AN OXFORD CLUB PUBLICATION

Loyal reader since December 2024

EDITOR'S NOTE

As a reminder, our offices and the markets will be closed tomorrow and Friday for Thanksgiving. I hope you're able to spend this time to rest, recharge, and spend time with loved ones.

I also want to thank readers for helping make Alexander Green's new book - The American Dream: Why It's Still Alive... and How to Achieve It - a #1 bestseller on Amazon.

I've provided an excerpt from the book below, one that epitomizes what we should all do this weekend: count our many blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving!

- Nicole Labra, Senior Managing Editor

THE SHORTEST WAY TO A RICH LIFE

The Quickest, Easiest, Most Reliable Way to Become Wealthier

Alexander Green, Chief Investment Strategist, The Oxford Club

The fastest way to become wealthier isn't to pay closer attention to your bank statement, your brokerage account, or your real estate holdings.

It's to expand your gratitude.

That may sound counterintuitive coming from someone who has spent four decades as a financial analyst and investment advisor.

But it happens to be true. And acknowledging this can transform your life.

Study after study confirms what the ancients knew: gratitude is a force multiplier.

It lowers anxiety and depression. It boosts optimism. It strengthens your immune system, improves your sleep, deepens relationships, and helps you savor life rather than simply survive it.

There are two main ways to foster a sense of gratitude. The first is to practice thankfulness for the life you've been given. The other is to deliberately notice what's right with your life, rather than dwelling on what's missing.

When we take a moment to feel grateful, most of us tell ourselves something like, "I have decent health, a loving family, good friends, and a comfortable home." But that hardly scratches the surface.

You won the ovarian lottery just by being born in the West in the modern era. Most of human history was pre-agricultural. For hundreds of thousands of years, people lived lives that were - in Thomas Hobbes's famous phrase - "nasty, brutish, and short" - battling the elements, avoiding predators, and hunting and scavenging to survive.

Two hundred years ago, most of the world's population experienced the present standard of living of Bangladesh. Yet Americans today live in the world's richest, most prosperous country, one that offers unlimited opportunities.

Compared to everyone in the past - and billions around the world today - you enjoy an unprecedented standard of living. This is true even if you are struggling financially.

A hundred years ago, you would not have had instant power at the flick of a switch - or a safe, reliable, and comfortable vehicle to take you around town or across the country. You could not have bought a ticket from a budget airline to fly to hundreds of destinations. You would not have been able to browse the internet and instantly order from a limitless range of excellent, affordable clothes, or tools or gadgets.

You would not have had a supercomputer in your pocket, one far more powerful that the computers that guided the Apollo astronauts.

It's not just that you can call, text, or videoconference at minimal cost. You have instant access to a camera, video recorder, GPS, television, library, music studio, health tracker, personal assistant, and a gateway to all human knowledge. That means you can work, study, or collaborate from anywhere. Your way of life is made easy by markets, machines, and other people.

For millennia, the world was rife with despotism, slavery, hierarchy, class privilege, and literally no increase in the standard of living. The Enlightenment changed that - ushering in a new world based on reason, science, and belief in progress and freedom.

The American founding - the ideals of political and economic freedom - led to human rights, property rights, free trade, religious toleration, peace, human flourishing, and the right to pursue happiness.

That brought about what economist Dierdre McCloskey calls the Great Fact of human history: the tremendous, unprecedented growth in living standards starting about 1800.

These ideas started in the West and then spread to the rest of the world.

Yes, humanity stumbled in the 20th century, enduring World War I, trade wars, the Great Depression, World War II, and rising violence and poverty. Some countries endured the horrors of communism or national socialism. And in some places today these problems still exist. But they are rarer - and in decline globally.

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In my lifetime, we have experienced Jim Crow laws, military conscription, wage and price controls, indecency laws, and 90% marginal income tax rates. These have all ended.

And many wonderful things have sprung up during this period, including pacemakers; in vitro fertilization; oral contraceptives; heart, liver, kidney, and lung transplants; ultrasounds; coronary bypass surgery; vaccines for measles, rubella, mumps, hepatitis B, and COVID-19; cochlear implants; magnetic resonance imagining; the insulin pump; the first successful jet airliner; integrated circuits; lasers; industrial robots; microprocessors; personal computers; the internet; cell phones and smartphones; social media; Wi-Fi; obesity drugs; artificial intelligence; and quantum computing. Just to name just a few.

Along the way, we sent satellites into space, walked on the Moon, and won the Cold War without firing a shot. The rule of law spread, and democratic governments increased. Property rights and market institutions also expanded, lifting over a billion people around the globe out of extreme poverty.

We have more freedom and progress than ever before. As a result, we have more abundance, more social harmony, more human dignity, and more human flourishing.

And we have much to look forward to - even though we can't imagine all the advancements ahead of us. We now combine ideas recursively - have thoughts about our thoughts - and share ideas immediately and globally.

That means we're not just getting better. We're getting better faster.

Today - thanks to global interconnectivity - discoveries spread instantaneously. And as we use increasingly powerful tools to expand our knowledge, we will have faster communications, safer homes, new lifesaving medical treatments, and much more.

The conventional wisdom is that any informed person should feel the world is falling apart. We can all recite a litany of what is wrong in the world. But we should also pay heed to what is going right - because we are astoundingly fortunate.

This is not just a matter of opinion. As Steven Pinker writes in Enlightenment Now...

The story of human progress is truly heroic. It is glorious. It is uplifting... We live longer, suffer less, learn more, get smarter, and enjoy more small pleasures and rich experiences... This heroic story is not just a myth. Myths are fictions, but this one is true... It requires only the convictions that life is better than death, health is better than sickness, abundance is better than want, freedom is better than coercion, happiness is better than suffering, and knowledge is better than superstition and ignorance.

Understanding this is essential because it puts things in perspective, revealing how well we live compared to others around the world today and almost everyone in the past.

It also makes it easier to invest, stay invested, and strive to get ahead when you realize that most long term trends are positive.

Another good reason to cultivate gratitude: psychologists say it is impossible to feel grateful and unhappy at the same time.

So, recognize your indebtedness to millions of others. They sacrificed and struggled so that we can enjoy our lives today. I'm talking about explorers, pioneers, inventors, artists, writers, activists, leaders, and everyday workers. (Not to mention parents and grandparents.) Their legacy is our inheritance.

Give thanks for the many men and women who have risked their lives - or laid down their lives - to uphold the many freedoms we enjoy today. Members of the armed forces mainly, but also police officers, rescue workers, and crisis volunteers. Many suffered through privation, fought the battles that made our lives free, physically built much of what we rely on for our prosperity, and shaped the ideals of liberty.

We live in the kind of nation they would have wished for us - in many ways, a better place than they dared imagine.

It's not a perfect world. Just the best one humanity has ever known. For us not to feel grateful is not just short-sighted. It's ignorant.

Ingratitude breeds envy and resentment. It leaves you with a chronic sense of lack. You're always looking for something else... something more.

Gratitude, by contrast, grounds you. It softens your struggles. It amplifies your joys. It reminds you - even in difficulty - that you are surrounded by abundance.

So, express your appreciation. Tell your coworkers that you value them. Show your friends that they matter. Let your family know they are loved.

In short, realize your immense good fortune. Put your gratitude into action. And live the American Dream.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Alex

P.S. To learn more about The American Dream - or to purchase your copies - click here.