What do you have to say to those who bought Tesla shares? Elon Musk is perhaps the new hero for everyone.
Well, if you’re in the press, Tesla is one of those smartest people in the world, except Trump. Tesla and Trump are two of the smartest people in the world. I see what has happened to the Tesla share price. I’ve seen this before. It is not my property. I have not shortened it. I have no position. It will collapse when the next bear market arrives. I have no idea when or how much higher it will go up, but I know stocks like that always go down a lot in the next bear market. Some of the accounting things Musk does are questionable. It’s apparently a great car, it’s apparently great technology, but it’s not a huge stock for me at these prices.
You have young children, which means they have the advantage of time. If you have to advise your children to start an ETF in a country, where there is going to be a structural change, a decade or two of big changes, what would that country be?
In 2020, it would probably be Russia. Russia is hated right now. Positive changes are taking place, not too much debt, a lot of raw materials. I know it’s a strange name, but to be successful you have to look for strange countries. For a 12-year-old, the world will change dramatically. Maybe Russia, maybe Venezuela. Countries that are hated, countries that are cheap which is where you are looking to find big profits in 20 or 30 years.
India is no longer the favorite of global investors in terms of profitability and asset allocation. Where does India fit in? Is it in the middle of the road or at the end of the road? Where is India in terms of perception and in terms of investment destination?
You know that India is one of my favorite countries in the world. I tell people all the time that if you can only visit one country in your life, it should be India. It is fabulous for many reasons. But now I am not an investor in India. Now I am not an investor in most emerging markets. When the bear market hits in the next few years, emerging markets, including India, will go down a lot, plus India has built up a lot of debt. I mean this is not as bad as Japan or America or somewhere, but India has been piling up debt. I do not like that. Modi says he’s always said he’s going to balance the budget, but he never does. India is not on my list at the moment. If it goes low enough, of course it will be on my list.
I want to go back to that question where we are talking about a country in which you would like to invest for your daughter and your children. But if you have to give your daughter something as a token of what you think, will it be a gold brick or a Bitcoin?
A Bitcoin no, no, not a Bitcoin. It would be gold. I certainly want my daughters to have gold and silver. Everyone should have some gold and silver for insurance, at least. If you do it right, you will earn a lot of money in gold and silver. The money is going to be in the computer, it already is in some countries. But this is going to be government money, governments don’t like to lose their power, governments don’t like to lose their monopoly, governments are going to legalize the possession and use of their money in the future, as always happens. So I don’t plan on having my kids own cryptocurrencies. I plan for them to own gold and silver.
A couple years ago it was Japan followed by US tech stocks, then it was China, then it was US tech stocks. What would that trend be for the next five-seven-ten-twelve, even fifteen years according to you?
The most interesting technology I see is the computer. It’s where everything is. Artificial intelligence is one way of looking at it. It’s where everything is going to be on the computer. Many people are going to lose their jobs in banks because now everything is going to be computerized and when that happens, there will be huge opportunities in some new companies and new technologies. I have no name. I wish I had. I know Samsung and other companies are doing a lot of research, but they are such big companies. The blockchain is going to change everything we know. It’s going to put a lot of people out of business. But remember, electricity put a lot of people out of business and no one is going to get rid of electricity. If I could find a major way to play blockchain, that’s what I would do.
Do you think this will be a difficult decade for any investor anywhere or should we expect late single-digit returns?
This is not going to be a good decade. The next bear market will be the worst of my life. This is not a good time to be young, and certainly not in the United States because the United States has accumulated huge amounts of debt. I care about my children and their life. I care about all of us, including the elderly like me, but I really care about the young because in five years someone is going to ask where did all this debt come from? It’s going to be awesome and it won’t be good for long for most countries. So I’ll do fine, but most don’t.
.
