A good time to invest?

It's a tough time to work in real world, but it is not bad to sit in the classroom now and learn about investment.

In Stanford, we have a class called the Investment Management and Entrepreneurial Finance taught by Professor Jack McDonald. He was once the Chairman of Nasdaq advisory committee, and is well connected in the industry. In the class, he invites all type of investment experts, from the founder of TPG to the Chairman of Capital Group Research. In the past few months, they talked on the downturn of the market usually in an optimistic way; interestingly, a lot of them mentioned the opportunity. One of them, founder of a US$15 billion PE firm, said the next 5 to 10 years is going to be a big opportunity to get a huge return. He said US's opportunity will sit in its advantage to deliver goods and services to other countries. More importantly, US should think more of the real problems such as energy dependence, climate change and food safety by working together with countries like China instead of treating it as adversary.

Clearly, there is a misconception in the US media that the US is going to an end. There are a lot of smart investors quietly observing the volatile market, waiting to be in the best deals. Looking at the past 100 years, a lot of great investors often emerged in the bad time. and who will be this time?