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January 6, 2012 Santiago, Chile We recently received a great question from a reader, Chuck, who asked, “Simon, I’m going to HK in 10 days to open a bank account, and I know there are options to do this in several foreign currencies. What foreign currency would you recommend to hold over the
Date: January 3, 2012 Coyhaique, Northern Patagonia Yesterday we discussed certain events that, in my view, are nearly mathematical certainties. Things like a restructuring of public pensions and Social Security in Europe and the US. Western governments blocking Internet and mobile networks. War. The US government being forced to issue debt in a foreign
December 23, 2011 Santiago, Chile First off, happy holidays. I hope this email finds you in good health and cheer. Down here in Chile, I intend to spend the weekend (and most of next week) doing absolutely nothing but reading, relaxing, and riding horseback with friends around our new 1,000+ acre farm. I’m
December 19, 2011 Santiago, Chile Ten years ago, Goldman Sachs’ Jim O’Neill coined the term “BRICs” to lump together a group of large, rapidly-growing economies that we all know well: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. True to his thesis at the time, growth and development in these countries has left the rest of
December 16, 2011 Santiago, Chile It’s done. Yesterday afternoon, after years of searching, months of preparation, and weeks of stress, my wonderful partners and I closed on a gorgeous farm in central Chile, about 2 1/2 hours south of Santiago. The land is over 1,000 acres of productive crops, plentiful water, mountainous horse
Date: December 12, 2011 Reporting From: Talca, Chile We’ve spent a wonderful weekend at the farm in Chile watching the harvest of our latest blueberry crop. As I write this, there are 52-workers walking up and down the rows of trees picking fruit… and it’s quite an interesting business. Blueberry trees mature and hit
[Editor’s note: Simon’s close friend Craig Ballantyne, now editor of the Early to Rise publication, is filling in today while Simon sits in boring meetings with his Chilean attorneys.] Imagine being a recently divorced mother of two young women who were about to enter the expensive American college system, and yet your job
December 1, 2011 Santiago, Chile My business partner Matt is a great friend and hell of a guy. He’s also a big technology buff and is an early adopter of new products. A few weeks ago he gave me a Kindle Fire, Amazon’s new touch-screen digital reader. It’s great. Fabulous, actually. I used
November 28, 2011 Santiago, Chile If the global financial crisis has taught the world anything, it’s that there is massive weakness running through western banking systems. The big banks in New York and London, once considered to be the strongest and most stable in the world, have been completely exposed for what they
November 27, 2011 Santiago, Chile Some friends and I spent most of the weekend touring the future site of our resilient community in central Chile, just a few hours’ drive south of Santiago on a very modern highway. As I’ve mentioned before, the site sprawls across roughly 1,000 acres in a gorgeous setting;
November 25, 2011 Santiago, Chile I can’t even begin to describe how happy I am to be back in the land of the free… and yes, I’m talking about Chile. I arrived a few days ago to beautiful summertime weather (remember, the seasons are flipped down here in the southern hemisphere). As usual,
November 24, 2011 Santiago, Chile Today, a lot of readers are enjoying time with friends, family, fowl, and football. Others are perhaps commemorating the first day of the Roman solstice holiday Brumalia. Still others may be celebrating Teacher’s Day in the Republic of Turkey. And for others, it’s just Thursday. Here in Chile,
November 21, 2011 Dallas, Texas, USA Did you hear about the latest civil unrest in Syria? Police in full riot gear swarmed peaceful students who were staging a completely non-violent, human-chain sit-in at a university campus. The Syrian police came up at point-blank range and hosed these kids down with pepper spray. If
Denver based Barnhardt Capital Management is a futures brokerage firm that focuses on agriculture, round-the-clock broker access, and inexpensive commissions. At least, it used to be. Barnhardt shuttered its operations yesterday after six-years in the business. The firm’s founder Ann Barnhardt posted the reasons online for the entire world to see: “I could
I had lunch yesterday with one of the sharpest financial minds I’ve met in a long time at a rather picturesque setting overlooking Evergreen Lake, west of Denver. The restaurant patrons were all well-to-do residents of this wealthy community… in fact, the whole area is like a bubble, largely shielded from any negative