Card 1 of 14: Buy American. I Am.
At the darkest depths of the 2008 financial crisis, Warren Buffett published a New York Times op-ed declaring he was buying American stocks with his personal money. He reminded the world that 'be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.'
In a famous 1984 speech, Warren Buffett debunked the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). He showed that a group of successful investors who all beat the market didn't do it by pure luck; they all shared the same value investing framework taught by Benjamin Graham.
In March 2009, with markets in free fall, Jeremy Grantham warned that the danger wasn't buying too early — it was “terminal paralysis.” Investors sitting on cash would keep waiting for the bottom and miss the recovery entirely. In a panic, he argued, the failure to act costs far more than acting imperfectly.
In 2021, legendary investor Jeremy Grantham warned that the US stock market was in a massive, multi-asset 'superbubble' driven by zero interest rates and speculative mania. He correctly predicted the painful popping of this bubble in 2022.
In February 2007 — months before the credit crisis broke — Howard Marks warned about a “race to the bottom” in debt markets. Lenders competing for deals were abandoning the protections and covenants that had long kept them safe, accepting ever more risk for ever lower returns.
In 2022, Howard Marks declared a fundamental 'Sea Change' in global finance. He argued that the 40-year era of declining interest rates (1980-2020) was over, and the new era of higher rates would require entirely different investment strategies.
Ray Dalio studied 100 years of financial history to identify the archetypal pattern of a debt crisis. He showed how credit cycles inevitably expand into bubbles, pop, and force painful but necessary deleveragings.
Ray Dalio's framework on the rise and fall of empires. He argues that global superpowers follow a predictable 250-year cycle driven by education, technological innovation, economic dominance, and eventually, financial ruin and conflict.
In December 2020, Lyn Alden argued that the dollar reserve system is not about to collapse — it is slowly re-aligning. Taking a quantitative look at the near-50-year-old petrodollar arrangement, she traced how the mechanics that once locked the world into holding dollars are fraying, for the United States and its trading partners alike.
In 2022, Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar coined 'Bretton Woods III', arguing that the global monetary system is shifting from inside money (fiat currency backed by sovereign debt) to outside money (currencies backed by hard commodities).