But now that you have all that cash handy, when do you pull the trigger? When is an asset cheap enough to buy? You can lose just as much money buying too soon as you can buying too late.

If you look around the world today, there are plenty of assets "on sale."

Emerging markets have gotten crushed thanks to troubled economies, a soaring dollar (which makes their dollar-denominated debts harder to pay) and trade war fears.

So far this year, the Turkish lira and Argentine peso are down 41% and 50%, respectively – those are HUGE moves for a currency in a short period of time. The Indian rupee, Indonesian rupiah and Russian ruble are also getting pummeled.

EM stocks are down more than 20% this year (they trade around 11 times forward earnings versus 17 for US stocks).

But is buying Argentine bonds (which yield 60% today) or a basket of EM stocks a good deal? (We'll get to that answer later.)

Here's another example of an asset that's getting crushed – South African farmland.

Right now in South Africa, there's a large movement to confiscate land from white farmers and redistribute it to black people. It's the hottest topic leading into next year's elections.

And the fiercest supporter of this movement is a politician named Julius Malema, aka the Hitler of South Africa, who kindly told white people that he wouldn't kill them… "yet."

So what do you think happens to farmland prices when a crazy, deranged politician is threatening to steal land and kill all the white people?