Showing posts with label CNBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CNBC. Show all posts

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Three Charts Every Trader and Investor Must See

Understanding the stock market and its potential through the use of technical analysis and historical price events has been proven repeatedly to outperform all forms of fundamental trading styles. The following is a story that walks you through my experience, the shift in my mindset and how I came to the conclusion that the three charts I share in this article are critical to your understanding of to make money in today’s market!

When I first learned to trade, I got all caught up with researching companies and finding the ones with the best earnings and future growth. I did that for several years after studying and following many “professional traders” who said it was the best way to trade and invest long term. We lost our shirts during the 2000 bear market by continuing to trade on fundamentals as stocks fell in value week after week. Even the companies that showed quarterly earnings growth fell in value – none of it seemed to make any sense to me, and it was very frustrating.

Losing money when buying the best companies made no logical sense, making me step back from the markets and ask myself, ‘what am I doing wrong here‘. People today are asking themselves the same question given today’s dizzying markets:

· Telsa shares fell from $971 a share down to $347, whopping 63% drop, in only a few weeks and then rebounded again too xx

· Netflix is down 30%, even though people are stuck at home desperately trying to find things to watch)

· Amazon has fallen 26% in the past couple of weeks despite soaring demand for their delivery services

· GDXJ, the gold miners sector that is typically a safe haven during times of volatility, crashed 57% even though gold is usually a safe haven during times of volatility.

So, what was I doing wrong? I started calling and visiting traders who were making money during the bear market to see what they were doing, and 100% of them were doing the same thing – Trading with Technical Analysis. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, per se. I was simply using the wrong tools and analysis for success!

What is Technical Analysis? In short, it’s the study of price, time, and volatility of any asset using price charts and indicators. Traders use technical analysis to find cycles and patterns in the market and trade on the analysis of preferred indicators as opposed to the fundamentals of a company and/or the economy in general.

When you start studying technical traders, you will notice every trader has a particular time frame, a preferred set of indicators, and trading frequency that fits their unique personality and lifestyle. Their brains can see the charts in ways you and I may not see them to predict future price direction over the next few hours, days, weeks, or months ahead. I quickly learned there are infinite ways to trade using technical analysis.

I was very surprised by how much these pro traders allowed me. While standing over their shoulders, I was looking at their charts to try to divine their high-level strategies and learn how they think, analyze, and trade. It was amazing how different each of them traded the market. Some traded currencies; others traded stocks, indexes, options, futures, etc. Most were day traders, swing traders, or a mix of the two. But none of them gave me their secret sauce. That is why I turned 100% of my focus to technical analysis. I was excited at the prospect of being able to profit from both rising and falling prices and no concern for anything other than price action reduced my research time dramatically. It was and is the biggest AH-HA moment of my life and a turning point for my career as a trader.

The year was 2001, when I made the shift to technical analysis. I unsubscribed from everything fundamental based. I canceled my CNBC, stopped listening to news, and stopped reading other people’s reports altogether. My goal was to create my own technical trading strategy that best suited my personality and lifestyle. I would have to discover the securities I was most comfortable trading, the frequency I would trade, and the type and amount of risk I was prepared to take.

I traded options, covered-calls, currencies, stocks, ETFs, and futures. From day trading to position trading (holding several months), I tried it all, hoping something would click for me to pursue at a much deeper level. Day trading, momentum, and swing trading were my sweet spots. Having three of them was a bonus as I know some traders only ever master one in their lifetime if they are lucky. I grew a liking for trading the major indexes like the DJIA, S&P 500, and Nasdaq… great liquidity with big money always at play.

Along my journey, I realized that if I could predict the overall market trend direction for the day or week, then I could day trade small cap stocks in the same direction as the index, knowing 80+% of the stocks follow the general stock market trend. I could generate much larger gains in a very short period of time. As time went on, I became comfortable predicting, trading, and profiting from the indexes, and my new trading strategy began to emerge.

I was fortunate enough to start learning about the markets and trading in college with a $2,000 E-Trade account, and then retiring (kinda) in 2009 at the age of 28. I built my dream home on the water, bought cars and boats, and spent time traveling with my growing family. I love trading and sharing my analysis with others – it is better than I had ever imagined and why I continue to help thousands of traders around the world every day with these video courses Trading System Mastery, and Trading As Your Business.

I contribute 100% of my trading success and lifestyle to the fact that I embraced technical analysis, where my strategy involves nothing more than price movement, position-sizing, and trade risk management techniques. All these allow me to easily reduce exposure, drawdowns, and losses with proper position sizing and protective strategies. If you want quick and simple, read about my journey and core trading tools in my book Technical Trading Mastery – 7 Steps to Win with Logic. My strategy is represented by human psychology and historical trading, as expressed in the three charts below.

Chart 1 – Human Psychology is What Drives Price Action

This chart is my favorite as it explains trader and investor psychology at various market stages. It also includes a simplified market cycle in the upper right corner, letting you know where the maximum financial risk is for investors and the highest opportunity for a trade.



Chart 2 – 2000 Stock Market Top & Bear Market That Followed

The chart may look a little overwhelming, but look at each part and compare it to the market psychology chart above. What happened in 2000 is what I feel is happening this year with the stock market sell-off.

In 2000, all market participants learned of at the same time was that there were no earnings coming from their darling .com stocks. Knowing they were not going to make money for a long time, everyone started selling these terrible stocks, and the market collapsed 40% very quickly.

What is similar between 2000 and 2020? Simple really. COVID-19 virus has halted a huge portion of business activity, travel, purchases, sporting events, etc. Everyone knows earnings are going to be poor, and many companies are going to go bankrupt. It is blatantly clear to everyone this is bad and will be for at least 6-12 months in corporate earnings; therefore, everyone is in a rush to sell their stock shares and are in a panic to unload them before everyone does.



Chart 3 – The 2020 Stock Market Top Looks to Be Unfolding

As you can see, this chart below of this year’s market crash is VERY similar to that of 2000 thus far, it’s based on a similar mindset, which is the fear of losing money, which causes everyone to sell their positions.

I am hopeful that we get a 25-30% rally from these lows before the market starts to fall and continue the new bear market, which I believe we are entering. Only the price will confirm the direction and major trend to follow, and since we follow price action and do not pick tops or bottoms, all we have to do is watch, learn, and trade when price favors new low risk, high reward trade setups.

It does not matter which way the market crashes from here, we will either profit from the next leg down, or will miss/avoid it depending on if we get a tradable setup. Either cause is a win, just one makes money, while the worst case scenario just preserves capital in a cash position, you can’t complain either way if you ask me.



Before you continue, be sure to opt-in to our free market trend signals before closing this page, so you don’t miss our next special report!

Concluding Thoughts

In short, is if you lost money during the recent market crash, then you likely have not mastered a technical trading strategy and do not have proper trade management rules in place. All traders must manage risk and trades to be sure you lock in profits and limit losses when prices start pullback or collapse. Without either of these, you will not be able to achieve long term success/gains, and that’s a fact.

While we can all make money during a bull market when stocks are rising, if you cannot retain or grow your account during market downturns, then you may as well be a passive buy and hold investors. You are better at riding the emotional investor rollercoaster without wasting your time and effort as a trader if you are not going to spend the time and money to learn to follow someone to become a successful trader. Without proven trading strategies or someone to follow, you are more likely to underperform a long term passive investor.

I get dozens of emails from people every week trying to trade this wild stock market and use leveraged ETFs, which doing so during these unprecedented market conditions is absolute craziness if you ask me.

These people think that because there are big moves in the market, they should be trading. That big money should be made trading them, which drives me crazy because it could not be further from the truth unless you are a scalp or day trader. To me, in this market condition, it’s about preserving capital, not risking it, in my opinion.

A subscriber to my market video analysis and ETF trading newsletter said it perfectly:

“Always intrigues me how many amateur surfers get to the north shore beaches in Hawaii, take one look at monster waves and conclude it’s way too dangerous. Yet the amateur trader looks at treacherous markets like these and wants to dive right in!!” Richard P.

I have to toot my own horn here a little because subscribers and I had our trading accounts close at a new high watermark for our accounts. We not only exited the equities market as it started to roll over we profited from the sell off in a very controlled way.

I hope you found this informative, and if you would like to get a pre-market video every day before the opening bell, along with my trade alerts, visit my ETF swing trading visit my website at The Technical Traders.

Chris Vermeulen
Founder of The Technical Traders 



Stock & ETF Trading Signals

Friday, May 12, 2017

The Bond King Says "Short U.S. Stock"

Image result for jeffrey gundlachShort the SP500.....That’s not something most investors would consider right now. After all, US stocks have been rallying for eight straight years. At this point, it’s hard to even remember what a down market feels like.

But that’s exactly what Jeff Gundlach thinks you should do. Gundlach, as you may know, is one of the world’s brightest investors. He manages more than $100 billion at his firm DoubleLine Capital.

On Monday, he told a room full of investors at the Sohn Investment Conference in New York to short (bet against) the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY). This fund tracks the S&P 500. It’s the most heavily traded ETF on the planet.

It’s a bold call, to say the least.…
But Gundlach has a history of nailing calls like this. At last year’s Sohn Conference, he told investors to short the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLU) and buy the iShares Mortgage Real Estate Capped ETF (REM). If you had taken Gundlach’s advice, you’d be up 40% on this trade today. Gundlach was also one of the few people to predict that Donald Trump would become president of the United States. In June, he told CNBC:
People aren't getting along, they're not happy because of technology taking jobs, and sort of this long, slow grind of a new economy. And so they're looking for change, and I think Trump is going to win on the basis of that.
In other words, it pays to listen to Gundlach.…
But here’s the thing. Gundlach doesn’t think you should get out of stocks completely. Instead, he thinks you should “go long” emerging markets. These are countries that are on their way to becoming “developed” countries like the United States. Brazil, Russia, India, and China (also known as the “BRICs”) are the largest emerging markets.

On Monday, Gundlach told investors at the Sohn Conference to buy the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), which tracks over 800 emerging market stocks. It’s one of the safest and most diversified ways to play emerging markets. Of course, you would have already known that if you’ve been reading the Dispatch.

After all, I’ve been pounding the table on emerging market stocks for months.…
In February, I outlined the bullish case for emerging markets. A month later, I told investors to “forget about US stocks” and consider emerging market stocks. I even recommended checking out EEM, just like Gundlach. Not only that, Gundlach likes emerging markets for the same reasons we do. I’ll share those with you in a moment. But let’s first look at why the “Bond King” thinks you should short the S&P 500.

U.S. stocks are incredibly expensive.…
Just look at this chart. It compares the total market value of the S&P 500 with the annual economic output of the United States, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP). This key ratio is now at the highest level since the dot com bubble.




US stocks aren’t just expensive from a historical perspective, either.…
They’re also much more expensive than emerging market stocks. Gundlach explained to CNBC on Monday:
The valuation of emerging markets is half the valuation of the S&P 500 when you look at things like price to sales, price to book, [and] Dr. Shiller’s CAPE ratio.
Dispatch readers know CAPE stands for cyclically adjusted price to earnings. It’s the cousin of the popular price to earnings (P/E) ratio. The only difference is that it uses 10 years’ worth of earnings instead of one. But just like the P/E ratio, a high CAPE ratio means stocks are expensive. You can see below that the CAPE ratio has surged to 29.5. That’s 76% higher than the S&P 500’s historical average. US stocks have only been this expensive two times in history: just before the Great Depression and during the dot com bubble. Meanwhile, the CAPE ratio for EEM is floating around 14, meaning it’s 52% cheaper than SPY.

To be fair, emerging market stocks have been cheaper than US stocks for years.…
And they’ve still underperformed them. But that’s starting to change. Just look at the chart below. It compares the performance of the S&P 500 with EEM. When this line is rising, it means US stocks are doing better than emerging market stocks.


You can see that’s been the case for years. But this key ratio just broke a long term upward trend line.
This tells us that emerging market stocks should outperform US stocks for years to come.

If you haven’t already, I recommend you pick up some emerging market stocks today.…
The easiest way to do this is with EEM or another major emerging market fund. These funds will give you broad exposure to emerging markets. Once you build a core position in emerging markets, you could consider investing in individual emerging markets. Right now, three of our favorite emerging markets are Poland, Colombia, and India.

As for U.S. stocks, I wouldn’t encourage everyday investors to short the S&P 500 like Gundlach recommends. Instead, I suggest you be very selective about what U.S. stocks you own. Avoid stocks trading at nosebleed valuations. Own companies with resilient business models and little debt.

The article “The Bond King” Says Short US Stocks was originally published at caseyresearch.com.




Stock & ETF Trading Signals

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Force Winning Trades While Reducing Your Trading Risk to Zero....New Video

Every time you lose money in the market, someone on the other side of the trade is grinning their fool head off because they won and you let them do it. Discover how savvy insiders make sure every trade is won before it’s even placed. And you can do it too!

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Option and stock investing involves risk and is not suitable for all investors. Only invest money you can afford to lose in stocks and options. Past performance does not guarantee future results. The trade entry and exit prices represent the price of the security at the time the recommendation was made. The trade record does not represent actual investment results. Trade examples are simulated and have certain limitations. Simulated results do not represent actual trading. Since the trades have not been executed, the results may have under or over compensated for the impact, if any, of certain market factors such as lack of liquidity. No representation is being made that any account will or is likely to achieve profit or losses similar to those shown.



Stock & ETF Trading Signals

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Carley Garner's "Higher Probability Commodity Trading"

Carley Garner's new book "Higher Probability Commodity Trading" takes readers on an unprecedented journey through the treacherous commodity markets; shedding light on topics rarely discussed in trading literature from a unique perspective, with the intention of increasing the odds of success for market participants.

In its quest to guide traders through the process of commodity market analysis, strategy development, and risk management, Higher Probability Commodity Trading discusses several alternative market concepts and unconventional views such as option selling tactics, hedging futures positions with options, and combining the practice of fundamental, technical, seasonal, and sentiment analysis to gauge market price changes.

Carley, is a frequent contributor of commodity market analysis to CNBC's Mad Money TV show hosted by Jim Cramer. She has also been a futures and options broker, where for over a decade she has had a front row seat to the victories and defeats the commodity markets deal to traders.

Garner has a knack for portraying complex commodity trading concepts, in an easy-to-read and entertaining format. Readers of Higher Probability Commodity Trading are sure to walk away with a better understanding of the futures and options market, but more importantly with the benefit of years of market lessons learned without the expensive lessons.

Get Higher Probability Commodity Trading on Amazon....Get it Here!

Friday, July 15, 2016

Why This Stock Rally Won’t Last…And What You Need to Do With Your Money Today

By Justin Spittler

Silver is sending us an important warning. Yesterday, the price of silver closed at $20.30, its highest price since July 2014. Silver is now up 45% this year. That’s nearly eight times better than the S&P 500’s 5.9% return. And it’s almost double gold’s 25% gain this year. If you’ve been reading the Dispatch, you know silver is rallying for the same reason gold’s taken off. Investors are worried about the economy and financial system.

Like gold, silver is real money. It’s also a safe haven asset that investors buy when they’re nervous. Unlike gold, silver is an industrial metal. It goes into everything from batteries to solar panels. Because of this, it's more sensitive to economic slowdowns. That’s why many folks think of silver as gold’s more volatile cousin.
Lately, silver has been acting more like a precious metal than an industrial metal. It’s soaring because the global economy is in serious trouble. Today, we’ll explain why silver is likely headed much higher. And we’ll show you the best way to profit from rising silver prices.

Silver has been in a bear market for the better part of the last five years..…
From April 2011 to December 2015, the price of silver plummeted 72%. This 56 month downturn was the longest silver bear market on record. As brutal as this bear market was, we knew it wouldn’t go on forever. That’s because silver, like other commodities, is cyclical. It experiences booms and busts. As you just saw, the losses in commodity bear markets can be huge. But the gains in commodity bull markets can be even bigger. During its 2008–2011 bull market, silver soared an incredible 441%. That’s why we watch commodities so closely. Every few years, they give you the chance to make huge gains in a short period of time.

On December 18, Casey Research founder Doug Casey said silver wouldn’t get much cheaper..…
Doug told Kitco, one of the world’s biggest precious metals retailers, that gold and silver were near a bottom:
My opinion is if it's not the bottom, it's close enough to the bottom. So, I have to be an aggressive buyer of both gold and silver at this point.
Doug’s call was dead on. Silver bottomed at $13.70 an ounce on December 17. That same day, gold bottomed at $1,051 an ounce. In other words, Doug was one day off from perfectly calling the bottom in gold and silver.

The price of silver has soared 49% since December..…
But it could head much higher in the coming years. Remember, silver soared 441% during its last bull market.
Silver is “cheap” too. It’s trading 58% below its 2011 high, even after this year’s monster rally. It’s also never been more important to own “real money.” That’s because it looks like the world is on the cusp of a major financial crisis. Doug explains:
Right now, we are exiting the eye of the giant financial hurricane that we entered in 2007, and we’re going into its trailing edge. It’s going to be much more severe, different, and longer lasting than what we saw in 2008 and 2009.
As longtime readers know, the last financial crisis caused the S&P 500 to plunge 57%. It sparked America’s worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. And it allowed the government to launch a series of radical “stimulus” measures, none which actually helped the economy.

BlackRock (BLK) sees tough times ahead too..…
BlackRock is the world’s biggest asset manager. It oversees $4.6 trillion. That’s more than the annual economic output of Japan, the world’s third biggest economy. BlackRock manages more money than Goldman Sachs (GS), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and Bank of America (BAC). This makes it one of the world’s most important financial institutions…and one that probably understands the global economy better than almost any other company on the planet. Like us, BlackRock’s chief investment strategist, Richard Turnill, thinks the next few years could be very difficult. CNBC reported on Monday:
"This feels more and more like we're in an environment of low returns and high volatility for some time," Richard Turnill said on "Squawk Box.” "The period of political [Brexit] uncertainty ahead of us isn't going to last for weeks or quarters, but potentially for years," he said.
According to BlackRock, the “Brexit” made the global economy more unstable..…
If you’ve been reading the Dispatch, you know Great Britain voted to leave the European Union (EU) on June 23. The Brexit, as folks are calling it, shook financial markets from Tokyo to New York. It erased more than $3 trillion from the global stock market in two days. 

Then, stocks started to rally. By this Tuesday, global stocks fully “recovered” from the Brexit bloodbath. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average even hit new all time highs this week.

Many investors took this as proof that the worst was over. We, on the other hand, reminded readers to not lose sight of the big picture. We explained that stocks were rallying because they’re the least bad place to put your money right now. We encouraged you to not “get sucked back into the stock market.”

Larry Fink doesn’t think U.S. stocks should be rallying either..…
Fink is the chairman and CEO of BlackRock. That makes him one of the most powerful people in the world.
Like us, Fink isn’t “buying” this stock rally. CNBC reported yesterday:
"I don't think we have enough evidence to justify these levels in the equity market at this moment," Fink said Thursday on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
According to Fink, stocks are rallying for the wrong reasons:
He said the recent rally has been supported by institutional investors covering shorts, or bets that stocks would fall, and not individual investors feeling bullish.
"Since Brexit, we've seen ETF flows almost at record levels … $18 billion of inflows," Fink said. "However, in the mutual fund area, we're continuing to see outflows."
What that tells you is retail investors are pulling out, he said. "You're seeing institutions who were short going into Brexit … all now rushing in to recalibrate their portfolios."
In other words, this rally could fizzle out any day.

We recommend you invest with great caution right now..…
If you still own stocks, consider selling your weakest positions. Get rid of your most expensive stocks. Only hang on to companies that you know can make money in a long economic downturn. We also encourage you to own gold. As we said earlier, it’s real money. It’s preserved wealth for centuries because it possesses a unique set of attributes: It’s durable, easy to transport, and easily divisible. You can take a gold coin anywhere in the world and folks will instantly recognize its value.

We recommend most folks to hold 10% to 15% of their wealth in gold. Once you own enough gold, consider putting money into silver. It could deliver even bigger gains than gold in the years to come. To learn why, watch this short video presentation. It explains why the biggest threat to your wealth right now isn’t an economic recession, a stock market crash, or even a global banking crisis.

It’s something much bigger and far more dangerous. The good news is that you can protect yourself from this coming crisis. Watch this free video to learn how.

REMINDER: Our friends at Bonner & Partners are holding a special training series..…  
If you’ve been reading the Dispatch, you know part of our job is to share exciting opportunities with you when we hear about them. Today, we invite you to take part in a special training series hosted by Jeff Brown, editor of Exponential Tech Investor.

If you haven’t heard of Jeff, he’s an aerospace engineer, tech insider, and angel investor. His advisory, Exponential Tech Investor, focuses on young technology companies with big upside. For example, Jeff recommended an IT security company in October that’s already up 72%. Another one of Jeff’s picks has jumped 38% since February. And one is up 178% in less than a month.

In Jeff's training series, he reveals his secret to making money in technology stocks. He also talks about a HUGE opportunity taking shape in the technology space.  Click here to sign up for Jeff’s training series.

It’s 100% free and will take up less than 15 minutes of your time. Click here to register.

Chart of the Day

Silver stocks just hit a new three year high. Today’s chart shows the performance of iShares MSCI Global Silver Miners ETF (SLVP), which tracks large silver miners. As regular readers know, silver stocks are leveraged to the price of silver. It doesn’t take a big jump by silver for them to skyrocket. This year, silver’s 45% jump caused SLVP to soar 171%. It’s now trading at its highest level since April 2013.

If you think gold and silver are headed much higher like we do, you could put some of your money into gold and silver stocks. According to Doug Casey, these stocks could enter a “super bubble” in the coming years. Keep in mind, these are some of the most volatile stocks on the planet. Many gold and silver stocks can swing 5% or more in a day. If you can stomach that kind of volatility, you could see huge returns in gold and silver stocks over the next few years.



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Stock & ETF Trading Signals

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Janet Yellen: The Best Pick Pocket in the USA

By Tony Sagami

“Some of the experiences [in Europe] suggest maybe we can use negative interest rates.”
—William Dudley, President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank

“We see now in the past few years that it [negative interest rates] has been made to work in some European countries. So I would think that in a future episode that the Fed would consider it.”
Ben Bernanke

“Indeed, I would be open to the possibility of reducing the fed funds target funds range even further, as a way of producing better labor market outcomes.”
—Narayana Kocherlakota, President of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank

If you are planning to travel to any major European city, you better watch your wallet because there are thousands of very skilled pickpockets looking to separate you from your valuables. Those pickpockets, however, will only get away with however much money you have in your wallet. Sure, a pickpocket can throw a major monkey wrench into your vacation, but the amount these European thieves take from you is peanuts compared to what Fed head Janet Yellen wants to steal from your bank account.

While Wall Street experts and CNBC talking heads regularly debate the "will they or wont they" interest rate liftoff, a more important question is whether or not the Federal Reserve will follow the European model of negative interest rates. Negative interest rates are nothing unusual in Europe as several central banks lowered key interest rates below 0%.


Yup, that means investors essentially pay a fee to park their money.

That parking fee just got higher last week when the European Central Bank cut its already negative deposit rate from minus 0.2% to minus 0.3%. The ECB also expanded is current quantitative easing program. The European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank, and the Danish National Bank all have interest rates below zero. In fact, the Danes have held their overnight rates at negative 0.75% since 2012.

The Swiss, however, are the undisputed leaders of the negative interest rate experiment. The SNB first moved to negative rates in December 2014 and then dropped rates to negative 0.75% in January of this year. The Swiss National Bank, by the way, meets in a couple of days, on December 10, and is widely expected to cut rates again.

The question, of course, is how negative can interest rates go? Before the end of December, I expect deposit rates in Switzerland to be between -100bps and -125bps. Remember, we’re not talking about some backwater, third world countries here. Switzerland and Germany are two of the wealthiest countries in the world, as well as the home of major financial and political centers.

And I’m not just talking about short term paper either. Finland, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Japan are all selling five year debt with negative yields. In fact, Switzerland became the first country in history to sell benchmark 10 year debt at a negative interest rate in April.

Don’t think that negative interest rates can happen in the US? Wrong!

You may have missed it, but the United States is now also a member of the “0% club”—most recently in October, when it sold $21 billion worth of 3 month bills at 0% interest.


However, that is not the first time. Since 2008, the US government has held 46 Treasury bill auctions where yields have been zero. The next step after zero is negative… and it’s becoming a real possibility. Welcome to the European model of starving savers to death!

The implications for investors are monumental.

Ask yourself, what would you do with your money if your bank started to charge you to deposit it there? Would you pay hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars a year just to keep your money in a bank?

Option #1: Hold your nose and pay the fees.
Option #2: Move those dollars into the stock market; perhaps into dividend paying stocks.
Option #3: Buy real estate; perhaps income generating real estate.
Option #4: Invest in collectibles, like art or classic cars.
Option #5: Stuff your money under a mattress.


The point I am trying to make is, the rules for successful income investing have completely changed. If you are living (or plan on living) off the earnings of your savings, you better adapt your strategy to the new world of negative interest rates…..or plan on working as a Walmart greeter during your golden years.


Even if you think I’m nuts about negative interest rates coming to the US, there is no doubt that interest rates are not climbing anytime soon.

According to the Federal Reserve.....
"The Committee anticipates that inflation will remain quite low in the coming months.”
“The stance of monetary policy will likely remain highly accommodative for quite some time after the initial increase in the federal funds rate.”

With the US national debt approaching $19 trillion, our government doesn’t have any choice but to keep interest rates low. Sadly, our politicians are paying for their spendthrift ways by starving responsible savers.
But you can (and should) fight back by changing the way you think about investing for income. You can start by giving my high yield income letter, Yield Shark, a risk free try with 90 day money back guarantee.

Tony Sagami
Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.



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Friday, November 6, 2015

Jared Dillian is Pulling Out All the Stops

By Jared Dillian


When I was a teenager, I had a different sort of part-time job. I was a church organist. Actually, it was the best job ever because I was something of a piano prodigy as a child. Around age 12, my parents and I had to make a conscious decision about whether I was going to pursue a career in music. I decided not to, which has greatly reduced the amount of Ramen noodles I have eaten over the years.At age  13, I decided I wanted to play the organ. I took lessons from the organist in the big Catholic church downtown. What an incredible instrument!

Playing the organ is a lot harder than it looks. In case you hadn’t noticed, there is a whole keyboard at your feet—yes, you play with both your hands and your feet. And since you can’t possibly learn all the hymns, you have to be really good at sight-reading three lines of music at once. It takes a great deal of coordination. Plus, you have two or more “manuals” (keyboards) and dozens of stops, which activate the different sounds in the organ. This is where the phrase “pulling out all the stops” comes from.

So I got a job as the organist at the Unitarian church down the street. For the first and only time of my life, I was a member of a union—the American Guild of Organists. I received my union-protected minimum wage of $50 per service, which is a great deal of money if you’re 16 years old in 1990. $50 a week definitely put gas in my car. And there was a girl in the congregation that I dated a couple of times.

I felt sorry for my poor schlep classmates who were bagging groceries for $4/hour. They had to work 12 hours to make what I made in one. I felt pretty smug.  The high point was when I transcribed the theme from “A Clockwork Orange” and played it as the prelude for one of the church services. You can see where the subversive streak comes from.

I Got Skills

So why did I make more than 12 times what my high school classmates made? Because my skills were worth 12 times as much. Bagging groceries is kind of the definition of unskilled labor. Literally anyone can bag groceries. The supply of labor that has those skills is limitless.

Church organists are in slightly higher demand. But not by much! I think a church organist these days—if you are hired by the church to play every week, plus run all the choir and music programs, probably pays about $35,000 to $50,000 a year, depending on the church. So not a lot!

It’s a decent living if you like playing the organ, but you also have to deal with church politics. The wages of an organist not only depend on the supply of labor but the demand for labor as well. And church construction has gone way down in recent years. Not to mention the fact that the latest fad in religious services is “contemporary music.”


However, the fact that church organists make more money than grocery baggers does reflect the level of skill the occupation requires. Before I became a church organist, I had been playing either the piano or organ for six years. Six years of practicing 30 minutes to an hour a day, every day.

Nobody practices bagging groceries for 30 minutes a day, every day.

I don’t particularly like manual labor (though I have done it on occasion). That’s why I do my best to acquire skills that are rare and marketable so I don’t have to do things like chip paint. In this country (and others), we have this unhealthy obsession with manual labor. Politicians talk about “working Americans” all the time. We say things like “putting in a hard day’s work.” The most popular car is the Ford F-150. Who wants to put in a hard day’s work? Not me! Instead, I will put in a hard day’s thinking.

Hate and Discontent

A lot of people spend too much time thinking about what other people make. It’s unproductive. Everyone thinks Wall Street guys are overpaid, for example. Okay, so let’s take your average ETF option trader at a bank. Say he makes $500,000 a year (which might even be generous these days). Let’s examine one trade of many that he is confronted with on a daily basis. A sales trader stands up and yells to him, “20,000 XLE Jan 75 calls, how?”

What’s happening here is that a client is asking for a two-sided market on the January 75 call options in XLE, which is the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF, 20,000 times, which means options on 2,000,000 shares, or about $140,000,000. It’s a big trade, definitely, but there are bigger ones. So let’s think of all the things the option trader needs to know. He needs to know what an option is, starting from scratch.

He needs to know what XLE is, that it’s an energy ETF, and he should have a good idea of what stocks are in the portfolio. He might have a cursory knowledge about factors affecting supply and demand for crude oil. In order to come up with a price for these options, he has to have an idea of what implied volatility should be and what realized volatility might be going forward.

This requires a knowledge of an option pricing model like Black-Scholes and many, many years of college mathematics, including probability theory and differential equations. He needs to know how he is going to hedge this option. Will he hedge the delta all in the stock? Will he hedge with other options? How will he dynamically hedge the trade until maturity? Will he lay off some of the risk in other strikes? Will he buy single stock options on some of the names in the index, like XOM, CVX, or COP, to effect a dispersion trade?

This means he has to know what a dispersion trade is. More math. He also needs to understand liquidity. What will be his execution impact by trying to sell 800,000 shares of XLE? This affects how wide he makes his market. And best of all, he needs to think about all of these things in a split-second, without hesitation. If he is off by even a penny—he loses money on the trade. I would characterize that as “skilled labor.” And we haven’t even talked about the emotional fortitude it takes to take that kind of risk. $500,000 a year seems low.

CEOs

People get the most upset about executive pay. Here you have some dillweed CEO who is the direct beneficiary of the agency problem. If company XYZ does well, he gets paid millions. If it does poorly, he gets fired and loses nothing, personally. We say that he has no skin in the game.

Well, do you have what it takes to run one of the 500 largest companies in the world?

Pretend we’re talking about McDonald’s. Many people think McDonald’s is doing a terrible job. There’s a lot of evidence that they are. They’re losing market share to Chipotle and lots of other “fast casual” restaurants.

But running a company is hard enough. You have 50,000 odd restaurants, you have to manage supply and distribution for this massive network, you have to do all the managerial science behind what is on the menu and how much it costs, you have to directly negotiate, and I mean meet with leaders of foreign governments, you need to go on CNBC from time to time and not be a mutant, and above all, you need to lead inspirationally.

Not many people can do all that. I can’t. Maybe I’m smart enough, but I don’t have the emotional maturity or even the desire for that kind of responsibility. Everyone wants to be the boss, but nobody really wants to be the boss. If you think you are underpaid—maybe you are. The labor market is not perfectly efficient. Anomalies can persist.

Take a look at people who you think are overpaid. What are they doing that you aren’t? Maybe you just aren’t willing to do those things (like kiss lots of ass). The responsibility is yours and yours alone. And that, my friends, is something nobody wants to hear.
Jared Dillian
Jared Dillian

If you enjoyed Jared's article, you can sign up for The 10th Man, a free weekly letter, at mauldineconomics.com

The article The 10th Man: Pulling Out All the Stops was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.


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Wednesday, July 29, 2015

The Wall Street Titanic and You

By Tony Sagami

“I would highlight that equity market valuations at this point generally are quite high.”
—Janet Yellen

Are you worried about the stock market? If you are, you’re in the minority of investors.
Greece… China… don’t worry about it!

At least that seems to be Wall Street’s reaction to what could have been a catastrophic fall of dominoes if the European and Chinese governments hadn’t come to the rescue with another massive monetary intervention.

If you think you’ve heard the last about Greece or a Chinese stock market meltdown, you’re in the majority. Investors are pretty darn confident about the stock market.


The John Hancock Investor Sentiment Index hit +29 in the second quarter, the highest reading since the inception of the index in January of 2011.

However, overconfidence is dangerous and often accompanies market tops.

If you listen to the hear no evil cheerleaders on Wall Street and CNBC, you might be inclined to think the bull market will last a couple more decades, but we haven’t had a major correction since 2011, and the Nasdaq hit an all time high last week.

Investors are so enthusiastic that the exuberance is spilling beyond stock certificates to the high brow world of collectible art.


Investment gamblers are shopping up art in record droves. In the last major art auction, prices for collectible art reached all time highs, and somebody with more money than brains paid $32.8 million for an Andy Warhol painting of a $1 bill.

Who says a dollar doesn’t buy what it used to?

I’m not saying that a new bear market will start tomorrow morning, but I’m suggesting that bear markets hurt more and last longer than most investors realize.

The reality is that bear markets historically occur about every four and a half to five years, which means we are overdue. And the average loss during a bear market is a whopping 38%. Ouch!


On average, a bear market lasts about two and a half years… but averages can be misleading.
In the 1973-74 bear market, investors had to wait seven and a half years to get back to even. In the 2000-02 bear market, investors didn’t break even until 2007.


Unless you, too, have drunk the Wall Street Kool Aid, you should have some type of emergency back up plan for the next bear market. There are three basic options:

Option #1: Do nothing, get clobbered, and wait between two and a half and 10 years to get your money back. Most people think they can ride out bear markets, but the reality is that most investors—professional and individual alike—panic and sell when the pain gets too severe.

Option #2: Have some sort of defensive selling strategy in place to avoid the big downturns. That could be some type of simple moving average selling discipline or a more complex technical analysis. At minimum, I highly recommend the use of stop losses.

Option #3: Buy some portfolio insurance with put options or inverse ETFs. That’s exactly what my Rational Bear subscribers are doing, and I expect those bear market bets to pay off in a big, big way.

Whether it is next week, next month, or next year—a bear market for US stocks is coming, and I hope you’ll have a strategy in place to protect yourself.

If you'd like to hear what worries me most about the stock market, here is a link to an interview I did last week with old friend and market watchdog Gary Halbert.
Tony Sagami
Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.



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Wednesday, March 4, 2015

What Top Hedge Fund Managers Really Think About Gold

By Jeff Clark, Senior Precious Metals Analyst

In the January BIG GOLD, I interviewed a plethora of experts on their views about gold for this year. The issue was so popular that we decided to republish a portion of the edition here.

Given their level of success, these fund managers are worth listening to: James Rickards, Chris Martenson, Steve Henningsen, Grant Williams, and Brent Johnson. Some questions are the same, while others were tailored to their particular expertise.

I hope you find their comments as insightful and useful as I did…...

James Rickards is chief global strategist at the West Shore Funds, editor of Strategic Intelligence, a monthly newsletter, and director of the James Rickards Project, an inquiry into the complex dynamics of geopolitics and global capital. He is the author of the New York Times best  seller The Death of Money and the national best seller Currency Wars.

He’s a portfolio manager, lawyer, and economist, and has held senior positions at Citibank, Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), and Caxton Associates. In 1998, he was the principal negotiator of the rescue of LTCM sponsored by the Federal Reserve. He’s an op-ed contributor to the Financial Times, Evening Standard, New York Times, and Washington Post, and has been interviewed by the BBC, CNN, NPR, C-SPAN, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox, and the Wall Street Journal.

Jeff: Your book The Death of Money does not paint an optimistic economic picture. What will the average citizen experience if events play out as you expect?

James: The end result of current developments in the international monetary system will almost certainly be high inflation or borderline hyperinflation in US dollars, but this process will take a few years to play out, and we may experience mild deflation first. Right now, global markets want to deflate, yet central banks must achieve inflation in order to make sovereign debt loads sustainable. The result is an unstable balance between natural deflation and policy inflation. The more deflation persists in the form of lower prices for oil and other commodities, the more central banks must persist in monetary easing. Eventually inflation will prevail, but it will be through a volatile and unstable process.

Jeff: The gold price has been in a downtrend for three years. Is the case for gold over? If not, what do you think kick-starts a new bull market?

James: The case for gold is not over—in fact, things are just getting interesting. I seldom think about the “price” of gold. I think of gold as money and everything else as a price measured in gold units. When the dollar price of gold is said to be “down,” I think of gold as a constant store of value and that the dollar is simply “up” in the sense that it takes more units of gold to buy one dollar. This perspective is helpful, because gold can be “down” in dollars but “up” in yen at the same time, and often is when the yen is collapsing against the dollar.

The reason gold is thought to be “down” is because the dollar is strong. However, a strong dollar is deflationary at a time when the Fed’s declared policy is to get inflation. Therefore, I expect the Fed will not raise interest rates in 2015 due to US economic weakness and because they do not want a stronger dollar. When that realization sinks in, the dollar should move lower and gold higher when measured in dollar terms.

The looming global shortage of physical gold relative to demand also presages a short squeeze on the paper gold edifice of futures, options, unallocated forward sales, and ETFs. The new bull market will be kick started when markets realize the Fed cannot raise rates in 2015 and when the Fed finds it necessary to do more quantitative easing, probably in early 2016.

Jeff: Given what you see coming, how should the average retail investor position his or her portfolio?

James: Since risks are balanced between deflation and inflation in the short run, a sound portfolio should be prepared for both. Investors should have gold, silver, land, fine art, and other hard assets as an inflation hedge. They should have cash and US Treasury 10-year notes as a deflation hedge. They should also include some carefully selected alternatives, including global macro hedge funds and venture capital investments for alpha. Investors should avoid emerging markets, junk bonds, and tech stocks.

Steve Henningsen is chief investment strategist and partner at The Wealth Conservancy in Boulder, CO, a firm that specializes in wealth coaching, planning, and investment management for inheritors focused on preservation of capital. He is a lifetime student, traveler, fiduciary, and skeptic.

Jeff: The Fed and other central banks have kept the economy and markets propped up longer than some thought they could. How much longer do you envision them being able to do so? Or has the Fed really staved off crisis?

Steve: I do not believe we are under a new economic paradigm whereupon a nation can resolve its solvency problem via increasing debt. As to how long the central banks’ plate spinning can defer the consequences of the past 30-plus years of excess credit growth, I hesitate to answer, as I never thought they would get this far without breaking a plate. However incorrect my timing has been over the past two years, though, I am beginning to doubt that they can last another 12 months. Twice in the last few months the stock market plates began to wobble, only to have Fed performers step in to steady the display.

With the end of QE, a slowing global economy, a strengthening dollar, and the recent sharp drop in oil prices, deflationary winds are picking up going into 2015, making their balancing act yet more difficult. (Not to mention increasing tension from poking a stick at the Russian bear.)

Jeff: Gold has been in decline for over three years now. What changes that? Should we expect gold to remain weak for several more years?

Steve: I cannot remember an asset more maligned than gold is currently, as to even admit one owns it receives a reflexive look of pity. While most have left our shiny friend bloodied, lying in the ditch by the side of the road, there are signs of resurrection. While I’m doubtful gold will do much in the first half of 2015 due to deflationary winds and could even get dragged down with stocks should global liquidity once again dissipate, I am confident that our central banks would again step in (QE4?) and gold should regain its luster as investors finally realize the Fed is out of bullets.

The wildcard I’m watching is the massive accumulation of gold (and silver) bullion by Russia, China, and India, and the speculation behind it. Should gold be announced as part of a new monetary system via global currency or gold-backed sovereign bond issuance, then gold’s renaissance begins.

Jeff: Given what you see coming, how should the average investor position her or his portfolio?

Steve: Obviously I am holding on to our gold bullion positions, as painful as this has been. I would also maintain equity exposure via investment managers with the flexibility to go long and short. I believe this strategy will finally show its merits vs. long-only passive investments in the years ahead. I believe that for the next 6-12 months, long-term Treasuries will help balance out deflationary risks, but they are definitely not a long-term hold. Maintaining an above average level of cash will allow investors to take advantage of any equity downturns, and I would stay away from industrial commodities until the deflationary winds subside.
Precious metals equities could not be hated more and therefore represent the best value if an investor can stomach their volatility.

Grant Williams is the author of the financial newsletter Things That Make You Go Hmmm and cofounder of Real Vision Television. He has spent the last 30 years in financial markets in London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York, Sydney, and Singapore, and is the portfolio and strategy advisor to Vulpes Investment Management in Singapore.

Jeff: The Fed and other central banks have kept the economy and markets propped up longer than some thought possible. How much longer do you envision them being able to do so? Or has the Fed really staved off crisis?

Grant: I have repeatedly referred to a singular phenomenon over the past several years and it bears repeating as we head into 2015: for a long time, things can seem to matter to nobody until the one day when they suddenly matter to everybody. It feels as though we have never been closer to a series of such moments, any one of which has the potential to derail the narrative that central bankers and politicians have been working so hard to drive.

Whether it be Russia, Greece, the plummeting crude oil price, or a loss of control in Japan, there are a seemingly never-ending series of situations, any one (or more) of which could suddenly erupt and matter to a lot of people at the same time. Throw in the possibility that a Black Swan comes out of nowhere that nobody has thought about (even something as seemingly trivial as the recent hack of Sony Pictures by the North Koreans could set in motion events which can cascade very quickly in a geopolitical world which has so many fissures running through it), and you have the possibility that fear will replace greed overnight in the market’s collective psyche. When that happens, people will want gold.

The issue then becomes where they are going to get it from. Physical gold has been moving steadily from West to East despite the weak paper prices we have seen for the last couple of years, and this can continue until there is a sudden wider need for gold as insurance or as a currency. When that day comes, the price will move sharply from being set in the paper market—where there is essentially infinite supply—to being set in the physical markets where there is very inelastic supply and the existing stock has been moving into strong hands for several years. Materially higher prices will be the only way to resolve the imbalance.

Jeff: You’ve written a lot about the gold market over the past few years. In your view, what are the most important factors gold investors should keep in mind right now?

Grant: I think the key focus should be on two things: first, the difference between paper and physical gold; and second, on the continuing drive by national banks to repatriate gold supplies. The former is something many people who are keen followers of the gold markets understand, but it is the latter which could potentially spark what would, in effect, be a run on the gold “bank.” Because of the mass leasing and rehypothecation programs by central banks, there are multiple claims on thousands of bars of gold. The movement to repatriate gold supplies runs the risk of causing a panic by central banks.

We have already seen the beginnings of monetary policy divergence as each central bank begins to realize it is every man for himself, but if that sentiment spreads further into the gold markets, it could cause mayhem.
Keep a close eye on stories of further central bank repatriation—there is a tipping point somewhere that, once reached, will light a fire under the physical gold market the likes of which we haven’t seen before, and that tipping point could well come in 2015.

Jeff: Given what you see coming, how should the average investor position his or her portfolio?

Grant: Right now I think there are two essentials in any portfolio: cash and gold. The risk/reward skew of being in equity markets in most places around the world is just not attractive at these levels. With such anemic growth everywhere we turn, and while it looks for all the world that bond yields are set to continue falling, I think the chances of equities continuing their stellar run are remote enough to make me want out of equity markets altogether.

There are pockets of value, but they are in countries where the average investor is either disadvantaged due to a lack of local knowledge and a lack of liquidity, or there is a requirement for deep due diligence of the kind not always available to the average investor.

The other problem is the ETF phenomenon. The thirst for ETFs in order to simplify complex investing decisions, as well as to throw a blanket over an idea in order to be sure to get the “winner” within a specific theme or sector, is not a problem in a rising market (though it does tend to cause severe value dislocations amongst stocks that are included in ETFs versus those that are not). In a falling market, however, when liquidity is paramount, any sudden upsurge of selling in the ETF space will require the underlying equities be sold into what may very well be a very thin market.

In a rising market, there is always an offer. In a falling market, bids can be hard to come by and in many cases, nonexistent, so anybody expecting to divest themselves of ETF positions in a 2008 like market could well find themselves with their own personal Flash Crash on their hands.

Unlevered physical gold has no counterparty risk and has sustained a bid for 6,000 straight years (and counting). Though sometimes, in the wee small hours, those bids can be both a little sparse and yet strangely attractive to certain sellers of size.

Meanwhile, a healthy allocation to cash offers a supply of dry powder that can be used to gain entry points which will hugely amplify both the chances of outperformance and the level of that performance in the coming years.

Remember, you make your money when you buy an asset, not when you sell it.

Caveat emptor.

Chris Martenson, PhD (Duke), MBA (Cornell), is an economic researcher and futurist who specializes in energy and resource depletion, and is cofounder of Peak Prosperity. As one of the early econobloggers who forecasted the housing market collapse and stock market correction years in advance, Chris rose to prominence with the launch of his seminal video seminar, The Crash Course, which has also been published in book form.

Jeff: The Fed and other central banks have kept the economy and markets propped up longer than some thought possible. How much longer do you envision them being able to do so? Or has the Fed really staved off crisis?

Chris: Well, if people were being rational, all of this would have stopped a very long time ago. There’s no possibility of paying off current debts, let alone liabilities, and yet “investors” are snapping up Italian 10 year debt at 2.0%! Or Japanese government bonds at nearly 0% when the total debt load in Japan is already around $1 million per rapidly aging person and growing. I cannot say how much longer so called investors are willing to remain irrational, but if pressed I would be very surprised if we make it past 2016 without a major financial crisis happening.

Of course, this bubble is really a bubble of faith, and its main derivative is faith based currency. And it’s global. Bubbles take time to burst roughly proportional to their size, and these nested bubbles the Fed and other central banks have engineered are by far the largest ever in human history.

As always, bubbles are always in search of a pin, and we cannot know exactly when that will be or what will finally be blamed. All we can do is be prepared.

Jeff: If deflationary forces pick up, how do you expect gold to perform?

Chris: Badly at first, and then spectacularly well. It’s like why the dollar is rising right now. Not because it’s a vastly superior currency, but because it’s the mathematical outcome of trillions of dollars’ worth of US dollar carry trades being unwound. So the first act in a global deflation is for the dollar to rise. Similarly, the first act is for gold to get sold by all of the speculators that are long and need to raise cash to unwind other parts of their trade books.

But the second act is for people to realize that the institutions and even whole nation states involved in the deflationary mess are not to be trusted. With opaque accounting and massive derivative positions, nobody will really know who is solvent and who isn’t. This is when gold gets “rediscovered” by everyone as the monetary asset that is free of counterparty risk—assuming you own and possess physical bullion, of course, not paper claims that purport to be the same thing but are not.

Jeff: Given what you see coming, how should the average investor position her or his portfolio?

Chris: Away from paper and toward real things. If the outstanding claims are too large, or too pricey, or both, then history is clear; the perceived value of those paper claims will fall.

My preferences are for land, precious metals, select real estate, and solid enterprises that produce real things. Our view at Peak Prosperity is that deflation is now winning the game, despite everything the central banks have attempted, and that the very last place you want to be is simply long a bunch of paper claims.

However, before the destruction of the currency systems involved, there will be a final act of desperation by the central banks that will involve printing money that goes directly to consumers. Perhaps it will be tax breaks or even rebates for prior years, or even the direct deposit of money into bank accounts.

When this last act of desperation arrives, you’ll want to be out of anything that looks or smells like currency and into anything you can get your hot little hands on. This may include equities and other forms of paper wealth—just not the currency itself. You’ll want to run, not walk, with a well-curated list of things to buy and spend all your currency on before the next guy does.

We’re not there yet, but we’re on our way. Expect the big deflation to happen first and then be alert for the inevitable central bank print a thon response.

Because of this view, we believe that having a very well balanced portfolio is key, with the idea that now is the time to either begin navigating toward real things, or to at least have that plan in place so that after the deflationary impulse works its destructive magic, you are ready to pounce.

Brent Johnson is CEO of Santiago Capital, a gold fund for accredited investors to gain exposure to gold and silver bullion stored outside the United States and outside of the banking system, in addition to precious metals mining equities. Brent is also a managing director at Baker Avenue Asset Management, where he specializes in creating comprehensive wealth management strategies for the individual portfolios of high-net-worth clients. He’s also worked at Credit Suisse as vice president in its private client group, and at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) in New York City.

Jeff: The Fed and other central banks have kept the economy and markets propped up longer than some thought possible. How much longer do you envision them being able to do so? Or has the Fed really staved off crisis?

Brent: As much as I dislike the central planners, from a Machiavellian perspective you really have to give them credit for extending their influence for as long as they have. I wasn’t surprised they could engineer a short-term recovery, and that’s why, even though I manage a precious metals fund, I don’t recommend clients put all their money in gold. But I must admit that I have been surprised by the duration of the bull market in equities and the bear market in gold. And while I probably shouldn’t be, I’m continually surprised by the willingness of the investing public to just accept as fact everything the central planners tell them. The recovery is by no means permanent and is ultimately going to end very, very badly.

But I don’t have a crystal ball that tells me how much longer this movie will last. My guess is that we are much closer to the end than the beginning. So while they could potentially draw this out another year, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see it all blow up tomorrow, because this is all very much contrived. That’s why I continue to hold gold. It is the ultimate form of payment and cannot be destroyed by either inflation, deflation, central bank arrogance, or whatever other shock exerts itself into the markets.

Jeff: As a gold fund manager, you’ve watched gold decline for over three years now. What changes that? And when? Should we expect gold to remain weak for several more years?

Gold has been in one of its longest bear markets in history. Many of us in the gold world must face up to this. We have been wrong on the direction of gold for three years now. Is this due to bullion banks trying to maximize their quarterly bonuses by fleecing the retail investor? Is it due to coordination at the central bank level to prolong the life of fiat currency? Is it due to the Western world not truly understanding the power of gold and surrendering our bullion to the East? I don’t know… maybe it’s a combination of all three. Or maybe it’s something else altogether.

What I do know is that gold is still down. Now the good news is… that’s okay. It’s okay because it isn’t going to stay down. The whole point of investing is to arbitrage the difference between price and value. And right now there remains a huge arbitrage to exploit. As Jim Grant said, “Investing is about having people agree with you… later.”

Now all that said, I realize it hasn’t been a fun three years. This isn’t a game for little boys, and I’ve felt as much pain as anyone. I think the trend is likely to change when the public’s belief in the central banks starts coming into question. We are starting to see the cracks in their omnipotence. For the most part, however, investors still believe that not only will the central banks try to bail out the markets if it comes to that, but they also still believe the central banks will be successful when they try. In my opinion, they are wrong.

And there are several catalysts that could spark this change—oil, Russia, other emerging markets, or the ECB and Japan monetizing the debt. This “recovery” has gone on for a long time. But from a mathematical perspective, it simply can’t go on forever. So as I’ve said before, if you believe in math, buy gold.

Jeff: Given what you see coming, how should the average investor position her or his portfolio?

Brent: The answer to this depends on several factors. It depends on the investor’s age, asset level, income level, goals, tolerance for volatility, etc. But in general, I’m a big believer in the idea of the “permanent portfolio.” If you held equal parts fixed income, equities, real estate, and gold over the last 40 years, your return is equal to that of the S&P 500 with substantially less volatility. And this portfolio will perform through inflation, deflation, hyperinflation, collapse, etc.

So if you are someone who is looking to protect your wealth without a lot of volatility, this is a very strong solution. If you are younger, are trying to create wealth, and have some years to ride out potential volatility, I would skew this more toward a higher allocation to gold and gold shares and less on fixed income, for example.

Because while I generally view gold as insurance, this space also has the ability to generate phenomenal returns and not just protect wealth, but create it. But whatever the case, regardless of your age, level of wealth, or world view, the correct allocation to gold in your portfolio is absolutely not zero. Gold will do phenomenally well in the years ahead, and those investors who are willing to take a contrarian stance stand to benefit not only from gold’s safety, but also its ability to generate wealth.

One other thing to remember about gold is that while it may be volatile, it’s not risky. Volatility is the fluctuation in an asset’s daily/weekly price. Risk is the likelihood of a permanent loss of capital. And with gold (in bullion form), there is essentially no chance of a permanent loss of capital. It is the one asset that has held its value not just over the years, but over the centuries. I for one do not hold myself out as being smarter than thousands of years of collective global wisdom. If you do, I wish you the best of luck!

Of course, bullish signs for gold have been mounting, which begs the question: could the breakthrough for the gold market be near?

Well, no one knows for sure. But what we do know is that when the market recovers, the handful of superb mining stocks that have survived the slaughter won’t just go up—they’ll go vertical.

Which is why we're hosting a free online event called, GOING VERTICAL, headlined by a panel of eight top players in the precious metals sector, names you'll no doubt recognize. Each of our guests give their assessment on where the gold market is right now, how long it will take to recovery, and what practical steps you need to take to prepare including - which stocks you should own now.

This free video event will air March 10th, 2pm Eastern time. To make sure you don't miss it, click here to register now.



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Saturday, February 14, 2015

Weekly Crude Oil and Gold Recap with Mike Seery

It's time for our weekly commodity futures recap with our trading partner Mike Seery. He has been Senior Analyst for close to 15 years and has extensive knowledge of all of the commodity and option markets. And frequently appears on multiple business networks including Bloomberg news, Fox Business, CNBC Worldwide, CNN Business, and Bloomberg TV. He is also a guest on First Business, which is a national and internationally syndicated business show.

Crude oil futures in the March contract are trading above their 20 but still below their 100 day moving average settling last Friday at 51.69 a barrel while trading up $1.80 this Friday afternoon currently trading at $53 a barrel right near a 6 week high as the chart structure is starting to improve. I have been advising traders to sit on the sidelines and avoid this market as volatility is extremely high but it does look to me that prices are bottoming here in the short term still waiting for a breakout to occur while maintaining the proper risk management as I do need to see better chart structure as volatility is too high for my blood at the current time.

The U.S dollar is still right near 11 year highs as that market is also trending sideways giving little direction for crude oil as prices look to consolidate that massive move down in my opinion over the next several months as I think volatility is going to remain extremely high but avoid this market and look for another trend that’s just beginning. Crude oil has been the leader in recent months to the downside so when you start to see a bottoming formation possibly occur now you’re starting to see many of the other commodities like grains and metals move higher but only time will tell to see if this is a dead cat bounce or the long term bottom being created
Trend: Higher
Chart Structure: Improving

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Gold futures in the April contract are up $13 this afternoon in New York currently trading at $1,233 an ounce after settling last Friday around $1,235 basically unchanged for the trading week still right near 4 week lows is I’m recommending investors to sit on the sidelines in this market as the trend is currently mixed. Gold futures are trading below their 20 but just barely above their 100 day moving average as the S&P 500 had a terrific week as the Dow Jones cracked 18,000 to the upside as that’s where the interest lies currently as the next major level of support is between $1,180 – $1,220 but sit on the sidelines as the chart structure is absolutely terrible at the current time.

If you have followed any of my previous blogs I constantly stress the fact to avoid markets that are choppy as I think the success rate is very low unless you are some type of day trader but I hold positions overnight so look for another market that is beginning to trend and keep an eye on gold as I don’t think we will be trading this market for quite some time. The U.S dollar is still right near 11 year high and that’s always pessimistic commodities in general especially the precious metals but at the current time I just don’t have an opinion on this market as I think we will chop around in the short term.
Trend: Mixed
Chart Structure: Poor

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