Many mutual fund managers were not yet born or barely born in 1974 so how would they know what a market crash and bear market feels like, especially if it goes on for years, such as the Japanese market has done. Rich dad simply said, "It is not possible to predict the mar- ket, but it is important that we be prepared for whichever di- rection it decides to go." He also said, "Bull markets seem to go on forever, which causes people to become sloppy, foolish, and complacent. Bear markets also seem to go on forever causing people to forget that bear markets are often the best times to become very, very rich. That is why you want to be a qualified investor." Why Markets Will Crash Faster in the Information Age In his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, a book I strongly recommend for anyone -wanting to understand the new era of global business we are in, author Thomas L. Friedman often makes reference to The Electronic Herd. The Electronic Herd is a group of several thousand people, very often young, who control great sums of electronic money. They are the individuals who work for large banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, insurance companies, and the like. They have the power with the click of their mouse to move literally trillions of dollars from one country to another country in a split second. That power gives the Electronic Herd more power than politicians. I was in South East Asia! in 1997 when the Electronic Herd moved their money out of countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Korea, virtually sinking those countries' economies overnight. It was not a pretty sight nor was it pleasant to be physically present in those countries. The Qualified Investor 257 For those of you who invest globally, you may recall how most of the world, even Wall Street was singing praises to the new Asian Tiger Economies. Everyone wanted to invest in these countries. Then suddenly, literally overnight, their world changed. There were murders, suicides, riots, looting, and a general feeling of financial sickness everywhere. The electronic herd did not like what it saw in those countries and moved their money out in a matter of seconds. Quoting from Thomas Friedman's book, he states: "Think of the Electronic Herd as being like a herd of wilde- beests grazing over a wide area of Africa. When a wildebeest on the edge of the herd sees something move in the tall, thick brush next to where it's feeding, that wildebeest doesn't say to the wildebeest next to it, 'Gosh, I wonder if that's a lion moving around there in the brush.' No way. That wildebeest just starts a stampede, and those wildebeests don't stampede for a mere hundred yards. They stampede to the next coun- try and crush everything in their path." That is what happened to the Asian Tigers in 1997. The Electronic Herd did not like what they saw going on in the area and moved out literally overnight. It went from high op- timism to riots and murder in a matter of days.