Easy.

Find out what the rich are doing with their hard-earned money and copy them.

Here’s a good example…

James Packer recently bank-rolled two online retailers to the tune of $80 million.

…and that wasn’t even enough to buy the whole company, he ended up with 40% of it, valuing it at $200 million.

Now you’d think that company would be a US-based business, but in fact it was a little, old Australian outfit called, Catch of the Day.

So, the hot trend at the moment is online retailing.

Five years ago, Catch of the Day didn’t exist. It started out of a garage, selling stuff.

Today it’s worth $200 million… Worth paying attention to, don’t you think?

…but is Jamie just a rich kid with lots of money and taking a punt?

I don’t think so.

His track-record of picking online winners has been pretty good.

- He invested $33 million in Seek.com.au and turned it into $440 million.

- He threw in a cool $100 million into carsales.com.au and now that’s worth $462 million.

- He put a bit of pocket change ($20 million) into a company called PC Tools and now it’s worth $60 million.

But hey, I know what you’re thinking… SO WHAT?

You don’t have that type of cash, and it’s alright for the big boys because they’ve got all the contacts to create and get access to these types of deals.

Money make money, right?

But here’s what’s really cool.

You can actually start in this home-based business opportunity for very, very little. Exactly the way the boys from Catch of the Day did just five years ago.

In fact, you don’t need a website or traffic or staff or much money at all at the beginning.

All you need is to be aware of the hot trend and start doing your own research as to how you can take advantage and build a little home-based empire doing what the big boys are doing.

More and more people are spending money online and that figure is growing in a big way every single day.

To put it into perspective, online retailing in Australia accounts for $12 billion (that’s right, with a B) in online sales. If you keep abreast of the financial news, you would know that retail is dead at the moment.

But, the online segment is killing it (another hot tip).

In fact, it’s got some of Australia’s richest blokes who run brick and mortar businesses like Gerry Harvey from Harvey Norman and Solomon Lew from the Premier Group really worried.

It’s not often that you get the rich bitching and moaning, running full-page ads in newspapers asking for the government to step in and help them out in their hour of need.

So their concerns are great news for you.

This hot home-business trend is only just forming and is in its early days.

It’s just going to get bigger and bigger in the next 10 years.

The best part of this opportunity is that if you took it seriously, in the next 12 months you could potentially replace your income.

Sure, that’s going to require a little bit of work, study, research and application, but hey! It beats going to a dead-end job every day.

Who knows, maybe James might come knocking on your door in 3-5 years with a big, fat cheque.

Signed with Success,

Jon Giaan
Knowledge Source

…but this discussion about slowing population growth is rubbish!

If either Gillard or Abbott want to slow how many people come in to this country, here’s what they have to do.

…put the brakes on the economy. They both know that – surely…

That’s right, they have to kill the goose that makes them look good.

So, it’s pretty easy to work out that that aint going to happen.

We will have probably more than 36 million people living in Australia in 20 years time. Currently, we’re at 22.4 million.

The reason why we’re getting so many people flocking to our shores is because we’re going through economic boom conditions. We need people to come here who are willing to work and are skilled.

Sure, we can get some of the Aussie’s to do it, but with full employment and a lot of lazy people on the dole, where are those folks going to come from?

Dick Smith said our solution to skilled migration problems is kicking some of those lazy dole bludgers in the backside… Dick estimates 4 million people who are called “functionally illiterate” can be trained to take on the skill shortage front.

Do you think that will happen? Did you even know there was a group of people in this country who are “functionally illiterate?”

Anyway, we haven’t always experienced massive migration. We fell away to virtually zero migration during the 1890′s, 1930′s, mid 1970′s and early 1990′s.

Do you want to have a stab in the dark as to why?

Pretty easy, aye?

All of those periods were tough financially. Most were recessions.

But again, the media hypes everything up and get’s us all worked up when we see the illegal immigrants on frail boats entering our country and branding them as queue-jumpers.

Do you want to know how many of those there are?

3,500 annually.

Nothing really.

We’ve got 42,000 people who arrive in luxury using Airbusses from all over the world who overstay their welcome of 3 months and settle here for at least a year.

…many of whom find their way to permanent residency.

So my friends, growth is going to happen and that will lead to strong financial opportunities if you just stopped listening to noise and started thinking about what’s really going on.

I’m not just talking about opportunities in real estate, they should be obvious to you. We’re struggling to cope with the influx and way behind on supply.

Don’t think anything is going to change in the next 10 years… Good times ahead.

The stock market and equity markets will continue to prosper as well.

New businesses that know how to identify hungry markets and not follow the traditional path of heavy capital intensive infrastructure setups will also make big bucks out of our expanding population.

Whilst the retail figures were flat recently, the labour force figures that came out last week showed that employment growth is now running at more than 3% a year, which means 340,000 new jobs were created in the last 12 months.

What does that mean?

People aren’t spending… They’re saving.

This is a world-wide phenomenon, not only is it happening in Australia but it’s happening in greater percentage increases in places like the US and Europe.

When the confidence really comes back and folks start putting their hands in their pockets and spending, we will see another massive surge in all markets.

Some of you may agree with this… Some of you may not.

I read lots of contrarian views that say the complete opposite. Some of these guys have been talking down the property boom for 3-5 years now. Whilst others have simply made hundreds, maybe even millions of dollars in the meantime.

I’m one of those. I hope you are too.

The immigration at the moment is just a political smokescreen. Neither party will be in power long enough to be able to make dent – and in any case, it would be political and economic suicide if they were even serious about it.

If you’ve read this far, you probably have a view. You can respond and jump on your soapbox below. Go there and have your say…

Have a great weekend.

Signed with Success,

Jon Giaan
Knowledge Source

I certainly am.

Reading all the headlines, you’d think we’re on the cusp of a property crash and diving into another global crisis via a double-dip recession. Run for the hills!!

Add an election to the mix and you’ve got a recipe for massive procrastination.

So what can we make of it all?

Let’s see if I can help…

I think the Reserve Bank of Australia went way over the top with its interest rate hikes. We went from a 3% cash rate to 4.5% in just 6 months.

This was a massive 50% increase and the most aggressive in the western world.

So why did Glen go so hard?

He had eyes only for the property market and the only way he could stop it was by using interest rates as his evil weapon against his perceived property boom.

He’s thinking was… Slow down the property boom and we’ve got a chance at improving the housing affordability of everyday Australians.

Since his crusade 6 months ago, he succeeded in putting a pause on property prices, but only after 6 months of solid real estate gains in most markets.

…and this week, we receive evidence that is he has also killed affordability with the following headline, “New Home-Starts Fall a Further 5.2% in June”

Some uneducated investors see those type of headlines and think we’ve got a serious problem.

Here’s what I think…

The down-turn in new home sales is by and large the product of the end of the government stimulus for first home buyers and the increase of interest rates, which has led to the following problems…

The lack of available land… Chronic lack of development finance leading to a lack of development activity… Council planning regulations taking far too long to release projects… Infrastructure delays in new development areas.

All of this will mean one thing.

That the housing shortage will continue to increase and prices will continue to push upwards… and the people most disadvantaged from this are the ones that the RBA boss, Glen Stevens is trying to help… those who are trying to buy their first home.

So all the shenanigans going on right now will push the expanding population into the rental market.

What does that mean?

Rents will significantly go up in the next 12-24 months.

Great if you’re a property investor, not much good if you’re a tenant.

So what I’m saying here is that there will be no property crash – full stop.

What we’ll see over the next several years is single-digit growth across many markets and if you’re smart and savvy within certain markets, you’ll be able to achieve much better than that.

You see, when most of the stats are quoted, they’re typically an average of all markets. So if we see 6% growth on average, it would not be unusual to have certain areas within property that have grown by 25%…

On the flip-side, some areas may fall by 10%.

That’s why I think you need to stay on top of your game, stay invested in areas that are likely to grow faster than others.

…research, research, research…

On another subject, and that is clearance rates, I often have a lot of fun with this sort of data… But here’s something you probably don’t know.

The clearance rates that the average investor seems to hang off every Monday morning reports only 20% of property transaction nationally.

That’s right, just 20%.

So does it really mean anything?

N.O.

Here’s something else that you need to know – all it really shows is people selling and buying.

12 months ago, we might have had a clearance rate of 55% with 400 properties on the market. In the current climate, we’ve got clearance rates of 67% with 900 properties on the market.

All this stuff is just noise to fill up newspapers and get your attention.

The macro picture (long term) is still so strong for property in this country that you’ll kick yourself if you sit on the fence again.

Interestingly, I was listening to professor Keen the other day and he is still ranting and raving about the 40% drop in real estate. The guy doesn’t give up.

He said that his initial prediction of a 40% drop was over a 10-15 year period… Not 2 years after the GFC hit. He was misquoted.

He also said that the fall would be from peak to trough.

What that means is, let’s say real estate has gone up 30% in the last 3 years since his prediction and it falls down by 30%, then Mr. Keen is right… Because real estate has fallen overall by 30% and it’s created a new peak and trough. (Economists are never wrong – they’ll find a way).

Confused, aren’t you?

It’s just more shenanigans by economists who are perhaps too close to the data for their own good.

My last point for today… What about a double-dip recession?

Here’s all I have to say about that…

It seems to me that everybody has almost guaranteed themselves that this is going to happen. From my experience, when the mainstream press and the man in the street are talking about a double-dip recession, then it’s likely not to happen and in fact go the other way.

Now of course in Australia, we never went into recession. And considering that I don’t think the global economies are going to go into a double-dip recession – I think it puts us in a good position going forward.

Just think contrarian (always go the opposite direction of the herd – most people are generally wrong).

They’re my thoughts.

Probably needs to be said, I failed high school, never did economics, wasn’t very good with maths, have absolutely no financial planning background – so everything I say here is basically my opinion based on my results (8-figure real estate portfolio, 7-figure stock market portfolio, 8-figure business).

…so please, before investing see a certified financial planner or follow the smart money.

That’s all for today.

Signed with Success,

Jon Giaan
Knowledge Source

P.S. So what do you think? Jump on your soapbox and let the rest of the Knowledge Source people hear your views below.