The Best Way to Protect Yourself From Out of Control Governments

By Nick Giambruno, editor, Crisis Investing

You probably know it’s a bad idea to put all of your asset eggs in one investment basket. The same goes for holding all of your assets in one country. But how much thought have you put into political diversification? With proper planning, you can greatly reduce the risk your home government presents to your financial and personal well being.

International diversification frees you from absolute dependence on any one country. Achieve that freedom, and it becomes very difficult for any group of bureaucrats to control you. The results can be life changing. Everyone in the world should aim for political diversification. Though it’s especially critical for those who live under a government sinking hopelessly deeper into financial trouble.

That means most Western governments. The US in particular. To get started, there are four core areas to consider: your savings, your citizenship, your income, and your digital presence.

Diversify Your Savings

It’s crucial to place some of your assets beyond the easy reach of your home government. It keeps that government from trapping your money if and when it implements capital controls or outright asset seizures. Any government can do either without warning.

You can diversify your savings in several ways:

• Foreign bank accounts
  
• Precious metals held abroad
  
• Foreign real estate
  

Foreign real estate is especially helpful. I call it a diversification “grand slam” because it accomplishes a number of key goals at once. Owning real estate in a foreign country moves a good chunk of your savings into a hard asset. One that’s outside of your home government’s immediate reach. Ideally, it’s located somewhere you’d enjoy living.

Unlike digital financial assets, it's probably impossible for your home country to seize your foreign real estate. Owning foreign real estate is one of the very few ways you can legally maintain some privacy for your wealth. In that sense, foreign real estate is the new Swiss bank account.

Foreign real estate often opens up other diversification options. In many cases, owning property in a foreign country makes it easier to open a bank account in that country.

It can also put you on the road to obtaining residency in a foreign country. It can even put you on a shortened path to citizenship in some cases. Lastly, owning foreign real estate gives you a second home, vacation hideaway, or place to retire. It’s an emergency “bolt hole” should you need to escape trouble back home.

Diversify Your Citizenship

One way to diversify your citizenship is with a second passport. Unfortunately, there is no route to a second passport that is simultaneously easy, fast, cheap, and legitimate. But that does not decrease the benefits of having one. Among other things, having a second passport allows you to invest, bank, travel, live, and do business in places you wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

There’s another important reason to get a second passport. No matter where you live, your home government can revoke your passport at any moment under any pretext it finds convenient. Your passport doesn’t actually belong to you. It belongs to the government. Having a second passport means that you can always escape your home country without having to live like a refugee.

Diversify Your Income

Income diversification means structuring your cash flows so you’re less dependent on any one country for your income. The goal is to create multiple sources of revenue from international investment opportunities and trends. Bonus diversification points if you do all this through your own offshore company domiciled in a favorable jurisdiction.

Diversify Your Digital Presence

Moving your digital presence to ideal foreign jurisdictions also adds significant political diversification benefits. This commonly includes your IP address (which often pinpoints you to a precise physical address), email account, online file storage, and the components of personal and business websites.

Plan for Bigger Government

Somehow, someway, your home government will keep squeezing your pocketbook harder and keep subjecting you to escalating, arbitrary, and burdensome regulations and restrictions. Expect more government and less freedom all around. The window to protect yourself closes a bit more with each passing week. The good news is you can start to diversify internationally without leaving your home country, or even your living room.

Still, it’s essential to take the necessary steps before the government slams your window of opportunity shut. If history is any guide, it won’t be open forever. It's much better to have developed and implemented your game plan a year early than a minute late.

International diversification is a time tested strategy to protect you from desperate and out of control governments. Wealthy people around the world have used it for centuries to effectively protect their money and their families. Now, thanks to modern technology, anyone can implement similar strategies.

Regards,
Nick Giambruno
Editor, Crisis Investing

P.S. Taking the simple steps above is now more important than ever. As you'll see, widespread economic chaos is coming… America is about to enter a crisis far more severe than what we saw in 2008–2009. 

Most investors aren’t prepared for what's coming. But Doug Casey and I know how to turn these types of situations into huge profits. And in this video, we share need to know information about the coming global economic meltdown.

Click Here to Watch it Now.

The article The Best Way to Protect Yourself From Out-of-Control Governments was originally published at caseyresearch.com

How Gold Stocks Could Deliver Historic Gains in the Years Ahead

By Doug Casey

My regular readers know why I believe the gold price is poised to move from its current level of around $1,250 per ounce to $1,500… $2,000… and eventually past $3,000. Right now, we are exiting the eye of the giant financial hurricane that we entered in 2007, and we’re going into its trailing edge. It’s going to be much more severe, different, and longer lasting than what we saw in 2008 and 2009.

In a desperate attempt to stave off a day of financial reckoning during the 2008 financial crisis, global central banks began printing trillions of new currency units. The printing continues to this day. And it’s not just the Federal Reserve that’s doing it: it’s just the leader of the pack. The U.S., Japan, Europe, China… all major central banks are participating in the biggest increase in global monetary units in history.

These reckless policies have produced not just billions, but trillions in malinvestment that will inevitably be liquidated. This will lead us to an economic disaster that will in many ways dwarf the Great Depression of 1929–1946. Paper currencies will fall apart, as they have many times throughout history. This isn’t some vague prediction about the future. It’s happening right now. The Canadian dollar has lost 33% of its value since 2013. The Australian dollar has lost 27% of its value during the same time. The Japanese yen and the euro have crashed in value. And the U.S. dollar is currently just the healthiest horse on its way to the glue factory.

These moves show that we’re in the early stages of a currency crisis. But if you make the right moves, you could actually make windfall gains instead of suffering losses. Here’s how to do it. The huge winner during this crisis will be the only currency that has real value: gold.

Gold has been used as money for thousands of years because it has a unique combination of qualities. Very briefly, it’s durable, easily divisible, convenient to carry, consistent around the world, and has value in and of itself. Just as important, governments can’t create gold out of thin air. It’s the only financial asset that’s not simultaneously someone else’s liability.

When people wake up and realize that most banks and governments are bankrupt, they’ll flock to gold… just as they’ve done for centuries. Gold will rise multiples of its current value. I expect a 200% rise from current levels, at the minimum. There are many reasons, which we don’t have room to cover here, why gold could see a 400% or 500% gain.

This should produce a corresponding bull market in gold stocks… perhaps of a magnitude we’ve never seen. A true mania for gold stocks could develop over the coming years. This could make anyone who buys gold stocks at their current depressed levels very rich.

What History Teaches Us About Great Speculations

Many of the best speculations have a political element to them. Governments are constantly creating distortions in the market, causing misallocations of capital. Whenever possible, the speculator tries to find out what these distortions are, because their consequences are predictable.

They result in trends you can bet on. Because you can almost always count on the government to do the wrong thing, you can almost always safely bet against them. It’s as if the government were guaranteeing your success. The classic example, not just coincidentally, concerns gold.

The U.S. government suppressed its price for decades while creating huge numbers of dollars before it exploded upward in 1971. Speculators who understood some basic economics positioned themselves accordingly. Over the next nine years, gold climbed more than 2,000% and many gold stocks climbed by more than 5,000%.

Governments are constantly manipulating and distorting the monetary situation. Gold in particular, as the market’s alternative to government money, is always affected by that. So gold stocks are really a way to short government — or go long on government stupidity, as it were.

The bad news is that governments act chaotically, spastically.

The beast jerks to the tugs on its strings held by various puppeteers. But while it’s often hard to predict price movements in the short term, the long term is a near certainty. You can bet confidently on the end results of chronic government monetary stupidity. Mining stocks are extremely volatile for that very same reason. That’s good news, however, because volatility makes it possible, from time to time, to get not just doubles or triples but 10 baggers, 20 baggers, and even 100 to 1 shots.

When gold starts moving higher, it’s going to direct a lot of attention towards gold stocks. When people get gold fever, they are not just driven by greed, they’re usually driven by fear as well, so you get both of the most powerful market motivators working for you at once. It’s a rare class of securities that can benefit from fear and greed at once. Remember that the Fed‘s pumping-up of the money supply ignited a huge bubble in tech stocks in the late ‘90s, and then an even more massive global bubble in real estate that burst in 2008. But they’re still creating tons of dollars.

This will inevitably ignite other asset bubbles. Where? I can’t say for certain, but I say the odds are extremely high that as gold goes up, a lot of this funny money is going to pour into these gold stocks, which are not just a microcap area of the market but a nanocap area of the market. The combined market capitalization of the 10 biggest U.S. listed gold stocks is less than 6% of the size of Facebook. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: When the public gets the bit in its teeth and wants to buy gold stocks, it’s going to be like trying to siphon the contents of the Hoover Dam through a garden hose.

Gold stocks, as a class, are going to be explosive. Now, you’ve got to remember that most of them are junk. Most will never, ever find an economical deposit. But it’s hopes and dreams that drive them, not reality, and even those without merit can still go up 10, 20, or 30 times your entry price. And companies that actually have the goods can go much higher than that.

You buy gold, the metal, because you’re prudent. It’s for safety, liquidity, insurance. The gold stocks, even though they explore for or mine gold, are at the polar opposite of the investment spectrum; you buy them for their extreme volatility, and the chance they offer for spectacular gains. It’s rather paradoxical, actually.

Why Gold Stocks Are an Ideal “Asymmetric Bet”

Because these stocks have the potential to go 10, 50, or even 100 times your entry price, they offer something called “asymmetry.” You probably learned about symmetry in grade school. It’s when the parts of something have equal form and size. For example, cut a square in half and the two parts are symmetrical.

Symmetry is attractive in some forms. The more symmetrical someone’s face is, the more physically attractive they are considered to be. Symmetry is often attractive in architecture. But when it comes to investing and speculating in the financial markets, the expert financial operator eschews symmetry. Symmetry is for suckers.

The expert financial operator hunts for extreme asymmetry.

An asymmetric bet is one where the potential upside of a position greatly exceeds its potential downside. If you risk $1 for the chance of making $20, you’re making an asymmetric bet. Amateur investors too often risk 100% of their money in the pursuit of a 10% return. These are horrible odds. But the financially and statistically illiterate take them. You might do better in a casino or most sports betting. It’s one of the key reasons most people struggle in the market.

I’ve always been more attracted to asymmetric bets… where I stand a good chance of making 10, 50, even 100 times the amount I’m risking. I’m not interested in even bets. I’m only taking the field if my potential upside is much, much greater than my potential downside. Because of the extreme asymmetry gold stocks offer—because of their extreme upside potential when they’re cheap—you don’t have to take a big position in them to make a huge impact on your net worth. A modest investment of $25,000 right now could turn into $500,000 in five years. It has happened before and it will happen again.

Right now gold stocks are near a historic low. I’m buying them aggressively. At this point, it’s possible that the shares of a quality exploration company or a quality development company (i.e., one that has found a deposit and is advancing it toward production) could still go down 10, 20, 30, or even 50 percent. But there’s an excellent chance that the same stock will go up by 10, 50, or even 100 times. I hate to use such hard to believe numbers, but that is the way this market works. When the coming resource bubble is ignited, the odds are excellent we’ll be laughing all the way to the bank in a few years.

No one, including me, knows that the Mania Phase is just around the corner. But I’ve operated in this market for over 40 years. This is a very reasonable time to be buying these stocks. And it’s absolutely a good time to start educating yourself about them. There’s an excellent chance a truly massive bubble is going to be ignited in this area. If so, the returns are going to be historic.

Regards,

Doug Casey
Founder, Casey Research

Note: Casey Research’s resident gold stock specialist, Louis James, has just unveiled a proprietary strategy for selecting small gold stocks. Over a 30 year historical backtest, the strategy had a 95% success rate. Remarkably, the strategy even produced winning plays during gold’s $700 drop from 2011 to 2015.

So, if the Mania Phase Doug predicts takes off, the asymmetrical gains you’ll see from these small gold stocks could hand you 10, 50, or even 100 times your money. Here, I explain the full story on Louis’ strategy so you can review it for yourself

This article was originally published at caseyresearch.com.

Mike Seery's Weekly Futures Recap - Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Gold, Sugar and More

It's time once again to check in with our trading partner Michael Seery. We've asked him to give our readers a recap of the this weeks futures markets and give us some insight on where he sees the markets headed this week. Mike has been a senior analyst for close to 15 years and has extensive knowledge of all of the commodity and option markets.

Crude oil futures in the July contract settled last Friday in New York at 45.83 a barrel while currently trading at 44.65 down over $1 for the trading week testing lows we haven't seen since November 2016. I'm not involved in this market, but I do think lower prices are ahead for the entire energy sector. At present, my only energy recommendation is a short natural gas position as complex oversupply issues continue to put pressure on prices in the short term. We are still trading far below the 20 and 100 day moving average, and that's telling you that the short term trend is lower in natural gas. The next major level of support is all the way down at the 42 level as Rig counts in the United States continue to increase supply, so if you are short a futures contract stay short & place the proper stop loss as I think lower prices are ahead. Gasoline and heating oil are also at fresh contract lows putting pressure on crude oil, and there is nothing right or positive to say about this sector at present. Today's slight rally across the board is just a dead cat bounce in my opinion and is due to oversold conditions.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Poor

Get our Current Market Movement, Trade Triangle and Futures Updates

Natural gas futures in the July contract settled last Friday in New York at 3.03 while currently trading at 3.03 unchanged for the trading week despite Thursday's trade rallying 12 points due to a bullish inventory report. I recommended a short position from the 3.17 level and if you took that trade continue to place your stop loss above the 10 day high standing at 3.10 as the chart structure is outstanding. Natural gas prices are still trading under their 20 and 100 day moving average which tells you that the trend is lower as we retested 4 month lows in Wednesday's trade. Stay short as mild temperatures in the 7/10 day forecast for Midwestern part of the United States could put pressure back on this market as the energy sector looks very weak in my opinion. Natural gas prices are just an eyelash away from getting stopped out as this trade has experienced very low volatility since the entry point, but if we are stopped out we will move on and look at other markets that are beginning to trend as the trends are coming back in the commodity sectors which is a great thing to see, but stay short as who knows what Monday's price action will bring.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Excellent

Gold prices settled last Friday in New York at 1,271 an ounce while currently trading at 1,256 down about $15 for the trading week and topping out at the 1,300 level. The Federal Reserve announced that they raised interest rates a .25 point and plan on raising interest rates further down the road and this sent gold prices to a three week low. I am not involved in any of the precious metals as they have been incredibly choppy in 2017 and the monetary risk and the risk/reward has not met my criteria as prices are now trading below their 20 and 100 day moving average. I'm advising clients to avoid this sector and gold at the present time. The commodity markets, in general, remain weak in my opinion except for a select few with the stock market continuing to move higher taking money flows out of the gold and moving them into the Dow Jones once again. I think that trend will continue despite the terrorist attacks happening on a weekly basis coupled with uncertainty worldwide. Prices seem to have one more leg lower to the downside with a possible retest of 1,215 in my opinion. Silver prices this week also went into the negative as those prices remain extremely choppy as well, but one day the trends will come back in the metals so keep a close eye on this market & wait for the chart structure to improve.
Trend: Mixed - Lower
Chart Structure: Poor

Sugar futures in the October contract are trading lower for the 6th consecutive trading session after settling last Friday in New York at 14.47 a pound while currently trading at 13.60 down nearly 80 points and continuing its bearish trend. I'm not sure anyone knows how low prices could go. The next significant level of support is around the February 2016 low of 12.45, and if that is broken it could retest the August 2015 lows around 10.00 that's how bearish this commodity is. This is due to overproduction and a very weak Brazilian Real which continues to put pressure on anything grown in Brazil. Sugar prices are trading far under their 20 and 100 day moving average and this trend is getting stronger on a weekly basis. I'm certainly not recommending any type of bullish position as that would be counter trend trading and trying to pick a bottom is very dangerous over the long haul. The soft commodities still look very weak as the agricultural sectors except for a couple continue to head lower so, if you do have a short futures position stay short & place the proper stop loss as you are on the right side of this trade.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Solid

For more calls on this week's commodity trades like Dow Jones Industrial, Cotton and more....Just Click Here!

The Last Time We Saw This, Investors Doubled Their Money in Six Months

By Justin Spittler

Gold couldn’t catch a bid in December 2015. It was down more than 30%, and trading at the lowest price in nearly six years. Gold stocks, which are leveraged to the price of gold, were doing even worse. The average gold stock was 80% off its highs. Most investors wanted nothing to do with gold. But not Doug Casey. Doug knew gold would rebound. It was only a matter of time. He even told Kitco, one of the world’s biggest gold and silver retailers, on December 18, 2015, that he was buying gold hand over fist:

My opinion is if it’s not the bottom, it’s close enough to the bottom. So, I have to be an aggressive buyer of both gold and silver at this point.

Doug’s timing was nearly perfect.…
The day before, gold bottomed. It went on to gain 30% over the next six months. The average gold stock more than doubled in value over the same period.

I’m telling this story because an opportunity just like this is shaping up before our eyes. Only this time, it’s in the energy market.

Energy stocks have been beaten to a pulp.…
You can see what I mean below. It shows how the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE) has done since the start of the year. This fund invests in 36 major U.S. energy companies, including Exxon Mobil and Chevron. You can see that XLE is down 13% this year. That makes energy stocks the worst-performing sector in the S&P 500.

Energy stocks are now off to “one of the worst beginnings to the year ever,” according to Morgan Stanley. As if that weren’t enough to scare away most investors, look at the ugly chart below. It compares the performance of XLE with the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500. When the line is rising, energy stocks are doing better than the broad market. When it’s falling, energy stocks are underperforming the S&P 500.

Energy stocks have been lagging the broad market for nearly a decade.…
As a result, energy stocks now make up just 5.9% of the S&P 500. That’s half of what the sector’s weighting was in 2011. Not only that, the 36 energy stocks that make up XLE are now worth less than the combined value of Apple and Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

Situations like this don’t last forever.…
Eventually, the pendulum swings the other way. The trick is knowing when that will happen. That’s obviously easier said than done. Plus, you have to understand that markets rarely change direction on a dime. Instead, they usually go through a bottoming process that can take weeks or longer. And it looks like energy stocks may have begun that process.

Energy stocks took off last week.…
XLE jumped 2.5% on Friday. That was the biggest one-day jump in energy stocks since last November. This week, XLE is up another 1.4%. Now, it would be easy to dismiss this as “noise.” But if energy stocks keep rallying, XLE could “break out.” The chart below shows the performance of XLE over the last 12 months. You can see that it’s been in a downtrend since late 2016.

You can see that XLE hasn’t broken out of its downtrend yet. But it could do that sooner than most investors think.

Energy companies are starting to make money again.…
Revenues for energy companies in the S&P 500 surged 34% during the first quarter of 2017. That was more than quadruple the S&P 500’s 7.6% jump in revenues. Wall Street now expects U.S energy companies to post an 18% rise in revenues when the second quarter is all said and done. Not only that, analysts expect the sector to report a more than 400% spike in second-quarter profits. For perspective, second quarter profits for the rest of the S&P 500 are expected to rise just 3.7%.

Once “the market” figures this out, watch out.…
Energy stocks are going to skyrocket just like gold stocks did in early 2016. Keep in mind, the bottoming process could take weeks or even months. So, wait for energy stocks to “carve a bottom” before diving in. That’s when stocks stop falling, trade in a tight range for a period of time, and then start heading higher. Stocks that carve a bottom often keep soaring. Just look at what GDX did after it carved a bottom early last year.

By waiting for energy stocks to carve a bottom, you’ll greatly limit your downside…without giving up a chance at big returns. I'll let you know when the time is right to invest in the energy sector. In the meantime, keep an eye on XLE and other energy funds like the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (XOP). Once they carve out bottoms, it will be a good time to buy.

The article The Last Time We Saw This, Investors Doubled Their Money in Six Months was originally published at caseyresearch.com.

FREE workshop....Big Profits from Breakouts & Mega Trends

We are excited to announce that this Thursday our friends Todd and Roger will be putting on a New FREE LIVE interactive trading workshop, where we’ll teach you how to incorporate Bollinger Bands and Price Envelopes into your trading for much bigger gains which will help you maximize the percentage of winning trades you take while decreasing your losses significantly.

They have decided to call this workshop "Big Profits from Breakouts and Mega Trends". You’ll also learn an ETF trading model that generated Todd over 963% return in just over 6 years.

Click here to REGISTER Thursday June 15th at 4:30 ET

It’s FREE to attend and it’s going to be actionable trading strategies you can start using the very next day!

Here’s just a few of the actionable strategies you’re going to learn:

* How To Use Bollinger Bands and Price Envelopes for Profitable Breakouts

* How Professional Traders Use Trailing Stops to Ride Massive Trends

* The Rules to the Turtles Trend Following System That Made Billions Over the Past Decade

* How to avoid Massive Losing Periods That Come With Buy and Hold

* How to Take Advantage of Increased Volatility So You Can Lock in Profits with Trailing Stops

* You’ll be Introduced to an ETF Trading Model That Generated Over 963% Return In Just Over 6 Years!

PLUS…Learn a lot more and get ALL your questions answered LIVE!

Click Here to REGISTER: Thursday June 15th at 4:30 ET

I couldn’t be more excited to have Todd and Roger show you firsthand how an ex hedge-fund manager with tremendous success and experience trades the markets.

Have a profitable day we hope to see you there!

 
See you in the markets,
Ray @ The Crude Oil Trader

P.S. I recommend you attend this class if you're interested in learning trading strategies you can incorporate into your trading right away. We anticipate this workshop will be fill up very quickly so get your reserved seat asap.

Mike Seery's Weekly Futures Recap - Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Silver, Coffee and More

Both the SP500 [key reversal down] and NASDAQ [below the 20 day moving average] closed sharply lower on Friday while the Dow managed to close higher extending the rally off April's low into uncharted territory. This will make upside targets hard to project for the Dow.

So let's get ready for this weeks trading with a heads up from our trading partner Michael Seery. We've asked him to give our readers a recap of the this weeks futures markets and give us some insight on where he sees these markets headed. Mike has been a senior analyst for close to 15 years and has extensive knowledge of all of the commodity and option markets.

Crude oil futures settled last Friday in New York at 47.66 a barrel while currently trading at 45.55 down about $2 for the trading week, but still trading under their 20 and 100 day moving average as prices are looking to retest the May 5th low of 44.13 in my opinion. The longer term and short term trend is to the downside as large supplies continue to keep a lid on prices. Gasoline and heating oil also continue to move lower, and my only recommendation in the energy sector is short the natural gas market at this time. The chart structure in oil is poor as the 10 day high is around $52 which is over $6 away. I'm currently waiting for the monetary risk to be lowered and I am looking at a short position possibly in next week's trade. There are concerns about gasoline demand which has also pushed oil lower over the last several weeks, but this market has been very choppy in 2017 as the volatility in the commodity markets are starting to rise once again as the summer months are upon us and historically speaking this is when you see large price swings up or down.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Poor

Get our Current Market Movement, Trade Triangle and Futures Updates

Natural gas futures settled last Friday in New York at 2.99 while currently trading at 3.04 up 5 points in an extremely low volatile trading week. I've been recommending a short position from the 3.17 level, and if you took the trade place the stop loss in Monday's trade at 3.26. Tuesday it will be lowered to 3.17 as the chart structure is becoming outstanding. For the bearish momentum to continue prices have to break the February 28th low of 2.88 which is still quite a distance away so stay short and continue to place the proper stop loss as the trend is still lower in my opinion. Prices are still underneath their 20 and 100 day moving average looking for some fresh fundamental moves to put some volatility back into this market. The energy sector, in general, continues its bearish momentum this week as oversupply issues continue to hamper this market as production levels in natural gas are increasing in 2017 and 2018. Higher temperatures in the Midwestern part of the United States are expected this weekend and that has helped prop up prices here in the short term, but the 7/10 day forecast still has average temperatures, so let's see what develops next week. I'm still looking at adding more contracts to the downside.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Solid - Improving

Silver futures in the July contract settled last Friday at 17.52 an ounce while currently trading at 17.28 trading lower for the 3rd consecutive trading session after topping out at 6 week highs earlier in the week around 17.74. I'm currently sitting on the sidelines as this market remains choppy in my opinion. Silver prices are trading right at their 20 day but still below their 100 day moving average as the U.S dollar has rallied somewhat over the last couple days putting pressure on gold and silver prices. The chart structure is poor therefore the monetary risk is too high for me to enter into this market at this time. The next major level of support is right at the 17 level, and for this market to continue its bullish momentum, we would have to break 17.75. Volatility has come upon us once again which is excellent to see in my opinion. Many of the commodity markets remain mixed as they are not trading in unison and that's what I'd like to see occur once again like we experienced in years past.
Trend: Mixed
Chart Structure: Poor - Improving

Coffee futures in the July contract is currently trading at 128.25 a pound after settling last Friday in New York at 125.25 up about 300 points for the trading week. I'm currently not involved in this market. However, I will not initiate a short position as I think coffee prices are cheap and I'm looking at a bullish position once a true breakout occurs. Coffee futures are still trading under their 20 day and 100 day moving average which stands at 139 which is quite a distance away. However, the chart structure is rather solid at the present time, and the volatility is really low as prices have been grinding lower. At the present time, we are in the frost season in the country of Brazil which is the largest producer in the world as colder temperatures are expected this weekend, but no frost as the agricultural markets are starting to stabilize despite the fact of the Brazilian Real remaining very weak against the U.S dollar. If you take a look at the daily chart, there is major support around the 125 level which was hit in the last 5 trading sessions and unable to break. I do believe we are finding support as prices are bottoming out in my opinion.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Solid - Improving

For more calls on this week's commodity trades like Sugar, Cotton, Corn and more....Just Click Here!

Do These Three Things to Profit When Stocks Fall

By Jeff Clark, editor, Delta Report

The stock market has entered “the worst six months of the year.” The S&P 500 makes its best gains between November 1 and April 30. The period between May 1 and October 31 tends to be negative. The exact historical figures vary depending on who you ask. But there’s a good reason the Wall Street cliché machine advises to “sell in May and go away.” Stocks don’t do very well this time of year. And most of the major stock market disruptions of my lifetime occurred during this six month window.

Smart investors should take some time off. Enjoy the fruits of the “Trump rally.” Cash in your 13% gain on the S&P 500 since last Halloween and enjoy the summer. We’ll see you back in the action in time for Thanksgiving. But, if you want to make some money while the rest of the world is losing it, then stick around. Smarter investors could have the best six months ever.

Think about this for a moment…
Over the past 20 years, the Volatility Index (VIX)—a measure of the price investors are willing to pay to insure their portfolios against a significant market decline—has traded between a low of about 10 to a high of about 80. Recently, the VIX closed at 11—one of the lowest readings in the past 20 years. This happened at a time when the S&P 500 closed near an all time high. So with the broad stock market trading at its highest level ever, insurance is about as cheap as it has been in the past 20 years.

In other words, as we enter the worst six months of the year, put options—bets that the stock market will fall—are as cheap as they’ve been in two decades. This is a remarkable opportunity to profit as stock prices decline. Speculators can risk relatively small amounts of capital and achieve HUGE returns if stock prices fall. But there are a few tricks to profiting on the downside.

How to Profit as Stocks Fall
Over the long term, stocks go up. Don’t argue about it. That’s just how it is. The stock market moves higher over time. So short sellers—those folks who profit as stock prices fall—face an uphill battle.
Of course, there are situations where short sellers will ultimately profit even if the broad stock market moves higher.

For example, companies that commit fraud, take on insane amounts of leverage, or overhype a fad business almost always eventually crash and burn. But opportunities to short the stock in these firms are few and far between. For the most part, traders who are looking to short sell are going to trade on momentum. They’re going to look for overbought situations that look ready to reverse.

They’re going to buy cheap, out of the money put options. They’re going to be lightning fast, taking profits as the trade moves in their favor. And they’re not going to stress out about losing 100% on a trade because they kept their position size small enough to digest the loss.

How This Great Trade Went South
Let me tell you a story about the absolute best and worst put option trade I’ve ever seen. The trader made the most money I’ve ever seen on one put option trade, then he gave it all back. In September 1987, I was running the trading desk for a small regional brokerage firm. We had a handful of big name clients, folks who appeared regularly on the Financial News Network (the precursor to CNBC). One of these clients was a value oriented newsletter writer. His investment style was ultra-conservative and ultra-prudent.

So in September 1987, when this client bought a large number of put options on the S&P 100 (OEX), I took note. It was the first option position this client had ever purchased. He was buying these put options to hedge his managed-money portfolios against a sudden crash in the stock market.
It worked perfectly.

When the stock market crashed on October 19, 1987, the put options this client purchased rallied enough to completely offset the decline in his stock portfolios. It was, in my opinion, the most perfect hedge anyone executed prior to the crash. But it turned out to be a disaster for his accounts. You see, the money manager never sold the options.

Despite the market crashing, despite the VIX jumping above 100, despite the options he purchased trading for 20 times the amount he paid, he wanted to maintain the hedge. He wanted to keep his insurance in case stocks dropped even more.

They didn’t....When his options expired in November, even though the broad stock market was almost 25% lower than where it was when he bought the puts, his put options expired worthless. Stocks hadn’t rallied much off the October crash bottom. The S&P 500 was maybe 5% higher. The stocks this advisor held in his managed accounts were still suffering from the crash. And he never collected from the insurance he bought to protect his clients from the crash.

His clients suffered from the decline in the market, and they suffered from paying the option premium that was supposed to protect them from a crash. So what appeared to be a brilliant move in September 1987 turned out to be an expensive mistake by late November. His clients suffered from a decline in their stock holdings, and they also suffered as the OEX put options expired worthless.

A Simple Lesson
The lesson here is simple, when you’re betting on a broad stock market decline, you need to buy cheap put options AND you need to be willing to cash out of the trade when it moves in your direction—even if you think the move will go farther.
In my experience—which goes back more than three decades—if you want to profit on the short side of trading stocks, you need to get three things right…

1. You need to target stocks that are overextended to the upside and have negative divergence on the technical indicators.
   
2. You need to buy cheap put options, and you need to be willing to lose 100% of the premium you pay for the options. It should be less of a loss than short selling the stock.
   
3. You need to be willing to take profits quickly. As stocks fall, the implied volatility of the option premium increases. You don’t need to wait for the stock to achieve your downside target. The option premium will often inflate to reflect the downside potential. Be willing to sell into that.
   

Best regards and good trading,
Jeff Clark
Editor, Delta Report

Justin's note: Tomorrow, Jeff will be releasing a brand-new presentation on what he calls “the biggest breakthrough of my career.” In it, he’ll reveal a trading strategy that he’s been developing for over five years… has a success rate of 90.2%… average gains of 50%… and an average trade length of just two days.

E.B. Tucker, editor of The Casey Report, and Doug Casey have been talking all about it these past few months. They think it’s one of the most fascinating moneymaking ideas they’ve ever encountered.
Most people will be watching this presentation at 12 p.m. ET tomorrow… but as a Casey reader, E.B. will be sending you the video early, so you can start watching ahead of the crowd at 9 a.m.
We hope to see you there.

The article Do These Three Things to Profit When Stocks Fall was originally published at caseyresearch.com.