Cash

Many investors around the world have converted a portion (or in some cases all of their investments to cash) because of the uncertain situation especially in Europe as well as other locations: Iran, Syria, Israel in regard to potential military operations that could greatly increase the price of oil worldwide. Other people are investing in Oil as a hedge at this time as will because of this reason. Some people also invest in gold. However, even though I like gold I haven't had the best experience with Gold personally, because unless your specialty is Gold as an investor or as a business usually if you buy and sell gold infrequently you will tend to lose money in trading gold as a relative novice. So, if I buy gold it is something that I tend to keep forever, or for a complete 2nd Great Depression scenario if everything went FUBAR in whatever country I was in. So, I'm not a gold trader in this sense.

But, many people are trying to stay liquid during the last year or two so no matter what happens they have enough cash to manage through anything that comes up. Some of you will stuff your mattresses with your favorite currency. But even though I wouldn't do that personally I understand the temptation to do that because my grandfather once buried $25,000 in a large coffee can in his front yard during the Great Depression in Seattle in Lake Forest Park. So, keeping enough cash somewhere safe to make it through any situation might be important the next few years.

Here are some of the reasons:  1. a completely dysfunctional U.S. Congress. We have not had a U.S. Congress this dysfunctional since Harry Truman and that had been caused by World War II.
2. A completely dysfunctional European Union. Though all the individual countries are functional as individual units the fact that they all share the same currency might take the whole group down as we can see every day in the news.
3. In my last article, you can see that foreign investers including those in the U.S. can no longer get enough information to safely invest in ANY Chinese Company. So, any that still do must be considered complete Las Vegas style big gamblers at this point.

So, my recommendation would be to invest in an American Blue Chip Company that gives good dividends that also does business in China. In that way you get all the advantages without any disadvantages. Because American Companies are required to be transparent for American investors still.

Though there are many other factors as well, it is obvious to anyone who studies world finances that we are in for either a severe transition like happened during the Great Depression and World War II or we are in for a recession or something like what Japan has been going through about the last 20 years or so. So, studying any or all of these things might be useful if you are a serious investor around the world now to make better decisions for your economic survival ongoing.