Spooky

No doubt that China's growth and trajectory are extremely impressive. However, as others have point out above, how can you buy stock which is essentially a bundle of legal rights in a country that does not have rule of law or respect individual property rights? Any investment you make in the country is subject to the whims of the CCP. What are the odds that the CCP comes along and nationalizes a company or rewrites the rules resulting in a permanent loss of capital? Not zero. What are the percentage of returns captured by shareholders of Chinese companies resulting from China's economic growth? Lower than US stocks. Personally, I have no ability to estimate these percentages with more certainty than others in the market and am unwilling to take an unknown risk of a permanent loss of capital. Especially when I can invest in other jurisdictions with robust legal systems and shareholder rights where this risk is virtually non-existent. Maybe Li Lu and other investors can properly evaluate and navigate these risks but I can't. Also, to me it seems like China is actively taking steps to prevent US citizens and Westerners generally from benefiting from China's growth by limiting overseas listings and IPOs. Only favoured institutions like Blackrock / Bridgewater that toe the party line get access to Chinese markets. To capitalize on the China growth opportunity I landed somewhere similar to SD - look for investment opportunities / companies in safer jurisdictions that have things China can't acquire or build at home that will benefit greatly from China's growth thus avoiding any CCP risk.

Two points here: A) Bonds and cash would do well in a deflationary environment. I wonder what probability weighting Buffet attributes to this outcome in his scenario analysis / mental models. Listening to Powell's speech at Jackson Hole he highlighted a lot of dis-inflationary forces out there and it seems like the Fed's continued dovishness is geared to minimize the probability of this outcome (rather than the inflation scenario). B) Bonds and cash also have an option value tied to them - if there is another large crash then perhaps some elephants become available at attractive prices.

I'm in downtown Toronto and there has been a pretty big divergence between home prices and rent with rent falling noticeably. The supply of homes for sale is also much lower than normal so my view is that it might be one of the best times to rent rather than buy right now.