Personal Wealth Management / Expert Commentary
Is Bitcoin the Right Investment for You?
Many people have been asking whether or not bitcoin is a good investment.
According to Ken Fisher, what is and is not a good investment depends on the investor. Ken explains that bitcoin falls into the category of an emerging commodity.
Transcript
Title screen appears, "Is Bitcoin the Right Investment for You? Ken Fisher Answers"
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A man appears on the screen wearing a navy suit, sitting in an office, he begins to speak.
A banner identifies him as Ken Fisher, Executive Chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer, Fisher Investments.
Ken Fisher doing hand gestures time-to-time explaining.
Ken Fisher: So, with the amount of rise in the price of bitcoin, there's
quite a lot of attention paid to it and quite a lot of people ask, I hear often is it a good investment?
Now I think you need to put that into framework because this is a) the kind of thing that people ask all the time about all kinds of things and
b) what a good investment for one person might be a bad investment for another, for all kind of reasons.
So, it really comes down to who's doing the investing, why and what are they all about.
Ken Fisher: Just the same as you could raise that point about a stock or a house or in different regards an education. And the fact is that bitcoin falls into the
category that is an emerging commodity but still a commodity.
It's got a little bit of equality being special.
So, at one level it's got a rare market that's a little bit like a lot of other things that are commodities that are rare, like maybe let's say some forms of rare earths, which of course rare earths aren't really rare, but that's a different topic. They’re treated as such.
Ken Fisher: And then more
importantly, it doesn't do anything.
People talk about it as a replacement for cash, a form of cyber cash, but to the extent that's really true, monies end up having to be stable value.
So, the question is what's the
price at which it's stable value?
And no one really knows that.
Therefore, it's a form of a speculation.
Ken Fisher: And as a form of speculation, there's nothing wrong with that for those that are good at speculating, there's nothing wrong with investing in
commodities for those that are good at that.
The question you have to ask, which is the same question that everybody always needs to ask when they think about investing in this, that or the
other thing, Is markets, capital markets, pre-price, all widely
known information, you either know something other people don't
know or you get luck, good or bad luck.
Ken Fisher: And in this just said simply, the
question you need to ask yourself always. And another commodity that I'm asked about pretty often is cannabis.
Ken Fisher: It's a commodity, there's a lot of people that use it. People ask me is it a good investment?
I always say what do you know about it that others don't
that would be pre-priced because that's really the crucial function always when you're thinking about this.
Ken Fisher: And for the most part, if you can't answer that pretty succinctly, I know this that others don't, that isn't
widely known and therefore isn't pre- priced into markets.
You're just relying on luck.
And if you're just relying on luck then it's probably not a good investment unless you've got some big portfolio of things that you're able to oversee
and this falls into a little piece of it,
but for some people probably a good thing.
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Ken Fisher finished talking, and a series of disclosures appears on screen: “Investing is Securities involves a risk of loss. Past performance is never a guarantee of future returns. Investing in foreign stock markets involves additional risks, such as the risk of currency fluctuations. The foregoing constitutes the general views of Fisher Investments and should not be regarded as personalized investment advice or a reflection of the performance of fisher investment or its clients. Nothing herein is intended to be a recommendation or a forecast of market conditions. Rather it is intended to illustrate a point. Current and future markets may differ significantly from those illustrated here. Not all past forecasts were, nor future forecasts may be, as accurate as those predicted herein.
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