If this was expected to be a typical market correction or deviation from what has been a trend for world events and economic repercussions, I would not have bothered to turtle-up. The 1980s were tough because I did not have anything and was vulnerable. The goal was to survive, and I did. The 2008-thing did not shake agriculture as roughly because it was going into its Supercycle. I didn’t have a sub-prime mortgage or dot.com investment.

I think that what we are about to experience may be the largest universal upheaval and disruption worldwide across all sectors of the economy in my lifetime. I think that it will span economics, markets, geopolitical upheaval, and challenge the U.S. constitutional government. Many are looking for something “just a little uncomfortable” and I think that it has the potential to upend the world as I have come to know it over seven decades. I think that they will get more than they dreamt of.

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

–Rudyard Kipling 1895

This poem is in the public domain.

This poem is Warren Buffett’s secret to wealth-building success. I am in the Warren Buffett camp, or try to be. It is easier said than done. He has been around longer than I have and has a sixth sense about market trends and is skilled at exploiting them. He is the contrarian. Other investors have been making fun of him, citing his age, ridiculing his risk-off to cash heavy transition of the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. He has able proteges that were well-trained by him. BRK has grown to be worth over a trillion dollars. BRK made $89 million last year while paying the equivalent of 5% of all U.S. corporate tax. He has sold more stock than he has purchased for nine consecutive quarters and used none of the proceeds for buy-backs of BRK stock. That is what I call, “getting smaller” as shareholders share the risk.

The naysayers do not know their history as Warren does. I have been a student of history too. I have watched Warren move his chips around and believe that I generally understand his strategy. His portfolio is so huge that you do not sell it in a day, week or month. He used the entire previous up-leg in equity markets to incrementally move money out of what had become his high-performers like Apple, reducing that position by two-thirds. He sold into strength. They were banking huge profits on everything that they sold including BYD, putting the proceeds in the “Treasury bank” now holding more T-Bills than the Fed does, well above $325 billion.

He shrunk BRK holdings in bank stocks as banks were as solvent as they were ever going to be pre-recession. I noted that Jamie Dimon, chairman of JP Morgan/Chase sold over $233 million in his bank’s stock in a Buffett-like move to liquidity. Dimon would be the consummate insider. He thinks that we are already in a cold-WW III. Warren bought more Occidental Petroleum which he considers to be a staple and strategically moved some cash to Japanese investment banks to hedge the dollar. I take the president’s call for a weaker dollar seriously, enough to buy physical gold ETFs. Buffett’s last move was to liquidate S&P 500 stock index-related ETFs.

I almost forgot … the WSJ says that Berkshire is reportedly in talks for a deal to sell its real estate brokerage company, Home Services of America, to Compass, the largest U.S. brokerage by volume. High home prices and high mortgage rates may have something to do with that. The short-term home rental industry is a bubble poised to pop, already having done so in bell-weather locations. His core companies are profitable businesses that have historically stood up to recession pressures. The trains got to run. Insurance is a necessity to consumers and the cash generated by premiums makes more money from the float when interest rates are high. Add income from Coca Cola, which has always paid a dividend every year since the company started 138 years ago. He made all of these moves while the markets were still in a period of strength, selling into the rally, so that his action did not move markets. In fact, BRK’s stock price diverged from the 10% decline in the broad market to score new highs last week.

He also kept his mouth shut. When asked about his expectations for the economy he refused to answer. His opinions are confidential but his trades get publicly reported. If he told what he thought it could create a stir that he did not want to deal with. It could move the markets while he was repositioning the portfolio which would not be in the interest, of Berkshire shareholders of which I am one. I compare that to Elon Musk’s absolute disregard for his shareholders’ fiduciary responsibility and would never consider investing with any Musk company because of it.

I believe that crypto is the tulip bulb mania of our lifetimes. Not surprisingly. Considering his duplicity in the industry, the president has decided to vest his interest on a federal crypto reserve. All crypto can be digitally confiscated while the same could not be said for gold. Several foreign nations with gold physically stored in our reserve system are requesting its repatriation. They do not trust us anymore. China does not allow cryptocurrency to be used in any way that could be considered to replace fiat-based transactions or business-related services. China has been reducing U.S. Treasury holdings and buying gold.

A metric called the “Buffett indicator,” which measures the value of the stock market against U.S. GDP, shows the stock market is way overvalued. The S&P price earnings ratio had reached 67% above its historical average. Despite the correction, I sense no real alarm of recognition that anything major has shifted “in the bull market” from the investing public. I believe that the about-to-unfold events are only beginning. I doubt that we have traveled a tenth of the distance of the run of change unfolding before us.