Bitcoin just hit a six-moth low, dropping under $7,000 earlier today. This has me thinking that folks who made a bundle on bitcoin in 2017 may soon be more keenly looking for the “next Bitcoin” speculation. What’s really interesting about about this is that it would include a lot of younger people than one would normally think of as investors.
It’s conventional wisdom in the investment industry to aim one’s marketing at older audiences. Older folks, it’s argued, have more money and interest in investing. That may be true about the money, if you look at net worth. But I doubt it’s true if you look at willingness to spend disposable cash.
As a person who’s taught entrepreneurship to college students in many countries, I’m sure that the notion of less interest in investing is not true. There’s no lack of desire, only a common—incorrect—belief that one has to wait until one is older to become an investor. Show young people this is wrong, and it’s amazing how quickly they leap into action.
After a talk I gave, one former student of mine got himself a day trading account and taught himself how to use technical analysis to generate market signals. Within a year, he was making $10K per month, working out of his dorm room. That was in Minsk, Belarus, of all places.
My favorite part of this story is that my young friend saved 50% of his earnings, redeployed 40%, and lived on 10%. That still made him the richest kid on the block.
But the critical part for any young people reading this is that he started with almost no money. Instead of buying new clothes or spending all his money on beer and video games, he put everything he could scrape together into his investments. His timing was good, as the markets were rebounding after the crash of 2008, but it remains true that his scrimping for a few months paid off in spades.
If a young person can save up for a car or for a new computer, they can save up cash for investing.
The real beauty of this is that young people who have fewer responsibilities and burdens than older folks can not only afford to invest, but to speculate.
The trick is to think of speculating as spending. Once deployed, the money is spent. Gone. If you can accept that, you can keep calm, stay out of trouble, and swing for the bleachers when you’ve found a great opportunity. If you’re successful at it, this “gone” money can come back and change your life.
One can think of this as being like going to Las Vegas to spend money having fun gambling. (That’s not my idea of fun, but it’s a useful metaphor.) The odds are much better, however, for disciplined speculators than for gamblers in Vegas. We don’t just throw the dice; we research our opportunities carefully to stack the odds in our favor. Best of all, win or lose, each exercise teaches a valuable lesson, improving the odds in the next round.
But what to speculate on?
Even young people who missed it when Bitcoin soared 20x in 2017 are well aware of the fortunes made—and many are looking for the next similar opportunity.
This fact alone spells the end of the idea that young people aren’t interested in speculation.
And there’s more. Many—if not most—young people I meet don’t believe there’s such a thing as a secure job anymore. That’s why they’re interested in entrepreneurship—and investing.
But they’re no dummies. Apart from a few fanatics, most concede that Bitcoin’s spectacular run in 2017 was likely a once-in-a-lifetime event.
So what’s next? Pot stocks?
Sure, many are interested. But I haven’t met any who are convinced they know of a pot stock that will go 20x in one year. (As I said, they’re no fools.)
Tech stocks?
Sure. They like them. They probably understand them better than I do. And they all know that Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft returned over 100x to early investors. But they also know that took decades.
So what else is there?
Well, as it happens, the resource sector is well known for generating extreme gains in short periods of time. That’s especially so for junior gold and silver stocks.
Okay, the 100x winners are rare, but 10x to 20x winners happen pretty much every year.
- Novo Resources (NVO.V), for instance, was a 10x winner in just a few months during the same year that Bitcoin went ballistic.
- Great Bear Resources (GBR.V) is a 10x winner right now over the last year.
- Reaching back a bit, GoldQuest Mining (GQC.V) was a 50x winner in 2012—a time when gold prices were falling.
- Further back, I remember recommending First Majestic Silver (AG, FR.TO) at around C$1.80, before that stock went well north of $20 in 2011, for better than 20x gains.
My point for young people—or anyone interested in making a lot of money today—is obvious: there is a market where 20x gains are not once-in-a-lifetime events, but relatively frequent occurrences.
Best of all is that gold and silver broke out this year, setting the stage for the next big rally. At around $1,470 per ounce as I write, gold is still well below all-time highs. That means there’s plenty of upside left. And silver is just starting to catch up.
My suggestion to young people—or anyone looking to accumulate wealth today—is to ignore the war of words between Bitcoin HODLers and gold bugs. Save up some money you can afford to speculate with and start researching the opportunities in gold and silver stocks today. Those of us who’ve been doing this for a while stand ready to help you.
For more on the basics of speculative investing, please see my free report: Speculation 101.
We have other resources available for free, such as out no-span weekly Speculator's Digest. I encourage you to make use of them all, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. And let us know if we can help.
Whatever you do, don’t miss out on gold’s emerging bull market. I’m convinced that’d be like missing out on Bitcoin in 2017.
That’s my take,
