the totality of the composition so far before I can continue any further. Mark Rothko, for example, would spend a great deal of time observing his paintings, of what he had created so far, before continuing and making his next move. Whereas an artist like Jackson Pollock had that perpetual spontaneous carnal ferocity. I have both; painting in different tempos and time signatures. Often spontaneous, but also more controlled. However, the eternal source always guides me. When I paint, I very seldom reference any external material like any preliminary sketches for example. And that is what Spiritual Coding is; letting the eternal source be my guide.
By Nicholas Peart
9th August 2026
(c)All Rights Reserved
Image: “Deep Forest Spirits (1/3)” (2020) by Nicholas Peart
Leopold Aschenbrenner is a young German AI researcher and investor only in his mid 20s. From 2023 to 2024 he worked for Open AI. During his tenure at the company he was part of their “Superalignment” team that made technological breakthroughs with AI systems more complex and intelligent than humans. The team was eventually wound down and Aschenbrenner was fired from the company over an alleged information leak. Not long after his dismissal from the company he authored a 165 page essay entitled “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead”, which was published in June 2024. In his essay he outlines the future trajectory and evolution of AI and the risks along the way. His essay received an enormous amount of global attention and raised his profile substantially.
After publishing his essay, he established a hedge fund called Situational Awareness LP (named after his essay and focused on AI), which received backing and funding from a bunch of heavyweight tech entrepreneurs and investors such as Patrick and John Collison (the co-founders of the fintech company Stripe), Daniel Goss and Nat Friedman.
Since the launch of the fund in July 2024 until just a couple of months ago, the fund made gains in excess of 1000%. That is a more than impressive gain in such a relatively short time span. This only cemented observers and investors’ views that the kid was a genius with the midas touch and a unique prescience. Until just last month when the fund collapsed from $45bn of assets to just $10bn. Now you may be thinking how could the value of the fund have collapsed so spectacularly in such a short space of time? Yet you could also ask the opposite question, how could the fund have racked up such spectacular gains in just two years? The answer of course is the L word; leverage. Whilst many investors and observers were drunk on the halo effect and would naturally attribute the past success of the fund to Leopold’s genius, a few actually cared to properly scrutinise the fund. And those that bothered to do any diligence were shocked by what they discovered. Their own research revealed that the company used as much as 400% leverage and thus they were not at all that surprised when the fund crashed hard.
This is not the first time something like this has happened nor I suspect will it be the last. Back in the mid to late 1990s, during the heating up of the dot-com bubble, there was an American hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management. LTCM was founded in 1994 by John Meriwether who had previously been the vice chairman and head of bond trading at Salomon Brothers. The fund’s board of directors included some very distinguished individuals such as Myron Scholes and Robert C Merton who both jointly won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1997 for their development of the Black-Scholes model; a mathematical model commonly used in derivatives trading. LTCM was initially successful with healthy double digit percentage annual returns. However, in 1998 things started to go badly wrong for the fund. In that year it lost $4.6bn in under four months due to taking on leverage (that L word again!) and exposure to both the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 1998 Russian financial crisis. The fund was on the cusp of collapse that year and was only saved by a $3.6bn bailout from a group of 14 banks to prevent further contagion. LTCM was eventually dissolved two years later in 2000.
When I reflect on what happened with both Situational Awareness LP and Long Term Capital Management, my key takeaway is that the market doesn’t care how smart you are. It can often be a mistake to automatically conflate intelligence or genius with making good investment decisions. This is where that aforementioned cognitive bias, the halo effect, can be particularly devastating. I think as human beings we can be strongly swayed by narratives and sometimes a strong narrative alone in something is enough to give us conviction in our investment decisions. Yet narratives, especially powerful and red hot ones, can be dangerous. There is no substitute to doing your own research. It can be gruelling and unsexy, but it can also save you.
Today marks the 10th anniversary since David Bowie passed away. I still remember that day clearly. I was in South Africa watching the news on the TV and seeing the wealth of tributes. It was a shock. He kept everything very private. In fact, I was thinking of him just a few months before he died and I was wondering when he would, if ever, decide to go on tour again? His last world tour was more than a decade before that point and I foolishly turned down the chance to see him play at Wembley Arena back in 2003. 2003-4 would be the last time he properly toured and save for a few sporadic and brief live appearances, he would never tour again.
Just a couple of days after he died on January 12th 2016, I wrote a piece entitled, “The Death Of David Bowie, The Future And 3D Printing”. This would also be my very first blog post for my newly established blog website that was originally called The Slider. In this post I not only reflect just on David himself, but also the wider context of the future and new and emerging technological developments. For example, I talk about the concept of The Singularity and the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil’s prediction that in 2045 artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence. Back then the topic of AI was not on everybody’s lips like it is today.
And what has all this got to do with David Bowie, you may ask? For me, it is all very relevant when I think of him. Aside from being a great artist who changed the face of pop music and expanded the parameters regarding the possibilities of what being a mainstream pop artist can be, he also had remarkable prescience. As well as embracing and harassing change (as opposed to fighting it), he had a unique ability to see far into the future and had a pioneering spirit. A great example of this is his interview with Jeremy Paxman from 1999. Back then we were still in its early days of the evolution of the internet. There was a lot of excitement and hype over the internet. Naturally, there were believers and sceptics. The doubting Thomases saw the internet as just a fad whereas the believers saw the net’s huge potential. Bowie was definitely in the latter camp, but he wasn’t a blind and blinkered believer. He was one of the first artists to release his own music online and he saw the great possibilities of the internet and how it would shape our lives. Yet he could also foresee the negative impacts it would have on humanity. In the interview, Paxman remarks that the internet is “just a tool”, although I suspect he may have been playing devil’s advocate and trying to gauge Bowie’s response.
It is a popular theory to say that Bowie planned his death all along and that he checked out at the perfect time before the whole world turned to custard. It is a compelling theory, but I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it, because I firmly believe that Bowie loved life for all its ups and downs. Yes, he may have been highly secretive about his illness and meticulously planned his final album, but if he had the chance he would have given anything to live longer on this planet. In fact, I recall reading somewhere after he died that one of the things that made him the most sad about knowing that he was going to go so soon was knowing that he wouldn’t be around to see his young daughter grow. Moreover, I also seem to remember reading a tweet by his son Duncan, a few years after his death, where he said that if only David had not smoked so much throughout most of his life there would have been a good chance he would still be around. So no, I am not one of those folk who thinks that he “died at the right time”.
On the day he passed away and the days after his death, I watched people who grew up with Bowie as far back as those Ziggy Stardust days being absolutely heartbroken; as if they had lost a beloved soulmate. I was very shocked and saddened when he died. I love his music and spent a lot of time listening to his records. However, I did not grow up with his music from the early days of his career. It was the Ziggy Stardust period that was the tipping point and that finally turned him into a star after several years of struggling and false dawns. Those veteran fans remember when Bowie appeared on Top Of The Pops in the early 70s playing his song Starman with a blue guitar. For them, it was like witnessing some exotic and androgynous extra-terrestrial being. In those days long before the internet, social media and hyperconnectivity, witnessing this on the TV was exciting and a blast of colour in a colourless world. Throughout most of the 70s Bowie was firing on all cylinders creatively and almost every album he released during this period was excellent. He took risks and never rested on his laurels like some of his glam rock contemporaries and he knew when the time was right to wrap up the Ziggy phase of his music career.
Sometimes I ask myself, if Bowie were starting out today would he strive to make it as a pop star or even go into the arts full stop? Personally, I feel that he was more than just a pop star and he didn’t have all his huevos in one basket. I think one of the most important things to deduce about him, as I already explained earlier, is that he had a pioneering spirit. He embraced change and new and emerging landscapes. He was terminally curious and open minded. When Bowie’s career first really took off in the early 70s, the music industry was still growing and there was still a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of creative musical experimentation and what could be achieved. Even though there were wild and unconventional musicians that existed before Bowie first emerged, one could argue that Bowie was the first mainstream pop star who created the template for all future popstars regarding what they could be. Thus in the same way that The Beatles were probably the most influential band of all time, it would not be unreasonable to argue that David Bowie was the most influential pop star of all time.
“A mania first takes out those that bet against it and then those that bet with it” Jim Rodgers
DISCLAIMER: The following article contains just my opinions and thoughts regarding where I think US financial markets may be heading over the next 8 years. I am not a qualified financial adviser so please don’t blindly take my words as gospel. For any financial advice, please seek a qualified financial adviser.
In this article I will be focusing on US financial markets and their trajectory over the coming 8 years until 2033. The USA has the largest economy in the world and over the last 16-17 years since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), its stock market has been a stellar performer. Back in March 2009, the S&P 500 index (that is the 500 largest US listed stocks by market capitalisation) was trading on a valuation of below 700 points. As I write this, the index is currently trading at over 6,300 points. This is a more than 9-fold gain during that period of time. Even more impressive is the performance of the NASDAQ index (which consists of many of the largest US technology companies) over that same time frame. In March 2009, the NASDAQ index was trading below 1500 points. Today it is trading above 21,000 points. This is a more than 14-fold gain during that period of time. Seriously mindblowing performance.
Yet as impressive as all this has been, several investors and analysts have warned about the US market being very overvalued and priced to perfection. And they are right to be concerned. The US financial markets alone make up just over 70% of the entire global stock market. Back in the 1980s, that share was only around 30% (1).
In addition to this, and more alarming, the current Shiller PE ratio (calculated as the price divided by the average of ten years of earning adjusted for inflation) of the S&P 500 index is at over 38 (2). This is historically very high. Over the last 124 years, the mean Shiller PE rate of the S&P 500 is just over 17. Thus the current ratio is more than double the average. That being said it is not at an all time high. This was reached back in December 1999, close to the peak of the DotCom bubble, when the ratio went above 44.
The AI And Emerging Technologies Tailwind
One big tailwind for the current high valuation of the US stock market is the current Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom. Many listed companies involved in AI have seen their stock prices fly over the last couple of years and this has contributed in a big way to the high overall valuation of the main US stock market indices. All of the so-called Magnificent 7 stocks including Tesla have trillion dollar market caps. The company Nvidia, arguably the poster child of this current AI boom, is now trading on a market cap of $4.4 trillion. This is the highest valuation of all the Mag 7 stocks including Apple and Microsoft. But even outside of the Mag 7, there are many stocks trading on absolutely bonkers valuations with multi-billion dollar market caps. One golden example is the software company Palantir. This stock has a current market cap of over $430bn and is trading on a PE of 587. Now such a PE would not matter if it were some junior small cap stock with a market cap below $100m, but this is a stock with a market cap vastly larger than any company on the London Stock Exchange.
However, even though a lot of investors and financial analysts are concerned about the current valuations of many of these stocks, I actually think that these valuations can get even more elevated in the short to medium term. And the reason for this is almost purely because of the current AI tailwind and narrative. The growth and exponential development of AI is very real and this will only continue to be turbocharged into the coming months and years. In many ways this is far bigger than those mid to late 90s early days of the internet. There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that AI is going to have an absolutely transformational effect on society and the way we all live. We can already see the signs via current AI models like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. To a lot of people, the growth and future trajectory of AI has no precedent. There is nothing from the past that one can really compare it to; not the formative growth years of the internet or even the Industrial Revolution. That alone is a very powerful thing.
And although it is AI that is on everyone’s mind right now, I can see other important emerging technologies being on people’s lips. One such technology is Quantum Computing. This is a technology I can see developing very fast and very soon becoming just as talked about as AI. It will not just revolutionise computing, it will also help massively with further speeding up the development of AI. So although the current AI tailwind is very strong, I can see it gaining even more traction as all these other emerging technologies like Quantum Computing enter the public consciousness. And this is what will likely further elevate all those stocks that have already appreciated substantially in value.
A Shiller PE Ratio Of 70
Although the current Shiller PE Ratio of 38 for the S&P 500 is historically high, I can see it going even higher over the next few years and far surpassing its all time high of 44. The last two years have seen AI and AI related stocks soar hugely and I can see the next 3 years being even more crazy. In fact, the next three years will be on mind altering steroids. The current AI tailwind will soon become the “AI and Quantum Computing” tailwind and then later the “AI, Quantum Computing, Robotics, Nanotech and 3D/4D Printing” tailwind. All of this will push valuations for all those already hot darling stocks even further into the stratosphere. So do not be surprised to see Palantir with a $1tn plus market cap and Nvidia exceed a market cap of $10tn. This tailwind and the supercharged positive feedback loops will likely result in this new demented environment. Over the next few years there will be a lot of market volatility and a few mini market corrections (a la Trump tarifs circa April 25) along the way, but all these corrections will be very short lived and the US stock market will keep breaching new all time highs. Meanwhile, incomes will barely increase and the wealth inequality gap will get even more extreme. If this all occurs I think its a real possibility that by 2028, the NASDAQ hits an all time high of close to 50,000 points and the S&P 500 goes to 14-15,000 points. And the Shiller PE Ratio will be at around 70 points; at over 25 points higher than its all time high. Analysts fixated on valuations are already sounding alarm bells about the current high valuation of the US market. Yet over the next few years they will be screaming even more and looking in disbelief as those already high valuations simply further inflate into infinity. Yet I am going to make a prediction and say that at some point in the first half of 2028 the absolute top of the US market will be reached and then what will happen afterwards will be incredibly seismic and dangerous.
The Biggest Financial Crisis In US History
When the S&P 500 and NASDAQ indices both reach their all time highs in the first half of 2028, this will precipitate the biggest financial crash and crisis in the history of the USA. It will far eclipse the 2008-9 Global Financial Crisis and also the 1929 Financial Crash and ensuing Depression. It’s possible that the NASDAQ index will fall sharply by over 50-60% in 2028 alone. There will be a huge stampede-like sell off in all those hot darling tech stops that dominated the zeitgeist for many years. I can see the DJT government, as it approaches the fag end of its current term, being in a state of genuine shock and completely taken aback by the sudden stock market plummeting with no abating in site. It will be a huge humiliation, especially to Trump himself who over the last few years took great pride in the seemingly neverending moonshooting valuations of the US stock market and the most popular tech stocks. It will likely also be the final major blow to his popularity even amongst his most staunch supporters. This major stock market crash will also occur at the same time when the USA has its first major government debt crisis and even defaults on a large portion of its debt. This will only increase the severity of the stock market crash with confidence dropping like a stone. During the 2008-9 GFC, government bailouts were given to companies that faced the real risk of collapsing. Central banks reduced interest rates to near zero and began massive rounds of Quantitative Easing (QE) to stimulate the economy. Such measures will prove deeply unpopular this time around. Public trust in government institutions and politicians is already at a very low level, but by 2028 when the financial crash is in full swing it will hit rock bottom. This will all result in irrevocable damage to the popularity of the DJT government and will pave the way for a stridently left wing leader and government to lead the USA post Trump. The USA may be historically the cradle of capitalism, but I can foresee mass disillusionment in capitalism in the wake of this seismic financial crash. It will hurt and affect so many people and there will be a fervently revolutionary spirit in the air where the new scapegoats will be, aside from the Trump government, all the very wealthy tech entrepreneurs, founders and executives of those company’s whose stock prices were soaring to dizzy heights before crashing back down to earth.
A Parting To The Left And The Scapegoating And Demonisation Of The Uber Wealthy
So when the US elections occur later in the second half of 2028, I predict that the new leader and government of the USA will be radically left wing. And the big reason for such a government coming into power, aside from the financial crash manifesting in a devastating way, will be the fact that despite there being an unbelievable stock market boom over the few preceding years, the levels of wealth inequality in the country reached dangerously high levels and the current DJT government did next to nothing to address this. They got too obsessed and blinded by the stock market boom (“America Is Booming!”) that they neglected and failed to address the concerns of many people.
This new left wing government will be just as extreme as the current DJT government, but in the complete opposite direction politically; like a pendulum swinging violently the other way. Their pre-victory campaign in the few months leading up to the election results day and in those months when the stock market is terminally crashing and the US defaults on its debt, will be focused heavily on the corruption, negligence and incompetence of the DJT government, the sky high levels of wealth inequality and a full on demonisation of the wealthy elite/oligarch class. The left leaning leader of this incoming government will be just as fiery as Trump himself; somebody with teeth and bite who suffers no fools and takes no nonsense. This will not be a puppet leader. However, although this may be seen as a welcome change by many people, it will be equally if not more unstable than the years of the preceding DJT government. By this point in the USA, there will be a huge revolutionary pitchfork movement against “the elite” and those with vast amounts of wealth. It will be almost dangerous to be in that category, especially if you are a high profile figure.
US Financial Markets In An Aggressive Multi-Year Long Bear Market
As the new left wing administration takes over, I can see the financial crash manifesting into a brutal multi-year long bear market with seemingly no end in sight. If 2028 is marked by a 50-70% fall in the major US stock market indices, 2029 will be marked by another chunky 40-50% fall and the same for 2030, 2031 etc. I think the bleeding will continue all the way into 2033. There will be no precedent in this epic multi-year long fall. Not even the years after the 1929 crash. But this is what happens when stock markets get elevated to extremely high levels. A Shiller PE Ratio of 70 for the S&P 500 index is beyond the realms of nuts. The US government debt default along with a new anti-big business/anti oligarch administration will completely crush investor confidence. The US economy will go from being an economic shining star to being an economic basket case.
A Post-Trump Era of Greater Regulatory Scrutiny
One major change that will occur when this new left wing government comes into power is that it will bring in a era of far greater regulatory scrutiny then ever and siding much more with the people than with the wealthy elites. This will be a huge change to the current landscape of very lax financial regulation and instances of financial fraud happening on a regular basis and often going unchecked and unpunished. The investor and infamous short-seller Jim Chanos famously called this period, “The Golden Age Of Fraud” back in 2020 (3). The wheels of the Golden Age Of Fraud continue to turn to this day and will only get even more extreme in the coming months and years all the way up to the 2028 financial crash.
When the previous GFC occurred, only a handful of people were punished and the subsequent years of Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) and QE planted the seeds for an asset and stock market boom that still continues to this day and has resulted in a level of wealth inequality not seen before the famous 1929 stock market crash. From 2028, I can foresee the new administration passing lots of new laws protecting investors and massively curbing the kinds of excesses that took place in the past. This will also go hand in hand with a program of massive wealth redistribution and a strengthening and overhaul of the existing US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Investing From 2028-2033
The financial crisis in the USA from 2028 will be brutal. Aside from all the hot darling stocks that will be getting crushed as this unfolds, one asset class I would not want to be anywhere near are US treasuries. When the USA defaults on its government debt, this is not somewhere I would want to put my money.
When the crash occurs everything will go down including more defensive stocks with a low beta that barely rode the wave of the stock market boom of the preceding years. Although their valuations will be much more stable and robust and impervious to the rapid falls many of the golden tech stocks will be experiencing.
I have long been banging the drum for gold in the face of this very possible scenario. Over the last couple of years the price of gold has been creeping up. I find it interesting that during this period of the major US stock market indices hitting new highs, the price of gold has also been breaching new highs. This is quite unusual, but to me it signifies that much of the current stock market boom is artificial and there are real concerns, along with the ever expanding US government debt pile, that it is simply not sustainable. As I already stated, trust in government institutions and politicians is at a very low level and when trust is low this is often a tailwind for something like gold.
I think that as the US stock market continues to boom into the next few years, the gold price will also continue to creep higher. However, I think the period from 2028-2033 will be the period when the gold price will really start to go on an epic tear. Yet this will first manifest during the period when the US defaults on its government debt and faith in the US dollar begins to plummet. The price of gold will be rising massively in US dollars, but what does this mean when faith in the US dollar is declining? It simply means that gold is doing what it is historically always meant to be doing and that is being a store of value. This is not the same function as a hot growth stock. It isn’t about making money. It is about protecting and preserving wealth.
The “Comment Scam Ring” (CSR) is an alarming phenomenon that has become a huge problem on social media. It is most common in the comments section of various popular finance, investing and cryptocurrency related videos on YouTube. Below, I am sharing a random example of one of many such CSRs, which I extracted from the comments section of a video by a popular finance influencer on YouTube who will remain nameless…
Such CSRs prey on unsuspecting and financially inexperienced individuals by creating a false and deceptive narrative of success by luring them into financial schemes that are completely fraudulent. In the case of the above example, a fake non-existent financial expert/adviser called Jessica Dawn Walters is used.
I broached this issue recently with ChatGPT to get some information. The way such a CSR operates is as follows…
Firstly, it starts with “The Setup”, which is the first original comment. In this case…“As an investing enthusiast… I’ve been sitting on over $545K equity…”. This is the “bait comment”. The individual making the comment tries to come across as a genuine investor with a sizeable although not enormous sum of money (In this case $545k to create a false sense of honesty and trust) that they are looking to invest, but are not sure what to do. The goal of this original comment is to be as convincing as possible by targeting individuals in a similar situation.
That first comment is followed by the first reply in the form of “The Helpful Advice”…. “I lack the time… I’ve enlisted the services of a fiduciary…”. The purpose of this reply is to create the “idea” of a trustworthy professional. Many times a “fiduciary” is used that paints a picture of someone responsible and legally bound to work in your interest. This sets the stage for the next step, which is recommending a fake adviser.
But before we get to that stage, there is “The Curious Observer” comment in the second reply….“How can I participate in this?…”. This is the “fake social proof”. Another fake account pretending to be a normal curious person asking for more info. This is simply designed to make the whole comment thread more believable to unsuspecting individuals.
Then we arrive at the fourth stage of this CSR; the third reply in the form of “The Pitch”. This is when the name of the fake financial adviser is dropped…“I’ve stuck with Jessica Dawn Walters for about five years…”. A plain and realistic-sounding name is used to make it all look genuine. However, those who try to research the name via Google will invariably find fake websites and LinkedIn Profiles as well as fake WhatsApp or Telegram numbers.
This is then followed by the final stage in the thread or “The Closer”. In this case in the fourth reply, a fake account comments, “Thank you for this amazing tip…”, further stating that the fake advisor has been contacted and thus adding a deceptive layer of legitimacy to this whole fraudulent operation. Sometimes such a CSR can be on steroids where there are many fake closer comments all endorsing the fake adviser and stating that they have scheduled a call etc.
To many seasoned investors and financial professionals such CSRs instantly appear deceptive and unconvincing. However, there are many individuals who sadly fall for such scams. The relatability, fake sense of trust as well as the triggering of the primal FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) bug in such people leads them down this shady avenue. Such scams usually result in situations where these victims end up paying up-front “consulting” fees and falling for Ponzi scheme style “high yield” investment offers. In even more severe cases, once one of the victims has engaged in such acts they may be emotionally manipulated via further follow-up contacts and other too-good-to-be-true “returns” schemes to keep them parting with more of their money.
What amazes me is the lack of pro-activity (and action full stop) in dealing with such CSRs by the content moderation teams of the YouTube segment of Alphabet (the parent company of YouTube). It seems that much of YouTube’s content moderation system is automated thus allowing such scams to persist. But sadly such scams are common throughout the entire world wide web, which, since it became mass adopted almost 30 years ago, continues to be a messy wild west space. We can only hope that one day in the future the internet becomes a cleaner and safer space to interact in and where all the harmful and nefarious elements are kept out.
There is seldom a day that passes when I trawl through the feeds of my social media accounts and stumble upon an article or post that laments the current state of affairs for many individuals in the creative/media industry. It is true, especially in the last 15 years, that many writers, journalists, musicians, songwriters etc have had a rough time. The internet, since it’s mainstream adoption almost 30 years ago, has had a colossal effect on this industry.
The emergence of the music file sharing site Napster at the end of the 90s was the first real taste of the seismic effects that the internet would have on the music industry in the coming years since this platform was first unleashed onto the world. Yet, even back then, very few people were able to foresee the long term effects. The internet and technology were moving at an exponential rate and much of the music industry was slow to adapt. In fact, some of the large record labels decided to fight those early disruptive file sharing platforms rather than to evolve and try to stay ahead of the curve.
In the past, bands and artists were able to make a comfortable living on their physical record sales alone. The most successful bands and artists sold records in the millions. Today, the internet has completely taken a sledge hammer to this business model. It is now very easy to listen to most music for free. In the past 10-15 years, streaming platforms such as Spotify have emerged where for a monthly subscription fee one has access to vast libraries of music both old and new. Unfortunately, for the musicians, even a substantial amount of listens does not generate anywhere near the same income like back when people actually bought records. There is the option to purchase or download a song or album, but against options like Spotify and You Tube, nowhere near enough people consume music via this route making it very hard for musicians to make a decent living just via their songs alone.
The internet and digitisation of the printing presses have also had a corrosive effect on the incomes of many writers and journalists. Now many people can create a website and start a blog to share their own articles and written content. Print sales of newspapers have been in decline and the revenues from digital subscription sales falls short of revenue numbers for physical sales from years gone by.
However, I don’t think the current status quo of oceans of free content will continue. In the coming years we will see artificial intelligence (AI) play an increasing role in the way we live our lives. I have been fascinated by the development of AI for over ten years now, yet it’s only been in the last few years that it has really entered the public consciousness and everyone seems to be talking about it. Yet, despite this, most people are understandably very worried about the development of AI and see an almost dystopian future ahead.
I am going to throw my hat in the ring here and say that AI will benefit humanity and lead to a much better world. In the context of the creative industries, I think AI will be on the side of the creators. In my view, I think that as AI continues to improve it will get to the stage where it will be able to do most tasks better than humans can. As the internet further evolves, I can see the net also being policed around the clock by increasingly sophisticated AI. This will be a very good thing as it will lead to a crackdown on all the toxic and nefarious forces of the net. Currently, the internet is a very messy place, but AI will do a remarkable job of cleaning it up and protecting users from the dangerous aspects of it, making it very hard for unsuspecting users to fall victim to fraud, deception, undesirable entities etc.
Ever since the internet first became mainstream, it has, for the most part, been a free wheeling and wild west place and many government bodies and authorities have been slow to keep up with it. However, with AI, I expect in the coming years that the internet will be much more regulated and less of an uncontrolled wild west space. The implications of this will be lots of new legislation created and passed and also applications put into place, which protect internet users.
I think when all this is finally realised, it will have a huge effect on the way we consume content. Suddenly, almost all content will not be free any more. It will not be possible to listen to a song for free or read an article for free like we currently do. To listen to just one song or read just one article, you will have to make a payment in advance. The super strong and sophisticated AI that now controls the internet will mean that there is no other way around those rules. It will be impossible to fight these AI safeguards. Today, free content is taken for granted, but it won’t always be like this and people will eventually have no other choice, but to accept this new reality. I would go as far as saying that people will and with it their values will change. They will begin to fully appreciate what they are consuming and they will be happy to pay for it.
Musicians and writers will be able to make a decent living again through their art. Popular streaming services like Spotify will be doomed if they don’t change their business model. I envisage that if they want to survive they will have to go down the same route as Apple and offer music as a download service where the consumer pays for each downloaded song and album rather than a flat monthly fee for an unlimited tap of music. Furthermore, AI will provide much of the traditional print media with a new financial bonanza. Many news sites have been struggling with the decline of print sales and falling ad revenues. Subscription revenues have been meagre by comparison. However, when people start paying per article I think that there is a good chance that revenues will cease to decline.
Contrary to much of the prevailing narrative that AI will only further increase the hardships of musicians and writers, I think AI will financially enrich them. Back in the beginning of 2022, I wrote an article entitled, ‘The Future Could Be Very Bright For Song Rights’. At the time that the article was written, many musicians were selling the rights to their songs. Some, like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, for vast sums of money. However, despite all this, I was stressing the importance for musicians to think twice before parting with their song rights – even with lots of money involved. You see, it is very likely that AI will open up many new income streams for song rights. The big labels also foresee this, which is why they have been very active buying up all the song rights they can get their hands on. They see these huge new potential money fountains that AI will give birth to for song rights and they are acting now before it becomes a reality.
It is increasingly likely that at some point over the coming years, many musicians will deeply regret that they sold the rights to their songs. At the time they probably thought that they were making the right decision, especially given the precarious and fragile state of the music industry and their natural concern that it will continue to get worse. Recently, Queen sold it’s entire music catalogue to Sony for over $1 billion. A monumental sum of money. However, there is a good chance that over the next ten years, the value of Queen’s back catalogue swells to $5-10 billion. If this were to happen it would become prohibitively expensive for any of the surviving members of the band or members of their family to buy back those rights. This is something to consider for those tempted to sell their song rights at this stage in their career.
Latitude Post 