"I been rich, I been poor...

 "I Been Rich, I Been Poor...

... Rich is Better.". 

So read the bumper-sticker I saw years ago. 

And... 

"You need to make real money in Big Licks": 

~ Bruce Turnbull, father of ex Aussie PM Malcolm. Not referring -- one presumes -- to the American ice-cream franchise Big Licks. Though he may as well have been: making money in a franchise is definitely a thing. 

All of which is true. In my own personal, me, mine own, experience.

In the 90s I was Executive General Manager of Austrade East Asia. Top, top job in the Aussie civil service. The Chinese had me pegged at the level of Deputy Minister. Deputy Minister! Then I went for the top job in Austrade, the one that would've been actual Minister, and lost it. I was too arrogant. Too sure I'd get it. And didn't. Came second, which there is none of. And so quit in a huff. 

Got new job with Leigh-Mardon, in Melbourne, then a subsidiary of the American Banknote Company, which then promptly went bankrupt and I found myself alone, bankrupt myself, in Sydney. Suicidal for a while. 

Magically, somehow, from Sydney, got a job with Duty Free Shoppers in Hong Kong, a subsidiary of the American parent, itself a subsidiary of Bernard Arnault's global luxury colossus LVMH. That job lasted less than a year -- this being around 1996, just before the Asian Financial Crisis -- when it ended, with me being retrenched, once again poor. But with just enough to get into day trading. Making enough money to... 

... making enough money by 2000 to buy the Hong Kong Master Franchise rights for the Wall Street Institute School of English, which, long story short, we sold in 2007 to a Singaporean private equity firm and made our "Big Lick" of money. Not a Yuuuge Lick, but a decent, biggish lick. 

And that's when I could safely agree: "I been rich; I been poor. Rich is better". Poverty demeans. Poverty restricts. Poverty crushes. Money liberates. 

Since then, 18 years ago, we've invested in the stock market and outperformed it, though not by a lot. Had we done something like invest it all in one single stock -- say Apple -- in 2008, we would now have over $US 415 million. Which we certainly don't have. I've been reminded by 'Er indoors that I once made the "crazy" suggestion to put all our money into Apple. I don't recall doing that though I wish I had, because I could now be saying "I told you". 

But still we did ok. And the following holds: that there are some markets better than others over the long term to invest in. The top best are both American. Australian is not so bad. European middling. The worst are China and Hong Kong. And the UK's has been pretty bad too. We've concentrated mostly in the US. And done well for that. 

CAGR = Compound Annual Growth Rate

I'd say that the future will be the same. America will outperform. Because, for all the "chaos" and turmoil, there's huge inventiveness amongst American entrepreneurs. The major one being my hero, Elon Musk. But many others as well. Which is what explains the strongest performance by the tech-heavy NASDAQ and the S&P 500. And if you want to be “crazy” and put it all in one stock, I’d say TESLA. Not the others in the “magnificent seven” — NVIDIA, MSFT, AAPL, AMZN, etc — as they’ve had their huge runs, but TSLA. EV, Energy, Self-driving, Robotaxis, Optimus Robots, and AI. All the biggies of now and future. 

Here endeth the lesson. Which is: make your money in business (not from salary). And put it into US stocks. The NASDAQ and S&P being the best ETFs.