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The Financial Advice that’s not Worth the Paper it’s Written on…
When my financial planning career began in 1987 I really had no idea about the workings of markets.
There was a share boom happening at the time and the ‘entrepreneurial’ sector was the darling of the market — names like Christopher Skase, Alan Bond, Laurie Connell and other lesser-known entrepreneurs. As a young man who harboured dreams of creating wealth, I revered the achievements of these ‘businessmen’.
The 1987 share market crash was my first lesson in how markets work. Booms always bust. After the 1987 crash the entrepreneurial sector returned to earth with a thud and in the cold light of a market bust the antics of these so-called businessman were laid bare. Skase became a fugitive and Bond spent time in jail.
With hindsight it was all so obvious to a novice planner what had happened but prior to the 1987 crash there was hardly a dissenting voice among the mainstream media and investment institutions.
I have observed this pattern repeating a few times throughout my career in financial planning – the property trust boom and bust of the early 1990’s; the tech boom and bust of late 90’s/2000 and the sub-prime debacle.
During all these periods, the majority of so-called market experts (mainstream economists, investment institutions and market analysts) never picked the ‘bubble’ conditions that were developing.
In their professional opinion we would always have ‘a soft landing’. No-one wanted to upset the apple cart of fees by calling the conditions for what they were.
A ‘bubble’ is when too much money flows into one market sector and over-inflates the value of that sector. Consequently, as the temporary wealth effect of the bubble spreads, it lifts the prices in other asset classes.
For example the sub-prime lending fiasco initially inflated US house prices. Householders felt wealthy so they borrowed against the assumed wealth stored in the value of their home and invested in the share market.
Read the rest of this article at The Daily Reckoning
