Page 160 - Rich Dad's Increase Your Financial IQ: Get Smarter with Your Money

happened to us. We will be missing in action and we aren’t even in any
action. I won’t be killed for a noble cause. I’ll be killed trying to shave a

few dollars off the price of an international commodity. I will die because I
am cheap and stupid. If I stand here any longer, I will be shot in the back,
arguing with this woman for a discount. I’m so stupid that I deserve to die.”

The Trend Is Your Friend

There were three lessons I learned that day. One was the power of global
markets. A global market means the price is the same all over the world.
Gold is priced in international markets. Real estate is priced in a local
market. The old woman won because she had information from both the

global and the local markets. She won because she had better information
and higher intelligence.
Today, I understand that I need to know what information is important
both locally and globally. Today, I love real estate because it is an asset

more dependent on local information than on global information. With real
estate, I can be the expert in my small area. With local information, I can be
smarter than the big institutional investors in New York, London, Hong
Kong, or Tokyo. Just as David beat Goliath, a small investor with superior

information and intelligence can beat the giant.
The second lesson I learned that day was the power of trends. If I had
better understood trends and the price of gold, I would have made a lot of
money without risking my life behind enemy lines. I did not need to go

behind enemy lines to invest. I did not need to ask for a discount. All I had
to do was invest with the trend. I could have gone to a coin shop in any
town in the world and bought gold for the same price. By 1979, the trend
had carried gold to nearly $800 an ounce. I did not have to risk my life. If I

had trusted the trend, I would have made a lot of money. I did not need a
discount to make money.
The third and most valuable lesson that day was that information is just
information. Intelligence is the ability to take information and make it

meaningful. The old woman with red teeth had the same information I had.
Yet her intelligence provided her understanding and meaning I did not have.