By Tom Dyson, editor, Postcards From the Fringe Mark Ford, whom I used to work with, expressed an important truth about life in his blog: In the mid 1970s, my wife and I were living in a humble three-room house without indoor plumbing in N’Djamena, Chad. I was sitting on our front porch watching the rain spill off the roof and onto our little garden when I had this thought: “One day, you will live in a big, fancy house back in the States. But you will never live in a house that can give you more pleasure than this one.” Our round-the-world trip – with Kate… the kids… all the countries and hotel rooms – was a two-year “intensive” on this one idea. We got detained by the Egyptian military at a remote checkpoint last year. We spent the evening under arrest in a room with nothing but two broken, disconnected toilets in it… We slept on filthy mattresses in a rundown love hotel in Hong Kong, to the sound of amorous couples and headboards banging against walls… We played cards on our suitcase in some eastern European train station in the dead of night when the train we were waiting for came seven hours late… And yet, like Mark, I look back on these times, and they were among the most satisfying times of my life. | Recommended Link | | 597x more powerful than iPhone technology? You're looking at a new chip that's 597x more powerful than the one in the iPhone X. And it will soon unlock some amazing new "apps" on your phone or tablet. Like "virtual" assistants that are almost identical to humans… and can book your restaurant reservation while you play a round of golf. One expert says it could be "the biggest breakthrough since the microchip in 1959." For investors, it means an incredible new opportunity… A chance to participate in a $15.7 trillion boom. Alongside Google, Amazon, Oracle, and just about every major company in America. | | | -- | Why? Because I was proud of what we were doing… and we were doing it together, as a family. Nothing else mattered. Not comfort. Not money. Not possessions. Not even a roof over our heads. We had a hard mission to complete: To travel around the world, live out of a suitcase for two years, and introduce the kids to the different cultures of the world. We were doing it together. And we were totally fulfilled. I’ve never been on a successful sports team, but I imagine this is a taste of what it feels like. The French have a word for this: camaraderie. This insight discredited almost every other “life strategy” I’d ever tried. It was such a revelation to me – that you can feel camaraderie with your wife and kids – that it motivated me to start telling our story publicly with emails, photographs, and social media posts. My Revelation About the Markets Since I discovered Bill Bonner’s daily Diary nearly 20 years ago, Bill has been an important inspiration to me, too. Like Mark Ford, he expressed in a very clear and entertaining way what I already knew in my heart was true. And that is… things come and go… busts follow booms… investors get optimistic, then they get pessimistic… and contrarian investment strategies always work, if you’re patient and disciplined enough to sit through the madness. The strategy Kate and I are following with our money – using the Dow-to-Gold ratio – is the ultimate contrarian stock market strategy. (We got it from Bill!) We buy stocks when they’re cheap. Then, when they’re expensive, we go to the sidelines (in gold – very important) and wait for stocks to get cheap again. This idea was such a revelation to me, I still remember exactly where I was when I read about it for the first time. And it motivated me to: a) bet all our money on it, and b) start writing and thinking about it every day. Is It Narcissism? In the feedback not long ago, someone said my e-letters are “narcissistic.” I write about my life… and about finance… and I take a lot of pictures of my family. I post it all online. Is that narcissism? I don’t know. But every day I ask myself why I feel the need to tell strangers about my life and share photographs of my family. “Is it because I love myself?” I wonder. “Or is it because my soul has a ravenous hunger for fame and validation that must be fed?” This is what I’d prefer the answer to be… I feel like something inspired me… some of which I learned from others (Bill)… some of which I learned from experience (our trip). And then I felt the tremendous urge to create something (pictures and words) out of it. And, paradoxically, because I’d lost all my self-esteem through depression and divorce, I found the courage to begin sharing these pictures and words with others. | Recommended Link | Is this man the next Head of the U.S. Space Force? Here are the facts: He's a graduate from Purdue University's famed "School of Astronauts"… He was recently spotted at the Pentagon… He's attended meetings in highly secured chambers beneath Capitol Hill... He spent time on NASA's Ames campus… And he's a massive supporter of President Trump's impact on the stock market — the tech market in particular. Is there something going on here? Could this man be the next head of the U.S. Space Force? It's hard to tell… But he sure seems like the kind of guy Trump would want to head the U.S. Space Force. | | | -- | So I started writing emails to my family and friends and posting on social media. (It served the additional three purposes of letting them know we were safe, helping me organize my thoughts each day, and memorializing our trip in a nice way for my family to look back on in the future.) And some of them wrote back to me and told me to keep going… that they were being entertained… that they wanted to keep getting them. I started to feel pride in what I was creating. And it emboldened me to share with a bigger and bigger audience. Slowly at first. Then more. Each time, the people I sent my “stuff” to validated me and encouraged me, which emboldened me even more. Then Bill’s publisher asked me if she could send them to her audience in return for a little money… And here I am, telling you about our life every day. Narcissism? I’ll leave it to you to decide. I don’t like that word, though. I heard it all the time when I lived in South Florida, before our trip. And no one ever seemed to be able to pin down for me exactly what it meant… except that no one wanted to be around it. Regards, 
Tom Dyson
Editor, Postcards From the Fringe P.S. Going back to our gold strategy… As you know, I’m “all in.” In fact, I’ve invested nearly $1 million of my own money into this idea. I’ve written before about the benefits of buying bullion. But there’s much more to our strategy than that. And I recently shared all the details in this urgent briefing. Be sure to check it out right here.
Like what you’re reading? Send us your thoughts by clicking here. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT… Dyson: "My No. 1 Investment for the Next 5 Years… I'm All In" “I'd kick myself if I didn't share my latest investment – one I bet nearly 100% of my family's life savings on. I've gone ‘all in’ like this twice before. Once at the start of the century, during which I found the decade's best-performing investment, according to the Telegraph. And then again in 2011, when I invested in bitcoin, right before it climbed 302,000%.” – Tom Dyson For the full details, click here.
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