This week I had the opportunity to sit down with groups of friends and investors on multiple days and one common thing that we discussed was the fact that everyone seemed always to be “working” and although nearly all those people do knowledge work, they don’t have or take the time to think.
Morgan Housel discusses this in his article titled Lazy Work, Good Work.
The point is that productive work today does not look like productive work did for most of history. If your job was to pull a lever, you were only productive if you were pulling the lever. But if your job is to create a marketing campaign, you might be productive sitting quietly with your eyes closed, thinking about design. The problem is that too many workplaces expect their knowledge workers to pull the proverbial lever – today in Microsoft Office form – 40+ hours a week when they’d be better off doing things that look lazy but are actually productive. The result is that most people have thought jobs without being given much time to think, which is the equivalent of making a ditch-digger work without a shovel.
Here is a detailed interview with Jim Rogers. Some interesting snippets from it that pertain to our investing world:
We probably won’t have many more interest rate hikes, as central bankers are scared after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, so things will be okay for a while. However, when inflation comes back central banks will have to raise interest rates again and then markets will collapse.
There are not a lot of cheap assets around. Bonds certainly have been in the biggest bubble ever, many stocks have been or are still in a bubble, property markets from Korea to New Zealand are in a bubble. The only asset class that is not in a bubble is commodities. Silver is down 60% from its all-time high, Sugar is down more than 50% from its record high – these are not bubble numbers. So commodities are cheap and normally commodities do well with high inflation.
Thought of the Week
“How to thrive in an unknowable future? Choose the plan with the most options. The best plan is the one that lets you change your plans.”
Video of the Week
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