Inflation and rising costs continue to squeeze the finances of most Americans and more and more people are finding it necessary to look for ways to generate extra income.
Whether that extra income comes in the form of a part-time job or so-called side hustles or investment speculation, more people today are seeking additional income to combat the rising price of most everything. Recent reports even indicate that now nearly 4 in 10 medical doctors are working side gigs to supplement their incomes and some of those are doing so by speculating in the financial markets and using services such as the Capitalist Exploits newsletter.
For investors and speculators alike, it has been a difficult couple of years. Most stock market indexes peaked between late 2021 and January 2022. And since that time the Federal Reserve signaled its’ intention to observe a tighter monetary policy in order to reduce inflation. Stock indexes were mostly lower in 2022 and lately have bounced back and forth in a trading range.
And in a surprise for many precious metals and mining stock investors, stocks in this niche have also performed miserably, even with higher inflation, with many of the junior miners still trading near their yearly lows. Yet, treasury yields for various time horizons have gone higher although most money market funds have not kept pace with those actual Treasury returns.
In 2022, we saw the emergence of controversial short-term traders which many more seasoned investors viewed as a pump-and-dump scheme targeting stocks that had unusually large short positions. But many more traditional stock investors took a more conservative approach albeit in a very risky stock market environment. Buying stocks in a scenario with the Fed aggressively raising interest rates seemed to violate the concept of not ‘fighting the Fed’ and ‘ two steps and a stumble’. Nonetheless, many traders, as evidenced by many a Capitalist Exploits review found help and disciple in what remains a dangerous stock market.
Last year in 2022, 41% of Americans are reported to have side jobs to earn extra money and that’s up from 31% before the pandemic. As inflation and the rising price of just about everything puts the financial squeeze on the public, more and more people are searching for ways to improve their financial condition. Sometimes that involves more aggressive and riskier investing, or often simply looking for ways to make extra income to supplement their existing full-time jobs. Accordingly, the concept of extra income opportunities is now increasingly characterized as so-called ‘side-hustles’, including ideas for making money with online businesses. And complicating the income situation for many is the fact that now approximately 58 million Americans identify themselves as ‘independent’ workers. That represents 36% of the U.S. workforce and that compares with 6 years ago when 27% identified themselves as independent workers. And, with this increased amount of independent workers comes increased income insecurity.
