Certified Financial Technician - CFTe | Financial Analyst & Educator | Media Presenter | Keynote Speaker | News Corp columnist | Founder of MtM
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Pretty cool milestone to share.
Due to the success of the weekly online articles, my ASX Trader column will now also be published in print every Tuesday across the major News Corp newspapers.
So if you're old school like me and still enjoy grabbing a physical paper, keep an eye out each Tuesday in publications including The Courier-Mail, The Daily Telegraph, the Herald and other News Corp papers around Australia.
The print edition will be a condensed version, to fit on one page, of my weekly online article, breaking down what I'm seeing across markets, where money is flowing and the areas I'm watching next.
This week we're looking at why the miners are starting to outperform the metals themselves, particularly across gold and silver, and why Australia's emerging companies (small caps) could be approaching an important period.
There's still something pretty cool about seeing your work in an actual newspaper.
Grab yourself a copy every Tuesday. 🗞️📈
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THIS CHART COULD BE ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARTS IN THE ENERGY MARKET RIGHT NOW.
A lot of people believe the current oil supply problem is simply because of the war.
War ends = oil problem solved.
But look closely at the chart. The biggest structural change started years before the current war.
After the energy crisis of the 1970s, America created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Think of it as an emergency savings account for oil. For roughly 40 years, the US built up hundreds of millions of barrels as protection against another major supply shock.
Then COVID happened.
Planes stopped flying, cars stopped moving and global oil demand collapsed. Producers cut production and investment. But when the world reopened, demand came back much faster than parts of the supply system could respond.
That's when America increasingly started drawing down its emergency oil reserves.
And this is the key point.
Look at the huge decline in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve from 2020 to 2025.
That happened BEFORE the current war.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the energy shock in 2022, the US alone announced an emergency release of 180 million barrels.
So the war we're dealing with today didn't create the entire problem.
If anything, it has been the nail in the coffin of a problem that was already developing.
The US entered the current conflict with roughly 415 million barrels in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Six months later?
286.6 million barrels.
That's another roughly 30% of the remaining stockpile gone, leaving America's emergency oil reserves at their lowest level since 1982.
And America isn't alone. Other countries have also drawn heavily on emergency reserves.
This is why I think saying, "When the war ends, oil goes back to normal," is far too simplistic.
Even if the war stopped tomorrow, those barrels don't magically reappear.
At some point, governments will want to rebuild their emergency reserves. And those barrels have to come from somewhere.
So potentially you've got normal global oil demand, growing energy requirements, AND countries eventually trying to rebuild strategic stockpiles that took decades to accumulate.
That's the bigger picture I'm watching.
Don't just focus on the final drop in this chart.
The major depletion started years before the current war.
The war may eventually end. But the structural energy problem doesn't necessarily end with it.
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This chart might scare you a little. I’m not going to lie.
This is the Australian Energy Index, the XEJ, measured against the broader Australian market, the XJO.
And remember, when we’re looking at an investment over the long term, it’s not enough for it to simply go up. We want to know whether it’s outperforming the benchmark.
From 2000 into the GFC, energy massively outperformed the Australian market.
Then everything changed.
For almost 20 years, energy has underperformed. You simply did not want to be overweight energy through that period because the broader market was doing a better job.
But look at what’s happening now.
That 18-year relative downtrend has finally broken.
We’ve come back and tested the breakout area as support. At the same time, we’ve formed bullish divergence on RSI, and now Stoch RSI has produced a bullish cross on the six-monthly candles.
Six-monthly candles.
That matters because we’re not talking about a little daily or weekly move here. We’re looking at a potential change in a very long-term relative trend.
Interestingly, this is very similar to the type of setup I was watching in Australian 10-year bond yields back in 2022, when I made the decision to lock my interest rate in for five years at 1.94%.
Now look back at the left-hand side of this chart.
When energy began outperforming around 2000, that wasn’t a six-month trade. It became a multi-year trend.
That’s why I keep saying I believe the move in energy has only just begun.
If this ratio continues higher, it means energy is outperforming the broader Australian share market. And for that to happen over a sustained period, you’d generally expect strong underlying energy markets to be part of the story.
That brings us back to oil.
If oil still has significantly further to run over this cycle, that matters well beyond energy stocks. Higher energy prices can feed into inflation and make the path back to lower interest rates much more difficult.
That’s the bigger picture I’m watching.
Not what oil does tomorrow.
Not what the XEJ does next week.
The cycle.
And this is where I think a lot of property commentary could be missing the bigger picture.
There seems to be this assumption that rates will come down soon, borrowing costs will ease, and everything will be fine again.
But what if that assumption is wrong?
If this chart is signalling the beginning of a multi-year period of energy outperformance, then oil could still have much further to run.
And if oil has much further to run, inflation could have much further to run.
And if inflation has much further to run, those interest rate cuts everyone is waiting for may not be coming anytime soon. Or they will be short lived.
That’s why I keep watching the data rather than the narrative.
Energy. Oil. Inflation. Interest rates.
They’re all connected.
And right now, this six-monthly chart is telling me the energy cycle may only just be getting started.
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Where do I believe some of the biggest opportunities of the next decade could be?
Look in the quiet corner of the market.
This is the Australian Energy Index, the XEJ, and I think this chart is a brilliant lesson in market cycles.
During the last major commodity cycle from around 2000 to 2010, Australian energy went through an enormous bull market. From the early 2000s lows, the index increased more than 5x. Energy ran with commodities.
Then the cycle changed.
What followed was an 18-year downtrend and, since around 2015, more than a decade of sideways accumulation.
While technology and growth stocks became the stars of the market, energy basically went nowhere.
But sectors don't outperform forever. They move in cycles.
For the last decade, cheap money, low inflation and falling interest rates helped technology and consumer discretionary dominate.
But I believe that environment has changed.
We're moving into a world where inflation and interest rates could remain structurally higher than during the previous cycle. Historically, that environment has been much more supportive of commodities and energy.
And now price is starting to confirm what I've been watching.
In 2026, the XEJ finally broke its 18-year downtrend.
The next major level I'm watching is around 12,000.
If that breaks and holds, we're potentially looking at a breakout from an accumulation range that's been forming for more than a decade.
We've seen similar processes elsewhere in commodities.
Years of accumulation.
Nobody cares.
Price starts breaking out.
Then the public notices.
That's why I was buying energy during the tariff-driven sell-off in April 2025.
I wrote about this in my Courier Mail column in May 2025, while attention was still focused on buying dips in the technology names that dominated the previous cycle.
There's an important lesson here.
I don't necessarily want to buy a dip just because something is 30%, 40% or even 50% below its high.
You need to ask where that asset sits in its larger cycle.
If something has already gone through accumulation, public participation and into an excess phase, buying a big dip can still mean you're buying late in the larger cycle. Being cheaper than its previous high doesn't automatically make it cheap.
We've seen how quickly previous market favourites such as Xero and WiseTech can fall when conditions change. If you bought the dip there instead of energy, you had short-term wins but gave back those gains.
What I'm trying to identify is the earlier part of a new cycle.
In Elliott Wave language, I'm looking for that Wave 2 area, where accumulation may be ending and public participation could be beginning.
That's where the asymmetry becomes interesting.
If you're right about the larger cycle, you're not squeezing the final bit out of yesterday's winner. You're potentially positioning before the crowd arrives to capture the public participation and, eventually, excess phase.
That's why energy and commodities became such a big focus for me.
This isn't about saying energy goes straight up from here. It won't. Bull markets have corrections.
The important thing is the larger market structure.
An 18-year downtrend has broken.
A decade-long accumulation range is sitting underneath price.
The 12,000 area is the next major hurdle.
If that breaks, I'll be watching to see whether Australian energy has moved into the next phase of its larger cycle.
One of the biggest mistakes investors make is assuming what made them money during the last decade will make them money during the next one.
History doesn't work like that.
Sometimes the best opportunities aren't sitting in the hottest corner of the market.
They're sitting in the corner nobody has cared about for years.
Skate to where the puck is going, not where it's been.
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Link to Article May 2025 on Energy. couriermail.com.au/business/…
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I constantly see comments saying:
“But if oil goes up, isn’t that bad for precious metals?”
Or, “How can you be bullish on silver AND oil?”
People get so caught up in the short-term movements that they completely miss the bigger cycle.
Oil is a commodity. Silver is a commodity.
And over the bigger commodity cycles, they can absolutely run together. In fact, research looking at 135 years of data found the long-term relationship between oil and precious metals has generally been positive, although it changes through different regimes.
Just look at the chart.
That’s over 100 YEARS of oil and silver.
Do they move perfectly together every month or every year? Of course not. Different parts of the commodity complex heat up at different times. Short-term correlations can change dramatically.
That’s the part people miss.
The way I look at the commodity cycle is that precious metals tend to get going first, followed by industrial metals, then energy, then eventually the soft commodities. There’s overlap, there are corrections along the way, and leadership changes.
And there’s a logical connection too. When mining activity ramps up, getting commodities out of the ground requires enormous amounts of energy. Trucks, machinery, processing and transportation all require fuel.
So stop looking at every little butterfly movement on the daily chart and zoom out.
You all know how bullish I am on silver over the coming decades.
Well, if this chart is showing us anything, being structurally bullish on silver certainly doesn’t mean I have to be bearish on oil.
Quite the opposite.
Sometimes the simplest thing you can do is zoom out and look at what 100+ years of market history is actually telling you.
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THIS CHART GOES BACK 100 YEARS… AND WE’VE ONLY BEEN HERE THREE TIMES BEFORE.
This is Oil vs the Dow Jones Industrial Average on yearly candles.
Basically, when this chart is this low, oil is historically cheap relative to US equities.
Now look at the previous major lows:
1929.
1966.
1999.
And now… 2026.
Those dates aren't exactly random.
Each of the previous periods occurred around major turning points for US equities and was followed by a very difficult long-term period for stocks, alongside major rotations between asset classes. Equties had dead money for over a decade.
Now look at the technicals.
The yearly RSI is sitting around 40, an area that has historically acted as support for this ratio.
Then look at Stochastic RSI.
The previous major oversold extremes on this chart occurred around 1929, 1966 and 1999.
And now we're back there again.
But here's where things get really interesting.
Look at the small chart I've added in the top right.
That's the fundamental side of the equation.
It combines a range of US equity valuation measures including trailing P/E, forward P/E, CAPE, price-to-book, EV/EBITDA, Tobin's Q and market cap-to-GDP.
And what periods jump out as major valuation extremes?
1929.
1966.
1999.
And the current period.
So we've got two completely different ways of looking at the market telling a very similar story.
The technical chart is telling us energy is historically cheap relative to equities.
The fundamental data is telling us US equities are historically expensive.
Coincidence?
Maybe.
But this is exactly why I love combining technicals, fundamentals and macro rather than looking at any one thing in isolation.
Does this mean US equities crash tomorrow?
No.
Does it mean oil goes straight up from here?
No.
This is a big-picture macro chart. I'm not looking at what happens next week. I'm looking at where capital could rotate over the next 5 to 10 years.
And when I keep seeing the same message across oil, commodities, bonds, valuations and relative-strength charts like this, I'm paying attention.
It's also one of the major reasons I'm personally very cautious about US equities at these valuations and far more interested in the opportunities developing across energy and commodities.
1929. 1966. 1999. 2026.
History doesn't have to repeat.
But when everything aligns it's rarely coincidence!
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OIL IS SETTING UP ALMOST EXACTLY LIKE THE LAST MAJOR CYCLE.
Zoom out.
From roughly 1983 to 2003, oil spent about 20 years going sideways. For two decades, it basically went nowhere.
Then the structure finally changed.
Oil bottomed around $12, broke out of that huge range and eventually ran to around $140.
More than a 10x move.
Imagine telling someone when oil was sitting around $12 to $20 that it could eventually trade above $100. Most people would have thought you were crazy.
Now look at where we are today.
Since the massive run into 2008, oil has spent nearly 19 years inside another huge sideways structure.
And this is where the chart gets really interesting.
These are six-month candles. Every single candle represents half a year, so we're ignoring all the daily noise and looking at the much bigger cycle.
I've circled each major bullish turn in the Stochastic RSI.
Historically, when this indicator has turned bullish from these lower levels, oil has gone on to experience a multi-year bullish move.
But the latest signal is different.
The previous three major turns in this cycle came from around the huge $35 support zone.
This time, oil didn't get anywhere near it.
It formed a higher low around $58 and the six-month momentum indicator has turned higher again.
Now go back to 2002.
That's almost exactly what happened before the last major breakout. Oil stopped returning to the bottom of its long-term range, formed a higher low, momentum turned higher, and then eventually broke through the ceiling that had contained price for decades.
Oil went from roughly $20 to $140.
Today, we're sitting underneath another enormous resistance zone around $100 to $110.
My view is that we're approaching the same stage of the cycle.
If oil can finally break and hold above that long-term resistance, the entire technical picture changes.
That's why I've been talking so much about energy lately.
I'm not looking at what oil does tomorrow, next week or even next month.
I'm watching a structure that's nearly two decades in the making.
And if this plays out anything like the previous cycle, the bigger move may only just be getting started.
Keep reading throughout coming weeks. Much more evidence to come.
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Hopefully people now realise physical demand for shelter and purchasing power for property are not the same thing.
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I wish I had been wrong about this.
Back in early 2022, when rates were still under 2%, I said I believed we could eventually see them move towards 6% to 8% in coming years.
At the time, that sounded extreme.
We’d spent years living in a world of incredibly cheap money. Rates had been falling for decades, and many people had built their mortgages, businesses and investment decisions around the belief that cheap debt was normal.
My concern was that it might not be.
It was a cycle.
And cycles eventually turn.
Fast forward to today, and unfortunately, that shift has played out.
The reason I was so vocal about it back then wasn’t because I wanted to be right. It was because I could see where things might be heading, and I knew people could be struggling today if they didn’t put plans in place while rates were still low.
At the end of last year, I spent almost a month posting nearly every day about what I was seeing next.
Why I believed interest rates were setting up for another major move higher.
Why I believed property was approaching a major peak in 2026.
And why people who were heavily leveraged or had everything tied up in one asset class could eventually feel the pinch.
We’re now starting to see some of that play out.
I take no pleasure in that.
But this is why I spend so much time looking for changes BEFORE they become obvious.
And now there’s another area I want to spend some time on.
ENERGY.
A lot of people have asked me why I believe oil could eventually trade above $200 in the coming years.
That’s not something I can properly explain in one comment or one post.
So over the coming days and weeks, I’m going to do my best to show you exactly what I’m seeing.
The fundamentals.
The technicals.
The macro picture.
The longer-term cycles.
Just like I tried to do with interest rates and housing, I’ll lay out the data and the reasoning behind my view.
Then you can decide for yourself.
You don’t have to agree with me. In fact, I would love you to challenge my ideas and data so we can have a robust discussion.
But I do think you need to be aware of what’s happening in the energy space.
Because if I’m even remotely close to being right, the implications could extend well beyond the price you pay at the petrol pump.
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Pretty cool seeing this pop up as a notification from @hellostake.
I was recently featured in Stake’s “What I’m Trading” series, where I got to share a bit more of the story behind how I ended up in markets.
We covered everything from how fantasy sports originally pushed me towards a data-driven approach to investing, to my early mistakes in crypto, the lessons those mistakes taught me, how being a teacher shaped the way I analyse markets, and eventually how Mastering the Markets came about.
We also got into what I’m watching right now, particularly commodities and energy, and why I think understanding the bigger market cycle matters so much.
One thing I really enjoyed about this was that it wasn’t just about winning trades.
Some of the biggest lessons I've learned came from getting things completely wrong.
Markets have taught me a lot over the years, but probably the biggest lesson is this:
Don’t outsource your decision-making.
Learn how to read the evidence, build your own process and make your own decisions.
That’s ultimately what I love teaching today.
Thanks to the team at Stake for featuring my story and apparently sending me into everyone’s notifications.
You can read the full story in the comments.
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THE MARKET OFTEN MOVES BEFORE THE STORY HITS THE HEADLINES.
I posted this chart on 25 April 2022.
Eight days later, the RBA raised interest rates for the first time in more than a decade.
But the rate rise wasn't the interesting part.
The US and AU 10-year Treasury yield was doing something I believed was far more important. It was breaking out of a downtrend that had dominated for roughly 40 years.
If bonds aren't your thing, here's the simple version.
For decades, we became used to cheaper money.
Lower rates made mortgages cheaper, borrowing easier and helped support asset prices.
Then that environment started changing.
What followed?
Higher rates. More expensive mortgages. Higher business borrowing costs. Inflation and cost-of-living pressures becoming part of everyday conversation.
The market was giving us clues before most people felt the effects. The things your feeling today i was talkimg about 4-5 years ago. You can prepare for change before it arrives.
And that's why I'm sharing this old chart again.
Because today I'm seeing another story developing.
Energy.
My longer-term technical view is that oil could trade above US$200 a barrel in the coming years.
That doesn't mean tomorrow. It doesn't mean it goes straight up. In fact, I think oil looks stretched in the short term and a correction wouldn't surprise me.
I'm talking about the bigger cycle.
And oil isn't just what you put in your car.
It's trucks moving food. Planes. Farming. Mining. Manufacturing. Freight. Almost everything we buy has energy somewhere in its cost.
That's why I'm personally preparing for the possibility of much higher energy costs in the years ahead.
The lesson from 2022 wasn't that charts can predict the future.
It's that markets can begin changing long before we feel the effects in everyday life.
Markets tell a story if you know how to read the language.
To me, it's like reading a book about the economic world.
Sometimes the charts give you the first few chapters before everyone else starts reading the story.
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THE FED JUST RAISED INTEREST RATES.
Last night, the Federal Reserve officially raised interest rates by 0.25%.
But for me, the interesting part isn't the rate rise itself.
It's what happened before it.
Back in January, I highlighted the change taking place in the US 10-year Treasury yield. At the time, the dominant narrative was still heavily focused on rates eventually heading lower.
Then at the end of July, I posted again as the US 10-year yield broke out of its major technical structure.
Another warning.
Fast forward to today, and the Fed has now raised rates.
But here's the part I find most interesting.
Go back and read the comments on those original posts.
The sentiment tells you almost everything you need to know.
It was overwhelmingly: Trump this, Trump that. Trump won't let rates rise. Trump won't let markets fall.
People were following the narrative in the news rather than the data sitting right in front of them.
That's one of the things I love most about technical analysis, and something we teach heavily at Mastering the Markets.
Follow the data, not the narrative.
Charts don't care what politicians want. They don't care what commentators think should happen. They simply show us what market participants are actually doing with their money.
The bond market was giving us clues back in January. By July, the US 10-year yield was breaking out and giving us another major warning.
We've spent this year preparing for this possibility. Preparing for a higher-rate environment, preparing for pressure on certain assets and watching bonds, yields, commodities and sector rotation rather than waiting for the headlines to tell us something has changed.
That's the whole point.
It's not about predicting every move perfectly. It's about recognising when the data changes and adjusting accordingly.
The charts were warning us months ago. Monetary policy is now catching up.
And seriously, go back and read some of the comments on those old posts.
It's a great reminder of just how convincing a narrative can sound at the time, and how wrong that narrative can eventually turn out to be.
Data over narratives. Every time.
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TLT: US 20+ Year Treasury Bonds.
At the beginning of this year, I said I believed US bonds had another major leg lower ahead of thema nd that Yields were heading higher.
I was called every name under the sun.
A lot of the responses were basically: “Trump won't allow it! He's going to bring rates down.”
Well, here we are almost a year later.
And this is one of the biggest misunderstandings I see when people talk about markets.
The President does not control the bond market.
Trump can push for lower rates. His administration can change fiscal policy, taxes, spending, regulation and Treasury issuance. Those things absolutely matter.
But he can't simply tell the market what a 20-year Treasury should yield.
The market prices that.
And if investors are worried about inflation, government borrowing, deficits or the amount of bonds coming onto the market, they can demand a higher yield to lend money for 20 or 30 years. Recent attempts by the Treasury to ease pressure in the bond market haven't stopped long-term yields from remaining elevated.
That's why I'm watching TLT so closely.
Bond prices and yields generally move in opposite directions. So if TLT continues falling, as I'm expecting, long-term Treasury yields would generally be moving higher.
TLT is around $81 and I still see the potential for another 20% to 30% downside, with the major 0.618 Fibonacci level around $61.50 on my chart.
If that happens, the real story isn't TLT.
It's the cost of money.
Higher Treasury yields can mean higher mortgage rates, more expensive business funding, higher refinancing costs and tighter financial conditions across the economy.
And that's why my view hasn't changed.
I believe the US is potentially entering another aggressive period of rising rates and borrowing costs, similar to the shift that began in 2022.
Politicians can tell you what they want rates to do.
The bond market tells you what investors are actually demanding for their money.
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The people who measure property purely on supply are making the same mistake as people who measure stocks purely on a P/E ratio, then wonder why the fundamentals look cheap while the stock keeps falling.
Markets are forward looking.
One of the biggest lessons in markets is that the fundamentals often look their BEST near the top of a cycle and their WORST near the bottom.
Why?
Because markets price in future growth.
When everyone can see the strong fundamentals, that expected growth is often already reflected in the price. During periods of euphoria, price can actually run well ahead of those fundamentals.
That’s how you get boom and bust cycles.
Property is no different.
People still need somewhere to live. Supply can still be tight. Population can still be growing. None of those things suddenly need to disappear for property returns to weaken.
Because price matters.
And this is where mean reversion is so important.
If property historically delivers somewhere around 7% a year over the long run, you can't continually get 15%, 20%+ annual growth and assume that's the new normal.
Those explosive gains bring future returns forward.
Imagine an asset is worth $500,000 and grows at 7% a year. In five years, that would put it around $700,000.
But what happens if euphoria pushes it to $700,000 in just two years?
You've effectively pulled several years of potential growth forward.
It doesn't HAVE to crash afterwards.
It could fall.
It could move sideways for years.
It could grow at only 1% or 2% while incomes and rents catch up.
Or inflation could slowly reduce its value in real terms.
That's mean reversion.
And we all knew property had run ahead of itself.
For years people have been saying housing is ridiculously expensive. Young people can't afford it. Prices have disconnected from incomes.
You can't acknowledge that prices have become stretched on the way up, then be shocked when the market eventually tries to correct that imbalance.
That's what cycles do.
Price runs ahead → future growth gets pulled forward → extraordinary returns attract more buyers → price becomes increasingly stretched → returns eventually revert towards the longer-term trend.
And then psychology makes it even more interesting.
Near the top, the fundamentals look fantastic. Everyone has a reason why prices can't fall. Supply is tight. Demand is strong. Everyone knows someone who's made a fortune.
That's exactly when large holders have the liquidity to sell.
Real estate needs that liquidity even more than stocks. You can't press a button and instantly exit a house. There has to be a buyer on the other side.
Then sentiment starts changing.
And I'm already seeing people calling this "blood on the streets."
It's not.
There's frustration. There's regret. There's some, "shit, I bought at the wrong time."
That's very different from genuine capitulation.
At major cycle bottoms, people aren't usually lining up excitedly to "buy the dip." They've often been hurt for long enough that they don't want anything to do with the asset.
That's the great irony of markets.
Near the top, everyone can see the reasons to buy.
Near the bottom, everyone can see the reasons not to.
Stocks. Property. Bonds. Commodities. Crypto.
Different assets. Same human psychology.
Price matters. Valuation matters. Sentiment matters.
And most importantly, where you are in the cycle matters.
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You probably don’t own enough hard assets.
For years I’ve been talking about a major change happening in the global economy.
If you’re new to markets, let me explain what I mean in really simple terms.
For roughly 40 years, investors became used to a world of generally falling inflation and falling interest rates.
That environment was incredibly good for financial assets like shares and bonds.
But economic environments don’t last forever.
In 2021, I started warning that inflation and interest rates were likely to become a much bigger issue. At the time, that view wasn’t particularly popular.
Then inflation surged. Interest rates followed.
In 2023, I said inflation could cool for a period before becoming a problem again later in the cycle.
But here’s the bigger point.
I don’t believe this was simply one inflation spike that came and went. I believe we’re still relatively early in a much bigger change in the economic cycle.
This chart helps explain why this matters.
It shows the rolling 10-year return from US bonds after inflation.
In simple terms, it asks: after holding bonds for 10 years, did your investment actually increase what your money could buy?
As of July 2026, the annualised real return was around -5.14%.
That’s what we call a real return.
Say your investment makes 5%, but the cost of living rises 6%. The number in your account has gone up, but what that money can actually buy has gone backwards.
And this is where the conversation around property becomes really important too.
Look back at previous major inflationary periods, particularly the 1970s. Property didn’t necessarily need to collapse in dollar terms for investors to experience poor real returns.
Once you adjust for inflation, there were periods where property actually went backwards in purchasing-power terms.
That’s something I think gets completely lost in the property debate.
When I talk about being cautious on property, I’m not necessarily saying property has to crash.
It could fall. It could move sideways. It could even rise modestly in dollar terms.
The bigger question is:
Is it the best place to park your money for the next 10 years?
Because if a property rises 3% a year while inflation averages 4%, you’re getting wealthier on paper while actually losing purchasing power, before even considering the costs of owning the property.
That’s opportunity cost.
And it’s one reason I’ve spent so much time talking about hard assets and understanding which hard assets are at the right stage of their cycle.
Gold. Silver. Commodities. Energy. Property. Farmland and other genuinely scarce assets.
They’re not all the same, and they won’t all perform well at the same time.
Being a hard asset doesn’t automatically make something a good investment at any price.
Price matters. Timing matters. Valuation matters. Cycles matter.
The investment environment that worked for the last 40 years may not be the environment that works for the next 10 or 20.
Sometimes the biggest risk isn’t watching the number in your bank account or the value of your house fall.
It’s watching the number go up, but everything else goes up faster.
You can probably already relate to that.
Do you own enough hard assets, and just as importantly, do you own the right ones at the right time?
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