[Albert]

China vs America: An economic cold world war

I can not post excerpts from the article as it is not allowing me to copy the text. So see inside.

What you pofoers think, fear mongering or some truth?

[SpecialOlympian]

Not really much substance in there, just a lot of economic doom and gloom. He points out that Chinese people are buying Canadian real estate. He doesn't bother to ask who is buying it or why. My understanding, and I'm by no means an expert, is that Chinese individuals and not the Chinese government are buying Canadian real estate. This is mostly because a lot of rich Chinese people want to leave China or have an escape plan. Chinese currency controls make it difficult for their rich to expatriate money, but when they do they want to invest/hold it in something stable like sovereign bonds or real estate.

Extrapolating the purchases of wealthy individuals into a broader, cohesive strategy of colonization doesn't seem justified to me. You can't conflate individual wealthy Chinese people buying real estate with CCP led diplomatic aid to Africa.

It should also be a bit telling of exactly how well China is doing if all the rich people are trying to get their money out and invest it in foreign countries. From what I have heard, Russian billionaires have been doing something similar in the UK.

A little digging on his website also showed me that he is an investment guru specializing in Canadian small-cap stock tips. A VIP membership to his site offers his monthly picks for his portfolio, and you're incentivized to purchase that membership if you believe he's an expert predicting doom and gloom. I can say that at my job some of our portfolios have had roughly 10-12 equities trades in the last 5 months, so take that as a comparison to how a professional firm conducts trades compared to offering stock tips on a monthly basis.

To be fair, we only trade in large cap stocks, so his website is aimed at an entirely different market. A quick perusing of the front page shows me it's mostly negative news, which fits into the doom and gloom, buy my newsletter strategy I outlined. I should also admit I'm a bit sensitive to this and immediately assumed he was a gold investment guru, since he writes under the name Midas Letter, since my uncle routinely sends me scammy investment shit from people with the same economic doomsday predictions.

tl;dr Fuck the filthy foreign mudapes and kick their ass back to Shitsylvania

[Drlee]

I think you nailed it SO. I am not even sure what his point is other than the same old impending doom close.

I went through a time of active investing and did myself no favors. A story. Somewhere along the way I bought a certain utilities fund trying to find some safety. It may have been around 2008 IIR. So I stuck some money in there and ignored the impossible to read quarterlies until occasion had me call Templeton about some other investments. While on the phone I asked what else I still held and they mentioned this fund. I said to the guy, "well I guess I ought to put that money to work too" to which the guy said, "well sir.....it is up 19% this year...ahem". So I am reminded that stirring the pot just to watch it swirl is not such a good strategy.

To the bigger question of a trade/economic war between the US and China. I hear this idea all of the time but just have to ask myself...why? What does either side have to gain from such a war? I know that politicians have a stake in bashing the other side for hometown advantage but the folks handling the money are not impressed with such stuff. Follow the money.

Individual Chinese are looking to get rid of exposure and have options should they decide to bail. China is facing real internal challenges. They have a shit load of people, most of whom believe they ought to get a bigger piece of the pie. They are getting competition from other nations with even cheaper labor pools and there is serious pressure for them to fix their monetary policies. That is the last thing they want to do. And they are desperately afraid of getting bitch slapped by the TPP. Rightly so.

If anything I think the US and China may be growing together rather than apart. We need each other. The right politicians could do wonders. If I had my choice about new besties, I would sure rather it be the PRC rather than Russia.