hispls
5,000+ posts
CarAudio.com Veteran
I know a guy who consistently makes money on FOREX and a couple other commodities. He has worked with some big players on Chicago Exchange. Claims the whole thing is rigged and he knows how to read big trends. Otherwise, as I said, go to the casino. Anything that has to do with things that don't actually exist and done on margin is incredibly risky. Even in a pretty bad scenario paper FRNs in a mattress would probably be used by some for trade since there is a rather small supply of paper compared to the "money supply" of all book keeping entries.
You could safely assume that even in a really bad situation blue chip type stocks at least you have can a certificate in hand and they represent your share of a company that will likely still exist in 20 years and who has real assets that to some degree back it's value. Of course if we flip into some sort of pure collectivism quickly any asset that can't be buried in the ground with intrinsic value will be vulnerable.
Gold and silver is good if you expect a soft collapse, food is better if you expect a major collapse. Good arable farm land is a great long term investment in general (a lot of big money has been buying farmland) and land with a good water supply is a very good long term plan.
The writing is on the wall about guns in the USA. IMO at some point we will be disarmed or at least an attempt will be made that will go really badly. You can play a short game and buy high capacity magazines and scary looking "assault" rifles and sell them after the next scary media event, or simply put things in a safe for a long term hold. Of course in a mad-max zombie apocalypse event they'd be priceless.
Personally I'm going to be making all my own food within a year or two here and I'm in a rather remote area with well armed neighbors and fair hunting. Even in a hard economic collapse food will be a big issue. Consider when we finally go to war with Iran or the dollar devalues by 1/5 or something. What do you think the price of a bag of Potatoes grown 1000 miles away from you will cost when gas is 20-30$ a gallon? Think the big rigs will still be trucking 1$ a pound tomatoes from Mexico to Ohio?
LOL. Considering it's been used primarily for buying drugs and other illegal activities on .tor AND the fact that it's actually worth something now, it's only a matter of time before it's regulated or otherwise tampered with by either the government or the same big financial players that screwed everything else. Also consider they have absolutely no intrinsic value, whereas at least the dollar is backed by the faith that the American people will pay their debts and America owns enough assets to buy with dollars. I would say they're a very high risk investment.
