Pity Professor Taleb is not about to offer his thoughts on the claims of guaranteed forever. As a practical matter I have long term investments (distinct from my trading portfolio) in what I believe are low risk investments. But I am well aware that nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world is risk free. As a perverse example, on 10 September, 2001, I would have wagered all that I own that the World Trade Center would be standing at sundown the next day. Apologies to anyone offended by my use of such a notorious example. If you live long enough, you know you have not seen everything, and you know that there will be events in the future that are beyond your dreams of today. Another example, my grandfather was born into a wealthy and privileged family in the 1800's, (think Downton Abbey). As a person of wealth there was a horse drawn carriage with a driver for his use, that was state of the art. Within his lifetime he saw the creation of cars, aircraft, telephones, satellites, two world wars (the first of which, the so-called war to end all wars, left him crippled for life), nuclear weapons unleashed on humans, and a human walking on the surface of the moon. You do the best you can with the risk you know of, but the outliers will occur in time. It is when the things of which you are absolutely certain, turn out to be wrong, then you have problems. Not to be too maudlin, and I certainly do not advocate converting all your assets into canned foods, in preparation for the apocalypse, but I do think about the impossible actually happening, and what do I need to do now to minimize the impact of the event. Good grief that was a long winded bit reminiscing. Who let grandpa lose on the interwebs again? Keep him in his room. For the bitcoin advocates (I have nothing to do with them), what will be the impact of quantum computing on their value? Present day encryption will have the security of a post-card in a world of quantum computing. Will a resurgence of mining lower their value? And finally, as always, there is the government. They can mess about your greatest plans in a twinkle.
%% Good coin /bit coin point; @ least insane priced tulips may look good, even when they crash LOL. This is strange timed comment anyway; SEPT tends to be down, stocks anyway. Plenty of coin has been made in coins[not bit con].Its not just the ChiComs knocked the daylight out of it. Even ''cant lose''coins like US gold + US silver coins got the appraiser standards changed on it. I did not use a spell checker on bit con. Not to worry Jim Cramer said BAC goes to $60 in heartbeat; actually he got the trend direction right but timing ??? At least that is a real bank.LOL
That or SQM, which is the biggest holding. They'll pull back near term though.... if this market ever corrects, I'm all in.
I don't usually hold anything through downturns, but am considering that for 25-yr-plus dividend achievers, it may be reasonable to hold them. The reason is, they are hardly ever cheap. So if I get out, it could be many years before I get a chance to buy again at a decent price. Now for those, I'd prefer a wide moat, a timeless product, and something that benefits from trends in geopolitics or demographics. How about GD?
You're making a persuasive qualitative argument for diversification. If you'd bought pieces of 500 NY buildings, instead of one particular NY building, you'd have been fine, to extend your example.