I met a guy who was a consultant for one of the political parties. He was going to help their Presidential candidate with social media and &ldquo;messaging&rdquo;.
We were talking a bit more about what messaging even meant and something he said reminded me of something. &ldquo;It sounds like the Dole-Clinton campaign.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Whoa,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that was before my time.&rdquo;
&ldquo;That was in 1996,&rdquo; I said.
&ldquo;I was born in 1996,&rdquo; he said.
I left the conversation. Not because he was very young. But because I was disappointed in him.
He was talking like he was an expert. And perhaps he does qualify somehow as an expert. I mean, he&rsquo;s working on helping someone become (or remain) the President of the United States.
But he didn&rsquo;t know his basic history. Bob Dole and Bill Clinton were almost exactly alike on issues. It was perhaps the last critical campaign that was actually decided by messaging (although it was pre-destined that Clinton would win by a landslide).
How could he not know it? Which means he won&rsquo;t know about Dukakis in a tank, or Bush&rsquo;s &ldquo;read my lips&rdquo;. Or Muskie crying in the primaries in 1972, or Eugene McCarthy in 1968. Or Hoover&rsquo;s messaging of the status quo in 1928. And on and on. Back to the first seriously contested election in 1800 when there were serious issues that John Adams might turn into a dictator if not for Jefferson campaigning against him for President.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6pAREZG641HJsZPgv2trBz/bad6bde20796a074124750d2117a7f09/Alc-issue-05-07_2_.png" alt="Dukakis" width="300px" />
(Dukakis probably lost the 1988 election because of this photo of him in a tank)
It&rsquo;s not that someone should know these things. Most people could care less and shouldn&rsquo;t really know these things unless they enjoy reading about election history.
But this guy worked at the highest levels of electioneering.
If you don&rsquo;t know the history, then you are not an expert.
Instead of standing on the shoulders of giants, you are just standing on the ground and have to make it up as you go along.
That is not an expert. That is a failure.
<h3>Understanding Investing</h3>
Of course, I&rsquo;m going to say: it&rsquo;s the same thing for investing.
Now, if you don&rsquo;t know how the market reacted every year of the Great Depression, or what happened in the months following the crashes of 87, 97, 9/11 and the Pandemic then don&rsquo;t worry about it.
You don&rsquo;t have to be a professional investor to invest. But to be a professional investor you have to know about investing both vertically and horizontally.
Vertically: know the history. Read the biographies of Warren Buffett, Bernard Baruch, Peter Lynch, John Bogle, etc. Read Famous First Bubbles by Guber and How to Be a Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt (an excellent book despite the corny title).
Read about Michael Milken and the events leading up to the crash in 1987. Read Victor Niederhoffer&rsquo;s Education of a Speculator and Jack Schwager&rsquo;s Market Wizards.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6pIHQk7YjhpZ5o23nZjf6z/ca989bdb504e458050018d55bc1bb575/Alc-issue-05-07_3_.png" alt="pub" width="216px" /> (A classic written in the early 70s)
&nbsp;
Horizontal: here are the strategies you should be knowledgeable enough to invest in:
<ul>
<li>Value investing</li>
<li>Growth investing</li>
<li>Bond investing</li>
<li>Merger arbitrage</li>
<li>Convertible arbitrage</li>
<li>Quantitative arbitrage</li>
<li>Options (trading volatility, trading &ldquo;the Greeks&rdquo;)</li>
<li>Private equity investing</li>
<li>Closed end fund arbitrage</li>
</ul>
You should understand the difference between &ldquo;cigar butt&rdquo; value investing (Buffett pre-1962) and value investing (which is another way of saying what is the difference between Buffett and Munger).
Understand why some of the greatest hedge funds had massive blowups (not just Long-Term Capital but even Soros and Julian Robertson&rsquo;s Tiger Funds in 2000 and many funds in 2008).
Understand why most hedge funds are rip-offs and what things to be careful of when your bank manager pitches you on the latest mutual funds.
What is the relationship between interest rates and stocks? Between inflation and gold? (they aren&rsquo;t correlated).
Perhaps most important, understand risk management. Maybe even understanding the history of money and why futures trading, or even stock investing, even exists?
My dream is to teach a free course on all of these things and much, much more to all of the readers of this newsletter. 
I have been obsessed with bettering myself as an investor for the past 24 years. And the reason I became obsessed is because I realized that without this knowledge, and because I had no mentor in the space or any reliable guide to help me, I was doomed to go broke over and over.
Again, I&rsquo;m not saying YOU should know all of these things. But I personally like to know them and then write about them.
I&rsquo;ve been writing about investing since 2002. I&rsquo;m really grateful that people thought enough of what I was writing that I ended up writing for The Financial Times for many years, then the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, and about half my books are investment-related.
I&rsquo;ve had so many adventures on this path and have met so many interesting people.
<h3>Understanding True Diversification</h3>
The reason I write this is that it took me a long time to understand true diversification.
It&rsquo;s not just buying an oil company and a tech company (for instance, Exxon and Microsoft) and saying you are diversified.
Those two stocks are mostly correlated.
I consider myself diversified when I have two things going for me:
<blockquote cite="">
A) I am investing in uncorrelated STRATEGIES. For instance, going long value stocks is one strategy. And trading &ldquo;country arbitrage&rdquo; (going long US and shorting Canada, for instance) is another strategy.
B) I like to invest in potential &ldquo;moonshots.&rdquo;
</blockquote>
What!? How can investing in something I think will go up 1000% be considered &ldquo;low risk&rdquo;?
Because if I do the research and think some asset (a stock, a crypto, an option, a commodity, etc.) has the potential to go up 1000% or more (I consider a &ldquo;moonshot&rdquo; something that has the potential to go up 10x AT LEAST) then:
<blockquote cite="">
A) I don&rsquo;t have to invest as much.
B) I can sleep well at night knowing I am mostly in cash and yet my money is working for me.
</blockquote>
Being in cash means I have dry powder for other strategies and opportunities when they come up. And I also have dry powder for when the market crashes.
Also, I sleep better at night knowing that nothing can really affect me.
And if I pick my spots carefully, I can and will return MUCH better than the market.
Which means sleeping better at night.
History helps here. Bernard Baruch said in 1910, &ldquo;I always bought too early and sold too soon.&rdquo; In other words, you can&rsquo;t time the market, and you have to have a positive mindset so you are able to focus on opportunities more than you focus on regrets.
A lot of people are just taking their first steps in investing. It&rsquo;s an exciting thing to dip your toes into investing. You learn about the world, about industries, and about how growth and innovation happen.
You get a taste of what it&rsquo;s like to make money through your own hard work instead of through a steady salary. The market is a jungle and with the right guidance you learn to survive that jungle.

Alc-issue-05-07(1)

We&rsquo;re living in an epic period of change, danger, and opportunity. The economy is blowing up in our faces. The Fed is printing trillions of dollars. People are getting fired and replaced by computers. Every day, we&rsquo;re bombarded with fake news and fake data. Crypto is eating everything online. Every &ldquo;fix&rdquo; from the government makes things worse. Technology is moving too fast for anyone to keep up.
In short, the Old World has been demolished&hellip; the new world is just beginning. Alongside the greatest wealth shift in human history. We get it. People are desperate for answers and to cut through the noise. Everyone wants to become financially secure. Nobody knows who to trust. That&rsquo;s where we can help.
Altucher Confidential&nbsp;is your guide to surviving and thriving in the age of risk, chaos, and tremendous rewards. This is not a newsletter for the faint of heart. It&rsquo;s a guide West, to the new frontier. For those who are ready to hear, James Altucher and Chris Campbell provide an updated map of the new territory for generating wealth and freedom. Consider&nbsp;Altucher Confidential&nbsp;your daily guide to building, keeping, and investing your money and breaking free from the chains of rusted, old thinking.

AltucherConfidential

Altucher Confidential is your guide to surviving and thriving in the age of risk, chaos, and tremendous rewards. This is not a newsletter for the faint of heart.

Altucher Confidential

The “Sleep Well at Night” Portfolio

I've been scared for quite some time. I read the news and I start to wonder how the world will even survive.
I always get flashbacks to my worst moments, when it seemed like the world was over and I cowered in my house and as quietly as possible, would go broke and cry. Trying to figure out how I would feed two little babies.
There are wars going on. Talk of "civil war" in the news. An election is coming up that is like an accident on the road we drive by and can't help staring just in case we get to see blood, guts, death.
And yet to make money you have to ignore the fears. When everyone is looking back at the accident, wondering how it will touch them, the investor has to look forward.
It's a symptom of the human condition that people want to know "Why?"
For instance, why is the market going up? In fact, why is it hitting all time highs? Didn't we just mention wars? Aren't we afraid of inflation? Of rate hikes, or perhaps worse, rate cuts and the recession that implies?
Aren't we worried about the dollar imploding. or commercial real estate exploding, or the uncertainy of the election? Shouldn't we be scared?
I was in an airport yesterday. I was flying to Utah. I'm speaking at a conference about the nature of going on a quest.
How in one's worst moments, you can't be frozen like a deer. These moments are special and must be treated as special, almost holy. Because they will either become the stories that define your life later, or the moments that ultimately did you in, despite all prior successes.
A quest is when you seek the impossible against all odds, against all the well-wishers who warn you, and against your own drive to stick to the paths that you have walked on for so long but have only brought you to this point - this worst moment.
I was in the airport and the worst television network in history was on the screen: CNBC.
The talking head was saying: "Stocks are going up only because companies are purchasing their own shares."
Forget for a second that a company will purchase their own shares only when: A) they have excess cash due to profits, and B ) they think their stock is undervalued. C) they know better than anyone what is happening at their company.
This "analyst" was insistent that this fake money was bolstering the markets and it would eventually collapse.
I started thinking of all the reasons people were giving that stocks seemed to be going higher despite their belief that the world was about to veer off its orbit and crash right into the Sun.
A) Companies were buying back their own stock. B) The Fed was getting ready to cut rates C) Trillion dollar spending packages in Congress would pump money into the economy. D) Only the top 7 companies were going up, the rest were in a bear market (not true). E) Venture capitalists were investing more money than ever in companies and that money would eventually find its way into the stock market. F) the market gains are equal to inflation so are not "real".
One reason that nobody seemed to give was the simplest answer.
There's a mental model - a rule that can be a shortcut for figuring out complicated situations - called Occam's Razor.
Occam's Razor suggests that the direction one's compass should navigate towards on the rough seas of decision is the Simplest reason.
For instance: the stock market is going up because companies are doing well.
When companies do well they have better potential for profits. And they reinvest those profits and continue to grow.
This is the answer.
Why are companies doing well?
1) We had two years that the entire global economy shut down. So companies are restocking the shelves that were abandoned for two years.
For two years nobody cut down a tree. So there was no wood for houses. So people stopped building houses. Now that is reversing.
For two years supply chains shut down. Now goods are coming back into the ports. So people are buying them.
2) Artificial Intelligence. Yes, I advise my children: use AI to cheat on your college essays. And I can make a fun song using AI with just a text prompt: "make a rap song about my podcast".
That's fun.
But AI increases productivity. It means for every dollar spent, more value can be produced.
If I want to make a logo, I no longer have to hire someone or spend weeks figuring out Adobe Photoshop. I can ask AI. Seconds later, it will make me ten logos.
My productivity increases.
When a farmer wants to til his land, he no longer has to get on the tractor, spend months spraying pesticides and pulling up weeds.
He can use his automated driving tractor (saving time on manual labor so he can more efficiently manage the farm) He can use AI to determine exactly what parts of the land need to be sprayed (saving hundreds of millions of dollars across all farmers), he can know exactly which parts of the land can be harvested more accurately.
And on and on.
Doctors can more accurately and quickly diagnose.
Accountants can do taxes faster.
Lawyers can consult relevant laws per case faster and more accurately.
Robots will clean your house. Software bots will protect your company from cyber attacks. AI dashboards for CFOs will tell you where and who are buying your products from what stores so you can more accurately plan the next year. Data centers of AI supercomputers can construct compounds for new medicines.
AI is not just about the AI companies like Microsoft and OpenAI and Nvidia.
Those companies are just the servants who work in the kitchen, making the food.
But the other 10,000 companies that drive the economy are the ones that satiate their appetites, using AI to create better products in their industries, save money, make more money, and create more innovations more quickly.
THIS is what is driving companies. It doesn't matter about rates. It doesn't matter about inflation. Or even wars or this coming election.
Yes, those things matter in life. And day-by-day they might effect stocks. But the market is going up because of Charles Darwin.
Every industry is evolving.
Perfumes evolved from the organic scents of flowers, to the synthetic scents made by chemists, to the AI-created scents beyond the ability of scientists to create long-lasting, better smelling scents that will make more profits in a $10 billion industry. Powered by IBM software.
Medicine is evolving. From your local shaman you would pray to get better. To the doctor who would hit your knee with a little hammer. To advanced X-ray techniques. To AI diagnosticians. To AI-created personalized medicine and genomics.
Finance is evolving. From barter, to gold, to gold-backed, to fiat, to digital, to digital and trustless (crypto). And along with that, the legal industry from dumb contracts (with dozens of lawyers fighting), to smart contracts (zero lawyers).
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6s2gIVm63wczTnu4Mra3Gu/a09d6e5987d0eee2d438686ffa50e9b8/ALC-Issue-0327_1_.png" alt="One Dollar" width="540px" /> Money is evolving.
THIS YEAR is society's crux, where every industry that has existed is being re-birthed in this baptism of AI, crypto, and the hungrier demands of society.
Sure, all the reasons mentioned above are possible answers as to why the market is going up. If the Fed cuts rates, markets go up. If companies purchase shares, the market goes up.
But the stock market is going up because companies are doing better, technology is eliminating problems of prior generations, and cash profits are being generated at a faster than expected rate.
It's too easy for me to be scared. To remember times when I was so scared I would make bad decisions, go broke, and pray to survive.
But that's looking back. The path forward is filled with more hope that we normally like to believe, for fear of being stupid.
But it's good to be stupid and rich.

ALC-Issue-0327(1)

James: “Why the Market is Going Up”

In the past, whenever the crypto market started heating up, Ethereum would face a familiar problem: skyrocketing gas fees.
It got so bad that even simple ETH transfers could cost you $30 -- sometimes way more.&nbsp;
For small-time users, this was a dealbreaker. They'd jump ship to cheaper chains, ditching Ethereum. And who can blame them? Spending $55 to buy $100 worth of a dog meme coin is not my idea of the &ldquo;future of finance,&rdquo; either.
BUT, here&rsquo;s my bold prediction:
Post-Dencun upgrade, Ethereum&rsquo;s going to slay the Ethereum killers. 
To be sure, Ethereum&rsquo;s competitors will still exist and might even do pretty well. But the idea that they will &ldquo;kill Ethereum&rdquo; will lose its potency.
Skeptical? You&rsquo;re not alone.
In fact, because so many people think the Ethereum ecosystem can&rsquo;t pull it off&hellip;
(Because they think they&rsquo;ve found the next 1,000x King Killer.)
It presents one of the BIGGEST opportunities in crypto.
And it's all thanks to what&rsquo;s called &ldquo;rollups.&rdquo; 
Allow me to explain.
NOTE: Because my aim here is to be thorough, this is a long one. But if you&rsquo;re interested in where we believe the smart contract landscape is headed, it&rsquo;s got everything you need. (That said, if you want to cut to the chase, skip ahead to the subhead: &ldquo;An Asymmetric Bet.&rdquo;) 
<h3>What the Feck is a Rollup?! </h3>
For starters, Ethereum is a smart contract network. It is competing with other smart contract networks. It is NOT competing with Bitcoin, which is serving an entirely different purpose.
But that&rsquo;s a conversation for another day.
Since the beginning, Ethereum has operated under a mental model: the blockchain trilemma.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/Xf0zFNbkxOVE6bIYXmrEe/214492dd2211b591372bb5940065a170/ALC-Issue-03-22_2_.png" alt="Mental Model" width="540px" />
The trilemma refers to the challenge of achieving scalability, security, and decentralization on a blockchain network, as improving one comes at the cost of the others.
Ethereum has prioritized decentralization and security over scalability, maintaining a high degree of decentralization and security, even if it means slower transaction throughput and higher gas fees on the base layer.
(Before I get ambushed by the &ldquo;ETHEREUM IS CENTRALIZED&rdquo; crowd: While no system is perfectly decentralized (not even Bitcoin!) Ethereum's large, diverse network of nodes, its open development process, and its resistance to censorship make it far more decentralized than, say, the rails that run traditional finance. Which is the point.)
To solve the trilemma, the ETH ecosystem has put a big emphasis on external rollups as a way to scale Ethereum. 
A rollup is a &ldquo;Layer 2 scaling solution&rdquo; -- or a blockchain network built on top of Ethereum with the aim of increasing Ethereum's transaction throughput and reducing gas fees.
Rollups do this by bundling (or "rolling up") multiple transactions and then submitting them to the main Ethereum chain as a single transaction. This way, the rollup can process many more transactions than the Ethereum base layer, while still inheriting the security of the main chain.
So&hellip;
Instead of abandoning Ethereum altogether, users can now move to a rollup and enjoy cheap transactions while still staying within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Some critics argue that this modular approach to scaling will hurt Ethereum in the long run. They say it will cannibalize the Ethereum chain and tank the value of ETH.
We think not.
For one, they fail to mention that rollups use ETH as their gas token, and sequencers (those who bundle up the transactions and submit them to Ethereum) still have to pay in ETH to write data to the base chain.
This is important because it means that rollups are still contributing to the demand for ETH.
It's like the traditional financial system: you've got FedWire for the big dogs doing billion-dollar payments, and Venmo for the pups splitting the bill at lunch. Ethereum is now building a similar stack, where users can choose the layer that works best for them.
And it looks like it's working: Popular rollups are giving cheap Layer 1s like BNB Smart Chain a run for their money. They're scooping up users Ethereum would have lost otherwise.
This is great for ETH.
AND&hellip;
It's going to send most other smart contract platforms to the graveyard. For the past few years, we've seen a bunch of smart contract platforms popping up, all claiming to be faster and cheaper than Ethereum.
Their main selling point was that they could handle more transactions at lower costs than Ethereum. They made a bunch of compromises -- security, uptime, and decentralization, namely -- to be "cheaper Ethereum," but now there's a rollup for that.
THERE&rsquo;S A ROLLUP FOR THAT.
In fact, there are many rollups competing to become Ethereum&rsquo;s go-to scaling solution, most of which have their own token that&rsquo;s designed to reward those who hold and use it.
There&rsquo;s one problem with this&hellip; and an obvious opportunity.
First, the problem.
<h3>The Problem</h3>
Warning: another buzzword incoming: composability.
Composability, or the ability for different DeFi applications to interact seamlessly, is a key feature of Ethereum.
The problem with rollups is -- at the moment -- they don&rsquo;t communicate well with one another without the use of bridges, or applications to bridge from one chain to another. But bridges are expensive. They also layer on more risk. (Many of the biggest hacks in crypto involved bridges.)
I say &ldquo;at the moment&rdquo; because this problem can be solved. Developers are working on what&rsquo;s called &ldquo;shared sequencing,&rdquo; where rollups can communicate with one another seamlessly.
It&rsquo;s an elegant solution, but isn&rsquo;t ready for prime-time.
In the short-term, this lag presents an opportunity. 
You see&hellip;
Lack of composability also fragments liquidity, and makes the user experience more complex. Users may need to manage multiple accounts across different rollups and navigate through bridges to move their assets or interact with various decentralized applications (DApps).
Hence, the opportunity.
<h3>The Opportunity </h3>
With so much development happening on Ethereum, I think its smart contract competitors will have a hard time keeping up.
And yet&hellip;
The short-term lack of direct communication between rollups will probably lead to this scenario:
One -- yes, ONE -- rollup provider will capture a significant portion of the liquidity in the Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem.
That one rollup provider will -- in a short amount of time -- gain millions of new users.
As users and developers gravitate towards a particular rollup with the most liquidity and activity, it can create a positive feedback loop. More users and DApps on a rollup attract even more users and DApps, further concentrating liquidity on that rollup.
For example:
DeFi protocols often rely on liquidity to function effectively. If one rollup has significantly more liquidity than others, it can attract more DeFi projects, which in turn attracts more users and liquidity.
If most of the liquidity and popular DApps are on one rollup, users may prefer to stay within that ecosystem to avoid the costs and friction associated with moving assets across different rollups via bridges.
The first rollup to gain significant traction and liquidity may have a strong advantage over competitors, as it becomes the default choice for users and developers.
These new users will translate to higher prices for the rollup provider&rsquo;s token.
Bigly.
However&hellip;
It's important to note that this outcome is not guaranteed. Factors such as innovation, user experience, transaction costs, and community support can all influence which rollup(s) ultimately succeed in capturing the most liquidity.
The competition is fierce.
BUT, but, but&hellip; 
<h3>An Asymmetric Bet </h3>
We&rsquo;re making a bold bet that this is EXACTLY what will play out.
James and I have identified ONE token we believe will be the winner. And all because this particular token has an ace up its sleeve. 
If we&rsquo;re right, the token we recently recommended to our Early Stage Crypto Investor members will:
<ol>
<li>Become the go-to rollup for Ethereum</li>
<li>Get tons of development and attention</li>
<li>See a massive uptick in users in 2024</li>
</ol>
If we&rsquo;re correct, this ONE play could pay for the cost of the entire year of ESC many times over. (And we have 30+ cryptos in our ESC portfolio.)
Not a member? <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2305602">See if it&rsquo;s right for you here. </a>

ALC-Issue-03-22(1)

Ethereum Kills Ethereum Killers

Our mission here in the Altucherverse is simple:
We want to help people get rid of the non-stop fear that comes with never having economic security or having it and being terrified of losing it. 
We want to help people get money, keep it, and discover their true &ldquo;calling&rdquo; so they can help others do the same.
AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE.
We do that by focusing very little on politics and very much on opportunities.
Politicians do the opposite. (<a href="https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/politics-is-a-scam-why-i-will-never-vote-again/">Politics is a scam</a>.)
That said, it&rsquo;s an election year. Everyone&rsquo;s got a hot take.
We&rsquo;re no different. (We never claimed to be perfect.)
In 2011, James wrote a piece called &ldquo;Abolish the Presidency, It&rsquo;s a Useless Job.&rdquo; 
I&rsquo;ve published it below because, 12 years later, it&rsquo;s an idea whose time still feels ripe and relevant.
And in perhaps some lesser-expected ways.
As you know, in 2011 Obama was president. His ratings were in the toilet, but he was about to stage a miraculous comeback. (Nobody has ever won a second-term from such low ratings in an election year.)
Now, here&rsquo;s the crazy thing&hellip;
If our colleague Jim Rickards is onto something, the Obamas could be shooting their shot again.
This time, it&rsquo;s Michelle that will be front-and-center.
Watch Jim make the case on our new Paradigm <a href="https://youtu.be/90wauMrAeyQ">Youtube page</a>.
<a href="https://youtu.be/90wauMrAeyQ">In the video</a>, Jim asks the question: will Michelle Obama be our next president? Biden&rsquo;s campaign is over and the Democrats are looking for their next nominee. Jim is here to tell you how Michelle Obama could replace Biden... in a very undemocratic way.
Click below to check it out.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2iDH4tMrzci6c33A2zdXSB/128fb685a4d055a310bf78fcef0259bc/jim-rickards-president-youtube.png" alt="Click here to learn more" width="540px" />
But&hellip;
Rather than this political circus taking up our attention, resources, and mental health every four years&hellip;
Wild thought: Perhaps we&rsquo;re better off without a President?
James made the case over a decade ago.
Read on below.
(Tomorrow we&rsquo;ll talk about how to make money in election years. Get ready!)
<div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Abolish The Presidency, It's A Useless Job.</h3>
</div>
We&rsquo;re all gearing up now for the biggest extravaganza since Bristol Palin was on Dancing With the Stars.
The Presidential Election of 2012.
Everyone is so excited! Will Obama come back from his dismal low ratings and break the record (nobody has ever come back from such a low rating in their first administration to win).
Will Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman settle their Mormon differences? Will Rick Perry win or secede from the Union?
Will Michelle Bachmann release a sex video?
We have no idea.
But we know something will happen.
And lots of it. It&rsquo;s going to cost $2 billion to win this election according to the latest pundit analysis (&ldquo;pundit&rdquo; &ldquo;anal&rdquo; and &ldquo;sis&rdquo; being the key words here).
There&rsquo;s going to be a lot of smoking behind closed doors. A lot of deal-making. A lot of machines are going to kick into gear. Consultants will become rich. TV networks and newspapers will get down on their knees and praise god they get to survive another year thanks to the massive amounts of advertising.
Here&rsquo;s my question: What does the President even do? Do we need one?
(really?)
In fact, one step further: I think the institution of the Presidency has largely ruined my life and the lives of most other people.
<h3 class="subhead nbp">My proposal: We don&rsquo;t need a President of the United States. In fact, it&rsquo;s useless.</h3>
First off, the Constitution doesn&rsquo;t even address the powers of the Presidency until Article II. The Founders clearly thought the legislative branch was more important, i.e. the actual branch that creates laws, declares wars, etc.
But, in a prior post I&rsquo;ve already written that<a href="http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/07/july-4th-is-a-scam/"> there&rsquo;s no longer a need for a legislative branch</a> the way the Founders conceived it. Times have changed and technology has driven away all of the initial reasons for a republic-based legislative branch so we can have a true democracy commanded by a much more informed electorate:
Just to summarize my prior post: The only original reasons the founding fathers had for an elected legislative branch (a republic instead of a democracy) were:
<ol>
<li>A) there was no way to transmit information quickly to the voters (now we have the internet so everyone can actually vote and be informed)</li>
<li>B) the founding fathers figured only rich landowners could afford to be congressmen (still mostly true) so that their interests above all would be represented (again, not a true democracy but more a bastardized distortion of one).</li>
</ol>
So now, we could:
<ol>
<li>A) save the <a href="https://stocktwits.com/symbol/4bb">$4bb</a> in costs that is the budget of congress each year</li>
<li>B) save the trillion or so in costs that are all the &ldquo;you vote for my bridge and I&rsquo;ll vote for yours&rdquo; pork that happens</li>
<li>C) save the 10s of billions in lobbying costs each year (not it would cost 100s of billions to do the same lobbying via advertising instead of just taking a congressman out for dinner)</li>
<li>D) avoid all the fear-mongering and partisanship that was caused by the debt ceiling argument and other similar meaningless arguments</li>
<li>E) actually have mothers vote on whether or not to send their kids to war.</li>
</ol>
(the best and the brightest?)
Ok, enough on that. [See also, why I don't vote: <a href="http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/06/politics-is-a-scam-why-i-will-never-vote-again/">"Politics is a Scam"</a>]
<h3 class="subhead nbp">So what&rsquo;s the Presidency for? According to the Constitution:</h3>
Wars? Lately the President has been declaring wars. We&rsquo;re in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and probably three or four other places I don&rsquo;t even know about. The only problem is, according to the Constitution, the President is not allowed to declare wars. Only the House is. The last war the House has actually declared (the only body of government actually allowed to declare war) was World War II, in 1941. And that was after 11 million people were already killed or about to be killed. Oops! Too late!
So the President, I guess, took &ldquo;actions&rdquo; in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada (??), and a dozen other places I would never want to step foot in. [See also, "<a href="http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/05/name-me-a-single-war-that-was-worth-it/">Name me one war that was justified</a>"]
It&rsquo;s such simple math: if you get rid of the Presidency, millions of American children will live to be adults instead of dying on foreign soil. And millions of civilians in other countries would be left alone. Seems like a good deal.
Treaties. Since 2000 there&rsquo;s only been two important treaties that have been ratified, both dealing with the US and Russia limiting nuclear arms. This is clearly important. We don&rsquo;t want people sending around nuclear missiles at each other, which is what I guess would&rsquo;ve happened if the President of the United States didn&rsquo;t figure this all out for us. Since this is an important issue (and looks like the ONLY important issue from an international perspective), my guess is we can just elect some specialist in nuclear proliferation to become the &ldquo;head of nuclear treaties&rdquo;. Then we, the new legislative branch democracy, would vote on whether or not to ratify the treaty. All good.
Guess what? The President doesn&rsquo;t really have any other power. Well, you might say, he is
Commander In Chief of the Military. A couple of points: He&rsquo;s not really commander in chief. I&rsquo;m not going to make fun of the last few Presidents. But if you do the slightest bit of googling on Clinton, Bush, and Obama, you can see that none of them are qualified to be Commander in Chief of a Girl Scout unit, let alone the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, etc.
Second, since the House hasn&rsquo;t declared war since 1941, what&rsquo;s the big deal about being Commander in Chief of an Army that hasn&rsquo;t legally done anything since 1941. I know, I know, we&rsquo;ve been in a lot of wars, justified or not. They are &ldquo;defending my way of life&rdquo;, etc etc.
Here&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s really defending my way of life. Not somebody fighting in a jungle in Vietnam or Afghanistan but global capitalism. The more we trade and do business and support the economic development of third world countries, the less likely they are to want to bomb us (which has happened once in 50 years and not by a country but by a terrorist group that we successfully fought more through seizing bank accounts than through military actions).
Let&rsquo;s not forget: WE CREATED Al Qaeda to fight the Russians. And then we abandoned them: militarily and economically. Let&rsquo;s stop doing that! Bad America!
My solution: eliminate 90% of the ground forces. Keep enough of the Air Force around so we can retaliate if anyone really does invade us. And keep the Navy around so we can ensure that Somalian pirates don&rsquo;t get in the way of free trade. &ldquo;But what if China invades us?&rdquo; you might say. Well, I have nothing against good Chinese food but think about it: China has already invaded us. They have $2 trillion of our dollars. We only have $80 billion of our dollars in the US Treasury. As Bush would say, &ldquo;Mission Accomplished!&rdquo;
(the leaders of China. Say Hello to them)
Laws: From the Constitution: &ldquo;He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;&rdquo;
I totally forgot about that. He can RECOMMEND things to us. He can have OPINIONS. That&rsquo;s amazing!
How can I forget that? Like he can recommend the Department of Education which, since it&rsquo;s creation, the US has gone from #1 in the world in education to #18. Or he can recommend that Fannie Mae reduce their lending standards so that more people can afford homes (eventually causing the housing bust, financial crisis, etc). My guess is, we&rsquo;d all be better off if the President watched back episodes o<a href="http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/03/how-snooki-can-stop-violent-and-sex-crazed-children-and-help-you-live-a-stress-free-life/">f Snooki on Jersey Shore </a>all day instead of recommending things.
Instead, let's have a digg or reddit-style system where people recommend things, back it up with essays, facts, etc and have people rank the recommendations. Then the top 100 ideas ranked gets voted on by&hellip;the legislative branch, which is now the direct electorate instead of a bunch of buffoons we elect who don&rsquo;t really represent our interests.
Supreme Court. He can recommend judges to the Supreme Court that the House has to then ratify. Again, I propose a digg-like system where judges present their credentials and the 150mm non-children in the United States vote them up or down and when we need a new Supreme Court Justice we decide which, of the top 10 should be that justice. And we do it through voting. Why should Supreme Court Justices be judges for life? Same system should be made for Ambassadors.
Finally, the LAST THING, the President can do. He can throw parties! That&rsquo;s right. This is in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution. When a visiting Ambassador comes and visits us, the President is allowed to throw a party to greet him. There&rsquo;s usually a very nice dinner. Then a dance. Then maybe a movie or a show. And a receiving line where lots of people can spread germs kissing each other and shaking hands. And everyone dresses in tuxedos. Why do we need a President to do it? How about Martha Stewart? Or that other lady on the Food Channel. Or Wolfgang Puck. I nominate Wolfgang Puck for party-thrower.
There's nothing else the President can do legally. All of the other stuff is artificial. He can go to funerals. He can create new cabinet level departments (Education, HUD, etc) that require massive buildings, budgets, and takes away people from private industry to give them sinecure BS jobs that last forever. I guess he runs the CIA so we can spy on people. Like how we spied on people so we avoided 9/11. Errr..
(Should the President watch Snooki? Or C-Span?)
FAQ:
I need an immediate FAQ here to answer the obvious questions:
Won&rsquo;t this lead to Anarchy or a potential military coup?
I&rsquo;m just recommending getting rid of one person (and the entire mega bureaucracy that supports him.) The US runs just fine whenever the President doesn&rsquo;t get in the way. We could&rsquo;ve avoided the housing crisis, the wars, the massive inflationary budgets and debts, etc. We have governors and local police forces to deal with anarchy. And since I&rsquo;m also suggesting massive de-militarization (since we haven&rsquo;t had a legal war since 1941) that avoids the chances of any military coup.
Who will veto stuff? Isn&rsquo;t the President there to check Congress?
Obama has vetoed 2 laws during his administration. W vetoed an entire 11 laws in 8 years, 6 of which were overridden and/or passed with minor changes. So that&rsquo;s an easy one: either let the Supreme Court override stuff (which they do anyway if they deem a law &ldquo;unconstitutional&rdquo;) or let the people override.
What else does the President do? Doesn&rsquo;t he do anything? 
No, constitutionally he does nothing more. In all of the Amendments to the Constitution that came later, the only important one dealing with the President and his powers is Amendement 22 which LIMITs the power of the Presidency by saying a President can serve no more than two terms. They did this because Roosevelt, on many occasions, tried to take too much power away from the people, the states, and the Constitution, during his three and a half terms. So, Congress and the States, correctly, limited the powers of the Presidency so that a single man can only run havoc throwing parties for two terms instead of infinite.
If we had a &ldquo;true democracy&rdquo; wouldn&rsquo;t 51% of the people vote to pay themselves out of the government Treasury?
Duh, that ALREADY happened and nobody stopped it. 51% of the country is on some form of unemployment or other government handouts. Most of those handouts created by Presidential &ldquo;special actions&rdquo;. Rather than taxing the middle class (the upper classes will always figure out how to avoid taxes. It&rsquo;s hard to touch them) why don&rsquo;t we figure out incentives for the 6 million private businesses to simply hire one more person each. That would completely solve unemployment, would feed millions of people, and create a culture of ambition that would lead to a true trickle down effect. The dollars are already in the system. Every less dollar spent by the public sector will, by definition, be spent in the private sector. Let&rsquo;s get some smart people on this already instead of having the President just write checks to everyone.
Well, What about the Vice-President? Do we get rid of him also?
Of course not! Someone needs to go to the funerals of dead Kings of other countries. That&rsquo;s a real boring job. Do you want to stare in the coffins of a lot of dead people and pretend to look somber during the funeral? If someone is willing to do that, then by all means give it to them. In fact, sign me up.

ALC-Issue-01.25.24(1)

Abolish The Presidency, It's A Useless Job.

Years ago, I visited Google not long ago with some friends and, after almost getting arrested, my mind was blown&hellip;
First, we wandered into the garage where they were actually making or fixing the driverless cars.
When they finally realized we were wandering around, security had to escort us out. We got scared and we thought we were going to get in trouble or thrown out.
But then we met with a friend high up at Google and learned some of the things Google was working on instead&hellip;.
Nothing was related to search engines, which is what you normally think of when you think of Google, right?
Everything was related to:
<ul>
<li>Curing cancer (a bracelet that can make all the cancer cells in your body move towards the bracelet)&hellip;</li>
<li>Automating everything (cars are just one of those things),</li>
<li>Wi-Fi everywhere (Project Loon) and solving other &ldquo;billion person problems.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
Billion person problems? That means a problem wasn&rsquo;t considered worthy unless it could solve a problem for a billion people.
A billion!
When you solve problems that big it doesn&rsquo;t create a ripple effect. It creates a surging crashing mile high wave that reshapes the world.
And the opportunities that I watch for are in that chaos. It&rsquo;s dangerous and unpredictable and exciting.
But at some point there is flash of clarity. That&rsquo;s when you know that the future isn&rsquo;t abstract and &ldquo;tomorrow&rdquo; bleeds into today.
In Google&rsquo;s totally off-limits-to-the-public testing garage I tripped and fell with absolute certainty into what will be one of the most disruptive and lucrative trends of the next decade.
Driverless cars, autonomous vehicles&hellip;disruption on a billion person scale.
When you notice a trend, you immediately have a handful of choices because :
<ul>
<li>It might indicate what stocks to buy.</li>
<li>It might indicate what businesses to start. And for every one trend there are many different businesses you can start.</li>
<li>If it&rsquo;s a negative trend, it might suggest how you can position your family to survive.</li>
<li>It gives you something to talk about with your friends.</li>
<li>It gives you ideas that may morph into revenue streams that nobody has ever thought of before.</li>
</ul>
I will tell you that the way I make money is through the first and last items listed. I think of ideas for other companies who call me, and my &ldquo;business&rdquo; is to help them implement those ideas on their own and become massive successes.
If you combine the ideas that trends give birth to with an understanding of demographic trends, there are trillions of dollars waiting to be made.
But the easiest (and fastest) way I make money is simply by investing in mega-trends.

ALC-Issue-12-29(1)

"I Visited Google. AI is Just the Beginning

Every movie about World War III starts out with the same scenario &mdash; S**t gets crazy in Israel.
I spoke to someone high up in the royal family of one of the countries in the Middle East.
I asked him, &ldquo;How does this situation get better? Can there be peace? Can war be avoided?&rdquo;
He said to me, &ldquo;This can only get worse. Palestinians only want to kill all the Jews. They don&rsquo;t care about land. If they got land they would have to do what every other country does: borrow money.
Instead, they get GIVEN money in the form of humanitarian aid and the leaders become billionaires.
&ldquo;Now, a new generation of hate has risen. Meanwhile, Israel keeps quoting the Bible on the reason they are there. They shouldn&rsquo;t do that. It just pissed off the whole Middle East.
&ldquo;Meanwhile, China and the US have warships in the Gulf. Iran controls the Straits of Hormuz and funds Hamas and Hezbollah and can easily lob a missile in.
&ldquo;Then what happens? Does the U.S. send a missile back? Then Russia sends a missile back? Then it, quite literally, blows up the situation.&rdquo;
I said, &ldquo;Is that what people think will happen there?&rdquo;
&ldquo;Put it this way,&rdquo; my friend said, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a possibility.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell anyone we had this conversation,&rdquo; he said.
<h3 class="subhead nbp">The Reality of the Situation</h3>
I do care if there is World War III. I am scared. The older I get, the more I want the status quo at the very least.
It&rsquo;s the lesser of all evils. And there are a lot of evils.
I want things to be good for my kids.
They live in NYC where girls are pushed in front of subways, and Jewish people are being harassed by protesters who applaud the death and rapes of a &ldquo;few hipsters&rdquo; at a dance rave.
I&rsquo;m scared and I&rsquo;m sad.
When I spoke to David Rubinstein, the head of The Carlyle Group, a half trillion private equity fund that has had several Presidents working for him after they left the Presidency, came on my podcast.
He outlined the problems he sees in the US economy in the future. Particularly the rise in debt and the obligations of Social Security and how the US will pay for them.
I&rsquo;ve written about this before myself.
I asked him, &ldquo;Do you worry about this?&rdquo;
&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;It will be a few decades before this gets really bad. I&rsquo;ll be dead by then,&rdquo; and he laughed.
This might be true.
But the current situation, we&rsquo;re watching it unravel in real-time. We are all alive.
A lot of people have opinions. People say, &ldquo;Jews are bad.&rdquo; Or &ldquo;Iran is bad and must be stopped.&rdquo; Or &ldquo;China is bad.&rdquo;
And on and on.
And they protest in the streets. And shout ridiculous slogans. Imagine the hypocrisy of saying, &ldquo;Queers for Free Palestine?&rdquo;
Are you kidding me? The actual law in Gaza is a minimum of 10 years in prison if you are gay&hellip;
But the reality is your brother will throw you off a roof if you come out as gay.
If you focus on all the hypocrisy out there, you go crazy.
It&rsquo;s too much.
It&rsquo;s easy to lose hope and motivation when all you see are armies of hypocrites fighting fake wars.
But there are real wars. And protests won&rsquo;t stop them.
Won&rsquo;t even come close.
And I can&rsquo;t do anything about anything.
I tried.
During Covid, I wrote to Larry Kudlow, an old friend, and outlined how I thought they could reopen the economy.
But there was too much political pressure. Nothing could be done.
<h3 class="subhead nbp">Nothing. Can. Ever. Be. Done.</h3>
So here&rsquo;s the only thing I can do. Make money.
Hope for the best but prepare.
I mean, hope for the best but&hellip; make money.
Money gets you freedom in a world of terror. I am being blunt.
But in a war or a massive terrorist situation, having money is much better than not having money.
You can decide where to live, you can have flexibility in how quickly you can move and (to a certain degree) how safe you are.
And your family can have flexibility and freedom as well.
You can get medical treatment more easily. You can get the drugs you need.
All of this is a way of saying that at some point, no matter how much I care about an issue, I can&rsquo;t let it affect my pragmatism on making money.
I focus on what is needed to protect my family.
On 9/11 I saw this. We were in a recession. We were in a bear market. But some stocks went up.
Here&rsquo;s one &mdash; InVision Technologies, Inc. It was a $1 or $2 stock on 9/10. A few years later it sold for $50 to GE.
Why did it go up so much in this horrible market post 9/11, during a recession?
Because it made bomb detection equipment for airports.
<h3 class="subhead nbp">3 Ways to Be Practical and Prepare</h3>
We&rsquo;ve picked three stocks that will go up in a war or in a world of massive terrorism, cyber terrorism, terrorism in the US and Europe unlike any we&rsquo;ve seen before.
You can find them under &ldquo;The World War III Portfolio&rdquo; in the Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network member&rsquo;s portfolio <a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/subscription/aln/portfolio">right here</a>.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/msmhllqqqY0yXDfhwErIJ/563c96fdf7715a6ade06736ec12a9657/ALC-Issue-12-08_2_.png" alt="ALC" width="540px" />
I am not expecting this to happen. I&rsquo;m just listening to people I know. And I want to prepare my portfolio.
<a href="https://my.paradigmpressgroup.com/subscription/aln/portfolio">These are the three stocks that look interesting in a &ldquo;worst case scenario.&rdquo;</a> I put that in quotes because the worst case scenario is a constantly changing scenario.
I consider these to be solid stocks that will do well regardless but will do even better in a war-like situation.
[Not an Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network member? <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2272980">Click here to sign up</a> and get access to the full ALN portfolio.]

ALC-Issue-12-08(1)

The Solution to World Chaos

Over the past two years, we&rsquo;ve placed a huge focus on DeFi and the crypto landscape.
My longtime readers know that I&rsquo;ve been a big believer in cryptocurrency and DeFi.
When I launched my book Choose Yourself I accepted payment in Bitcoin at a time when most people hadn&rsquo;t even heard about cryptocurrency. In 2013, I was one of the first people to talk about cryptocurrency on CNBC.
As someone who worked on Wall Street for many years, I&rsquo;ve seen firsthand how much waste exists and how big the opportunity is for better systems.
All of this is to say, I&rsquo;m a very big believer in DeFi and cryptocurrency.
It seems that we are now only weeks away from the launch of an official Bitcoin ETF in the US.
With the crypto market recovering substantially from its lows set last year, I believe that the market still has a lot of upside opportunity.
With many of the criminals from the last crypto bull market now on trial or behind bars, crypto is evolving into a more legitimate market that is a respectable investment opportunity for professional investors and banks.
The launch of crypto ETFs will only throw fuel on the fire to push crypto (and DeFi) prices to record highs in the next big bull run.
However, the world of investing is about making choices.
If we want to build life-changing wealth, we need to double down on the biggest and fastest-growing opportunities.
That&rsquo;s why we&rsquo;re on the lookout for the Henry Fords of AI&hellip;
The Alexander Graham Bells of Machine Learning&hellip;
The Richard Bransons of computing&hellip;
The Andrew Carnegies of data science&hellip;
The Rockefellers of neural networks&hellip;
You get the picture.
<h3 class="subhead nbp">Shifting Our Focus</h3>
Although crypto and DeFi are massive opportunities that are growing fast, we&rsquo;ve begun to look at an opportunity that we can&rsquo;t pass up&hellip; AI.
Over the next five to ten years, Artificial Intelligence is going to change every business on Earth.
The last time we saw an opportunity like this was in the early days of the Internet.
The pace of AI development is unlike anything we&rsquo;ve ever seen before.
Although the development of the Internet was fast, AI development and advancement will be even faster.
The cost of sitting on the sidelines is just too high.
Blink and you might miss the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the next Google, Meta, or Apple.
The number of these opportunities that we are seeing every day is almost too massive for all of our publications.
That&rsquo;s why we have some exciting announcements coming up.
You&rsquo;ll see it first in these pages.

ALC-12-01(Hero)

The Henry Ford of AI

First off, I love Bitcoin. I love everything about it. If Bitcoin was a person I might marry it. If Bitcoin was champagne, I would bathe in it.
From 2010 to 2015 I used to hold these Q&amp;A sessions every single Thursday on Twitter. I would spend about 90 minutes and I did this about 50 times a year for six years. I really loved doing it.
For better or worse, I&rsquo;ve stumbled into a lot of bad situations for myself and some good ones. So people would ask me questions about their own strange situations. We all have them.
People would say, &ldquo;Who are you to be answering questions?&rdquo; And I would respond, &ldquo;nobody,&rdquo; which is true. We&rsquo;re all in this trap together. And our main task, if we have one, is to help each other get to the other side safely. Or as safely as we possibly can.
People would ask and I would freely give my opinion and tell my own stories a little. And I would say, this is not advice. Just my experiences.&nbsp;
Often people would ask me about Bitcoin and soon, in early 2013, everyone seemed to be asking me about Bitcoin. I looked into it for about ten seconds and said, &ldquo;seems like a scam to me.&rdquo; This was March 2013.
A month later, Naval Ravikant, who is a big enthusiast of all things crypto, flew into NY. We spent the morning together with a whiteboard and he explained Bitcoin in every which way to me.
It BLEW MY MIND. It seemed to be like the natural evolution of what money would become.
Every industry evolves. Think about it&hellip;
Medicine went from praying for healing from one of your gods, to leeches, to a guy who hits your knee with a hammer, to data and AI analyzing your genome.
War is another top of mind example as we&rsquo;re seeing in Ukraine.
Thousands of years ago, kingdoms would hold sacrifices to their gods the day before war.
Then they said, forget that, let&rsquo;s make bullets.
And now you have satellite images, AI guided missiles, cyberattacks&hellip; all orchestrated with massive amounts of data. If you have more data than bullets, you win.
Money has gone from bartering with a rock like gold, to &ldquo;In God We Trust&rdquo;, to fiat money where it&rsquo;s &ldquo;in the Federal Reserve we PRAY we can trust&rdquo;, to now... the natural evolution of all industries&hellip; a data-based currency.
Enter Bitcoin.
Bitcoin solves the problems of &ldquo;human&rdquo; currency. No Federal Reserve manipulating the value of the dollars in your pocket.
No middlemen of six banks every time you send a wire. No potential for forgery. Secure transactions and a record of every transaction right there on the blockchain.
But that&rsquo;s just the beginning.
With smart contracts, Bitcoin and other cryptos not only embed all the features of a currency, combined with all the benefits of computers, but you can make, using Bitcoin, smart contracts that enable you to recreate just about all software in existence, but better.
So a month or so later, in mid 2013, I did an experiment. I sold my book, &ldquo;Choose Yourself&rdquo; in a Bitcoin-only store that I had created.
This was in May, 2013.
I tried to get Coinbase to help me create it but they couldn&rsquo;t help me. Nobody knew how to do anything with Bitcoin. It was useless but all of us true believers still loved it.
So I coded my own store and sold about 60 copies of my book for 0.1 Bitcoin. At the time, it was about $10 per PDF that I sent to the 60 that bought it for what would now be around $4,000, give or take.
CNBC invited me on to talk about Bitcoin where I spouted its virtues.
Over time I bought some Bitcoin. I bought some Ethereum. I bought some alt-coins, and more recently I&rsquo;ve been buying coins in the DeFi space.
But earlier this year, I sold every single Bitcoin I owned.
Why? Because I started seeing even BIGGER opportunities in the market.
I just finished up <a href="https://pro.threefounders-reports.com/m/2267405">a quick chat about one of these opportunities</a> with my colleague Doug Hill.
If you haven&rsquo;t already seen it, don&rsquo;t wait too long.
In short&hellip;
<a href="https://pro.threefounders-reports.com/m/2267405">This AI trend</a> could spell the END of investing as we know it&hellip; and the beginning of something I&rsquo;m incredibly excited about.
<a href="https://pro.threefounders-reports.com/m/2267405">Click here for the full version</a>.

ALC-Issue-11-24(1)

Why I Said Goodbye to Bitcoin 

Happy Thanksgiving.
I&rsquo;m going to take the holiday to talk a little about what an idiot I am.
Getting started with investing. It was one thing to make some random trades in the Internet boom.
But then to make the leap to professional investing!
It starts with making money with my own money. Which is hard enough. Painful. But then to make money investing for others. UGLY! I&rsquo;ve been doing it now for over 20 years. I really hate it. But I love it. Hate it. Love it.
Hate it.
Why do I do this? Sometimes I wish I would take on simple hobbies and passions.
Ralph Maccio in the show, Cobra Kai, is a car dealer and has a hobby of pruning Bonsai trees.
He needs the hobby because he is horribly mediocre at his other passion, which is karate. And God forbid he developed a passion for acting because he would not be good at that.
Bonsai trees. Stamp collecting. Stamps don&rsquo;t really disappoint you.
I started writing books in 1990. I wrote novels and short stories. It&rsquo;s hard to sit down and write. Even this article, 32 years later.
From 1990-1995 I wrote about 50 short stories. And 4 novels.
For each short story, I was very aggressive (and overly confident) about publishing them. All of them. I was the greatest writer! I had so much delusion.
I sent each story out to an average of 40 literary journals and magazines. I sent out each novel to about a dozen publishers and 30 agents.
Every single short story and novel I wrote during this period was rejected by everyone. And I&rsquo;m not exaggerating the numbers. It was a full time job sending out these wastes of paper to magazines, publishers, agents. A full time job after the writing.
I was thrown out of graduate school because I was writing too much. Lost jobs, relationships, so much. And for what.
Over 2,000 rejection letters.
Since then I&rsquo;ve written and published 25 books. And most of them have made me zero money. And most of them are no good. Please do not ever buy my book, SuperCash, written in 2006.
But, I am proud of one book I wrote under a pseudonym, and given the events of the past week it is appropriate to post it here:
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Prince-George-Alexander-Windsor-ebook/dp/B00EA6QHPC">The Autobiography of Prince George Alexander Louis Windsor</a>
I gave myself the challenge to write AND PUBLISH a novel in a weekend. So I did it the week Prince George was born. He was three days old when I had him write his autobiography with the help of his sturdy butler, John Kenneth Rowling (get it?).
It&rsquo;s a classic masterpiece by me.
35% of the reviews are 1 star reviews. People just don&rsquo;t get me!
What pain. All the time. Every single day someone gets up the energy to send me a note about how much they dislike something I did.
So what did I do? I started playing poker as a hobby. No problem, let&rsquo;s play a game where I lose money the first six months of playing every night. Coming home at 4am through Madison Park with all the rats out and down another $500.
So, of course, take on a more pleasant hobby and then profession. Professional investing and trading.
And later, standup comedy, chess, more writing, more businesses. You would think playing a game would be fun.
As Bruce Springsteen says, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s called &lsquo;playing&rsquo; for a reason.&rdquo;
In a chess tournament, you sit there for four hours, twice in one day. Eight hours where you can&rsquo;t speak to anyone else and you are just alone with your thoughts, inches from your opponent.
Imagine losing twice in one day. The eight hours of self-talk. The bitterness, the anger, the five stages of grief. The feelings of being a loser and &ldquo;this is like that time when I sucked at that other thing&rdquo; over and over.
You have to really like yourself in order to play chess. Unfortunately, I realized I have to work on that part of my game.
You have to really like yourself to invest.
The market wants you to make money. It wants you to succeed. To invest in good companies. To be an entrepreneur.
My team and I are always on the lookout for the BIGGEST investment trends of the decade.
As I show in my <a href="https://pro.threefounders-reports.com/m/2267404">latest interview</a>&hellip;
If you&rsquo;re not in this sector, you&rsquo;re going to fall way behind.
Check it out. <a href="https://pro.threefounders-reports.com/m/2267404">It could change everything</a>.

ALC-Issue-11-23(1)

 To Win, Just Don’t Die

Every so often, I come across an opportunity that merges multiple interests of mine.
When I was in my doctoral program, I got to merge my interest in computers and artificial intelligence with my interest in chess when I worked on developing Deep Blue&hellip; the chess supercomputer that would eventually beat the world's top chess players.
On my podcasts, I merge my interest in chatting with interesting people with my interest in making money.
Nothing is better than making money from something you enjoy doing.
That&rsquo;s why, every two years, I look forward to the upcoming federal elections.
Over the past few years, I've reliably turned election season into a revenue stream.
Let me explain&hellip;
<h3 class="subhead nbp">Place Your Bets</h3>
About ten years back, I came across the concept of prediction markets.
Prediction markets allow people to bet on what they think will happen in the future.
For example, there could be a prediction market for who people think will win the next presidential election.
People who think they know what will happen can buy and sell "shares" in the outcome they predict.
Each share is like a bet on one of the possibilities.
Shares that match the actual outcome end up worth $1 each.
Shares for things that don't happen become worth $0.
This creates an incentive for people to buy shares that match what they believe will happen.
The prices of the shares go up and down based on what traders think is likely to occur.
Like in the stock market, the price goes up if more people want to buy a share.
And if more people want to sell a share, the price goes down.
So the current share price shows what percentage chance traders as a whole think that outcome has of happening.
For example, if a share is trading at $0.70, that means the traders think there is a 70% chance of that outcome occurring.
In this way, the prices reflect the information that all the traders have put together.
The market prices can be used to predict what is likely to actually occur.
<h3 class="subhead nbp">Making Easy Money</h3>
What makes prediction markets incredibly cool is how often I've seen them get the odds completely wrong.
Although, in theory, prediction markets are supposed to provide excellent predictions, there are yet to be enough traders (or trades) for the markets to work well.
This creates small, sometimes temporary, opportunities to make money on low-risk wagers.
For example, on election day 2020, the prediction market for a Joe Biden presidential victory went wild.
After Fox News and many other media outlets reported that Biden won the election, the prediction market for a Biden victory went down to about ninety-five cents (or a 95% chance that he was the winner).
However, when Donald Trump got on TV and made a speech claiming to win the election, those shares dropped to about eighty-five cents.
Of course, we can debate whether they should have dropped to eighty-five cents. That&rsquo;s beside the point.
The point is that anyone smart enough to buy those temporarily discounted Joe Biden victory shares could have made easy money.
This is just one example, of course.
Over the years, I've seen (and even written about) numerous other opportunities to make easy money in this market.
With the 2023 elections behind us, the 2024 federal election season is kicking off.
I'll be writing about more opportunities to invest in prediction markets over the coming year.
In the meantime, if you&rsquo;re interested in learning more about prediction markets, feel free to check out the largest market in the US: <a href="https://events-c.mp.paradigmpressgroup.com/z/8oesrq86b?uid=f33578a3-17b1-4930-9ca3-0d6bc24e0b12&amp;txnid=cbde7789-d183-4117-a916-6abf54d7bc42&amp;mid=723aa340-8a9b-4a85-a1f5-fe61860f609e&amp;utid=f33578a3-17b1-4930-9ca3-0d6bc24e0b12-000059650738&amp;bsft_ek=2023-11-14T14%3A40%3A20Z&amp;pk=46912b1e1c277735d030ac7b25af8b72&amp;vid2=e5bf97427439162940854d6d675ed2990b2759b264c3e4e3f51c3df2d3f10384f743e567bdddadb9640599e1ac8a9796&amp;listCode&amp;originType=item&amp;origin=AL2&amp;bsft_mime_type=html&amp;bsft_tv=2&amp;bsft_lx=2">PredictIt</a>.

Hi, I'm James.

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