Robert Kiyosaki is dead on the money. Now, some may have qualms about his various marketing machinations: selling books, seminars, and whatnot, but I'll tell you that when I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I thought it was a fresh and brilliant book for educating the financially illiterate.
So how can I say that the market is crashing even if it continues to go up? To see the true crash, educated investors need to compare apples to oranges, not apples to apples.
When you compare the Dow to the Dow, or the S&P 500 to the S&P 500, that's comparing apples to apples. The Dow at 12,000 appears better than the Dow at 9,000, just as an apple at $1 a pound looks better than at $1.50 a pound, even though it's still the same apple. All that's happened is the price per pound of the apple has gone up -- the apple hasn't changed.
Years ago, my rich dad taught me to be a comparison shopper, especially when it comes to investments. He said, "You need to understand value more than price. Just because the price of something goes up doesn't necessarily mean the value has gone up."
He also told me, "If prices go up without a corresponding increase in value, it means the value of the asset has actually gone down." This holds true for all assets, including stocks, bonds, and real estate.
For example, when the price of a house goes up it doesn't mean that the house is more valuable. And prices going up may mean that something else is going down in value. In today's global markets, what's going down is the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar.
Bingo. Do you know what? When your S&P loaded fund gives you 11% in a year, and taxes reduce that to 8%%, guess what? You're about 7% in the hole, because that's what's happening to the dollar since about 2000. Its devaluation is unprecedented in recent history.
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For example, when the price of a house goes up it doesn't mean that the house is more valuable.
I bet 9 in 10 people on the street would disagree with that. 10 out of 10 of those nutjobs over at Beyerstien's who keep insisting on assessing the objective value of Billy's guitar.
Waht do you think of Kiyosaki's CASHFLOW ideas and the game? A bunch of us have been playing after work, and it's been an eye opener.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand your logic. If I make 8% on a stock after taxes in one year and that puts me about 7% in the hole, that would indicate a 15% rate of inflation? Sure, you could find a commodity like gold that has gone up that much, but gold is hardly a staple in everyday life, nor as good an indicator of inflation as it used to be. Even if you pick gold, you have to pick the proper time frame. 25 years ago, gold was almost $1000 an ounce. Using that time frame, the dollar has actually appreciated over the last 25 years. Prices of electronic goods continually go down. How much did you pay for your Pentium 1 PC 10 years ago?
While the CPI is far from perfect, it is a closer indicator of inflation that a single arbitrary commodity like gold. Look at your personal life. Does it really take twice as much money to live the same lifestyle today as it did 5 years ago? That's what a 15% yearly rate of inflation would suggest.
It's true that if the price of an apple goes up, it's still the same apple. I won't go into long detail on how the same apple could be worth more (or less) at a different time because of demand and other reasons. However, stocks are truly dynamic and the actually substance of what they are changes over time. Stocks are primarily valued on the expected future profits and growth potential. Today, companys are making more profits then ever, thus the value of owning a portion of that company is worth more. It is, in fact, not the same apple.