Traders and investors think in terms of quarterly reports and stock momo, or at least I did in the panic of 2008-9. I made good money with BA options when the stock declined on 787 woes and macro headwinds. The last few years have been benign with the exception of Petrobras (PBR), which I advised ADR holders to sell at a high of 72. It's exasperating that analysts can't trade on publicly announced ratings, but it was good for reputation.

I'm gambling that reputation again with a slightly difference perspective today. I'm no longer active as a sector analyst. Art Berman and I warned as loudly as possible (and got ridiculed) saying that shale drillers were skating on thin ice, bulking up with HY debt and silly reserves valuation. Oil under $40 crippled two vital sectors, the oil patch from Alberta to Texas, plus the industrial suppliers and engineering firms who build rigs and pads, drill and frack wells. We warned that bankruptcies were inevitable. Sad that Aubrey McClendon ended his career in a fiery crash, symbolic of the industrial collapse that's ravaging the American heartland.

Rear view mirrors are nice, but the real deal is to make accurate assessments of the future. The problem at Deutsche Bank (DB) got my attention recently as a red flag. But I acted on a wider view of world debt, growing entitlement burdens, and something we refer to as Hell. It's a city of four million active and prosperous professionals, technicians, small business owners and service workers. Unemployment is low. The freeway system is arguably the world's best, most logical, almost luxurious. But it's hell living and working there. So we left Hell about a year ago. Hell is great for making money, but it comes at a price. Deadbolts, security guards, private schools, 24/7 helicopter parenting, insane local politics and high cost of living. Never free to speak your mind at the office. Spend your entire day in front of a computer or in the car, competing with millions of people for a freeway lane or packed turn lane at a stoplight. The only news is bad news in Hell. Death, injury, lawsuits, crime.

What I did about it personally was to move my family to a remote part of the Ozarks, where county government consists of six people at a courthouse and two sheriff deputies on duty to patrol 800 square miles of dairy farms, cattle ranches, forest, hills, and self-reliant neighbors who were born and lived here for generations. City ways are alien. Folks speak their minds, and they help one another as a matter of cheerful, common sense rural life. Crime is almost unknown, because every household is armed. There are bald eagles and beautiful red hawks in the sky. Wild turkey and deer to hunt. Capable men with bulldozers and backhoes, logging skidders and massive dump trucks. Great place to build a hilltop home sheathed in steel, with a cozy fire in a new wood stove, propane for a new gas range.  Reasonably cheap to build and furnish.

Am I suggesting that you should abandon city life and head for the hills?  -- Yep.

Satellite service will keep you connected to the markets. There are good hospitals an hour away, 911 fire and air ambulance, locally grown organic food, and retail chains you think you can't live without: WalMart, McDonald's, Subway. This is descriptive of Fly Over Country in dozens of states from sea to shining sea. And for us, there was good reason to bug out. We have a teenage daughter. She's making straight A's in a university program at home online, with proctored final exams at a university extension office in town. She and Mom planted vegetables and joined the volunteer fire department Ladies Auxillary. On a clear night the Milky Way shines so bright you don't need a flashlight. Good place for families among other families who care for one another and like being self-reliant in open country with a little General Store for fuel and feed, where farmers and farriers gather on Wednesdays to swap gossip. They accept us for who we are, decent folks who came here to enjoy life. Perfectly understandable. Locals have been to Hell once or twice and hated it.

Long term thinking means looking over the horizon. It's dead certain that world population will increase to 10 billion and then 20 billion. Europe is swamped with migrants, as are U.S. cities. The trend is not your friend if you want America to magically reinvent itself. Policy is frozen. Everyone will be fed and housed at public expense, draining assets. Nothing can stop population increase, not even continual wars. The only way out is a homestead in a low tax rural county -- for the present -- but let's think a little farther in the future, say fifty years. If today's cities are crowded and dangerous, imagine twice the population in 2166. Children born today will inherit a social disaster.

Having given this matter considerable thought, I concluded that the rich won't stand for it. They will expatriate in a whole new way sometime in the next 50 years. The future of wealth and luxurious living will be a space colony far from Earth. In fact, I'm working on a audio drama about this very idea. If you are interested, you can read more about it on my TalkMarkets personal blog, here.