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you back!

Great to hear from you Orca.

Hi Patrick,

I'd like to get your opinion on this.... Martin Luther King once said that, "Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found... in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both."

Unbridled capitalism has enabled market returns on average over the last several decades of around 10-15%. However, the world is realising that this is not only inequitable but also unsustainable. We are seeing the emergence of active investors and ESG and impact investors who are advocating for a fairer world, perhaps leading towards the synthesis mentioned in the quote above. Investors now realise that correcting wage and social inequality, helping protect the environment etc. all involve higher costs that were never previously considered by the rampant, greed driven capitalism.

The world is also struggling with the limits to growth, with negative rates abounding, even as central banks try to stimulate inflation and growth by conjuring up new cash. The problem is that there is not enough real-world growth to "absorb" this new cash and it has found its way into markets, dangerously overheating them, at least from a value-investors perspective.

Thus, I believe that low stock market returns are here to stay for the foreseeable future, of around 3-7% per year if we're lucky. There is also the ever-present risk of a serious market correction if prices trend too high above value. ESG and impact investors seem happy with this sort of return, as the world starts to consider measuring returns in more than just monetary terms.

The question is, what does this type of return do to the FIRE movement? What is the minimum annual return required to keep withdrawing (4%) of your capital and not run out of money?

In a way this whole trend change is making intuitive sense to me.... It's only possible to be a passive investor, adding no productive value to the world (e.g. indulging in travel), when we do not properly value the real factors (i.e. the workers and environment) that help that investment to make outsized returns. The days of rocking up with capital, facilitating an investment in a factory, paying slave wages, not accounting for environmental resources properly (cost of water or cleaning up pollution), and then taking the bulk of profits out, are nearing an end....

Interesting questions Bevan.


An example of a puzzling phenomenon is Japan flat lining for 20 years. I know that their bubble burst in the early 90's, but wow- 20 years without growth in the stock market WITH a very diligent and productive workforce. It boggles my mind.

..i guess the bottom line might be as Buffet says... when everyone is excited be very cautious and when everyone is scared be bold

Orca, may your move and especially your adjustment to the new environment go well. 10 out of 10 for your willingness to adapt

I see bundu, goliath, and others on the leader board.

Orca, when the chips are down how do you cope? I hope for you that mrs's health improves

Thank you Andre for sharing and well done on the discipline to save as you have.

Have you been travelling the last number of years? i ask as full time travelling can have drawbacks. (missing family and friends etc) 

Here another one for a bit of diversion from a fellow biker from Cape Town (Kamaya)

What else would one do?...

Driving from Jhb. Not sure where to stop to sleep. The GPS - that seductive electronic siren suggested Hopetown would be doable before sundown at the current pace. Hopetown? Hopetown! Now there's a fine place to stay considering all that is going on...

It also suggested a bouquet of guest houses. The Lavender guest house piqued my attention. My logic was that, I am in so deep behind the boerewors curtain that this isn't curtains we're talking about, this is shutters baby, and how does lavender make its way past the plethora of vans, kloofs, tjies and plaase?

A desperately gorgeous sunset of complex purples and pinks was putting itself to bed with me a mere 10k's to go and it looked like if I can locate the local bottle store I might have been able to gate crash natures revelry. Maybe even get a gorgeous picture to feel happy and hopeful to.

Bonus! Hopetown is small enough with an obvious need that the only bottle store is open till 7!

"Do you have an un-oaked Chardonnay?" Says I, keen to have some first world alacrity to make up for my arriving late for the show.

I have often been labelled an optimist. In asking for Chardonnay, un-oaked in Hopetown I might very well have set a new personal best in this discipline!

Asking in English, I'm obviously a "souty", and as such is not a well-known entity round here so I was treated a bit royal. With all the dignity that such a request seems to have required, the owner with creased brows and fat fingers walked around from the till and personally inspected the 3 bottles of white in amongst the motley bunch or reds that looked even sorrier for having robbed precious space from the rows of 6 deep brandies and other powerful spirits.

"No, meneer, I wus sure we had one soon. Must I order?"

You've gotta love small towns. Ernest politeness and smashed language.

I'll make do with the Orange River Cellars, (I'm being a snob, they do a fabulous red and not a bad white. Just not un-oaked)

Before me in the queue was an old white chap. Clearly had seen better days and much easier work. He was still a working man, dirtily obvious that, not because he wanted to, but, he had two demons to serve; poverty and alcohol.

He was the not so shining example of what happens when one isn't fortunate enough to have had a seat belt and air bags in the monstrous traffic smash between the colonial experiment and the new South Africa.

At first I was not sure what he was paying for, then I saw it, the poor man’s poorest drink; a 5 litre box wine with not one label on it. It was just a white box of hope whose fine print, by its omission, promised loss, past and misery.

Sadly, with all this, I missed my sunset by at least a half glass of wine.

Lavender and hope. It was serendipitous and mirrored exactly where I was. Exactly.

A promise of wisdom and soothing and possibility bathed in beauty, but, delivering missed opportunities, pathos and sorrow.

I am so sorry and sad... But tonight I sleep in lavender. Maybe tomorrow truer purple and pink?
 

Compromise!

The truth is that for most, the nomadic journeys must occur in the mind or value must be accorded to random nocturnal sojourns around the suburb or the occasional walk through a park where as one watches one's dog piss against a carefully maintained shrub for which we pay the necessary levy taxes.  The complex strands of any family dynamic do not always allow for the freeist of spirits to take off on whims of self discovery. I have been into a few wildernesses without exiting my front door.