Could a Bitcoin Blowout coincide with a Major Market Blowout?

Our team of researchers continues to attempt to identify market strengths and weakness in the US major markets by identifying key, underlying factors of the markets and how they relate to one another.

Recently, we’ve been warning of a potentially explosive bullish move in Metals and our last article highlighted the weakness in the Transportation Index as it relates to the US major markets. 

On November 2, 2017, we warned that the NQ volatility would be excessive and that any move near or below 6200 would likely prompt support to drive prices higher as our Adaptive Dynamic Learning model was showing wide volatility and the potential for rotation moves.

This week, we are attempting to highlight a potential move in Bitcoin that could disrupt the global economy and more traditional investment vehicles.  For the past few years, Bitcoin has been on a terror to the upside.  Recently, a 30% downside price rotation caused a bit of panic in the Crypto world.  This -30% decline was fast and left some people wondering what could happen if something deeper were to happen – where would Crypto’s find a bottom.  From that -30% low, Bitcoin has recovered to previous highs (near $8000) and have stalled – interesting.

While discussing Bitcoin with some associates a while back, I heard rumor that a move to Bitcoin CASH was underway and that Bitcoin would collapse as some point in the near future. The people I was meeting with were very well connected in this field and were warning me to alert me in case I had any Bitcoin holdings (which I do).  I found it interesting that these people were moving into the Bitcoin CASH market as fast as they could.  What did they know that I didn’t know and how could any potential Bitcoin blowout drive the global markets?

Panic breeds fear and fear drives the markets (fear or greed).  If Bitcoin were to increase volatility beyond the most recent move (-30% in 4 days) – what could happen to the Crypto markets if a bubble collapse or fundamental collapse happened?

How would the major markets react to a Crypto market collapse that destroyed billions in capital?  For this, we try to rely on our modeling systems and our understanding of the major markets.  Let’s get started by looking at the NASDAQ with two modeling systems (the Fibonacci Price Modeling System and the Adaptive Dynamic Learning system).

This first chart is a Daily Adaptive Dynamic Learning (ADL) model representation of what this modeling system believes will be the highest probability outcome of price going forward 20 days.  Notice that we are asking it to show use what it believes will happen from last week’s trading activity (ignoring anything prior).  This provides us the most recent and relevant data to review.

We can see from the “range lines” (the red and green price range levels shown on the chart), that upside price range is rather limited to recent highs whereas downside prices swing lower (to near 6200 and below) rather quickly.  Additionally, the highest probability price moves indicate that we could see some downside price rotation over the Thanksgiving week followed by a retest of recent high price levels throughout the end of November.

This NQ Weekly chart, below, is showing our Fibonacci price modeling system and the fact that we are currently in an extended bullish run that, so far, shows no signs of stalling.  The Fibonacci Price Breach Level (the red line near the right side of the chart) is showing us that we should be paying attention to the 6075 level for any confirmation of a bearish trend reversal.  Notice how that aligns with the blue projected downside support level (projected into future price levels).  Overall, for the NQ or the US majors to show any signs of major weakness, these Fibonacci levels would have to be tested and breached.  Until that happens, expect continued overall moderate bullish price activity.  When it happens, look out below.

The next charts we are going to review are the Metals markets (Gold and Silver).  Currently, an interesting setup is happening with Silver.  It appears to show that volatility in the Silver market will be potentially much greater than the volatility in the Gold market.  This would indicate that Silver would be the metal to watch going into and through the end of this year.  This first chart is showing the ADL modeling system and highlighting the volatility and price predictions that are present in the Silver market.  Pay attention to the facts that ranges and price projections are rather stable till about 15 days out – that’s when we are seeing a massive upside potential in Silver.

This next chart is the Fibonacci Price Modeling system on a Weekly Silver chart.  What is important here is the recent price rotation that has setup the Fibonacci Price Breach trigger to the upside (currently).  This move is telling us that as long as price stays above $16.89 on a Weekly closing price basis, then Silver should attempt to push higher and higher over time.  The projected target levels are $19.50, $20.25 and $21.45.  Notice any similarity in price levels between the Fibonacci analysis and the ADL analysis?  Yes, that $16.89 level is clearly identified as price range support by the ADL modeling system (the red price range expectation lines).

How will this playout in our opinion with Bitcoin potentially rotating lower off this double top while the metals appear to be basing and potentially reacting to fear in the market?  Allow us to explain what we believe will be the most likely pathway forward…

At first, this holiday week in the US, the markets will be quiet and not show many signs of anything.  Just another holiday week in the US with the markets mostly moderately bullish – almost on auto-pilot for the holidays.  Then closing in on the end of November, we could start to see some increased volatility and price rotation in the metals and the US majors.  If Bitcoin has moved by this time, we would expect that it would be setting up a rotational low above the -30% lows recently set.  In other words, Bitcoin would likely fall 8~15% on rotation, then stall before attempting any further downside moves.

By the end of November, we expect the US markets to have begun a price pattern formation that indicates sideways/stalling price activity moving into the end of this year.  This ADL Daily ES Chart clearly shows what is predicted going forward 20 days with price rotating near current highs for a few days before settling lower (near 2540~2550 through early Christmas 2017).  The ADL projected highs are not much higher than recent high price levels, therefore we do not expect the ES to attempt to push much higher than 2595 in the immediate future.  It might try to test this level or rotate a bit higher as a washout high, but our analysis shows that prices should be settling into complacency for the next week or two while settling near the lower range of recent price activity.

What you should take away from this analysis is the following : don’t expect any massive upside moves between now and the end of the year that last longer than a few days.  Don’t expect the markets to rocket higher unless there is some unexpected positive news from somewhere that changes the current expectations.  Expect Silver to begin to move higher in early December as well as expect Gold to follow Silver.  We believe Silver is the metal to watch as it will likely be the most volatile and drive the metals move.  Expect the major markets to be quiet through the Thanksgiving week with a potential for moderate bullish price activity before settling into a complacent retracement mode through the end of November and early December.

If Bitcoin does what we expect by creating a rotational lower price breakout setup from recent highs, we’ll know within a week or two.  If this $8000 level holds as resistance, then we will clearly see Bitcoin rotate into a defensive market pattern (a flag formation or some other harmonic pattern above support).  The US majors will likely follow this move as a broader fear could begin gripping the markets.

Lastly, as we mentioned last week, pay very close attention to the Transportation Index and it’s ability to find/hold support.  Unless the Transportation index finds some level of support and begins a new bullish trend, we could be in for a more dramatic move early next year.  Our last article clearly laid out our concerns regarding the Transportation Index and the broader market cycles.  All of our analysis should be taken as segments of a much larger market picture.  We are setting up for an interesting holiday season where the market could turn in an instant on fear or news of some global event (like a Bitcoin collapse).  The volatility we are seeing our modeling systems predict is increasing (especially in the Silver market over the next few weeks).  We could be headed for a bumpy ride with a classic top formation setting up.

Overall, protect your investments and your long positions.  Many people will be away from their PCs and away from the markets over the holidays.  It is important that you understand the risks that continue to play out in the markets.  Pay attention to market sectors that are at risk of showing us greater fear or weakness in the major markets.  Pay attention to these increases in volatility and price rotation.  Most of all, pay attention to the market’s failure to move higher over this holiday season because we should be traditionally expecting the Christmas Rally to push equities moderately higher at this time.

Should we see any more clear signs of weakness or market rotation, you will know about it with our regular updates to the public.  If you want to know how Acitve Trading Partners can assist you in staying up to day with the market cycles and analysis, then visit the Active Trading Partners and learn how we can assist you with detailed market research, daily updates, trading signals and more.

We are dedicated to helping you achieve success in the markets and do our best to make sure you are prepared for any future market moves.  See how we can assist you now and in 2018 to achieve greater success.

Chris Vermeulen

Prognosticators Who Cried Wolf about Dollar & Global Economic Collapse – Part 1

Over the years, hundreds of various self proclaimed prognosticators who said a global economic collapse were to happen on this date or that date have failed. Sort of like the old story about the shepherd who cried wolf.

Unfortunately this is EXACTLY what looks to be getting ready to happen. But first let me mention that the most accurate doomsday/sky is falling talking heads out there who have predicted several life changing events correctly in the past always seem to be 3 - 5 years early.

Why are these people always a few years early in predicting these events?

I believe it is because they focus almost strictly on fundamentals and economic data and ignore price analysis of various assets which could help in timing these events. There is no doubt in my mind they are correct about the fundamentals being out of whack and unsustainable, but I know from trading that fundamental data can lead or lag the actual markets themselves by several years.

In 2011 and 2012 several global economic collapse scenarios started to float around the market place. Now 4 - 5 year later we have yet to have a global collapse. But, what is interesting is the fact that many of the things they said would start to happen HAVE started happening in the past few months.

What scares me the most is the fact that the US bond bubble may burst, the USA will not be able to service their debt, the dollar will collapse in value, and a new currency will emerge.

If this happens everyone will experience some rough times for a while. Keep in mind that most of the US dollars are held outside the United States. The dollar is global and will send a shockwave into several countries financial systems.

Secret New Global Economic Treaty

Barack Obama has been working secretly on a new treaty and potentially new world currency. Only members of Congress are allowed to look at the treaty and they are being banned from saying anything to the public.

Americans could lose most of their wealth overnight and thanks to all of this secrecy they won’t even see it coming. There is the potential for a massive devaluation in the dollar which could happen literally overnight. This means Americans (individuals holding primarily U.S. Dollars) will wake up one morning with a fraction of the wealth they had 24 hours ago. Its scary stuff to say the least.

This new treaty is the “Trans Pacific Partnership”, and is being touted as perhaps the most important trade agreement in history. Very few people in this country are talking about it.

Currently, there are 12 countries in negotiations: the United States, Canada, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.  These countries have a total population of 790 million people which accounts for an astounding 40 percent of the global economy.  If the EU, China, and India join then this treaty will likely pass.

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Chris Vermeulen

How to Find the Best Offshore Banks

By Nick Giambruno

It’s hard to think of a topic where following the conventional wisdom can be more dangerous. And that topic is banking. It’s generally accepted as an absolute truth by the public and most financial experts that putting your money in a domestic bank is a safe and responsible thing to do. After all, if anything were to go wrong, your deposits are insured by the government.

As a result, most people put more thought into which shoes they should purchase than which bank should be entrusted with their life savings.

It’s a classic moral hazard—a situation in which a person is more likely to take risks because the costs won’t be borne by that person. In the case of banking, that’s how a lot of people think, but it isn’t necessarily true that individuals bear no costs of their banking decisions. The prudent thing to do is ignore the conventional wisdom and look at the facts to form your opinions. Choosing the right custodian for your life savings makes a difference—and it deserves some serious thought.

A False Sense of Security

In the US, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures bank deposits. In the case of a bank failure, the FDIC pays depositors up to $250,000. The FDIC has a reserve of around $30 billion for this purpose.

Now, $30 billion might sound like a lot of money. But considering that the FDIC insures around $9 trillion in deposits, the $30 billion in reserve amounts to just a drop in the bucket. It’s actually less than half a penny for every dollar it supposedly insures.

In fact, there are over 36 banks in the US that have deposits larger than the FDIC’s reserve. It wouldn’t take much for the FDIC itself to go bust. One large bank failure is all it would take. And with many of the big banks leveraged to the hilt, that isn’t as remote a possibility as many would believe.

Oddly, this doesn’t shake the confidence the public and most financial experts place in the US banking system.

Also, it’s already an established precedent that whenever a government deems it necessary, deposit guarantees can be disregarded on whim. We saw this in the early days of the financial crisis in Cyprus. The Cypriot government initially sought (but was ultimately rebuffed) to dip its hands into bank accounts under the guaranteed amount. Similarly, Spain has imposed a blanket taxation on all bank deposits. I’d bet this is only the beginning. We haven’t even made it through the coming attractions.

Taken together, this shows that the confidence in the banking system—merely because of the existence of a bankrupt government promise—is dangerously misplaced.

Follow conventional wisdom at your own peril.

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Fortunately, in this day and age the decision on where to bank doesn’t have to be constrained by geography. Banking outside of your home country—where much sounder governments, banking systems, and banks can be found—is in most ways just as easy as banking with Bank of America.

The Solution

Obtaining a bank account outside of your home country is a key component of any international diversification strategy.

It protects you from capital controls, lightning government seizures, bail ins, other forms of confiscation, and any number of other dirty tricks a bankrupt government might try.

Offshore banks offer another benefit: they are usually much safer and more conservatively run than banks in your home country… at least if you live in the US and many parts of Europe. It’s hard to see how you’d be worse off for placing some of your cash where it’s treated best. In the event that your home government does something desperate or your domestic bank makes a losing bet, it could turn out to be a very prudent move.

When Doug Casey and I were in Cyprus, we met with a number of astute Cypriots who saw the writing on the wall. They got their money outside of the country before the bail in and capital controls, and they were spared. It would be wise to learn from their example.

But you shouldn’t just blindly move your savings to any foreign bank. You want to consider only the best.
For me, being able to find the safest and best offshore banks comes naturally. In the past, I worked as a banking analyst for an investment bank in Beirut, Lebanon. While there, I rigorously assessed countless banks around the world. This experience and the analytical tools I developed have been very helpful in evaluating the best offshore banks worthy of holding deposits.

A basic rundown (but not inclusive) of factors I look for when analyzing an offshore bank include:

• The economic fundamentals and political risk of the jurisdictions the bank operates in.

• The quality of the bank’s assets—namely its loan book and investments. This helps you determine what the bank is doing with your money. I look for banks that are conservatively run and don’t gamble with your deposits. Banks that make leveraged bets with things like mortgage-backed securities or Greek government bonds are obviously to be avoided. Having a sound loan book with a low nonperforming ratio is crucial.

• Liquidity—a relatively safer bank will keep more cash on hand rather than invest it in risky assets or loan it out, all else equal. That way it can meet customer withdrawals without having to potentially sell off assets for a loss—which could affect its ability to give you back your deposits.

• Capitalization—this is a measure of its financial strength of the bank. It also shows you if the bank is using excessive leverage, which can increase the risk of insolvency. A bank’s capitalization is like its margin of error: the higher the better.

Another important factor is whether an offshore bank has a presence in your home jurisdiction. To obtain more political diversification benefits, it’s better that it does not.

For example, assume you are a Chinese citizen and want to diversify. It wouldn’t make much sense to open an account with the New York City branch of the Bank of China. It would be much better from a diversification standpoint for the Chinese citizen to open an account with a sound regional or local bank that doesn’t have a presence or connection to mainland China—and thus cannot have its arm easily twisted by the Chinese government.

The Best Offshore Banks

Each year, a prominent financial magazine publishes a study on the world’s safest banks. Below are its top 10 safest banks in the world (notice that none of them is in the US).

Naturally, things can change quickly though. New options emerge, while others disappear. This is why it’s so important to have the most up-to-date and accurate information possible. That’s where International Man comes in. Be sure to get the free IM Communiqué to keep up with the latest on the best offshore banking options.

Now, as an American citizen, it’s very unlikely that you could just show up to one of these banks and open an account as a nonresident of that country. That is, unless you plan on making a seven figure or high six figure deposit. Then you might have a chance, but even then it’s not guaranteed.

This dynamic is thanks to FATCA and all the red tape that the US government imposes on foreign banks who have US clients. For foreign banks, the logical business decision is to show Americans the unwelcome mat. The costs simply do not justify the benefits.

This is unfortunately true for many banks the world over. The net effect is to drastically reduce the number of choices that Americans have when banking offshore. It’s a sort of de facto capital control.

There are of course exceptions. Some solid offshore banks still accept Americans, and some even open accounts remotely. This means you could obtain huge diversification benefits without having to leave your living room.

In our comprehensive Going Global publication, we discuss our favorite banks and jurisdictions for offshore banking, crucially including those that still accept Americans as clients. It’s a list that is constantly dwindling, which highlights the need to act sooner rather than later.

The article was originally published at internationalman.com.

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The Looming Uranium Crisis: Strategic Implications for the Colder War

By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist

In the wake of one singular event—the disaster at Fukushima in March 2011, the effects of which are still being felt today across the planet—nuclear power has seemingly fallen into utter disrepute, at least in the popular mind. But this is largely an illusion.

It’s true that Japan took all 52 of its nuclear plants offline after Fukushima and sold much of its uranium inventory. South Korea followed with shutdowns of its own. Germany permanently mothballed eight of its 17 reactors and pledged to close the rest by the end of 2022. Austria and Spain have enacted laws to cease construction on new nuclear power stations. Switzerland is phasing them out. A majority of the other European nations is also opposed.

All of this has resulted in a large decrease in demand for uranium, a glut of the fuel on the market, and a per-pound price that fell as low as $28.50 in mid-2014, down nearly 80% from its peak of $135 in 2007.

Currently, it’s languishing around $39 per pound, still below the cost of production for many miners—about 80% need prices above $40 to make any return on investment, and even at that level, no new mines will be built. It’s easy to hear a death knell for nuclear energy on the breeze. And that may well be the case for Europe (except for France). But Europe is hardly the world.

South Korean plants are back online. Japan is planning to restart its reactor fleet (despite a great deal of citizen protest) beginning in 2015. Russia is heavily invested, with nine plants under construction and 14 others planned. China, faced with unhealthy levels of air pollution in many of its cities due to coal power generation, is going all in on nuclear. 26 reactors are under construction, and the government has declared a goal of quadrupling present capacity—either in operation or being built—by 2020. India has 20 plants and is adding seven more. And in the rest of the developing nations, nuclear power is exploding.

Worldwide, no fewer than 71 new plants are under construction in more than a dozen countries, with another 163 planned and 329 proposed. Many countries without nuclear power soon will build their first reactors, including Turkey, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and several of the Gulf emirates.

For years, China, with its stunning GDP growth rate, has been seen as the leading destination for natural resources. “Produce what China needs” has been every supplier’s ongoing mantra. Yet, as many Americans fail to realize, it’s their own home that is the biggest uranium consumer. Despite having not opened a new plant since 1977 (though six additional units are scheduled to open by 2020), the US is the world’s #1 producer of nuclear energy, accounting for more than 30% of the global total. France is a distant second at 12%; China, playing catchup, sits at only 6% right now. The 65 American nuclear plants, housing just over 100 reactors, generate 20% of total US electricity.

Yet uranium is the one fuel for which there is very little domestic supply.

As you can see, the US has to import over 90% of what it uses. That’s a huge shortfall—and it’s persisted for many years. How has the country made it up?

In a word: Russia.

America’s former Cold War archenemy—and antagonist in the unfolding sequel, the Colder War—has in fact been keeping the US nuclear fires burning, through conduits like the Megatons to Megawatts Program.
When the USSR collapsed, Russia inherited over two million pounds of HEU—highly enriched uranium (the 90% U-235 needed to fashion a bomb)—and vast, underused facilities for handling and fabricating the material. Starting in 1993, it cut a deal with the US dubbed the Megatons to Megawatts Program. Over the 20 years that followed, 1.1 million pounds of Russian weapon-grade uranium, equivalent to about 20,000 nuclear warheads, was downblended to U₃O₈ and sold to the United States as fuel.

That source was very important in helping to fill the US supply gap for those two decades. It represented, on average, over 20 million pounds of annual uranium supply, or half of what the country consumed. I’m sure it would have come as a shock to most Americans if they’d realized that one in ten of their homes was being powered by former Soviet missiles.

Megatons to Megawatts expired in November 2013, but US dependence on Russia did not. Russia is easily able to maintain its sizeable export presence, due largely to present economics.

Because of all the uranium swamping the market since Fukushima, separative work units (SWUs) are trading at very low prices. SWUs measure the amount of separation work necessary to enrich uranium—in other words, how much work must be done to raise the product’s concentration of U-235 to the 3-5% that most reactors require for fission?

The tails that are left behind when U-235 is separated out to make warheads still contain some amount of the isotope, usually around 0.2% to 0.3%. When the price of SWUs gets low enough, it’s a condition known as “underfeeding,” meaning it’s worth the effort to go back and extract leftover U-235 from the tails. That’s done through the process of re-enrichment, the reverse of the procedure that creates HEU. It’s kind of like getting fresh gold from old ore that had already yielded the easy stuff.

After the Soviet Union broke up, Russia had a lot of enrichment capacity it no longer needed for its military program. And major uranium companies like Areva and Urenco had sent trainloads of enrichment tails to Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Great stockpiles were built up, and they’ll be put to use until the pendulum swings the other way and we get “overfeeding,” where the price of SWUs makes re-enrichment too costly to continue. We will go from under- to overfeeding in the near future. Rising demand from the Japanese restart and new plants coming online ensures that it will happen, and probably within the next 24 months. The market is already anticipating it, with the per-pound price of uranium up more than 35% in the past few months. It’s going to double to $75… at the least.

Meanwhile, though, the ability to profitably produce fuel-grade uranium from tails confers on Russia a number of significant advantages. Among them:

• It permits the country to exploit a previously worthless resource.

• The more tails it can use as feedstock, the fewer it has to dispose of.

• Most important, it means Russia can conserve much of its mineral supply for a future when higher prices will dramatically increase its leverage. That includes in-ground ore, of which it has a lot, and probably uranium picked up on the cheap when Japan did its massive post-Fukushima fuel dump (though it has never been officially confirmed who the buyers of Japan’s uranium supply were, I have some very connected sources who tell me it was the Russians who snapped most of it up).

This is one part of Vladimir Putin’s plan to dominate the world energy markets. In my book, The Colder War, I call it the “Putinization” of uranium.  And he has nicely positioned his country to pull it off.
In January 2014, Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russian energy giant Rosatom, was bursting with enthusiasm when he predicted that Russia’s recent annual production rate of 6.5 million pounds of uranium would triple in 2015.

Rosatom puts Russia’s uranium reserves in the ground at 1.2 billion pounds of yellowcake, which would be the second largest in the world; the company is quite capable of mining 40 million pounds per year by 2020. Add in Russia’s foreign projects in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia, and annual production in 2020 jumps to more than 63 million pounds. Include all of Russia’s sphere of influence, and annual production easily could amount to more than 140 million pounds six years from now.

No other country has a uranium mining plan nearly this ambitious. By 2020, Russia itself could be producing a third of all yellowcake. With just its close ally Kazakhstan chipping in another 25%, Russia would have effective control of more than half of world supply.

That’s clout. But it doesn’t end there.
Globally, there are a fair number of facilities for fabricating fuel rods. Not so with conversion plants (uranium oxide to uranium hexafluoride) or enrichment plants (isolating the U-235). And the world leader in conversion and enrichment is…. yes, Russia.

All told, Russia has one-third of all uranium conversion capacity. The United States is in second place with 18%. And Russia’s share is projected to rise, assuming Rosatom proceeds with a new conversion plant planned for 2015. Similarly, Russia owns 40% of the world’s enrichment capacity. Planned expansion of the existing facilities will push that share close to 50%.

That’s Putin’s goal—to corner the conversion and enrichment markets—because it wraps Russian hands around the chokepoints in the whole yellowcake to electricity progression. It’s a smart strategy, too—control those, and you control the availability and pricing of a product for which demand will be rising for decades.

And that control will tighten, because the barrier to entry for either function is very high. Building new conversion or enrichment facilities is too costly for most countries, and it is especially difficult in the West due to the influence of environmentalists.

It’s worth reiterating. Russia is on track to control 58% of global yellowcake production; currently responsible for a third of yellowcake-to-uranium-hexafluoride conversion; and soon to hold half of all global enrichment capacity.

There’s a word for this: stranglehold.

That is what Putin and Russia will have on the supply chain for nuclear fuel in a world where new atomic power plants are being constructed at warp speed, which will force the price of uranium ever higher. It will give Russia enormous global influence and great leverage in all future dealings with the US America can mine some uranium domestically and buy some more from its Canadian ally. But even taken together, those sources put only a small patch on the supply gap.

The US government would do well to make peace with Putin, if it can, because the domestic nuclear power industry—and by extension the economic health of the country—is at the mercy of Russia, indefinitely.
To get the full story, click here to order your copy of my new book, The Colder War.

Inside, you’ll discover more on how Putin has cornered the market on Uranium, and how he’s making a big play to control the world's oil and natural gas markets. You’ll also glimpse his endgame and how it will personally affect millions of investors and the lives of nearly every American.

The article The Looming Uranium Crisis: Strategic Implications for the Colder War was originally published at casey research

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Why Putin Has Been Able to Outwit America and Take Over the Global Energy Trade

By Casey Research
Vladimir Putin commands the utmost loyalty from those around him, whereas American politics is now characterized solely by infighting and self destructiveness. It’s this unity of purpose that explains how Putin and his St. Petersburg boys managed to rise to power from humble beginnings and why they’re winning the fight to control global energy trade. Putin is fiercely committed to restoring Russia’s superpower status using its vast energy resources as an economic weapon. Can American possibly compete?

Before Putin makes another move, pick up a copy of The Colder War and learn how his plans will directly affect you. You might even catch yourself admiring the man, save for the fact that all this is happening at our expense.

The article Why Putin Has Been Able to Outwit America and Take Over the Global Energy Trade was originally published at casey research

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The Biggest Lesson from Microsoft’s Recent Battle with the US Government

By Nick Giambruno, Senior Editor, InternationalMan.com

A court ruling involving Microsoft’s offshore data storage offers an instructive lesson on the long reach of the US government—and what you can do to mitigate this political risk.

A federal judge recently agreed with the US government that Microsoft must turn over its customer data that it holds offshore if requested in a search warrant. Microsoft had refused because the digital content being requested physically was located on servers in Ireland.

Microsoft said in a statement that “a US prosecutor cannot obtain a US warrant to search someone’s home located in another country, just as another country’s prosecutor cannot obtain a court order in her home country to conduct a search in the United States.”

The judge disagreed. She ruled that it’s a matter of where the control of that data is being exercised, not of where the data is physically located.

This ruling is not at all surprising. It’s long been crystal clear that the US will aggressively claim jurisdiction if the situation in question has even the slightest, vaguest, or most indirect connection. Worse yet, as we’ve seen with the extraterritorial FATCA law, the US is not afraid to impose its own laws on foreign countries.
One of the favorite pretexts for a US connection is the use of the US dollar. The US government claims that just using the US dollar—which nearly every bank in the world does—gives it jurisdiction, even if there were no other connections to the US. It’s quite obviously a flimsy pretext, but it works.

Recently the US government fined (i.e., extorted) over $8 billion from BNP Paribas for doing business with countries it doesn’t like. The transactions were totally legal under EU and French law, but illegal under US law. The US successfully claimed jurisdiction because the transactions were denominated in US dollars—there was no other US connection.

This is not typical of how most governments conduct themselves. Not because they don’t want to, but because they couldn’t get away with it. The US, on the other hand—as the world’s sole financial and military superpower (for now at least)—can get away with it.

This of course translates into a uniquely acute amount of political risk for anyone who might fall under US jurisdiction somehow, especially American citizens. A prudent person will look to mitigate this risk through international diversification.

So let’s see what kinds of lessons this recent court ruling offers for those formulating their diversification strategies.

The Biggest Lesson

The most important lesson of the Microsoft case is that any connection to the US government —no matter how small—exposes you to big risks.

If there’s anything connected to the US, you can count on the US government using that vulnerability as a pressure point. Microsoft, being a US company with a huge US presence, is of course exposed to having its arms easily twisted by the US government—regardless if the data it stores is physically offshore.

Now let’s assume the company in question was a non-US company, with no US presence whatsoever (not incorporated in the US, no employees in the US, no servers or computer infrastructure in the US, no bank accounts in the US): then the US government would have a much more difficult time accessing the data and putting pressure on the company to comply with its demands.

It’s important to remember that even if a company or person is more immune to traditional pressures, there are plenty of unconventional ways the US can respond.

The US government could always resort to hacking, blackmail, or other acts of subterfuge to access foreign data that is seemingly out of its reach. This is where encryption comes in. We know from the Edward Snowden revelations that when properly executed, encryption works. For all practical purposes as things are today, strong and proper encryption places data beyond the reach of any government or anyone without the encryption keys.

Of course, there is no such thing as 100% protection, and there never will be. But using encryption in combination with a company that—unlike Microsoft—is 100% offshore is the best protection you can currently get for your digital assets.

Once you get the hang of it, encryption is actually easy to use. Be sure to check out the Easy Email Encryption guide; it’s free and located in the Guides and Resources section of the IM site.

How easily the US can access your offshore digital data will also come down to the politics and relationship between the US and the country in question. You can count on the UK, Canada, Australia, and others to easily roll over for anything the US wants. On the other hand, you can bet that a country with frosty relations with the US—like China or Russia—will toss most US requests in the garbage. This political arbitrage is what international diversification is all about.

The lessons of the Microsoft case extend to offshore banking.

It’s much better to do your offshore banking with a bank that has no branch in the US. For example, if you open an HSBC account in Hong Kong, the US government can simply pressure HSBC’s large presence in the US to get at your Hong Kong account—much like how the US government pressured Microsoft’s US presence to get at its data physically stored in Ireland.

Obtaining the Most Diversification Benefits

Most of us know about the benefits of holding uncorrelated assets in an investment portfolio to reduce overall risk. In a similar fashion, you can reduce your political risk—the risk that comes from governments. You do this by spreading various aspects of your life—banking, citizenship, residency, business, digital presence, and tax domicile—across politically uncorrelated countries to obtain the most diversification benefits. The optimal outcome is to totally eliminate your dependence on any one country.

This means you’ll want to diversify into countries that won’t necessarily roll over easily for other countries. This is of course just one consideration, and it needs to be balanced with other factors. For example, Russia isn’t going to be easily pressured by the US government. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to bank there.

Personally, I’m a fan of jurisdictions that are friendly with China—which helps insulate them from US pressure—but have a degree of independence and are competently run, like Hong Kong and Singapore.
Naturally, things can change quickly. New options emerge, while others disappear. This is why it’s so important to have the most up-to-date and accurate information possible. That’s where International Man comes in. Be sure to check out our Going Global publication, where we discuss the latest and best international diversification strategies in great, actionable detail.

The article The Biggest Lesson from Microsoft’s Recent Battle with the U.S. Government was originally published at Casey Research

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China’s Minsky Moment?

By John Mauldin

In speeches and presentations since the end of last year, I have been saying that I think the biggest macro problem in the world today is China. China has run up a huge debt, and the payments are coming due. They seem to be proactive, but will it be enough? How much risk do they pose for the global system?

This week as I travel to Cafayate I have asked my young associate Worth Wray to write up his research and our conversations on China. Worth has lived in China; and with his (and my) access to people with their fingers on the pulse of China, he has come up with some valuable insights. The hard part for him was to keep it in a single letter. China is a such a huge topic that writing about it can easily yield a tome.

I am lucky to have enticed Worth to come to work with me. He is extraordinarily talented and insightful as an economist, has the boundless energy of youth (which means he seemingly doesn’t sleep), and spent the last five years deep in one of the best training grounds that a young analyst could have. He brings his own extensive Rolodex to our organization. In the not too distant future, we plan to start writing a joint letter on portfolio design and construction, translating the macro insights we have into real world portfolios that can inform your own investing. Lots of I’s to dot and T’s to cross, but we are making progress.

I am delighted to be able to bring a talent like Worth to your attention. So let’s let him talk China to us and see where it takes us. [Note: as I do the final edits here in Cafayate, I see that Worth did an outstanding job of bringing the data together and making the story understandable. You want to take the time to read this!]

A Front Row Seat
By Worth Wray

Before I teamed up with John last July, I worked as the portfolio strategist for an $18 billion money manager in Houston, TX that, among its other businesses, co-managed (with an elite team of investors from the university endowment world) one of the largest registered funds of funds in the United States.

For a bright-eyed kid from South Louisiana, it was a life changing experience. I had a front-row seat for every investment decision in a multi-billion-dollar portfolio for almost five years; and along with my colleagues and mentors in Texas, North Carolina, New York, Shanghai, and Singapore, I had the chance to meet and interact with a long list of the most sought-after hedge fund, private equity, and venture capital teams. I often found myself in the same room with honest-to-god legends like Kyle Bass, John Paulson, JC Flowers, and Ken Griffin … and I forged lasting some friendships with their portfolio managers and analysts.

As you can imagine, the information flow was addictive. I spent thousands of hours poring over manager letters from six continents, doing my best to connect the global macro dots ahead of the markets and coming up with question after question for everyone who would return my calls. That experience plugged me in to an enduring network of truly independent thinkers, forced me to see the world from an entirely different perspective, and put me in an ideal position to figure out what it takes to navigate the unprecedented (not to say strange) investment challenges posed by a “Code Red” world.

Sometimes, combing through a mountain of manager letters felt like reading the newspaper years in advance. I remember watching with amazement as a free-thinking global macro investor named Mark Hart made a fortune for his investors by shorting US subprime mortgages and then shifted his focus to what he argued would be the next shoe to drop – a series of sovereign defaults across the Eurozone.

Mark explained how the launch of a common currency had allowed historically riskier borrowers like Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and France to issue sovereign debt for the same borrowing cost as Germany did… without any kind of fiscal union to justify the common rates. The resulting debt splurge led to a big increase in fiscal debts, drove an unwarranted rise in unit labor costs across the southern Eurozone, and essentially activated a ticking time bomb at the very foundations of the euro system. It seemed obvious that rates would eventually diverge to reflect the relative credit risks of the borrowers, but the market didn’t seem to care until it got very bad news from Athens. We all know what happened next.

Just as Mark and his team at Corriente Advisors had predicted, spreads blew out in Greece, then in Ireland, then in Portugal, then in Spain… and it now appears that Italy and France are veering toward a similar fate. When the euro crisis finally broke out, my colleagues and I were waiting for it, because Mark had already walked us through his playbook for a multi-act global debt drama.

Instead of blowing up in spectacular fashion, the Eurozone crisis has taken far longer to resolve than a lot of investors and economists expected (Mark, John, and myself included); but the euro’s survival thus far has been largely the result of extensive Realpolitik and an increasingly hollow narrative from Mario Draghi and the ECB laying claim to the wherewithal to “do whatever it takes” to preserve the single-currency system. Meanwhile, as Corriente understood, the likelihood of major defaults across the Eurozone rises every day that the ECB does the bare minimum to resist France’s and Italy’s slide toward deflation. It’s not over until the fat lady sings.

The point I am trying to make is that Mark saw the fundamental imbalances behind the global financial crisis in time to launch a dedicated fund in 2006, and he saw the root causes of the ongoing European debt crisis in time to launch a dedicated fund in 2007… precisely because he thinks of the global economy as one interconnected system peppered with a series of unstable and still unresolved debt bubbles. Mark is one of the most forward-thinking investors I have ever met and one of the best in recent decades at spotting the big imbalances that spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

I can’t tell you if he will be right about the next phase of the global debt drama. Predicting the actions and reactions of elected and unelected officials is next to impossible in a Code Red world, but some people have an eye for fundamental imbalances. And since Mark has been largely right in identifying the major debt bubbles that have plagued the world since 2007, John and I can’t comfortably ignore his warning.

As Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff argued in their still-authoritative history of financial boom and bust over the past eight hundred years, “When an accident is waiting to happen, it eventually does. When countries become too deeply indebted, they are headed for trouble. When debt-fueled asset price explosions seem too good to be true, they probably are.”

The Bubble That Is China

Following his prescient calls on the subprime debacle and the European debt crisis, Mark identified in 2010 another source of instability that he warned could shake the global economy. And it took me by surprise. He warned that China was in the “late stages of an enormous credit bubble,” and he projected that the economic fallout when that bubble burst could be “as extraordinary as China’s economic outperformance over the last decade.”

To my knowledge, Mark Hart and his team at Corriente were the first of many global macro managers to anticipate a hard landing in the People’s Republic of China. Mark argued that the Middle Kingdom would land very hard indeed, popping speculative bubbles in the property and stock markets, sending foreign capital flying out the door, and triggering a rapid collapse in the renminbi … and even if the Chinese government could manage its economy away from a deflationary bust, they would be forced to devalue the renminbi to do so. In other words, Mark saw a much lower renminbi under almost every outcome.
It was a mind-blowing concept to me that the main driver of global growth (at the time) could not only implode but even drag the rest of the world down with it.

I can’t share the original Corriente China presentation with you for legal reasons, but here are a few public notes published by the Telegraph’s Louise Armistead after she attended one of Mark’s presentations in November 2010. These may look like obvious observations today, the sort you can find plastered all across the internet, but very few people were actually paying attention four years ago. And the data has only gotten worse since 2010 as rampant credit growth and insidious shadow lending have continued to fuel greater and greater capital misallocation.

In the presentation, which amounts to a devastating attack on the prevailing belief that China is an engine for growth, the financier argues that ‘inappropriately low interest rates and an artificially suppressed exchange rate’ have created dangerous bubbles in sectors including:

Raw materials: Corriente says China has consumed just 65pc of the cement it has produced in the past five years, after exports. The country is currently outputting more steel than the next seven largest producers combined – it now has 200m tons of excess capacity, more that the EU and Japan's total production so far this year.

Property construction: Corriente reckons there is currently an excess of 3.3bn square meters of floor space in the country – yet 200m square metres of new space is being constructed each year.

Property prices: The average price-to-rent ratio of China's eight key cities is 39.4 times – this figure was 22.8 times in America just before its housing crisis. Corriente argues: “Lacking alternative investment options, Chinese corporates, households and government entities have invested excess liquidity in the property markets, driving home prices to unsustainable levels.” The result is that the property is out of reach for the majority of ordinary Chinese.

Banking: As with the credit crisis in the West, the banks’ exposure to the infrastructure credit bubbles isn’t obvious because the debt is held in Local Investment Companies – shell entities which borrow from Chinese banks and invest in fixed assets. Mr Hart reckons that ‘bad loans will equal 98pc of total bank equity if LIC-owned, non-cashflow-producing assets are recognised as non-performing.’

The result is that, rather than being the ‘key engine for global growth’, China is an ‘enormous tail-risk’.

(Louise Armistead, The Telegraph, “Hedge fund manager Mark Hart bets on China as the next ‘enormous credit bubble’ to burst.” Nov. 29, 2010)

The markets may damn well prove Mark right, along with a host of other managers who either jumped on his bandwagon or reached the same conclusions independently; but it seemed downright crazy in 2010 to think that the main driver of global growth could abruptly become its biggest threat within a few short years.

On a personal note, I obsessed over China’s culture, economy, and political system for years in college and then witnessed the country’s transformation firsthand during my time at Shanghai’s Fudan University in the summer of 2007. Then and later, I marveled at China’s strength relative to the developed world and the seemingly invincible central government’s ability to keep the economy chugging along with credit growth and fixed investment while it hoped for the return of its developed world customers then mired in the Great Recession.

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear … but I had to accept that Mark could be right. He had clearly identified a major imbalance which has continued to worsen over the last few years, and now we are just waiting for the next shoe to drop.



Four years later, Chinese production is slowing in the shadow of a massive credit bubble and in the face of aggressive reforms. Disappointing investment returns are revealing broad based capital misallocation; property prices are cooling (relative to other countries); and commodity stockpiles are mounting.

With China’s new policy of allowing defaults (historically, China’s default rate has been 0%), there is a real risk that follow-on events could spin out of control, raising nonperforming loan ratios and sparking a panic as bank capital is significantly eroded.

In the meantime, the renminbi is trading down, most likely due to an intentional effort by the People’s Bank of China to aid in the slow unwinding of leveraged trade finance.

Now the signs of a Chinese slowdown (and thus a global one, as the world is geared to 8% Chinese growth) are clear, and people around the world are meeting uncertainty with emotion. With that in mind, let’s dig into the data that really matters and try to get to the heart of China’s dilemma.
China’s Minsky Moment?

“China is like an elephant riding a bicycle. If it slows down, it could fall off, and then the earth might quake.” – James Kynge, China Shakes the World

After 30 years of sustained economic growth topping 8% and a successful bank cleanup in 2000, the People’s Republic was well on its way to blowing through the “middle income trap” and transitioning to a more advanced consumption-based economy. But then in 2008 the banking crisis in the United States abruptly ushered in a painful era of balance sheet repair across the developed world and delivered a demand shock to emerging markets. Rather than allow the Chinese economy to fall into recession at such an inconvenient time, the Party leadership sprang into action to stimulate demand with its largest fiscal deficit in more than 60 years and to mobilize bank lending with historically low interest rates and enormous liquidity injections.



As you can see in the charts above, China’s total debt-to-GDP (including estimates for shadow banks) grew by roughly 20% per year, from just under 150% in 2008 to nearly than 210% at the end of 2012 … and continued rising in 2013. Even more ominous, corporate debt has soared from 92% in 2008 to 150% today against the expectation that China’s government would always backstop defaults. That makes Chinese corporates the most highly levered in the world and more than twice as levered as US corporates, just as  corporate defaults are happening for the very first time in more than 60 years.



By another measure, China has accounted for more than $15 trillion of the $30 trillion in worldwide credit growth over the last five years, bringing Chinese bank assets to roughly $24 trillion (2.5x Chinese GDP) and prompting London Telegraph columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard to tweet John and me a short message: “China riding tail of $24 trillion credit tiger. Tiger will eat Maoists.” And to that, I would respond that I hope the tiger doesn’t find its way to France. (You can follow John and Worth on Twitter at @JohnFMauldin and @WorthWray.)

Looking further into the debt problem, China is steadily incurring more and more credit for less and less growth – suggesting that the newer debt is less productive because it is being put to unproductive uses – as you can see in Chart 2 above. That explains why many analysts believe China’s official reported nonperforming loan ratio of 1% is more like 11% – or more than 20% of GDP.

To continue reading this article from Thoughts from the Frontline – a free weekly publication by John Mauldin, renowned financial expert, best-selling author, and Chairman of Mauldin Economics – please click here.

The article Thoughts from the Frontline: China’s Minsky Moment? was originally published at Mauldin Economics

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Is Investing in Electric Cars the Best Way to Invest in Crude Oil?

The United States alone consumes 18.9 million barrels of oil every day, rain or shine. And China's appetite grows more ravenous by the minute, with daily consumption doubling from 5.5 million barrels in 2003 to nearly 9.8 million in 2011.

Aside from a brief downturn during the recession, global oil consumption has been moving inexorably higher.

Worldwide oil consumption passed its pre-recession 2007 peak in 2010 and continues to rise. It is projected to reach 90.2 million barrels per day this year. Meanwhile, the world's oil companies will only produce 90 million barrels per day.

In other words, demand will outstrip supply by 200,000 barrels per day, or by about 73 million barrels this year.

We can barely feed our energy appetite today. And we're getting hungrier. Per-capita consumption in China and India is still less than one-tenth that of the United States, but these growing middle classes are catching up fast. In fact, 18 million new cars hit the road in China last year -- compared with 14.5 million in the United States -- stretching oil supplies even thinner.



Meanwhile, most production grounds have been in a steady decline for decades. Future oil exploration activity will be focused in deep offshore basins, which are expensive to tap.

That's why I'm advising readers to invest in the "Oil of the 21st Century."

I call it this because no other precious resource in the world can do what it does. Businesses are willing to pay hundreds of millions a year for its unique qualities -- it is a key ingredient in a wide range of products, from pharmaceuticals to rocket fuel. But its real magic is that, pound for pound, this featherweight metal can store more electric energy than just about any other material.

I'm talking about lithium.

You see, lithium is the battery maker's best friend. Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have twice the energy density of yesterday's outdated nickel-cadmium technology, making them indispensible in everyday products from digital cameras to portable video game consoles.

You've probably got some lithium within reach right now. If you own an iPad, iPod or iPhone, you definitely do.

But electronic gadgets aren't why I'm so excited by lithium.

The real action is in cars -- electric cars, to be specific.

President Barack Obama wants to put 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015, and 10 times that amount by 2018. The government is bankrolling the transition with some heavy incentive dollars.

GM is going electric with the Volt. Ford is planning a battery-powered car based on the Focus. And, of course, Toyota has the Prius... Honda the Insight... and Nissan the Leaf.

But car makers won't be the biggest winners from the craze for electric vehicles. Instead, I think there's another way to make even more money from the transition to battery power.

Unlike gold, silver and other metals, it is virtually impossible to invest directly in lithium. The Global X Lithium Exchange Traded Fund (NYSE: LIT), however, is the next best thing.

The fund's three largest positions, or roughly half its portfolio, is invested in companies engaged in lithium mining and refining. These companies have diverse business lines, so these aren't pure plays. But collectively, this trio accounts for the majority of the world's lithium production. The rest of the fund's assets are invested in a well rounded mix of battery makers.

Click here to get your FREE Trend Analysis for LIT

Risks to Consider: In many respects, this industry is still in its infancy. So it's difficult to say which technologies will emerge victorious and which will become historical footnotes. That means there will be some spectacular winners in this field, but also some big losers.


The 2 Energy Sectors You Should Invest in This Year

CME Crude Oil, Natural Gas and Gold Market Recap

August crude oil prices trended higher throughout the US trading session, supported by the lack of progress in resolving an oil workers strike in Norway. Another source of support for the crude oil market came from weakness in the US dollar and ideas that weaker than expected global economic data could prompt central bankers to pursue more monetary stimulus. The product markets were also higher, supported by gains in crude oil and prospect that leaders in China could move to lower domestic gasoline and diesel prices in a maneuver to stoke economic growth.

So far the natural gas futures market has recovered about 2/3 of the loss from Friday's session as the market rethinks the impact on demand from the hot weather in the US even as the economics of coal to gas switching are still biased to the coal side. At the moment the macroeconomics comparing the spot Nymex Appalachian coal price to the spot Nymex Nat Gas price is favorable to the coal side. This coupled with the robust level of coal inventories at many utility sites should result in the utility sector starting to switch back to coal at the expense of Nat Gas for power generation. This is certain to have an impact on demand and will eventually have a negative impact on the underperformance of injections that has been experienced throughout the injection season so far.

On the other hand the massive heat wave that has engulfed a major portion of the US for the last several weeks is cooling down in the south for the next 6 to 10 days. However, the above normal temperatures are projected to return during the 8 to 14 day forecast period. As such Nat Gas cooling demand will likely be above normal for most of the month of July and possibly beyond that. However, the big question is ...will the above normal level of cooling related Nat Gas demand be enough to compensate for the loss of demand from switching back to coal for power generation. I do not think it will be enough and as such I still view the current level of Nat Gas futures prices to be overvalued or better said ahead of the price level that the current fundamentals would support.

Perhaps the gold market was lifted by soaring grain prices or perhaps the gold trade was simply inspired by a revival of easing prospects from the Chinese. It is also possible that gold and other physical commodity markets were lifted as a result of calls to extend the Bush tax cuts for lower incomes. It is also possible that gold saw its fortunes boosted by a bounce in the Euro, which at times was hopeful of some fresh maneuvering from EU officials.

Phil Flynn: Bail Out Bonanza

Another day, another bailout and yes, bailouts are bullish! Another plan to save Europe and rising expectations of the US economy has oil back on an upward track. Oil got an initial bounce off of a jobs report that seemed to suggest that we are not in a recession. Yet after a surprise downgrade of Italy and Spain, oil took a late drop. Holy Fitch! Yet over the weekend German Chancellor Angel Merkel said that Germany and Spain have a plan to bail out European banks. Well at the very least they have a plan to make a plan and the details will be forthcoming. Huh? Well no matter, enjoy the ride!

Plus there are reports that the French-Belgian bank Dexia agreed to the nationalization of its Belgian banking division and secured 90 billion euros or $121 billion dollars in state guarantees. Now it appears that other banks in Europe will be backed by the governments in an effort to forestall an economic collapse. Bloomberg News reported that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy turned their crisis fighting focus to banks, promising a recapitalization blueprint this month that will overtake a 12 week old rescue plan that has yet to be put into place. “We will recapitalize the banks,” the French president said in Berlin yesterday at a joint briefing with the German chancellor without providing details. “We’ll do it in complete agreement with our German friends because the economy needs it, to assure growth and financing.”

Of course the recent drop in crude oil price may cause some to change their long term demand forecasts and their outlook for future production capacity as well! The Saudis announced that they have put on hold their expansion of oil production capacity. The Saudis had planned to add another 2.5 million barrels of day of capacity to meet growing global demand. That would have the Saudi's production capacity at around 15 million barrels per day. The Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Khalid Al Falih said, "There is no reason for Saudi Aramco to pursue 15 million barrels (of output capacity),"It is difficult to see (an increase in capacity) because there are too many variables happening," he said. "You've got too many announcements about massive capacity expansions coming out of countries like Brazil, coming out of countries like Iraq.

The market demand is addressed by others." He went on to say, "Our objective is not to grow our production for the sake of growing our production," Falih said, "but to be there for the market if the market needs it, and we are waiting to see what happens on the supply side as well as how demand stabilizes. Our planning horizons are in the decades and most of our investments are investments that will do very well at the end of an economic recession so we will pursue them ... regardless of what happens in Europe or in the U.S.," he said.

Now some peak freaks will claim the real reason is because the Saudis can't raise production because they are running out of oil. Yet the truth is that they are worried that an increase in capacity will put downward pressure on price at a time when global demand is faltering.


Tune into the Fox Business Network where you can see Phil every day! Also sign up for a trial to his daily trade levels! Just email him at pflynn@pfgbest.com

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Bloomberg: Contango on Mideast Oil Disappears on China Diesel Squeeze

The 1 month old contango in Dubai oil, the benchmark grade of crude for Asia, has disappeared as a shortage of diesel in China puts a premium on the quickest deliveries of fuel. The December contract was 15 cents a barrel more expensive than January’s today, reversing a discount that’s been in place since July 2009, according to data from PVM Oil Associates, a London based broker.

A shortage of diesel in China is pushing up the premium for the fastest deliveries of oil as the nation curbs power use under a plan by Premier Wen Jiabao to cut electricity consumption per unit of gross domestic product by 20 percent in the five years through 2010. Stockpiles in the country, the world’s biggest energy user, fell for a seventh month in October, according to data from China Oil, Gas & Petrochemicals, a publication of the state owned Xinhua News Agency.

“China’s got to be short” of crude oil, said Alex Yap, an analyst at FACTS Global Energy in Singapore. “If they want to do any restocking from November to December, they’ll have to be importing a lot for the next couple of months.”

Oil imports dropped 30 percent to a 17 month low of 16.4 million metric tons in October, or about 3.9 million barrels a day, the General Administration of Customs said Nov. 22. Diesel inventories declined 11 percent to about 6.2 million tons in October, data from Xinhua News showed on Nov. 22. They were 11.5 million tons in February......Read the entire article.


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Phil Flynn: Crude Oil Is Shell Shocked

North Korea’s shelling of a South Korean Island is raising fears of a global catastrophe and the impact on oil might be dramatic. Overnight in what is being called the most aggressive attack since the Korean War Cease fire back in 1953 North Korea's shelling of South Korea is shaking up global commodity markets. Oil prices are falling with traders seeking safe haven in the US dollar as they wait and try to figure out just what the heck is behind North Korea's aggressive action. North Korea, without provocation, decided to shell a South Korean Island and as reported by the New York Times.

“North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire on Tuesday after dozens of shells fired from the North struck a South Korean Island near the countries’ disputed maritime border. Two South Korean soldiers were killed, 15 were wounded and three civilians were injured", said Kiyheon Kwon, an official at the Defense Ministry. Reuters News reported, “South Korea has warned North Korea it would “sternly retaliate” to any further provocations. There may be a lot of reasons for North Korea’s action. Perhaps it is because their secret nuclear weapons facility was exposed. That led to reports that South Korea’s defense minister saying that South Korea might again might hoist......Read the entire article.




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