Are we really reading books that biased towards the US market and the current (long-term) credit cycle?

[Peter1011]

ผมได้เขียนบทความสั้นๆนี้ขึ้นมาหลังจากได้อ่าน The Changing World Order ของ Dalio ลงที่ reddit แต่ผมก็อยากได้ข้อคิดเห็น โต้แย้ง หรือ ประสบการณ์ ของเพื่อนๆ พี่ๆ นักลงทุนที่นี่ด้วยครับ

Please read to the end before making discussion. All of my observations are drawn from my memory and are likely to be distorted/wrong, it is important these must be corrected.

As a typical value investor, reading becomes part of my daily routine. I have read many investment books by Cunningham, Fisher, Graham, Lynch, Marks, Thiel, etc. all of them are widely received authors.

These books are written by US based investors and most importantly, all but few are based on events happened in the current long-term debt cycle (c1946 up to now) where the US is a major power. For example, Lynch books describe his tactics from 60's to 90's while Fisher was around 50's and 60's and Cunningham (based on Buffett) from the 60's onwards. Except some like Graham who actually had experience in the market from the 20's onwards though his exposure was mainly in the US market.

After reading Dalio's The Changing World Order, I start to realise the importance of big cycles and rise and decline of empires. I felt that some of the advice published may no longer work, especially in the next cycle.

Various contradiction to some of the famous quotes made by the aforementioned investors are formed, for instances

1. I found that some of Lynch's claim only applies to the US such as "I rarely read about macro-economics", well if you did not invest in the US but in the market like emerging market where foreign exchange can scare off investors such as the Asian financial crisis in the late 90's where there are currency devaluation.

2. "Be greedy when others are fearful" by Buffett, let's imagine when you bought some Russian stocks at their lowest points in Feb-Mar 2022 and then found that these stocks are sanctioned by the West and you can no longer own them anymore.

3. "Index funds are the best way to invest with little work" quoted by many authors. I'm sorry, some of the index funds (mostly in Emerging markets) are distorted and manipulated with high P/E stocks and cornered stocks respectively. If you want to know about this try searching "SET DELTA".

Now back to Dalio. He himself did warn us in the beginning of his book that there are some unknowns that he did not studied and might lead to being wrong. Although his presentation of evidence of the rise and fall of world powers has convinced me regarding the existence of the cycle, I don't know whether the period of decline for the US has arrived or not, but I must make sure that I must understand those investment strategy I am going to use first and be aware of how the change in cycle might affect it.

What about Graham? Did he survived the cycle? From my point of view, Graham used his method of value investing and really performed well during the 30's to 50's with around 20% return each year. He's one of the few investors who actually goes from the previous cycle to the current cycle. Nevertheless, I can't say whether his cigar-butt method will work in this transition or not.

I have yet to find the non-US based investor who really survived the end of the last cycle. If there is/are, I would really want to know who that is, and how he/she did it?

Thinking about Polish or Hungarian investors before WWII, their wealth were wiped out, regardless of their investment method, by the war and communism.