Houdini was incredibly strong and could hold his breath for several minutes. He was a great contortionist with an uncanny ability to twist and bend his body and dislocate his joints. He once said, "To any young man who has in mind a career similar to mine, I would say: 'First try bending over backward and picking up a pin with your teeth from the floor... That was my first stunt.'" Since Houdini never died when shackled and buried underground or submerged upside down in a water torture cell, it's natural to wonder what finally killed him. That's an odd story... Houdini would often invite the biggest man in the audience to join him on stage. He would then raise his shirt to reveal his bare skin and insist that the man punch him in the stomach as hard as he could. To the astonishment of the audience, Houdini would weather the blow with no ill effects. The onstage participant was not a shill. Houdini was an amateur boxer who had learned to flex his muscles to absorb the punch. In 1926, however, a student who had just seen the show approached Houdini in his dressing room and slammed his fist into Houdini's stomach without warning. Houdini wasn't ready. He doubled over in pain, his appendix ruptured. He died soon thereafter. The biggest risk is what you don't see coming. Most of the biggest market-shaking events of the past 35 years were completely unexpected. The list includes... - The stock market crash on October 19, 1987, when the Dow lost almost a quarter of its value in a single day.
- Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990, which led to a spike in oil prices, the first Gulf War and an immediate bear market.
- The collapse of Long-Term Capital Management - an enormous and highly leveraged hedge fund overseen by Nobel laureates - in 1998. (Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recruited 14 major financial institutions to help supervise its orderly liquidation to avoid a full-fledged panic.)
- The September 11 attacks.
- The sudden collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers - two storied Wall Street banks - in 2008. That helped kick off the financial crisis.
- And, of course, the novel coronavirus that quickly turned into a worldwide pandemic.
Who predicted these extraordinary events? No one. Who will predict the next one? No one. That is why you diversify. Not just to reduce your risk. But to protect the assets you've spent a lifetime accumulating from the next bolt out of the blue. We can't know what that will be or when it will occur. So diversify your portfolio. Because - like Harry Houdini - you won't see it coming. Good investing, Alex | 
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