Can Investing Become the Hottest Job of this Decade & Beyond?

I recently came across a series of interesting tweets from a certain balajis.

The gentleman has asked a very pertinent question.

• 'Farming was the 1800s. Manufacturing was the 1900s. Counterintuitively, could investing become the most common "job" of the 2000s?'

Put differently, since investing has become such a mass phenomenon and has turned everyone into an investor, can this go all the way?

Can most factory workers become investors in the 21^st century just as most farmers became factory workers in the 20^th?

I know what you are thinking. If everyone becomes an investor, who will do the jobs?

A similar question was posed to the farmers before they migrated to towns during the industrial revolution.

The worry then was 'If most farmers move to factories, who will man the farms and look after agricultural production?'

Well, more than a century later, the answer is loud and clear. Despite people moving to factories by the millions, agricultural production hasn't suffered.

In fact, thanks to mechanisation, better techniques and increased use of fertilisers and chemicals, total agricultural production has grown by leaps and bounds.

Thus, what has happened to agriculture can happen to manufacturing as well.

Factories of the future may not need that many humans after all. Yet, they can churn out greater quantity of products and of much better quality.

How? Think computers.

Digitisation and software have already replaced millions of humans across the world. Now we have robotics and artificial intelligence breathing down our necks.

In fact, I experience this shift first hand every day. I don't remember the last time a human voice has sold stuff like personal loans and credit cards to me over the phone live.

Almost always, it's a pre-recorded message playing in a loop, a form of robot if you will.

Robots are coming for humans in other areas as well. As per analysis from Oxford Economics, up to 20 m manufacturing jobs around the world could be replaced by robots by 2030.

That's huge and this number can only go up in the future. Obviously, the labor displaced by the upcoming robotic tsunami has to be absorbed somewhere else.

Is investing or finance such a place? Are those displaced by robots and artificial intelligence going to find comfort in investing?

Is trading exotic cryptocurrencies and meme stocks the next big wave of the future?

Well, to be honest, I wouldn't want to be a part of the economy where the majority do nothing but trade stocks and commodities for a living.

This activity may prove productive for those 5%-10% of traders or investors who've figured out a way to earn staggering returns consistently, year in and year out.

However, for the vast majority, it's very difficult to earn long-term returns greater than the rate at which the underlying economy is growing.

In fact, most fail at achieving even these returns. Thus, they would be better off letting the professionals manage their money or perhaps invest in index funds.

If they want, they can set aside 10%-15% of their corpus and try and manage this sum as a part time activity.

However, to plunge full time into this is not the best use of their time in my view. They'd rather do something that not only adds value to them but also to the society at large.

Flipping stocks every few days for a small percentage gain is certainly not one of them.

I hope you will agree.

Let me know what you think, dear reader. Write to me here.

Warm regards,


Rahul Shah
Editor and Research Analyst, Profit Hunter