I can recap today’s message with one sentence: Take 10% MINIMUM of your wealth and own physical precious metals.

It’s that simple, yet no one does it. My analysis has led to the conclusion that about 0.58% of the population in the western world (1 out of 200) owns gold either directly, or through various mutual funds that he indirectly purchased – but even this number is too high, in my opinion.

If we surveyed the general population, my estimate is that not ONE in a THOUSAND owns gold and silver coins. It’s considered barbaric and primitive.

I was born in July 1984 and the only major recession that I’ve experienced on my own skin is the Great Recession of 2008. I was 24 and eight years into building my portfolio and my businesses. In 1997, when my father’s company went under, I was 13 years old. I began working, as my parents were struggling to pay bills. By 16 years of age (July 2000), I had $20,000 in the bank. I bought two stocks, initially – V.F. Corp and Johnson & Johnson.

In September 2008, I booked a 4-day rafting trip in the Green River, Colorado. These were to be 4 days without a cell signal, so I tightened my stop losses on the entire portfolio to 10%. Since the collapse began in late September 2007, I’d already loaded up on defensive stocks like Walmart, McDonalds and Southern Company, but I didn’t want a massive exposure while being gone, doing rapids on a kayak. During the 4 nights I spent sleeping on the riverbed, Bar-B-Qing and relaxing, the market tanked.

My stop-loss discipline saved me a fortune and helped me to cash up on the flipside. It was a combination of luck, superstition, and preemptive thinking that caused me to take action.

That one decision was a launchpad for my other businesses. I was cash-rich, while others were bleeding.
One decision, one critical moment was instrumental to pave the way to 7-figures and an 8-figure net worth a decade later. NOT owning gold and silver today is the worst decision one can make. It’s the same as not having tight stop losses in 07′.

Think about the state of the world today: In 13 months, a new president will be elected in the world’s largest economy. The volatility of not knowing who it will be until the last hour, when the candidates are so different, will be overwhelming for investors.

Courtesy: Zerohedge.com

People are absolutely worried today, as they were in 2007 and in 2008, but it’s very hard to fall into a severe recession with zero-rates policy. What is more likely, looking at the case of Japan, is a fall into a state of no growth and no appreciation for decades.

This has a lot to do with demographics. For example, I’ve been in Italy for over a month – in Florence, Venice, Dolomites, Verona, Cinque Terre and now Milano and the Alps. In this country, the average mother gives birth to 1.42 children. The population isn’t growing and it’s only aging. The burden of taxes on the rich cities, like in Milano and Torino, is huge. Women’s entrance to the workforce has been a trend worldwide, which postpones family formation and lowers the reproductive rate.

Our beautiful and ever-evolving societies, which in the last 120 years have sparked miraculous progress in all of life’s major categories – from communications to technology, medicine, hygiene, intelligence, travel, shelter and you name it – have become so forward-looking that we just can’t support the hundreds of millions of people that hit retirement age and require the help of government to bankroll their livelihoods.

This is a debt bazooka, and like all great human quantum leaps I can tell you how it ends: with a BANG.
There will be many public debates on this matter, many legislative reforms, but in the end, GIANT WRITE-OFFS will be made. Governments will have to partially default on obligations, or we’ll suffer from severe inflation.

This is not an imminent scenario, effective tomorrow. This isn’t a situation where you must go out and buy a ranch in Wyoming and grow your own vegetables, but it does require you to consider the fragility of our system.

In the city where I will lay my head to rest today and spend the next couple of weeks, Milano, Benito Mussolini and his mistress were taken 84 years ago and left in a suburban square for a large angry crowd to insult and physically abuse. Subsequently, they were hung upside down. Their bodies were beaten, shot at, and hit with hammers. Things can turn ugly, fast, so we must use judgement and history, as precedence.

Life in the 21^st century revolves much more around wisdom than it does around information. The planet is an endless library; knowledge is freely accessible. No, the great challenge is not acquiring data, but the WISDOM to apply it.

Mismanagement of the world’s affairs by political and financial officials, mistreatment of issues by religious leaders, and misallocation of capital will determine if the world enters a greater age of enlightenment and riches, or foolishly takes a plunge into the abyss. Once again we’ll be re-learning the same lessons of every catastrophe – that we are all on the round-spinning water planet together, not apart.