Stocks and Crypto are crashing but... (1.Viewing)

Anyone feeling a bit smug?

That's why it's good to have a mixture of investments that are uncorrelated.

Domains always seem to be selling every week no matter what the economy is doing. And when we come out of this downturn in the markets and economy, however long it lasts, domains will do even better imo.

Even after the current crash, the Nasdaq has returned 13+% annually over the past 15 years. That's a pretty safe bet considering it is literally zero effort. I suspect there are plenty of domainers that would have been better off choosing that route, with the bonus of maintaining 100% liquidity. There are probably many domainers that think they are worth 7 figures and up on paper, but have almost no liquidity and are therefore struggling to pay renewals.

15 years ago it was 2010, two years after the 2008 Great Financial crisis when the banks almost collapsed, and 10 years after the 2000 dotcom bust. From the peak of the Nasdaq in Feb 2000, it took 15 years for the Nasdaq to get to that level again after it dropped. So in hindsight yes the Nasdaq has had a great run, but in 2010 it would have seemed very risky to bet big on it, and along the way there were some stomach turning drops that might have scared people out. A lot of people who got burned in 2000 and 2008 missed the tech boom of the 2010's because they were so scarred by the crashes. For the boomers who invested in stocks from the early 80's they had 40 years of good to great stock markets, and just needed to hold and keep buying through the downturns.

I would wonder if the Nasdaq will do 13% annually on average over the next 15 years, or are we headed into a down or plateauing index for a while (like after 2000).

Interestingly, since the year 2000 gold has beaten almost all investments other than bitcoin (which only started around 2008). In 2000 gold was priced at around $250 an oz, today it is around $3000 an oz. A 1200% return, and maybe even better with US to CAD currency conversion. In just the past year gold is up 50% and is likely to go higher in the coming year or more. Nothing more simple than just buying and storing some metal.

domains said:

Interestingly, since the year 2000 gold has beaten almost all investments other than bitcoin (which only started around 2008). In 2000 gold was priced at around $250 an oz, today it is around $3000 an oz. A 1200% return, and maybe even better with US to CAD currency conversion. In just the past year gold is up 50% and is likely to go higher in the coming year or more. Nothing more simple than just buying and storing some metal.

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Yeah, gold doubled in the financial mess of 2008 and it has less than doubled in the 17 years since. Gold is historically a good investment in recessions, but because the markets have been good, gold has been essentially flat for close to 4 years, it has really only moved upward (by about 50%) since around the time the democrats started to fall apart with the Biden re-election mess and it became realistic that Trump may get elected. So it seems that gold's significant increase is due to the safe-haven effect - people fearing the inevitable turbulence of trump's reign - an insight that has proven very true. But I have to wonder if it's too late now for gold, if it's already had its run and from here on out a recession will just kill off production and demand for all commodities?

Gold rose in the last year because government central banks around the world have been buying (eg: China, Turkey, some European countries, Asian countries...) and in the last couple months a lot of physical gold has been brought into the US - and it's unclear why so far but it must be one or more big US buyers - banks? government? But at the highest price gold has ever been in history, big entities are still buying it at this level. The general public, people, investors, have not been the ones pushing the price this time, but some speculate that will still come and that is what pushes gold even higher. US currency is still the global reserve but when they confiscated Russia's treasuries at the start of the war in Ukraine, a lot of countries now don't see the US dollar as such a 'safe haven', and prefer having more gold as reserves. And as you mention turbulent times around the world, regional wars, now tariff wars, there is a lot of uncertainty and gold performs well in that. Rough economy, recession, inflation, gold does well. Because stock markets have performed so well up to recently, the general investor and fund hasn't seen a reason to own gold - that might be changing as stock markets get rattled and gold holds up. At $3000/oz, gold mining companies are printing cash and by many measures are severely undervalued. There are many charts showing gold performance vs the stock market, and we have been in a period where gold has underperformed the stock markets but the charts are showing the trend is reversing, and we're heading into a period which could last a couple to many years where gold/silver and gold/silver miners outperform the stock markets. Think 1970's and early 2000's. The historical average of funds investing in mining companies is 2.0%. Currently they are at 0.5%. It's been as high as maybe 5% in the past during manias. So just to get back to the mean of 2.0%, four times the amount of money has to flow into the gold sector. That will push gold and gold mining stocks much higher than current levels.