Did you know that “The Day After Thanksgiving” is an official government holiday for most of the US? That means that government workers get the day off to digest their food and cure their hangover, from the previous day’s gluttony.
“The Day After Thanksgiving” is also known as “Black Friday” which is the start of the shopping season.
Black Friday is easily the most ridiculous and embarrassing day for the United States. Basically, a bunch of lemmings, err people, line up outside of stores in the middle of the night waiting for the doors to open so they can buy the hottest new electronic device.
There have literally been people killed during Black Friday events.
Don’t believe me? Well, go to blackfridaydeathcount.com. This website actually exists.
My favorite headline is “Shirtless man uses belt as a whip outside Vancouver Black Friday sale.”
I’m just picturing this crazy guy whipping fellow shoppers with his belt, while he is pushing a shopping cart full of crap. Like some Roman warrior in a chariot.
As an American, it makes me feel a little bit better that this whipping event happened in Canada, which is home to the world’s nicest people. Proves that Black Friday makes people from everywhere freaking nuts for at least one day.
I’m kind of getting off on a tangent here, but I’m trying to point out how ridiculous this whole Black Friday thing is. Why would people wait for one specific day to go shopping? Is it because stores all of a sudden put their merchandise on sale? Are you telling me that there is no other time to buy things at a discount?
And is it worth getting whipped by a shirtless man’s belt for that deal!?
Let’s go shopping where there are no crowds…
Right now, there are some great investing opportunities if you are holding the US dollar (or a currency pegged to the US dollar).
I’ve written about this many times before.
According to Nomura, there are seven economies that are at risk of having an exchange rate crisis. These countries are Sri Lanka, South Africa, Argentina, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, and Ukraine.
Basically, what this means is that when a currency loses value in relation to another, you can use the stronger currency to buy assets priced in the weaker currency, which means you’ll get more than before.
Think of it this way…
Let’s say one US dollar buys a jar of maple syrup . Let’s also assume that one Canadian dollar can buy that jar of maple syrup.
So, for ten US dollars or ten Canadian dollars, you can buy ten jars of maple syrup. Simple.
Then, let’s pretend that the Canadian dollar loses value in relation to the US dollar. Instead of the two currencies being equal, now it takes 1.3 Canadian dollars to equal one US dollar. (This is currently the case.)
However, it still costs one Canadian dollar to buy a jar of maple syrup.
Stay with me here…
If we took ten US dollars and converted them to Canadian dollars, we’d end up with 13 Canadian dollars. Now we can buy 13 jars of maple syrup from our ten US dollars.
See how that works? As a dollar holder, your purchasing power has increased because of the change in value of the two currencies.
Ok, now extrapolate that idea to anything you can think of. Jars of maple syrup, clothing, art, real estate…
If you’re an investor with significant money to deploy, real estate is looking very interesting in some of these locations. We’ll be doing something in mid 2019 related to this.
If you’re a smaller investor, there is still a huge opportunity… and it involves adventurous travel.
Here is what you can do: Find a country that has had recent devaluation of its currency and that also has something very valuable to sell.
I’m going to go with rugs in Turkey. Yes, you read that right. Rugs. Like a square piece of carpet. And the country of Turkey.
Rugs, if you didn’t know, can be worth A LOT of money. I’m talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. Countries such as India, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey are known for their high quality rugs.
Remember, the Turkish lira has recently lost value in relation to the US dollar. So, just like the jar of syrup example, there is an opportunity if you are holding US dollars.
If you’re a smaller investor… you should hop on a plane to Turkey with a pocket full of US dollars to buy Turkish rugs that you’ll ship back to the US to sell.
If Turkish rugs aren’t your thing, I’m sure you can think of something…
Go out to these countries and find something for sale!
(And if you’re from one of these countries with a weak currency, find someone in the US to sell things to.)
