Have you ever thought that a person's entire life is actually tightly controlled by an invisible cyclical law? An economist once proposed a view: in the critical 60 years of life, only 30 years are actively involved in economic activities, and within these 30 years, there are only three opportunities for wealth brought by economic cycles. These three opportunities cannot be seized just because you want to; your fate has already been written.

He divides it as follows:

The first opportunity was in 2008 — it has already passed
The second opportunity was in 2019 — also missed
The third opportunity will be in 2030 — this is upcoming

For people of different age groups, the advice is quite straightforward. For example, those born after 1985 and currently under 30, their first wealth window is only in 2019. If you were between 25 and 30 at that time, the past five years were basically a period of working and saving. Buying a house, investing, and so on? Conditions were not yet ripe. This is not a matter of personal will, but a fate determined by cycles.

What is the core of this theory? He proposed a nested three-layer cycle framework:

The largest is the Kondratiev wave, lasting 50 to 60 years, driven by technological revolutions
Next is the real estate cycle (Kuznets cycle), a 20 to 25-year round
The third layer is the capital expenditure cycle (Juglar cycle), 9 to 11 years
The smallest is the inventory cycle (Kitchin cycle), a 3 to 4-year round

In a complete Kondratiev wave, there are 3 real estate cycles, 6 capital expenditure cycles, and 18 inventory cycles. In other words: your entire life is essentially a superposition of one Kondratiev wave, three real estate cycles, nine fixed asset investment cycles, and eighteen inventory cycles. Life is lived amidst these cyclical fluctuations. This way of understanding can also provide insights into long-term market opportunities.