Inflection Points: When many different things come together and synch up in a big move

Bethany Hamilton surfing a ginormous wave at Jaws, on the north shore of Maui, in 2016.

Inflection point- (2) (In business): A time of significant change in a situation; a turning point.
- Google dictionary

This video is an inflection point, it captures a very short span of time where many conditions came together to form an absolutely huge wave that had the right characteristics to allow Bethany Hamilton to surf it successfully, changing or enhancing many people's view of Bethany, the surf break of Jaws, women's surfing, and the idea of wave riding itself.  Most people would see this video and think, "Wow, that guy's crazy!"  Then a surfer would respond, "That's a woman!  A woman with one arm."  Then the inevitable response.  "Wait... really?  She's NUTS!" Yeah, and just plain amazing.

All kinds of things had to happen to make the 18 seconds of the ride in this clip above get captured on this video.  The tectonic plate of the crust of the Earth, under the Pacific Ocean, slowly moved over a hot spot of magma, volcanoes formed, and eruptions over millions of years built up those volcanoes from the bottom of the sea, eventually rising above the water level, and formed Maui and the other Hawaiian islands.  A ridge offshore off the north of Maui, the area known as Pe 'ahi to the locals, formed from volcanic activity, and then was worn into a certain shape by ocean currents and wave action over hundreds of thousands of years.

Meanwhile, in 2016, a huge storm, perhaps a thousand or more miles away, sent out pressure waves that travel through the water at 500 miles per hour, in a very specific direction, towards the small island of Maui.  That pressure wave combined with ocean currents, the tides created by the Moon's gravitational relation to the Earth, the local shape of the shore, and the underwater ridge.  Those and many other factors forced the water upwards, into the wave we see in the video, at that particular moment in time.

At that same time, surfer Bethany Hamilton was there, holding a tow rope attached to a jet ski, waiting for the right wave.  Bethany, born and raised in Hawaii, was already a legend in the surfing world.  Bethany was just 13-years-old in 2003, already a hot up-and-coming amateur surfer, when she was attacked by a huge, 14 foot Tiger shark, of Kauai.  The shark bit off her left arm near the shoulder.  With the help of her best friend Alana Blanchard, and Alana's dad and brothers, Bethany got to shore, was rushed to the hospital, survived losing 60% of her blood, and came through the ordeal.

A surfer to the core, Bethany not only got back in the water, she learned to surf again, with one arm, and went on to become a top women's surfing pro.  Her shark attack ordeal was written in the 2004 book, Soul Surfer, and made into a movie in 2011.  The attack made Bethany famous.  What Bethany did after the attack, not only learning to surf again, without one arm, but going on to become a top pro and a big waver rider, made Bethany a legend to surfers and non-surfers alike.

In addition to the legendary surf break Jaws, and legendary surfer Bethany, this short video took the lifetimes of work of the surfers/watermen (and women?) on the jet skis, the photographers on the boats, and the video cameraperson from Shannon Reporting, Shannon Marie Quirk, who captured this moment on video.  All of these things I've mentioned, and many other things as well, came together to create this 18 seconds of action on video, which will raise anyone's opinion of what is possible by a human being.  In other words, this short video is an inflection point, something that enhanced Bethany's surfing reputation greatly, Shannon's video reputation, and even the reputation of the mighty surf break Jaws.

So why am I going into so much detail about a cool clip of amazing surfing?  Because it's a good metaphor for inflection points in the economic and business world.  All my life I've been an amateur futurist, always wondering what would happen in the future, and trying to figure out how to understand the present, in order to accurately predict the parts of the future that were predictable to some degree.  This seems to be where my fascination with predicting the future evolved from.

In late December of 1989, I visited my parents in North Carolina, going there for a week over Christmas.  I bought a book to read that week, because staying there was pretty boring most of the time.  After the initial, "How have you been?" conversation for a couple hours, everyone mostly did their own thing, and reading was a good option to fill my time.  I picked up the book, The Great Depression of 1990 by economist Ravi Batra.  Yes, I know, not the subject matter most people would choose.  I'm an economics geek, making me a geek even among the geeks.  I found the book fascinating, as Batra explained a very obscure social theory from India, added in his understanding of economics, and then predicted am economic Great Depression, like in the 1930's, starting in 1990. I found that fascinating, because I'm weird like that.  After reading the book, I headed back to Huntington Beach, and I began to read the business section of the newspaper every day.

We didn't have a Great Depression in 1990.  But we did go into a recession, then popped out a bit, then back into it.  They called it a "double dip recession."  To me it seemed that most of the reason it was given that name was so they wouldn't have to actually call it a "depression," which has a much darker, and scary, connotation.

The traditional definition of an economic recession, at that time, is an economic "contraction" for two consecutive quarters.  So instead of the total economy growing, it shrinks for six months.  A "depression" is when that happens for three years, and a "great depression" is when that happens for five years.    The "double dip" thing "officially" only lasted 8 months.  But the economy sucked for average people, and the California (and most other places) real estate market didn't rebound until late 1996 and early 1997.  So things largely sucked financially for 6 years, and we happened to have this little thing called the internet being invented (in a widespread way, as opposed to the original military uses) to help bring us out of it.  That was a huge, unexpected, one time economic boom, that almost everyone by surprise.

So from my point of view, most of what Ravi Batra predicted in 1989 actually happened.  It just didn't happen to as deep of a level as he predicted.  I became really interested in the social theory from India, "The Law of Social Cycle," by P.R. Sarkar, as well as many of his thoughts on long term economic trends.

One of those trends was that we have a depression (or great depression) every 30 or 60 years in the U.S., going back to colonial days.  The only exception was the reconstruction era, for about 30 years, after the Civil War.  That period through everything out of whack.  But looking at the historical records, Batra found that if the depression skipped the 30 year mark, it tended to be more intense at the 60 year mark.  So we had the stock crash of 1929, leading into The Great Depression of the 1930's.  There was no depression in 1960, 30 years later.  So he saw a deeper depression looming in 1990.  Guess what 2020 is?  Yep, it's the 30 year mark after 1990.  So that's one long term trend suggesting an economic downturn, a sizeable one, could happen in, or around, 2020.  That's one historical trend in a possible major inflection point for our economy.

By actually watching the economic news, actually reading the newspaper in the early 1990's, and later watching CNBC business news, as it came along and grew, I noticed that many different things would happen, which could be seen in real time, and often in different charts of different economic factors.  The stock market would be doing one thing.  The bond market and interest rates doing another.  The price of gold, the price of oil, the price of agricultural commodities would each be doing their own thing.  But when you looked at several different charts over the same span of time, you'd see spikes at the exact moment, in many different things.  Some spiked up while others spiked down.  Some things would trend up before the spike, while other things trended in a rough parallel, and others trended down.  But many different charts would show the exact inflection points, suggesting there were deeper things, factors, happenings, that affected all of them.  Interest rates being moved up or down by the Federal Reserve was the most obvious.  The effects of The Federal Reserve moving interest rates up or down ripples throughout the economy.  But that's not the only cause of these inflection points.

In the late 90's, I took a home study course on trading commodities, which relied heavily on looking at the different price charts for the 40 or so traded commodities.  That's when I really began to notice these inflection points, in multiple markets, all happening at the same time.  So I started looking up and searching for what the business news was on those particular days, the times when several different markets made big moves, at the same time.  Like I just mentioned, several were when interest rates were adjusted.  But others had different causes, and some I never did figure out.  But I learned that when several markets are heading in the general direction of a big inflection point, its an indicator a big inflection point if coming.

That's where we are in today's economic world.  There are all kinds of trends pointing at a HUGE inflection point, something that will be a massive negative hit to millions of people's lives.  Yet no one wants to know it's about to happen.  That's why I predicted we're in the "prelude" to a Great Depression on my personal blog a couple of days ago.  Many different factors are coming together in a big confluence pointing to that happening.  I've been saying this since 2017, knowing we were heading that that direction.

Here's the ting about inflection points.  If you were in a sea kayak or small boat, not knowing the swell was coming to Jaws, the wave above could easily kill you.  But Bethany spent her life pushing limits as a surfer and as a human, to be able to have a chance to successfully ride this huge wave.  HUNDREDS of millions of people will be crushed by the economic wave I see building.  But some will surf it.  That's why I write things like this.  For those who don't want to be crushed to know to get out of the way, and for those who can "surf" economic waves to surf this one that's building.

There is one more aspect to the video above that I haven't mentioned that played a crucial role.  Someone predicted that there was a huge swell coming, and that it might make Jaws go off in an epic way.  That's how Bethany Hamilton, the guys on the jet skis, the photographers, and Shannon with the video camera all knew to be there.  That was most likely Surfline.com, based in Huntington Beach, California, where I've spent most of my adult life.  Surfline predicts swells around the world, and top big wave surfers regularly fly halfway around the world, on a couple of days notice, to surf a spot Surfline.com predicts will go off in a big way.

When it comes to the big economic waves, I am Surfline.com.  There's a huge crash coming, a "negative" wave that will also create more opportunity for smart businesses, new businesses, and new ideas of all kinds, than any period of time in our lives.  It's about to happen.  Get your board waxed up.