Shervin Pishevar is a venture capitalist who helped launched major brands, and he co-founded Virgin’s Hyperloop. On February 5, the investor in Uber, Airbnb and Postmates shared his thoughts about the state of the U.S. economy through his Twitter account, @Shervin.
6,000 Points
Pishevar’s first tweet was inspired by early-February hiccups in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. He forecast an extensive, slow downturn. “I expect a 6000-point drop in aggregate in the months ahead,” he stated. Over the next 21 hours, Shervin Pishevar added related tweets under his first and built a 50-tweet thread.
Volatile Financial Instruments
Pishevar was concerned by the American stock market’s volatility indices. He called them the tail wagging the dog, and he wrote that these financial instruments can lead to the type of risky investing that allowed 2008’s Great Recession. Further, he decried exchange-traded funds.
Popularly known as ETFs, these tools enable less-savvy investors to buy one stock managed by a Wall Street veteran who spreads the fund’s pool across a diverse set of industries. Shervin Pishevar is not a fan of ETFs. “24 ETFs with a combined market cap of nearly $6 billion. The inverse ETFs are over $3 billion of that and are at essentially zero overnight,” he lamented.
Entrepreneurs without Borders
Continuing, the venture capitalist criticized the U.S.’s faith in its tech-field competitive advantage. He tweeted, “As I’ve said before, Silicon Valley is no longer a physical place but an idea that’s gone viral. Entrepreneurship is a movement. Borderless!”
1,500 Builders
Pishewar then showed how the U.S. trails China in the tech economy. He shared a story from SCMP News about a large train station built in Longyan by 1,500 workers in nine hours. “Meanwhile,” he tweeted, “our infrastructure is in tatters.” See This Page for more information
The Coming Shift
Further, Shervin Pishevar forecast a once-in-ten-centuries shift that cryptocurrencies could bring. “That shift has to do with a revolution in stateless digital currencies unleashed across the globe over the next couple decades,” he stated.
Nations prepared for that revolution have a chance at success in this century. The unprepared ones could fade from the global economic stage.