3 Profitable concepts I wish I knew earlier about investing

With no formal financial education and a desire to achieve my fiscal goals, I have spent the last 20 years investing in many different asset classes. And while I haven’t achieved financial independence, I have learned a lot of lessons the hard way. Perhaps these 3 things can help you from making some of the mistakes that I have made so that you can reach your goals faster.

Image by Anastasia Shuraeva on Pexels

1. The markets are anything but free

Some markets are directly controlled and manipulated and others are indirectly manipulated. There are so many financial levers that the wealthy/elites/controlling class/government- whatever name you want to give them- have at their disposal to move markets.

A few examples of transparent manipulation:

• Gamestop and AMC stock trading was halted by most trading platforms in 2020 and subsequently, the price of the equities dropped significantly and many retail traders faced huge losses. Read more about Robinhood’s manipulative ways here.
• JPMorgan was fined nearly $1 billion in 2020 for “spoofing” metal markets.
• In 2020, billionaire investor, Bill Hwang and his firm Archegos Capital Management watched as its fortune vanished nearly taking down major banks with it. Read more about the Archegos corruption and manipulation here.

A few examples of indirect manipulation

• The Fed comes out in March 2020 and says that they will be buying nearly everything including an unlimited amount of US government bonds and mortgage-backed securities, corporate bonds, and even providing financing to individual companies.
• Housing prices hit record highs on the back of record low-interest rates. This occurs shortly after the US experiences its worst GDP contraction recorded. Of course, the low supply of homes helped squeeze prices higher due to a government-mandated foreclosure moratorium.
• For a decade, many companies including airlines financed stock buybacks with debt and earnings driving their stock prices higher and rewarding management (who get paid in stock). When the Coronavirus arrived, these same companies were bailed out by the US taxpayers but none of the executives were clawed back.