Pyramid selling
I'm increasingly convinced - or at least concerned - that many youngsters will lose most of their net worth, or worse, in the coming months or years, as the stimulus is wound back and the tightening cycle begins.
Anyone who is old enough to have been around in the tech bubble years will immediately get the point.
Too much leverage, too much wild speculation for instant gains, too many narratives about why such and such is different.
This week's latest theme appears to be that pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes could actually be a good thing, as long as you get in early...
etc etc.
Investment principles
Clearly there's a lot of new technology breaking new ground right now, and that will in any case continue for decades to come.
But what a lot of younger investors may not yet appreciate is that many of the same investment principles still apply today, as they do in all asset classes.
For example, employ at least some level of diversification (i.e. don't have all your eggs in one basket), have a base of sound investments, and then potentially then add some higher risk investments and allocations, and so on.
A decade from now one would to have to assume there will probably be a few huge, game-changing winners, but then also thousands of coins, NFTs, and crypto ventures that will inevitably be worth zero.
Compound your wealth
Of course, you can get exposure to the space, if that's what you want to do - it's just probably not smart to stake all of your net worth on one outcome, particularly in some of the borderline insane meme tokens and stocks.
Most of the people reading my blog would know this stuff already, as it's a somewhat self-selecting readership, and you're most likely interested in finance and investing.
We were all young once, and unfortunately the only way to learn a lot of these lessons is the hard way, and perhaps many youngsters will need to do so.
The good news is that when you're young you usually have less to lose in financial terms, and you do have the time in your side to bounce back.
Anyway, here are a couple of stocking-filler ideas for your friends and family who may not be so financially well-versed, to get them financially educated:
