Monday, October 13, 2014

Commodities Market Summary for Monday October 13th - Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Gold, Coffee

November crude oil closed lower on Monday. The high range close sets the stage for a steady to higher opening when Tuesday's night session begins. Stochastics and the RSI are oversold but remain neutral to bearish signaling that sideways to lower prices are possible near term. If November extends the decline off June's high, the 62% retracement level of the 2009-2011 rally crossing at 80.80 is the next downside target. Closes above the 20 day moving average crossing at 90.64 are needed to confirm that a low has been posted. First resistance is the 10 day moving average crossing at 88.63. Second resistance is the 20 day moving average crossing at 90.64. First support is last Friday's low crossing at 83.15. Second support is the 62% retracement level of the 2009-2011 rally crossing at 80.80.

We made the arrangements for a FREE MarketClub Trial....It’s been paid for!

November Henry natural gas closed higher on Monday as it consolidates some of last week's losses. The high range close sets the stage for a steady to higher opening when Tuesday's session begins trading. Stochastics and the RSI are oversold but remain neutral to bearish signaling that sideways to lower prices are possible near term. If November extends last week's decline, September's low crossing at 3.812 is the next downside target. Multiple closes above the late August high crossing at 4.163 are needed to confirm an upside breakout of the late summer trading range. Closes below July's low crossing at 3.786 would confirm a downside breakout of the late summer trading range. First resistance is the reaction high crossing at 4.184. Second resistance is the reaction high crossing at 4.487. First support is September's low crossing at 3.812. Second support is July's low crossing at 3.786.

Todays Top Dividend Plays, Stock and ETF....Just Click Here

December gold closed higher on Monday as it extends this month's short covering rally. The high range close sets the stage for a steady to higher opening when Tuesday's night session begins trading. Stochastics and the RSI are neutral to bullish signaling that sideways to higher prices are possible near term. If December extends this month's rally, the 38% retracement level of the July-October decline crossing at 1246.00 is the next upside target. Closes below the 10 day moving average crossing at 1214.20 would confirm that a short term top has been posted. First resistance is the 38% retracement level of the July-October decline crossing at 1246.00 . Second resistance is the 50% retracement level of the July-October decline crossing at 1265.50 . First support is October's low crossing at 1183.30. Second support is monthly support crossing at 1179.40.

Here's our simple method to "Bring Your Portfolio into the 21st Century"

December coffee closed lower due to profit taking on Monday. The low range close set the stage for a steady to lower opening on Tuesday. Stochastics and the RSI are overbought but remain neutral to bullish signaling that sideways to higher prices are possible near term. If December extends the rally off September's low, weekly resistance crossing at 24.30 is the next upside target. Closes below the 20 day moving average crossing at 19.79 are needed to confirm that a top has been posted.

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Saturday, October 11, 2014

The Broken State and How to Fix It

By Casey Research

The United States of America is not what it used to be. Unsustainable mountains of debt, continuous meddling by the government and Fed to “stimulate the economy,” and the U.S. dollar’s dwindling status as the world’s reserve currency are very real threats to Americans’ standard of living. Here are some opinions from the recently concluded Casey Research Fall Summit on the state of the state and how to fix it.

Marc Victor, a criminal defense attorney from Arizona and a staunch liberty advocate, says there’s really no such thing as “the state”—“it’s just some people bossing other people around.”

Not everyone wants to fix things, he says; the bosses like the status quo. For example, aside from drug lords, DEA agents are the ones benefiting most from the “War on Drugs.”

Victor believes that democracy and freedom are incompatible, since “democracy is majority rule, and freedom is self-rule.” If you want to bring true freedom to America, he says, winning hearts and minds is the only way to reboot this country and create a free society.

Paul Rosenberg, adventure capitalist, Casey Research contributor, and editor of “A Free Man’s Take,” views America’s future similarly. He thinks the United States is in a state of entropy.

The bad news, says Rosenberg, is that there will be no revolution. The good news is that the peak of citizens’ obedience to the state is behind us, and people are getting fed up with the government’s shenanigans.

Real change is slow, he says, so we must work persistently to create a better world.

Stephen Moore, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, says the problem is liberal economic policy: Red states in the US, he says, have blown away blue states in job creation since 1990. Texas alone accounts for the entire net growth of the US economy over the past five years.

As another proof point in favor of a free market economy, Moore emphasizes that both Obama and Reagan took office during terrible economic times. While Obama has raised taxes and instituted Obamacare, Reagan cut taxes and regulation. As a result, the Reagan economic recovery was almost twice as robust as the Obama “recovery.”

One of the US’s biggest problems, says Moore, is that companies can’t reinvest profits because dividend, capital gains, and income taxes all have increased under Obama. Corporate taxes in the rest of the world have dramatically declined in the last 25 years, but in the US, they haven’t budged. The average corporate tax rate around the world is 24%—in the US, it’s 38%.

Overall, though, Moore is bullish on the U.S. economy. American companies, he says, are the best run in the world, if only the US government would adopt less economically destructive policies.

Doug Casey, chairman of Casey Research, legendary speculator, and best-selling financial author, isn’t so optimistic. First of all, he says, we’re in the Greater Depression right now, which began in 2008. He fears it’s too late to repair America, but says if anyone would attempt to do so, the following seven step program would help:
  • Allow the collapse of “zombie companies” (companies that are only being held up by government handouts and other cash infusions).
  • Abolish all regulatory agencies.
  • Abolish the Federal Reserve.
  • Cut the size of the military by at least 90%.
  • Sell all US government assets.
  • Eliminate the income tax.
  • Default on the national debt.
Of course, says Casey, that’s not going to happen, so individual investors shouldn’t hope for a political solution or waste their time and money trying to stop the inevitable collapse of the U.S. economy. The only way to save yourself and your assets is to internationalize.

He recommends owning significant assets outside your home country: for example, by buying foreign real estate. You should also buy and store gold, “the only financial asset that’s not simultaneously someone else’s liability.”

Casey’s suggestions include going short bubbles that are about to burst (like Japanese bonds denominated in yen), selling expensive assets like collectible cars and expensive real estate in major cities, as well as looking toward places like Africa as contrarian investment opportunities.

Nick Giambruno, senior editor of International Man, agrees that internationalizing your wealth—and yourself—is the most prudent way to go for today’s high net worth investors. It ensures that “no single government can control your destiny,” and that you put your money, business, and yourself where they are treated best.

You should internationalize each of these six aspects of your life, says Giambruno: our assets; your citizenship; your income/business; your legal residency; your lifestyle residency; and your digital presence.
Regarding your assets, you can find better capitalized, more liquid banks abroad, and using international brokerage accounts can provide you access to new investment markets.

To hear all of Nick Giambruno’s detailed tips on how to go global, as well as every single presentation of the Summit, order your 26+-hour Summit Audio Collection now. It’s available in CD and/or MP3 format.

Learn More Here


The article The Broken State and How to Fix It was originally published at Casey Research.


Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Friday, October 10, 2014

Yield Hungry Baby Boomers Are on a Death March

By Dennis Miller

Today’s forecast: yield starved investors forced into the market by seemingly permanent low interest rates will continue to be collateral damage. For some, that collateral damage may involve more than the loss of income opportunities… many could be wiped out completely.

At the Casey Research Summit last month, I asked the participants in our discussion group: “If there were safe, fixed income opportunities available paying 5 - 7%, would you move a major portion of your portfolio out of the market?”

They all answered a resounding, “Absolutely.”

Participants relying on their nest eggs for retirement income said they felt forced into the market for yield. Their retirement projections weren’t based on 2% yields, the rough rate now available on fixed income investments. They’d planned on 6% or so. What other choice do they have now?

The Federal Reserve knows seniors and savers are collateral damage. Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has openly acknowledged that the Fed’s low interest rate policy is designed to prompt savers to take more chances with riskier investments. In their book Code Red, authors John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper shine a harsh light on that policy, writing:

Central banks want people to take their money out of safe investments and put them into risky investments. They call it the “portfolio balance channel,” but you could call it “starve people for yield and they’ll buy anything.”

I have to agree with Mauldin and Tepper.

The collateral damage inflicted upon seniors and savers is twofold. First, it’s the loss of safe income opportunities. The Fed’s low interest rate policies have saved banks and the government an estimated $2 trillion in interest alone. $2 trillion added to the balances of 401(k) and IRA accounts would sure bolster a lot of desperate retirement plans.

But there’s no sign the Fed will reverse its low interest rate policies in the foreseeable future. So, yield starved investors, including throngs of baby boomers maturing into retirement age each day, play the market and risk their nest eggs in the process.

The Federal Reserve has succeeded in forcing savers to take billions of dollars out of fixed income investments to hunt for better yields. Take a look at the chart below showing the S&P 500’s performance since 2004. The Index has almost tripled since its 2009 bottom. There hasn’t been a major correction in well over 1,000 days.


When the bubble burst in 2007, the S&P took a 57% drop. I had friends just entering retirement who suffered 40-50% losses. Their stories are not uncommon, and some are now back at work—and not by choice.

This is the second form of collateral damage, and it can be much more devastating. It’s one thing to lose an income opportunity and call it collateral damage, but quite another to lose 50% or more of your life savings. If the market drops radically, as it did less than a decade ago, the life savings of many baby boomers could be destroyed.

No one knows when the next correction will occur. However, many pundits believe a major correction is due. Others say we can continue on the same track, much like Japan has done for 25 years. Here’s what we do know: the Fed has made it clear that it plans to hold interest rates down for quite some time.

When you invest money earmarked for retirement, you risk trying to time the market. Even seasoned investors would be foolhardy to think they’ll have enough time to easily exit their positions and lock in gains.

It never works that way.

Now is the time for caution. Whether you’re a do it yourself investor or work with an investment professional, it’s a good time for a complete portfolio analysis with an eye on this question:

What happens to my portfolio if the market completely collapses?

There are concrete steps you can take to avoid catastrophic collateral damage. Sticking to firm position limits, diversifying geographically (including international holdings), non correlated assets, setting trailing stop losses, and holding short-duration bonds come to mind.

Be wary of any advisor touting the “buy and hold” philosophy. They’d point to the chart above and note that the market went from 700 to 1,900+ in five years. If investors are patient, it will come back after the next drop. Unfortunately, seniors don’t have time to sit around and wait.

No one can guarantee the market will rebound as quickly as it did in the last decade. It’s not the “buy” in “buy and hold” that concerns me. There are excellent companies out there that pay healthy dividends and will rebound relatively quickly. Depending on your age and financial condition, it’s the indefinite holding that could be a problem.

If you’re not comfortable holding an investment for a decade or more, consider using a stop loss. After all, would you rather suffer a major loss and hope against hope that the market rebounds fast, or be proactive and keep your nest egg intact?

The best way to avoid becoming collateral damage is to take safety precautions before the next big, bad event takes place. One easy (and free) way to start strengthening your financial know how is to read our e-letter, Miller’s Money Weekly. Each Thursday my team I cover hot button financial topics and share the tools income investors need to live rich in today’s low yield world.

Click here to begin receiving your complimentary copy today.

The article Yield Hungry Baby Boomers Are on a Death March was originally published at millers money


Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Understanding Options.....Easier Then You Think

If you have not taken the time to do this, do it asap while it's still available. You know our trading partner John Carter from his wildly popular free trading webinars and John has found yet another way to make learning to trade options in any size account even easier. With his latest FREE eBook.

The options trading eBook "Understanding Options"

In this free options trading eBook you will learn.....

  *   How to use leverage to grow your account exponentially or free up excess capital

  *   What the options basics are so you’re never confused by an options chain again

  *   The essentials to managing your position at expiration

  *   The two different types of settlement

  *   The key options terms you need to know

  *   The most important factor to your options trading success

......and much more

To get this FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Gold: Time to Prepare for Big Gains?

By Casey Research

Years of a severe downturn in the gold market have left very few bulls to speak out in favor of the yellow metal. Here are some positive opinions on the future of the precious metal, from the recently concluded Casey Research Fall Summit.

David Tice, founder of the Prudent Bear Fund, believes we are heading for a “global currency reset” that will reduce the role of the dollar in global trade. Central banks, he says, don’t possess all the gold they claim to, and the unwinding of the paper gold market probably isn’t far down the road—it could even ignite the next major crisis.

The paper gold market (for example, exchange-traded funds like GLD) has massive leverage, with a ratio of 90:1 or 100:1 of paper claims on gold bullion. If only a small fraction of owners convert their paper to physical gold, says Tice, it will create a “no bid” price environment and cause the price of gold to explode.
He believes that once the paper gold market collapses, gold will be priced on the basis of supply/demand for the physical metal—which means it could be headed for $3,000 to $8,000 per ounce.

Ed Steer, editor of Casey Research’s popular e-letter Gold and Silver Daily, is equally bullish on gold… in the long term, because right now, he believes the gold market to be rigged: “Central banks intervene; that’s what they do.”

They control not only gold, but also silver, platinum, palladium, copper, and oil. He says there are two possible reasons that Germany hasn’t gotten its gold back that it had stored in the U.S. — either the gold doesn’t exist or there’s so much paper written against it that it can’t be moved for collateral reasons.

While there’s not much an investor can do about gold manipulation, Steer believes that the manipulators’ schemes will blow up in their faces sooner than later.

Summit regular Rick Rule, chairman of Sprott US Holdings, isn’t worried about the bear market in gold.
“What matters is your response to the bear market,” he says. “If you have the wits, courage, knowledge, and cash to take advantage of them, bear markets are great.”

He’s keeping his eyes peeled on junior gold mining stocks, which, he says, are hugely attractive right now.
“Our market has fallen by 75% in three years. That means it’s 75% more attractive than in 2010, when we were all in love with it. Within a few years, we’ll look back on today’s low prices as the good old days.”
Louis James, chief investment strategist of Casey’s Metals & Mining division, also welcomes the opportunities to buy low that the current slump in gold prices provides.

He personally owns stock of three of the junior miners present in the Map Room at the Casey Fall Summit. All three of them have exceptionally high-grade projects that are delivering what they promised.

To get all of Louis James’ stock picks (and those of the other speakers), as well as every single presentation of the Summit, order your 26+-hour Summit Audio Collection now. It’s available in CD and/or MP3 format. Learn more here.


The article Gold: Time to Prepare for Big Gains? was originally published at casey research


Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

New Video: Obama’s Abandoning the Saudis for Iran and Dooming the Petrodollar

By Alex Daley, Chief Technology Investment Strategist

I sat down with Jim Rickards, author of many best selling economics and investing books, including his latest, titled The Death of Money. In this exclusive interview, Jim shares his view on the changes in U.S. foreign policy—the newly announced partnership with Iran to help fight ISIS and recent moves away from the petrodollar deal with Saudi Arabia—and what they mean for the dollar, gold, and investment markets in general.

This interview just scratches the surface of the topics Jim covered in his speech at the most recent Casey Research Summit in San Antonio. You can grab a complete recording of that speech, and all 25 of the others, in the Summit Audio Collection, which is on sale with a juicy preorder discount for just a few more days.



Alex Daley
Chief Technology Investment Strategist
Casey Research



Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Monday, October 6, 2014

War, Peace, and Financial Fireworks

By Casey Research

Politics has long been a driver of international markets and fickle financial systems alike. Everything is connected. Here are some voices from the just concluded Casey Research Fall Summit talking about cause, effect, and war.

James Rickards, senior managing director with Tangent Capital Partners and an audience favorite at investment conferences, says the Middle East, Russia, and China are all working against the U.S. dollar and for gold.

America’s recently improved relationship with Iran is actually bad for the petrodollar, he claims, because the Saudis and the Iranians are bitter enemies. The Russians, for their part, aren’t sitting idly by while the US imposes sanctions on them—aside from Putin being able to freeze US assets in Russia, Rickards believes that Russian hackers may already have the ability to shut down the New York Stock Exchange.

China does want a strong dollar because it still holds over $1 trillion in dollar-denominated assets. But Beijing is aware that eventually the dollar will depreciate, so it’s buying gold to hedge against a decline in the value of the US currency. Current gold reserves are estimated to be between 3,000 and 4,000 tonnes of gold; the ultimate target may be 8,000 tonnes.

Rickards thinks that we are approaching a period of extreme volatility in the U.S. markets and recommends allocating 10% of one’s portfolio to physical gold.

Bud Conrad, chief economist at Casey Research, also is a petrodollar bear. For the past 40 years, he says, the petrodollar has bestowed extraordinary privileges on Americans, but that era is now coming to an end.
Dozens of countries have already set up bilateral trade agreements that circumvent the US dollar. Dollars as a percentage of foreign reserves have declined from 55% in 1999 to 32% today—and could reach 18% by 2019, says Conrad. Ultimately, the petrodollar will fail, which will lead to a rise in sought-after commodities, especially gold.

Conrad thinks the greatest danger we face may be a combined financial and political collapse. Current geopolitical problems are even worse than economic problems, he says, and the trend is toward more, not less, war. Wars, on the other hand, often precipitate financial collapse.

Grant Williams, portfolio and strategy advisor for Vulpes Investment Management in Singapore and editor of the hugely popular newsletter Things That Make You Go Hmmm…, wholeheartedly agrees.

War and financial turmoil have always been inextricably linked, says Williams. Both occur in natural cycles, and one often causes the other. He believes that we’re in an extended period of economic peace because the Federal Reserve has used monetary policy “to abolish the bottom half of the business cycle.”

Although that may sound like a good thing, it is not. The business cycle, argues Williams, is inevitable and natural; we need it to cleanse the economy. But the Fed has leveraged to such unsustainable levels to “keep the peace” that the inevitable fallout will be that much worse.

He foresees serious wars to accompany the coming financial turmoil. Today’s geopolitical setup, he says, is similar to 1914’s. In 1914, France was a fading former giant (that’s Japan today); Britain was a waning superpower, no longer able to guarantee global security (that’s the US now); and Germany was an emerging industrial power huffing and puffing and making territorial claims (today, that’s China).

Rather than all out war, Marin Katusa, Casey’s chief energy investment strategist, believes the new “Colder War” will be fought by economic means, specifically through domination of the energy markets.
While Europe is using less oil than it did over a decade ago, says Katusa, it’s depending more on Russia for its energy. North Sea oil and gas production is in decline, and Norway’s production has reached a plateau and is dropping. Russia, on the other hand, owns 40% of the world’s conventional oil and gas reserves.

The solution, Katusa says, is the “European Energy Renaissance.” As Putin tightens the thumbscrews on his energy trading partners, more and more EU countries are waking up to the fact that they will have to produce their own energy to gain independence from Russia. As the best ways to play this new paradigm, Katusa recommends three undervalued North American companies that are in the thick of the action.

To get Marin Katusa’s timely stock picks (and those of the other speakers), as well as every single presentation of the Summit and all bonus files the speakers used, order your 26+-hour Summit Audio Collection now. They’re available in CD and/or MP3 format. Learn more here.


The article War, Peace, and Financial Fireworks was originally published at casey research


Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Sunday, October 5, 2014

How Low Can Crude Oil Go?

Our trading partner Mike Seery is laying out his bearish view on crude oil. How low can it go?

Crude oil futures in the November contract are down $1.50 a barrel currently trading at 89.53 right near two year lows with extreme choppiness over the last several weeks with many rallies and sell offs as I’ve been sitting on the sidelines but now the trend clearly is to the downside, however the chart structure is terrible at the current time so I am not taking a short at this time, however if you are interested in selling this market I would sell a futures contract at today’s price of 89.53 while placing my stop above $95 risking around $5,500 per contract.

The chart structure is very poor as volatility is extremely high but I am certainly not recommending anybody to buy this market as I do think prices are headed lower and if the chart structure improves in the next couple of days I will take a shot at the downside as we are awash in supplies worldwide plus the fact that the U.S dollar hit 2 year highs today as I see oil prices possibly heading down to the $80 level here in the next couple of months due to the fact of low demand and the fact that many of the commodity markets continue bearish trends as deflation is a problem not inflation.

The fact that prices are not rallying with havoc over in the mid East as oil used to rally sharply on problems in the Middle East but now the U.S is an exporter of oil so these ISIS events are not as important as they used to be so continue to sell any type of rally while placing your stop loss properly risking 2% of your account balance on any given trade.

TREND: LOWER
CHART STRUCTURE: TERRIBLE

Get more of Mike Seerys calls on commodities for this week....Just Click Here!

Friday, October 3, 2014

Bonds....the Fourth Quarter Trade of 2014

If you have been paying close attention to the stock market, market internals/breadth, and bonds for the past three months, you’ve likely come to the same conclusion that I have.

The US stock market is showing signs of severe weakness with the market breadth and leading indicators pointing to a sharp correction for stock prices.

With fewer stocks trading above their 50 and 200 day moving averages each week, while the broad market S&P 500 index continues to rising, this bearish divergence is a red flag for long term investors.

When a handful of large-cap stocks are the only things propelling the stock market higher while the majority of small-cap stocks are falling you should keep new position sizes smaller than normal and start moving your protective stops up to lock in gains/reduce losses in case the market rolls over sooner than later.

Small cap stocks are typically a leading indicator of the broad market. The Russell 2000 index is what investors should keep a close eye on because it’s the index of small-cap stocks. Since March of this year, the Russell 2000 been trading sideways and actually making new lows. This tells us that big money speculative traders are rotating out of the stock market and into other investments like high dividend paying stocks, blue chips, and likely bonds.

Looking at the chart below I have overlaid the S&P 500 index and the price of bonds. History has a way of repeating itself; although it may never feel the same and the economy may be different, price action of investments have the tendency to repeat.

In 2011 we saw the stock market and bonds form specific patterns. These patterns clearly show that money was rotating out of the stock market and into bonds. During times of uncertainty in the stocks market money has the tendency to move into bonds, as they are known as a safe haven. Bonds tend to reverse before the stock market does, so if you have never tracked the price chart of bonds before, then you should start.



From late 2013 until now bonds and the stock market have repeated the same price patterns from 2011. If history is going to repeat itself, which the technical and statistical analysis is also favoring, we should see the stock market correct 18% to 30% in the near future. If this happens bonds will rally to new highs.

It’s important to realize the chart above is weekly. Each candle represents five trading days, and four candles represents one month. So while this chart points to an imminent selloff from a visual standpoint, keep in mind this could take 2 to 3 months to unfold or longer. The market always has a way of dragging things out. If the market can’t shake you out, it will wait you out.

So if you are short the market or planning to short the market be very cautious as it could be choppy for the next several weeks and possibly months before price truly breaks down and we see price freefall.

To get my pre-market video analysis each day, and trade alerts visit: www.the gold and oil guy

Chris Vermeulen
Founder of Technical Traders

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Why the Fed Is So Wimpy

By John Mauldin


Another in what seems to be a small parade of scandals involving secretly recorded tapes of Federal Reserve regulators emerged last week. What a number of writers (including me) have written about regulatory capture over the past decade was brought out into the open, at least for a while. My brilliant young friend (40 seems young to me now) Justin Fox, editorial director of the Harvard Business Review and business and economic columnist for Time magazine, published a thoughtful essay this week, outlining some of the issues surrounding the whole concept of banking regulations.

Yes, the latest scandal involved Goldman Sachs, and it took place in the US, but do you really think it’s much different in Europe or Japan? Actually, there are those who argue that it’s worse in those places. This does not bode well for what happens during the next crisis (and there is always a next crisis, hopefully far in the future, though they do seem to come more frequently lately).

Writes Justin:
The point here is that if bank regulators are captives who identify with the interests of the banks they regulate, it is partly by design. This is especially true of the Federal Reserve System, which was created by Congress in 1913 more as a friend to and creature of the banks than as a watchdog. Two-thirds of the board that governs the New York Fed is chosen by local bankers. And while amendments to the Federal Reserve Act in 1933 shifted the balance of power in the Federal Reserve System from the regional Federal Reserve Banks (and the New York Fed in particular) to the political appointees on the Board of Governors in Washington, bank regulation continues to reside at the regional banks. Which means that the bank regulators’ bosses report to a board chosen by … the banks.

For those who would like a bit more bearish meat, I offer you a link to John Hussman’s latest piece, “The Ingredients of a Market Crash.”

I’m in Washington DC today at a conference sponsored by an association of endowments and foundations. They have a rather impressive roster of speakers, so I have found myself attending more sessions than I normally do at conferences. Martin Wolf and David Petraeus headline a very thoughtful group of managers and economists, accompanied by an assortment of geopolitical wizards. I’ve learned a lot.
No follow-on note today. I need to get back to my classroom education….

Your loving the fall weather analyst,
John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Stay Ahead of the Latest Tech News and Investing Trends...
Each day, you get the three tech news stories with the biggest potential impact.

Why the Fed Is So Wimpy

By Justin Fox
Harvard Business Review HBR Blog Network
September 26, 2014

Regulatory capture – when regulators come to act mainly in the interest of the industries they regulate – is a phenomenon that economists, political scientists, and legal scholars have been writing about for decades.  Bank regulators in particular have been depicted as captives for years, and have even taken to describing themselves as such.

Actually witnessing capture in the wild is different, though, and the new This American Life episode with secret recordings of bank examiners at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York going about their jobs is going to focus a lot more attention on the phenomenon. It’s really well done, and you should listen to it, read the transcript, and/or read the story by ProPublica reporter Jake Bernstein.

Still, there is some context that’s inevitably missing, and as a former banking regulation reporter for the American Banker, I feel called to fill some of it in. Much of it has to do with the structure of bank regulation in the U.S., which actually seems designed to encourage capture. But to start, there are a couple of revelations about Goldman Sachs in the story that are treated as smoking guns. One seems to have fired a blank, while the other may be even more explosive than it’s made out to be.

In the first, Carmen Segarra, the former Fed bank examiner who made the tapes, tells of a Goldman Sachs executive saying in a meeting that “once clients were wealthy enough, certain consumer laws didn’t apply to them.”  Far from being a shocking admission, this is actually a pretty fair summary of American securities law. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “accredited investor” guidelines, an individual with a net worth of more than $1 million or an income of more than $200,000 is exempt from many of the investor-protection rules that apply to people with less money. That’s why rich people can invest in hedge funds while, for the most part, regular folks can’t. Maybe there were some incriminating details behind the Goldman executive’s statement that alarmed Segarra and were left out of the story, but on the face of it there’s nothing to see here.

The other smoking gun is that Segarra pushed for a tough Fed line on Goldman’s lack of a substantive conflict of interest policy, and was rebuffed by her boss. This is a big deal, and for much more than the legal/compliance reasons discussed in the piece. That’s because, for the past two decades or so, not having a substantive conflict of interest policy has been Goldman’s business model. Representing both sides in mergers, betting alongside and against clients, and exploiting its informational edge wherever possible is simply how the firm makes its money. Forcing it to sharply reduce these conflicts would be potentially devastating.

Maybe, as a matter of policy, the United States government should ban such behavior. But asking bank examiners at the New York Fed to take an action on their own that might torpedo a leading bank’s profits is an awfully tall order. The regulators at the Fed and their counterparts at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation correctly see their main job as ensuring the safety and soundness of the banking system. Over the decades, consumer protections and other rules have been added to their purview, but safety and soundness have remained paramount. Profitable banks are generally safer and sounder than unprofitable ones. So bank regulators are understandably wary of doing anything that might cut into profits.

The point here is that if bank regulators are captives who identify with the interests of the banks they regulate, it is partly by design. This is especially true of the Federal Reserve System, which was created by Congress in 1913 more as a friend to and creature of the banks than as a watchdog. Two-thirds of the board that governs the New York Fed is chosen by local bankers. And while amendments to the Federal Reserve Act in 1933 shifted the balance of power in the Federal Reserve System from the regional Federal Reserve Banks (and the New York Fed in particular) to the political appointees on the Board of Governors in Washington, bank regulation continues to reside at the regional banks. Which means that the bank regulators’ bosses report to a board chosen by … the banks.

Then there’s the fact that Goldman Sachs is a relative newcomer to Federal Reserve supervision – it and rival Morgan Stanley only agreed to become bank holding companies, giving them access to New York Fed loans, at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. While it’s a little hard to imagine Goldman choosing now to rejoin the ranks of mere securities firms, and even harder to see how it could leap to a different banking regulator, it is possible that some Fed examiners are afraid of scaring it away.

All this is meant not to excuse the extreme timidity apparent in the Fed tapes, but to explain why it’s been so hard for the New York Fed to adopt the more aggressive, questioning approach urged by Columbia Business School Professor David Beim in a formerly confidential internal Fed report that This American Life and ProPublica give a lot of play to. Bank regulation springs from much different roots than, say, environmental regulation.

So what is to be done? A lot of the classic regulatory capture literature tends toward the conclusion that we should just give up – shut down the regulators and allow competitive forces to work their magic. That means letting businesses fail. But with banks more than other businesses, failures tend to be contagious. It was to counteract this risk of systemic failure that Congress created the Fed and other bank regulators in the first place, and even if you think that was a big mistake, they’re really not going away.

More recently, there’s been a concerted effort to take a more nuanced view of regulatory capture and how to counteract it. The recent Tobin Project book, Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It, sums up much of this thinking. While I’ve read parts of it before, I only downloaded the full book an hour ago, so I’m not going to pretend to be able to sum it up here. But here’s a thought – maybe if banking laws and regulations were simpler and more straightforward, the bank examiners at the Fed and elsewhere wouldn’t so often be in the position of making judgment calls that favor the banks they oversee. Then again, the people who write banking laws and regulations are not exactly immune from capture themselves. This won’t be an easy thing to fix.

update: The initial version of this piece listed the Office of Thrift Supervision as one of the nation’s bank regulators. As David Dayen pointed out (and I swear I knew at some point, but had totally forgotten), it was subsumed by the OCC in 2011.

Justin Fox is Executive Editor, New York, of the Harvard Business Review Group and author of The Myth of the Rational Market. Follow him on Twitter @foxjust.

Like Outside the Box?

Sign up today and get each new issue delivered free to your inbox.
It's your opportunity to get the news John Mauldin thinks matters most to your finances.


The article Outside the Box: Why the Fed Is So Wimpy was originally published at Mauldin Economics


Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Everything You Need to Know About the SP 500 Until Christmas

By Andrey Dashkov

When I need to clear my mind, I put on my beat up Saucony sneakers and drive to nearby Deer Lake Park in Burnaby, British Columbia. After a couple of miles, though, as my body gets into a rhythm, my mind wanders back to the thought that occupy it for hours each day: where will this market go next?

And I’ve thought a lot about what went on this summer. Since June 1st:

•  S&P 500 is up 2.7%, having set a new record high in September;
•  MSCI World index is down 0.5%;
•  10 year Treasury yield is down from 2.54% to 2.50%;
•  Brent Crude 0il is down 12.8%; and

•  Gold is down 2.2%.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the U.S. economy expanded by 4.6% year on year in the second quarter, up sharply from the first quarter’s disappointing 2.1% annual decline. Consensus estimates for annual GDP growth in the third and fourth quarters of this year are about 3%.

The stage seems to be set for the fifth straight year of positive economic growth in the US; however, we’re always cautious about government supplied information, especially during an election cycle.

At the moment, macro developments seem closely intertwined with stock market performance. Instead of slumping, the market was rather vibrant this summer. The S&P 500 showed resilience, reaching higher highs after a dip in late July and early August that coincided with increased uncertainty surrounding the Ukrainian crisis.

Geopolitics aside, the market was supported by GDP growth, which in turn was underpinned by strong corporate profits and margins. In fact, in the second quarter, the S&P 500 set a new record for profit margins: 9.1%. So much for “sell in May and go away.”

Expanding earnings and margins are great news on the fundamental front. Of the trends we observed this summer, at least two will benefit S&P 500 companies’ profitability. Cheaper oil may keep energy costs down, while consumers are more than willing to swipe their debit and credit cards. In August, consumer confidence jumped to its highest level since October 2007, having increased for four months in a row.

Loose Money Helping Stocks in the Short Term


The Fed has done its part, too. Long-term effects of its prolonged loose monetary policy aside, it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t helped stocks in the short term. With Treasury rates still low, debt options abound, and companies can obtain cheap funding for things like capital expenditures and buying back shares.

In the first quarter, 290 companies from the S&P 500 bought back shares at a cost of $159.3 billion, 59% more than a year ago. Dividends are up as well: in the first quarter, S&P 500 companies spent a record $241.2 billion on dividends and repurchases together, according to Standard & Poor’s.

Second quarter share repurchases were estimated at $106 billion, according to Financial Post. That’s much lower than first-quarter repurchases (though the official numbers aren’t out yet) and down 10% year on year.

Buyback Frenzy Is a Net Positive for Share Prices


However, the most important takeaway is that the cumulative effect of the recent buyback frenzy was positive for share prices and dividends. With fewer shares, it’s easier for companies to maintain dividend payments. Higher share prices may drive down dividend yields, but companies tend to increase dividends over time, which makes up for that in part. And despite the S&P 500’s significant growth over the past five years, dividend yields have not decreased as much as one would expect.

The chart below tracks the S&P 500’s median dividend yield since the first quarter of 2009.


The median dividend yield decreased just slightly over this period: from 1.9% in 1Q09 to 1.7% in 2Q14, and it’s held relatively steady over the past three years.

The good news is that S&P companies aren’t stretching their balance sheets too thin to cover these dividend payments—these payments are backed by earnings. The median dividend payout ratio (the ratio of dividends paid to net income), although up from five years ago, still looks solid.


S&P companies can successfully cover their dividends with earnings, so there’s no reason to fear that they’ll have to borrow to keep paying them. However, a lot of investors worry about leverage. On one hand, financial leverage boosts return on equity (ROE), and prudent borrowing can be a positive for investors. On the other hand, large amounts of leverage leads to volatility in earnings, a less stable balance sheet, and risk that affects valuations.

Debt and Cash Both Up


These are legitimate concerns, but our next chart shows that in the past five years, S&P companies have increased debt while also accumulating a lot of cash on their balance sheets.


Debt and cash grew at about the same pace during the last couple of years. There were many reasons for this trend, but two interrelated ones stand out: the abundance of cheap debt that S&P companies took advantage of (why spend your own cash when you can finance on such great terms and pay it back over a long period?); and the desire to keep interest on that debt as low as possible by making credit rating agencies happy and holding a lot of cash in the bank.

If a correction is in the cards for the near term, this cash, increased earnings, and the support coming from share buybacks will provide some cushion for these companies’ valuations.

Why We’re Not “Permabears”


So what’s ahead? I wish I knew. There are a lot of market bears out there who say this rally will come to a halt sooner rather than later, and the S&P will fall off a cliff. I stay away from calling tops and bottoms and wonder how many pundits actually have any skin in the game. Going short the market requires timing; so any “permabear” who puts money where his mouth is may lose a lot if his timing is wrong.
I’m not saying the rising market is somehow “wrong.” There are solid company level fundamentals and positive macro-level data points here and there that support a significant part of its growth.

Your Plan to Profit


We’re pragmatists at Miller’s Money. Quantitative easing and basement-level interest rates have flooded the market with dollars and eroded yields, but you should use these circumstances to capture some of the benefits they’ve created. No, you can’t earn much on CDs. No, dividend yields might not beat inflation (at least not all of them, and certainly not every estimate of inflation). And yes, the current rally will eventually end, one way or another. We just don’t know when or how. No one does.

What matters is that even in this situation you can protect your financial well being by sticking to our core strategy: diversify geographically and across sectors; and invest in assets that provide robust yield relative to risk and have the potential to rise in price. You can learn more about the Miller’s Money Forever core strategy here—a time-tested plan designed for seniors, savers and like-minded conservative investors.



Make sure to get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Sunday, September 28, 2014

The End of Monetary Policy

Thoughts from the Frontline: The End of Monetary Policy

By John Mauldin


We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar…
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
            –  T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. This is not to say that there will no longer be events to fill the pages of Foreign Affairs' yearly summaries of international relations, for the victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run.

– Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

Francis Fukuyama created all sorts of controversy when he declared “the end of history” in 1989 (and again in 1992 in the book cited above). That book won general applause, and unlike many other academics he has gone on to produce similarly thoughtful work. A review of his latest book, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy, appeared just yesterday in The Economist. It’s the second volume in a two-volume tour de force on “political order.”

I was struck by the closing paragraphs of the review:

Mr. Fukuyama argues that the political institutions that allowed the United States to become a successful modern democracy are beginning to decay. The division of powers has always created a potential for gridlock. But two big changes have turned potential into reality: political parties are polarised along ideological lines and powerful interest groups exercise a veto over policies they dislike. America has degenerated into a “vetocracy”. It is almost incapable of addressing many of its serious problems, from illegal immigration to stagnating living standards; it may even be degenerating into what Mr. Fukuyama calls a “neopatrimonial” society in which dynasties control blocks of votes and political insiders trade power for favours.

Mr. Fukuyama’s central message in this long book is as depressing as the central message in “The End of History” was inspiring. Slowly at first but then with gathering momentum political decay can take away the great advantages that political order has delivered: a stable, prosperous and harmonious society.

While I am somewhat more hopeful than Professor Fukuyama is about the future of our political process (I see the rise of a refreshing new kind of libertarianism, especially among our youth, in both conservative and liberal circles, as a potential game changer), I am concerned about what I think will be the increasing impotence of monetary policy in a world where the political class has not wisely used the time that monetary policy has bought them to correct the problems of debt and market restricting policies. They have avoided making the difficult political decisions that would set the stage for the next few decades of powerful growth.

Make sure you get our new FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

So while the title of this letter, “The End of Monetary Policy,” is purposely provocative, the longer and more appropriate title would be “The End of Effective and Productive Monetary Policy.” My concern is not that we will move into an era of no monetary policy, but that monetary policy will become increasingly ineffective, so that we will have to solve our social and physical problems in a much less friendly economic environment.
In today’s Thoughts from the Frontline, let’s explore the limits of monetary policy and think about the evolution and then the endgame of economic history. Not the end of monetary policy per se, but its emasculation.

The End of Monetary Policy

Asset classes all over the developed world have responded positively to lower interest rates and successive rounds of quantitative easing from the major central banks. To the current generation it all seems so easy. All we have to do is ensure permanently low rates and a continual supply of new money, and everything works like a charm. Stock and real estate prices go up; new private equity and credit deals abound; and corporations get loans at low rates with ridiculously easy terms. Subprime borrowers have access to credit for a cornucopia of products.

What was Paul Volcker really thinking by raising interest rates and punishing the economy with two successive recessions? Why didn’t he just print money and drop rates even further? Oh wait, he was dealing with the highest inflation our country had seen in the last century, and the problem is that his predecessor had been printing money, keeping rates too low, and allowing inflation to run out of control. Kind of like what we have now, except we’re missing the inflation.

Let’s Look at the Numbers

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has a marvelous website full of all sorts of useful information. Let’s start by looking at inflation around the world. This table is rather dense and is offered only to give you a taste of what’s available.



What we find out is that inflation is strikingly, almost shockingly, low. It certainly seems so to those of us who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s and who now, in the fullness of time, are watching aghast as stupendous amounts of various currencies are fabricated out of thin air. Seriously, if I had suggested to you back in 2007 that central bank balance sheets would expand by $7-8 trillion in the next half decade but that inflation would be averaging less than 2%, you would have laughed in my face.

Let’s take a quick world tour. France has inflation of 0.5%; Italy’s is -0.2% (as in deflation); the euro area on the whole has 0.4% inflation; the United Kingdom (which still includes Scotland) is at an amazingly low 1.5% for the latest month, down from 4.5% in 2011; China with its huge debt bubble has 2.2% inflation; Mexico, which has been synonymous with high inflation for decades, is only running in the 4% range. And so on. Looking at the list of the major economies of the world, including the BRICS and other large emerging markets, there is not one country with double digit inflation (with the exception of Argentina, and Argentina is always an exception – their data lies, too, because inflation is 3-4 times what they publish.) Even India, at least since Rajan assumed control of the Reserve Bank of India, has watched its inflation rate steadily drop.

Japan is the anomaly. The imposition of Abenomics has seemingly engineered an inflation rate of 3.4%, finally overcoming deflation. Or has it? What you find is that inflation magically appeared in March of this year when a 3% hike in the consumption tax was introduced. When government decrees that prices will go up 3%, then voilà, like magic, you get 3% inflation. Take out the 3% tax, and inflation is running about 1% in the midst of one of the most massive monetary expansions ever seen. And there is reason to suspect that a considerable part of that 1% is actually due to the ongoing currency devaluation. The yen closed just shy of 110 yesterday, up from less than 80 two years ago.

I should also point out that, one year from now, this 3% inflation may disappear into yesteryear’s statistics. The new tax will already be factored into all current and future prices, and inflation will go back to its normal low levels in Japan.

Inflation in the US is running less than 2% (latest month is 1.7%) as the Fed pulls the plug on QE. As I’ve been writing for … my gods, has it really been two decades?! – the overall trend is deflationary for a host of reasons. That trend will change someday, but it will be with us for a while.

Where’s my GDP?

Gross domestic product around the developed world ranges anywhere from subdued to anemic to outright recessionary:



The G-20 itself is growing at an almost respectable 3%, but when you look at the developed world’s portion of that statistic, the picture gets much worse. The European Union grew at 0.1% last year and is barely on target to beat that this year. The euro area is flat to down. The United Kingdom and the United States are at 1.7% and 2.2% respectively. Japan is in recession. France is literally at 0% for the year and is likely to enter recession by the end of the year. Italy remains mired in recession. Powerhouse Germany was in recession during the second quarter.

Let’s put those stats in context. We have seen the most massive monetary stimulation of the last 200 years in the developed world, and growth can be best described as faltering. Without the totally serendipitous shale oil revolution in the United States, growth here would be about 1%, or not much ahead of where Europe is today.

Demographics, Debt, Bond Bubbles, and Currency Wars

Look at the rest of the economic ecology. Demographics are decidedly deflationary. Every country in the developed world is getting older, and with each year there are fewer people in the working cohort to support those in retirement. Government debt is massive and rising in almost every country. In Japan and many countries of Europe it is approaching true bubble status. Anybody who thinks the current corporate junk bond market is sustainable is smoking funny smelling cigarettes. (The song from my youth “Don’t Bogart That Joint” pops to mind. But I digrass.)

We are seeing the beginnings of an outright global currency war that I expect to ensue in earnest in 2015. My co-author Jonathan Tepper and I outlined in both Endgame and Code Red what we still believe to be the future. The Japanese are clearly in the process of weakening their currency. This is just the beginning. The yen is going to be weakening 10 to 15% a year for a very long time. I truly expect to see the yen at 200 to the dollar somewhere near the end of the decade.

ECB head Mario Draghi is committed to weakening the euro. The reigning economic philosophy has it that weakening your currency will boost exports and thus growth. And Europe desperately needs growth. Absent QE4 from the Fed, the euro is going to continue to weaken against the dollar. Emerging-market countries will be alarmed at the increasing strength of the dollar and other developed world currencies against their currencies and will try to fight back by weakening their own money. This is what Greg Weldon described back in 2001 as the Competitive Devaluation Raceway, which back then described the competition among emerging markets to maintain the devaluation of their currencies against the dollar.

Today, with Europe and Japan gunning their engines, which have considerable horsepower left, it is a very competitive race indeed – and one with far reaching political implications for each country. As I have written in past letters, it is now every central banker for him or herself.

That Pesky Budget Thing

Developed governments around the world are running deficits. France will be close to a 4% deficit this year, with no improvement in sight. Germany is running a small deficit. Japan has a mind boggling 8% deficit, which they keep talking about dealing with, but nothing ever actually happens. How is this possible with a debt of 250% of GDP? Any European country with such a debt structure would be in a state of collapse. The US is at 5.8% and the United Kingdom at 5.3%, while Spain is still at 5.5%.

Let’s focus on the US. Everyone knows that the US has an entitlement driven spending problem, but very few people I talk with understand the true nature of the situation, which is actually quite dire, looming up ahead of us. In less than 10 years, at current debt projection growth rates, the third largest expenditure of the United States government will be interest expense. The other three largest categories are all entitlement programs. Discretionary spending, whether for defense or anything else, is becoming an ever smaller part of the budget. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid now command nearly two thirds of the national budget and rising. Ironically, polls suggest that 80% of Americans are concerned about the rising deficit and debt, but 69% oppose Medicare cutbacks, and 78% oppose Medicaid cutbacks.



At some point in the middle of the next decade, entitlement spending plus interest payments will be more than the total revenue of the government. The deficit that we are currently experiencing will explode. The following chart is what will happen if nothing changes. But this chart also cannot happen, because the bond market and the economy will simply implode before it does.



A Multitude of Sins

Monetary policy has been able to mask a multitude of our government’s fiscal sins. My worry for the economy is what will happen when Band-Aid monetary policy can no longer forestall the hemorrhaging of the US economy. Long before we get to 2024 we will have a crisis. In past years, I have expected the problems to come to a head sooner rather than later, but I have come to realize that the US economy can absorb a great deal of punishment. But it cannot absorb the outcomes depicted in those last two charts. Something will have to give.

And these projections assume there will be no recession within the next 10 years. How likely is that? What happens when the US has to deal with its imbalances at the same time Europe and Japan must deal with theirs? These problems are not resolvable by monetary policy.

Right now the markets move on every utterance from Janet Yellen, Mario Draghi, and their central bank friends. Central banking dominates the economic narrative. But what happens to the power of central banks to move markets when the fiscal imperative overcomes the central bank narrative?

Sometime this decade (which at my age seems to be passing mind-numbingly quickly) we are going to face a situation where monetary policy no longer works. Optimistically speaking, interest rates may be in the 2% range by the end of 2016, assuming the Fed starts to raise rates the middle of next year and raises by 25 basis points per meeting. If we were to enter a recession with rates already low, what would dropping rates to the zero bound again really do? What kind of confidence would that tactic actually inspire? And gods forbid we find ourselves in a recession or a period of slow growth prior to that time. Will the Fed under Janet Yellen raise interest rates if growth sputters at less than 2%?

An even scarier scenario is what will happen if we don’t deal with our fiscal issues. You can’t solve a yawning deficit with monetary policy.

Further, at some point the velocity of money is going to reverse, and monetary policy will have to be far more restrained. The only reason, and I mean only, that we’ve been able to get away with such a massively easy monetary policy is that the velocity of money has been dropping consistently for the last 10 years. The velocity of money is at its lowest level since the end of World War II, but it is altogether possible that it will slow further to Great Depression levels.

When the velocity of money begins to once again rise – and in the fullness of time it always does – we are going to face the nemesis of inflation. Monetary policy during periods of inflation is far more constrained. Quantitative easing will not be the order of the day.

For Keynesians, we are in the Golden Age of Monetary Policy. It can’t get any better than this: free money and low rates and no consequences (at least no consequences that can be seen by the public). This will end, as it always does…..

Not with a Bang but a Whimper

Will we see the end of monetary policy? No, policy will just be constrained. The current era of easy monetary policy will not end (in the words of T.S. Eliot) with a bang but a whimper. Janet or Mario will walk to the podium and say the same words they do today, and the markets will not respond. Central banks will lose control of the narrative, and we will have to figure out what to do in a world where profits and productivity are once again more important than quantitative easing and monetary policy.

You need to be thinking about how you will react and how you want to protect your portfolios in such a circumstance. Even if that volatility is years off, “war-gaming” how you will respond is an important exercise. Because it will happen, unless Congress and the White House decide to resolve the fiscal crisis before it happens. Calculate the odds on that happening and then decide whether you need to have a plan.

Unless you think the bond market will continue to finance the US government through endless deficits (as so far has happened in Japan), then you need to start to contemplate the end of effective monetary policy. I would note that, even in Japan, monetary policy has not been effective in restarting an economy. It is a quirk of Japan’s social structure that the Japanese have devoted almost their entire net savings to government bonds. As the savings rate there is getting ready to turn negative, we are going to see a very different economic result. Japan with the yen at 200 and an even older society will look a great deal different than the country does today.

Current market levels of volatility and complacency should be seen as temporary. Plan accordingly.

Washington DC, Chicago, Athens (Texas), and Boston

I am in Washington DC as you read this. I have a few meetings set up, as well as a speaking engagement, and then I’ll return home to meet with my business partners at Mauldin Economics later in the week. In the middle of October I will go to Chicago for a speech, fly back to a meeting with Kyle Bass and his friends at the Barefoot Ranch in Athens, Texas, and then fly out to Boston to spend the weekend with Niall Ferguson and some of his friends. I am sure I will be happily surfing mental stimulus overload that week.

Next weekend (October 4) is my 65th birthday. I had originally thought I would do a rather low key event with family; but my staff, family, and friends have different plans. I’m not really supposed to know what’s going on and don’t really have much of an idea as I am not allowed around planning sessions, but it sounds like fun.

I am walking on legs that feel like Jell-O, as it was “legs day” yesterday, working out with The Beast. My regular workout partner couldn’t make it, so he was able to focus on exhausting me to the maximum extent possible. I’ve never been all that athletic. As a kid, for the most part I was not allowed to participate in PE due to some physical limitations (which fortunately went away as I grew older).

I became a true geek. Not that that is all bad: it has served me rather well later in life. Geeks rule. It wasn’t until I was in my mid 40s that I began to go to the gym on more than a haphazard basis. And I must confess that I was a typical male in that I focused on my upper body as opposed to my legs and abdominals. That oversight is catching up with me now. The Beast is forcing me to devote more time to my legs and core. Much better for me as I approach the latter half of my 60s, but it’s painful to realize the cost of my negligence.

In the last five or six years my travel has reduced my gym time, or at least that’s my excuse. For whatever reason, my travel has been reduced for the last two months, so I’m getting much more time in the gym, and my workouts are more well rounded. I typically try to do at least another 30 minutes of cardio after our training sessions, even if the session was based around cardio. Except on leg days. There’s nothing left for extra walking or cycling after leg days.

I share this because I want you to understand that working out is just as important as your investment strategy. I fully intend to be going strong for a very long time. But that doesn’t happen (at least as easily) if you lose your legs. As much as I hate leg days, I probably need those workouts more than any others.

It’s time to hit the send button. I hear kids and grand kids gathering in the next room. That’s something else that is just as important as investment strategy. You have a great week.

Your thinking about how to profit from the coming crisis analyst,
John Mauldin



Make sure you get our new FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Friday, September 26, 2014

Are you a "Future Bull"?

By John Mauldin

In a conversation this morning, I remarked how rapidly things change. It was less than 20 years ago that cutting edge tech for listening to music was the cassette tape. We blew right past CDs, and now we all consume music from the cloud on our phones. Boom. Almost overnight.

A lot has changed about the global economy and politics, too. Things that were unthinkable only 10 years ago now seem to be reality. What changes, I wonder, will we be writing about a few years from now that will seem obvious with the advantage of hindsight?

In today’s Outside the Box, my good friend David Hay of Evergreen Capital sends us a letter written from the perspective of a few years in the future. I find myself wishing that some of the more hopeful events he foresees will come true, and my optimistic self actually sees a way through to such an outcome. In that future, I will join David as a bull. But the path that he proposes to take to that more optimistic future is not one that most investors will enjoy, so on the whole it’s a very sobering letter and one that should make all of us think.

Take a break to download our new FREE eBook "Understanding Options".....Just Click Here

I’m back from San Antonio, where I spent four enjoyable days with my friends and participants at the Casey Research Summit. I tried to attend as many of the conference sessions as I could, and I intend to get the “tapes” for some of the ones I missed.

I did a lot of video interviews while in San Antonio, too. And finished up a major documentary. Mauldin Economics will be making all of these available very soon. It’s hard to recommend one interview over another, but Lacy Hunt is just so smart.

And with no further remarks let’s turn it over to David Hay and think about how the next few years will play out. Have a great week.

Your wishing his crystal ball was clearer analyst,
John Mauldin, Editor

Stay Ahead of the Latest Tech News and Investing Trends...
Each day, you get the three tech news stories with the biggest potential impact.

Future Bull

By David Hay
Twitter: @EvergreenGK

“Money amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong.”
– Economist and historian Niall Ferguson

Future bull.  Let me admit up front that this EVA has been rolling around in my mind for quite awhile. Its genesis may be directly related to the fact that I’ve been desperately yearning to write a bullish EVA – besides on Canadian REITs or income securities that get trounced by the Fed’s utterances. In other words, I want to return to my normal posture of being bullish on the US stock market.

It wasn’t long ago, like in 2011, that clients were chastising me for believing in what I formerly referred to as “the coiled spring effect.” By this I meant that corporate earnings had been rising for over a decade, and yet, stock prices were much lower than they there were in 1999. Consequently, price/earnings ratios were compressed down to low levels, though certainly not to true bear market troughs. My belief was that stocks were poised for an upside explosion once the inhibiting factors, primarily extreme pessimism on the direction of the country, were removed. I even remember one long-time client dismissing my “Buy America” argument on the grounds that in my profession I had to be bullish (regular EVA readers know that is definitely not the case!).

Well, a funny thing happened to my “coiled spring effect” – namely, it became a reality. Additionally, the upward reaction was much stronger than I envisioned. But what really caught me by surprise was that it played out with virtually no improvement on the “extreme pessimism on the direction of the country” front. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I don’t think there has ever been a rally that has taken stocks to such high valuations (time for my usual qualifier – based on mid-cycle profit margins, not the Fed-inflated ones we have today) concurrent with such pervasive fears America is on the wrong track.

Undoubtedly, the pros among you who just read that last sentence are thinking: “That’s great news! All that pessimism will keep this market running. We’re not even close to the peak.” Not so fast, mon amis (and amies)! We’re not talking market pessimism here. As numerous EVAs have documented, US investors are as heavily exposed to stocks as they have ever been, other than during the late 1990s, when stocks bubbled up to valuations that made 1929 look restrained.

Further, please check out the chart below from still-bullish Ned Davis regarding investment advisor sentiment.  The bearish reading is the lowest since the fateful year of 1987, while bulled-up views are in the excessively optimistic zone.  (See Figure 1.)



It is my contention that there are currently millions of fully-invested skeptics. They aren’t bullish long-term – in fact, they believe the underlying fundamentals are alarming (with the usual perma-bull exceptions) – but they feel compelled by the lack of competitive alternatives to remain at their full equity allocation.

Disturbingly, professional investors are increasingly doing so even with money belonging to retired investors who need both cash flow and stability.

Okay, with all that history out of the way, let’s go the other direction  – into the future, to a time several years from now, when conditions are nearly the polar opposite of where they are today.

The Evergreen Virtual Advisor (EVA)

November, 201???

At long last, reforms! Do you remember back in 2014 when the stock market was as hot as napalm? When it just never went down? When millions believed the Fed could control stock prices by whipping up a trillion here and a trillion there?

Looking back from the vantage of today, it all seems so obvious. We should have known better than to believe that the S&P 500 had years more of appreciation left in it after having already tripled by the fall of 2014 from the 2009 nadir. The warning signs were there. But, before we rehash what went wrong, let’s focus on the upside of what some are calling “The Great Unwind” – the hangover after years and years of the Fed recklessly driving asset prices to unsustainable heights.

First of all, let me start with what I think is the biggest positive of all:  the end of the central banks’ era of omnipotence. While that might sound like a major negative, you may have noticed that with the crutch of binge-printing taken away, our nation’s leaders are finally getting around to implementing reforms that should have been enacted years ago. The history of our country is that we are energized by crises, and the latest is no exception. Our most recent financial convulsions have galvanized a bipartisan coalition to attack an array of long-festering problems that have hobbled our country since the start of the millennium.

Arguably, the most important was the recently enacted tax reform legislation. Skeptics believed the US could never move toward the type of simple tax system that has long been used in countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, and even Estonia. It took the realization by both parties that lower tax rates with almost no deductions would actually produce more revenue. Moreover, the elimination of incalculable and massive “friction costs” for millions of businesses and individuals, trying to adhere to and/or game that beastly labyrinth known as the tax code, is quickly catalyzing real economic growth. This is in contrast to the 2010 to 2014 counterfeit version that rolled off the Fed’s printing press.

By 2014, the US was ranked a lowly 32nd out of 34 countries in terms of tax fairness and efficiency. Yet, now, thanks to last year’s drastic tax reform, US corporations are no longer fleeing in droves to other countries, using such tax dodges as inversions (buying out foreign companies and assuming their country of corporate citizenship to access lower tax rates). They have even begun to repatriate their trillion or so of offshore profits since the formerly onerous tax rate of 35%, the highest in the developed world, has been reduced. And, thanks to the eradication of the aforementioned legalized tax dodges, corporate tax receipts are actually beginning to rise sharply, despite the fact that our economy is in the early stages of recovering from the latest recession.

As we all know, the rationalization of our national business model involves much more than even the essential aspect of tax code simplification. At long last, meaningful tort reform has been enacted. No longer will the rule of lawyers be allowed to dominate the rule of law. The enormous, but insidiously hidden, costs of a subsector of the legal system whose chief mission is to squeeze unjustifiable sums from the private sector is finally being reined in.

Similarly, regulatory overkill is also being addressed by the very entity that created this monster in the first place: the government itself. Absurd, overlapping, and often conflicting directives that hobbled the most essential element of the private sector – small businesses – have been abolished, replaced by a much simpler and unified set of rules.

Even America’s dysfunctional and wasteful healthcare system is being revamped using rational economic solutions, rather than by piling on more incomprehensible rules, requirements, and panels. Consumers can now easily compare prices among service providers thanks to technology as instituted by for-profit providers. Along with significantly improved visibility, they also now have far greater control over how their healthcare dollars are spent.  Medical outlays are now in a decided downtrend.

Incredibly, Congress is actually beginning to behave like a representative of the people rather than an ATM dispensing taxpayer money to the most politically connected. The intense implosions of the multiple bubbles the Fed intentionally inflated triggered a backlash of voter ire toward its legislative enablers. Since then, we’ve seen a dramatic House – and Senate – cleaning. This new “coalition of the thinking” is now following the proven path to recovery that numerous countries – such as Germany, Sweden, and Canada – blazed when their economic and financial systems hit previous roadblocks. As in those nations, moving away from excessive socialism, while simultaneously supporting the business community, rather than vilifying and hindering it, is already beginning to elevate America out of its long stagnation.

Collectively, these sweeping reforms are as dramatic as those seen in the 1980s and promise to unleash a growth boom equally as powerful as the ones that followed those overhauls. Yet, despite these dramatic and highly promising changes, investors remain hunkered down in their bomb shelters.

Fool me once, fool me twice, fool me thrice!  After the third devastating bear market since 1999, investor hostility toward stocks has reached a level unseen since the 1970s. Far too many were lured in by the last up-leg of the great bull market that started in the depths of pessimism in March of 2009. As the market resolutely climbed higher and higher, even beyond the five-year length of most bull cycles, millions of investors succumbed to either greed or complacency.



Indicative of the feverish conditions prevailing then—despite the widely disseminated myth that it was the most hated bull market of all time—headlines like those shown below, and graphics such as the one above, began to dominate the financial press.



Remarkably, at least to me, investors once again ignored warnings from the savviest savants, almost all of whom had waxed cautious about the tech and housing manias: Bob Shiller, Jeremy Grantham, Rob Arnott, John Mauldin, Seth Klarman, and John Hussman. As the esteemed Mohamed El-Erian had prophetically written in June of 2014, “In their efforts to promote growth and jobs, central banks are trading the possibility of immediate economic gains for a growing risk of financial instability later.”

Conversely, Janet Yellen didn’t do her legacy any favors by uttering these words in July, 2014: “Because a resilient financial system can withstand unexpected developments, identification of bubbles is less critical.” At the time, I was pretty sure she would come to regret that statement as much as Ben Bernanke did his equally ill-advised assurances back in 2007 that the problems in sub-prime mortgages were contained. Based on how fragile the “resilient financial system” turned out to be, I’ll say no more.

It did surprise me that despite having called out those previous bubbles, as well as several others including the 2008 blow-offs in commodities and Chinese stocks, I received such intense resistance from other professionals and even clients. After awhile, I was getting so much push back I started to feel like the nose of a commercial airliner being readied for take-off.

Ignorance wasn’t bliss. Another aspect of the late stages of the last bull market was how many investment professionals – who should have known better – dismissed Robert Shiller’s namesake P/E. To clarify, Shiller believes (as did Warren Buffett’s mentor, Ben Graham) that the stock market needs to be valued based on normalized earnings, not bottom- or top-of-the cycle profits. Despite the unassailable logic of this approach, a legion of perma-bulls repeatedly sought to discredit Shiller and his valuation methodology. Some even went so far as to deride his process as “Shiller Snake Oil,” notwithstanding Dr. Shiller’s Nobel Prize and, more meaningfully in my view, the fact that he had forewarned of both the tech and housing bubbles – unlike almost all of those throwing stones at him back in 2014.

The main criticism from those who were “hatin’ on” Shiller in 2014 was that his P/E had produced only two buy signals over a 25-year period. This was a valid critique but it missed an essential point: Despite the reality that the stock market from 1990 to 2014 traded at valuations far higher than it had in any previous quarter-century timeframe, the Shiller P/E accurately predicted future returns. In other words, when the Shiller P/E was very elevated – like in the late 1990s, 2007, and 2014 (so far) – stocks went on to generate extremely disappointing future returns (it also did so in decades going all the way back to the 1920s but this was not the era that the Shiller debunkers were criticizing). The graphic on the next page vividly illustrates this fact, even though it was created before the most recent bear market further underscored the danger of ignoring high Shiller P/Es. (See Figure 2.)



It also shocked and dismayed me at the time how many contortions Wall Street strategists, and even money managers, performed in order to dismiss concerns about the extreme variability of earnings. Somehow charts like the one below from Capital Economics were blown-off despite (or, perhaps, because) it so clearly highlighted the tendency of corporate profits to return back down to the long-term trend-line of nominal GDP growth, with stocks closely following. As we all now know, this time wasn’t different. (See Figure 3.)



The legions of market cheerleaders also ignored the heavy reliance on profits from the financial sector, a notoriously unstable source of earnings. This proved to be a disaster in 2007 and, unsurprisingly, was again once the Fed’s “Great Levitation” fell victim to gravitational forces. (See Figure 4.)



Even David Rosenberg, one of the few economists who saw the housing debacle coming, but who briefly flirted with drinking the Fed-spiked bubble-aid in 2014, noted that 60% of earnings growth from 2010 through 2013 came from share buy-backs. He calculated that the market’s “organic” P/E, backing out the influence from share repurchases, was over 20, even prior to normalizing for peak profit margins. Additionally, the reality that corporations buy the most stock at high prices, and the least at low prices, was forgotten – another costly oversight. (See Figure 5, above.)

It was also overlooked during this era of Fed-induced euphoria, that low interest rates – so often cited by bulls as a justification for lofty P/Es – historically coincided with lower earnings multiples. (See Figure 6.)



As Japan and Europe have repeatedly shown over the last two decades, when low interest rates are a function of chronic economic stagnation, P/Es actually contract, not expand. The fact that the latest recession has reduced America’s anemic 1.8% annual growth rate since 2000 to even lower levels is a key reason why stocks have been thrashed over the last couple of years, despite interest rates on the 10-year treasury note falling to 1%.

Another massive mistake was to overlook the strident warning from Evergreen’s favorite valuation metric, the price-to-sales (P/S) ratio. By the summer of 2014, the median stock in the S&P 500 was trading at its highest P/S ratio on record. Sadly, this attracted little attention. (See Figure 7.)



But perhaps the most egregious oversight of all was to forget the theorem from the late, great economist Hyman Minsky who long ago warned that stability breeds instability. As was the case from 2002 through 2007, the exceptionally low volatility of the years leading up to the latest crisis numbed market participants to the steadily rising risks. Even professional investors convinced themselves they could get out in time once conditions became unstable, an arrogance that has been severely punished, as well it should. Alas, we’ve had to learn Dr. Minsky’s lesson the hard way, once again.

But let’s close this EVA by focusing on the stunning opportunity for investors created by the Fed’s latest misadventure…...

Investors, start your engines! It is certainly understandable that US investors are thoroughly disenchanted with the stock market. The fact that the powers-that-be, or at least used-to-be, allowed securities trading to become so heavily dominated by computers was, like the tolerance of the Fed’s asset inflation, inexcusable. The influence of computerized, black box trading was unquestionably a huge factor in the speed-of-light-in-a-vacuum drop in stock prices. Also as feared, many ETFs poured kerosene on the fire as investors became terrified by the nearly overnight erosion in these prices, causing them to sell en masse. The plethora of ETFs holding illiquid underlying securities were particularly crushed, with many simply halting trading for long stretches. Now, instead of rapturous paeans about the wonders of ETF liquidity and low costs, the financial press is full of horror stories about their fundamental flaws (fortunately, higher quality and more liquid ETFs, performed as expected during the worst of the panic).

Further, based on the failure of the Fed’s desperate maneuver to stabilize stocks after their first big break, by launching another $1 trillion QE, this time directly buying US shares, investors have rationally lost faith in the Fed’s ability to make stocks dance to its tune. While QE 4 did cause a sharp counter-trend rally after it was initially launched, the supportive effects soon waned, as we all are now painfully aware. The resumption of the bear market after the Fed’s frantic triage effort was reminiscent of Dorothy, the Tinman, the Lion, and Toto discovering that behind the green curtain was a scared old man instead of The Wizard of Oz.

The extreme negativity by investors toward the stock market today is reflected in the high level of outflows being seen from equity mutual funds, including ETFs. Cash levels are high everywhere as institutional and retail investors, as well as corporations, have become excessively risk averse. This provides the rocket fuel for the next bull market which might just be much closer than almost everyone believes.

Rampant investor pessimism is also being manifested in the drop in the Shiller P/E to the mid-teens from 26 at the peak of the last bull romp.  As a direct result, future returns on stocks are now projected by the aforementioned Jeremy Grantham and John Hussman to be in the low double digits over the next seven to ten years.  Yet, no one seems interested. Even Warren Buffett’s ragingly bullish comments, which were considerably premature, are being attributed to the ramblings of a soon-to-be nonagenarian.

Naturally, I have considerable empathy for Mr. Buffett because, as usual, Evergreen was early to shift into bullish mode. We waited much longer than most people and actually did a fairly commendable job of cutting back into the Fed’s QE4 driven rally, after raising our equity exposure during the initial steep sell-off. But once stocks fell hard after that sugar-high wore off, we were guilty of our typical “premature accumulation syndrome.”

However, we did the same thing way back in October of 2008 when we published our client newsletter, “A Bull is Born” (and wrote a series of “buy the panic” EVAs), only to watch the market slide another 30%.  Yet, buying when almost the entire world was in liquidation mode, much of it forced, in the fall of 2008 proved to be extremely lucrative over the next two years. We are convinced the same will be true following this latest episode of market mayhem.

From a longer-term standpoint, a perspective most investors seem unwilling to take given their still-fresh pain and suffering, conditions look highly encouraging. In addition to the previously described remedies our policy makers are belatedly adopting, many of the key positive trends the bulls used to justify over-the-top valuations for stocks back in 2014 are still in place. Admittedly, the enthusiasm got ahead of reality but the energy renaissance continues apace in the US, despite the well-publicized fracking problems. Re-shoring of manufacturing, which has been slower than the uber-optimists forecast, appears to be now accelerating. Relatedly, robotic adoption is rapidly spreading through the US industrial base, supporting Evergreen’s belief that re-shoring is a reality, not a fantasy. Yet, there’s even more to like.

Nanotechnology and solar power innovators continue to provide breathtaking breakthroughs. Today, nanotech is becoming as ubiquitous as the microprocessor was a decade ago. Meanwhile, solar power, thanks to miniaturization advances similar to Moore’s Law, has achieved “grid parity,” or even lower, in over a dozen US states. Power is becoming increasingly cheap and abundant and that’s terrific news for humanity.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, we are far closer to achieving that wondrous, if slightly scary, state known as “singularity.” As most us now know, this means that humans are becoming one with computers.

The proliferation of wearables has essentially elevated the intelligence of anyone who can afford to spend $150 for an iWatch or Google Glass, to the level of a supercomputer. We now take for granted being able to whisper a few instructions into our watches, like Dick Tracy, and have all the information of the Cloud at our disposal. (It may soon be feasible to actually have a computer implanted into our brains, possibly even curing Alzheimer’s.) Clearly, the implications for productivity are nearly limitless. Already, we are beginning to see this in the data and we believe we are in the very early innings of a true revolution – with no apologies to gloomsters like Northwestern University’s Robert Gordon who believed, and still do, that the era of radical innovation ended long ago.

One of the biggest challenges a professional investor faces is the tyranny of current prices. When they are relentlessly rising, as they were back in 2013 and 2014, clients extrapolate those indefinitely, and, for a long time, they are right to do so. The same thing happens on the downside in periods such as we are in right now.  But rising markets always turn down and falling ones always turn up. Those are unquestionable facts. We are getting closer to the point where this bear goes back into its cave for a nice long nap while a powerful young bull is ready to bust out of the pen it’s been cooped up in for what seems like an eternity. Get out your checkbook – it’s time to bet on the bull!

Back to the here and now. A wise man once said that if you are going to predict that something will happen, don’t be so foolish as to say when it will happen. You may have noticed, I’ve followed that advice, perhaps to an irritating degree, mainly because I truly have no clue when our current bull market, already so long in the horns, will succumb.

It also goes without saying, but I will anyway, that the sequence and details of future financial events are almost certain to be dramatically different than what I’ve suggested in this EVA edition. However, I believe the broad outline is likely to be roughly along these lines, including my exceedingly optimistic long-term outlook for America.

It dawned on me as I wrote the section about tax, tort, healthcare, and regulatory reforms that many readers were probably thinking: “Not in my lifetime – and I’m only 50!” First, of all, let me say that I’m jealous you’re just 50. Second, it is highly unlikely stocks will remain in a long-term bull market, or even continue to hover at such generous valuations, unless our country makes some truly dramatic changes. It can’t remain business as usual, persistently avoiding essential reforms, relying almost totally on the Fed.

Believe me, I will be a bull again, and likely a very lonely one at that. But it’s going to take a combination of lower valuations and a serious makeover of how this country operates. We can do it and I’m convinced we will do it. Hopefully, I’ll be able to convince some of you the next time fear is on the rampage.


Like Outside the Box?
Sign up today and get each new issue delivered free to your inbox.


It's your opportunity to get the news John Mauldin thinks matters most to your finances.

Important Disclosures

The article Outside the Box: Future Bull was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.


Make sure to get our FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Stock & ETF Trading Signals