"I'm never going to make that foolish mistake my parents made!" you said.
And I said.
And everyone else said.
Experience counts...
Once you touch that hot stove yourself, you know you will never touch it again. And when you see family members make a life-changing mistake, you learn that you don't want to go through that yourself.
The problem is, we are fooled by experience...
We put too much weight on what we have actually been through.
The same thing happens in the financial markets...
Many young adults today saw their parents get crushed in the housing bust a decade ago. They saw them end up-upside down on their mortgages, and they swore they would never end up in that position.
But young adults are making this borrowing mistake in other areas. And they don't even realize it...
"Americans' love of pricey pickups and sport utility vehicles is stretching their wallets," Bloomberg news reported last week.
Who needs a $70,000 pickup truck? I have no idea.
But a Ram "Big Horn" truck can set you back $70,000 or more. For a pickup truck!
Guess what... According to the Bloomberg article, the Ram truck brand has an average loan term these days of 73 months. 73 months!!!
The article says that two out of three vehicles sold in the U.S. these days are "light trucks" – a category that includes SUVs and most pickup trucks.
With a six-year loan term, it wouldn't surprise me at all if a number of these loans end up in financial disaster like mortgages a decade ago... where the borrower defaults on an asset that they are upside-down on.
The student-loan market is in the same boat...
In 2009, total student-loan debt was about $771 billion – a huge number! Or so I thought...
By October last year, that number had soared to around $1.5 trillion. It nearly doubled!
Student-loan debt is another financial disaster in the making. You can easily make a case that we could see hundreds of billions of dollars in defaults.
It's not just financial disasters... You can make mistakes on the upside, too...
Young people bought up cryptocurrencies like bitcoin with big dreams. But in late 2017, it turned into bubble, like many others in history.
I love learning about financial history. I love finding parallels between today and a time in the past.
But one clear lesson from history is this: It never happens the exactly the same way the next time around.
That's why it's easy to be fooled... to think that "this time is different."
Financial disasters and bubbles don't repeat... but they certainly rhyme. Don't you forget it!
Good investing,
Steve
Further Reading:
"Market behavior tends to repeat," Greg Diamond writes. "We know what's happening because we've seen this all happen before." His unique style of trading uses this secret to capture big potential profits... Learn more here: How to Invest With the Power of Human Nature.
"This massive debt bubble has mostly been created by the 44 million Americans who have student loans," Porter Stansberry says. Read more about the growing debt crisis – and where he believes it is leading us – right here: A Lottery That No One Wants to Win.
Investors tend to overreact. Today, they're worried that the bull market in U.S. stocks is over. And it's a major reason why U.S. stocks could move higher...
NEW HIGHS OF NOTE LAST WEEK
CSX (CSX)... railroads
Hess (HES)... oil and gas
Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD)... oil and gas
ConocoPhillips (COP)... oil and gas
Valero Energy (VLO)... oil and gas
Arch Coal (ARCH)... coal
Rayonier (RYN)... timberland
Southern Copper (SCCO)... copper
American Express (AXP)... financial powerhouse
E-Trade Financial (ETFC)... online brokerage
Interactive Brokers (IBKR)... online brokerage
GoDaddy (GDDY)... world's largest domain-name provider
NetApp (NTAP)... "cloud" storage
Match (MTCH)... undisputed leader in online dating
Netflix (NFLX)... "game changer" in technology
Intel (INTC)... chipmaker
Denny's (DENN)... a dining chain goes digital
Wendy's (WEN)... fast food
Domino's Pizza (DPZ)... pizza
NEW LOWS OF NOTE LAST WEEK
PepsiCo (PEP)... soda
Procter & Gamble (PG)... household goods
Kimberly-Clark (KMB)... household goods
General Mills (GIS)... Cheerios, Betty Crocker, Pillsbury
Altria (MO)... cigarettes
Philip Morris (PM)... cigarettes
Harley-Davidson (HOG)... motorcycles
