Hillary’s Scary New Cash Tax

By Justin Spittler

Have you heard of “negative interest rates?” It’s become a phenomenon with economists and the media. There’s a good chance you’ve read an article about it. We’ve covered it many times in the Dispatch. I’m writing to tell you something about negative interest rates you haven’t heard. You certainly won’t hear about it in the mainstream press.

What’s coming at you is a historic event. It’s something our grandchildren will hear stories about...much like the Great Depression or the Cold War. What’s coming could send the price of gold much higher in the coming years...and hand gold stock owners 500%+ gains. If you know what’s coming, it could mean the difference between having lots of free cash in retirement or barely getting by.

To understand the gravity of this moment, let’s cover one of the most bizarre ideas in the world...Negative Interest Rates. In a normal world, your bank pays you interest on your savings. It takes your money, pools it with other people’s money, and loans it out. The bank makes money by paying out less in interest on your deposit than it earns in interest from borrowers.

For example, it might pay out 3% to depositors while earning 6% from borrowers. This is how it has worked for decades. Negative interest rates turn your “normal” bank account upside down. Negative interest rates could only exist in a crazy world where idiot politicians are in control. Unfortunately, that’s just what we’re dealing with right now. Politicians all over the world are ordering banks to charge depositors (you) a fee for storing cash.

It’s a perversion of saving. It’s a perversion of capitalism. It’s a perversion of planning for the future.
And it’s going to result in disaster. Politicians think that by making it unattractive for you to keep money in the bank, you’ll save less money. Instead, you’ll spend more money on things like smartphones and cars. You’ll invest in things like stocks and real estate. This would “stimulate” the economy.

This thinking is very, very wrong. No matter what the government does, it can’t force you to spend money. It can’t force you to make investments if you don’t see good opportunities. Forcing people to pay banks to hold their money is a tax. It is wealth confiscation for the digital age.

The government and the mainstream press won’t dare call it a tax. But that’s exactly what it is. A negative interest rate policy is a tax. Any time you hear a politician, central banker, or news anchor say “negative interest rates,” just think “TAX.” Think “TAX ON MY CASH”. I’ll say it again: Negative interest rates are going to result in financial disaster.

The coming disaster will wipe out many people. But you don’t have to be one them. I’ll explain how you can sidestep this disaster—and even make a lot of money as a result of it—in a moment. But let’s quickly cover one more thing about negative interest rates.

The Ugly Twin Sister of Negative Interest Rates

If the government makes it unattractive for you to keep cash in the bank, you can pull cash out of the bank. You can simply store it in a safe or under the mattress. Politicians know this. That’s why they’ve created another dangerous policy that works hand-in-glove with negative interest rates. That policy is banning cash.
You see, if you pull your money out of the banking system and stuff it under the mattress, you aren’t doing what the government wants you to do.

You’re not spending money or investing in stocks. This is a major reason why governments are banning large cash transactions and large denomination bills.

They are fighting a War on "Cash". In just the past few years…

• Spain banned cash transactions over 2,500 euros
• Italy banned cash transactions over 1,000 euros
• France banned cash transactions over 1,000 euros, down from the previous limit of 3,000 euros

And just a few weeks ago, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers called for a ban on the $100 bill!
Historians aren’t surprised by Summers’ idea. Franklin Delano Roosevelt banned $500 and $1,000 bills in the 1930s. You can bet that Big Government types like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will do the same thing in a financial emergency.

By making it so difficult (or illegal) to buy and sell things with cash, the government wants to force people into the banking system. That way it can monitor us and coerce us into whatever it wants...like pay outrageous new taxes.

It’s all a dream come true for government central planners.

The governments say these new currency laws are for fighting terrorism, money laundering, and drugs.
But the ultimate goal is control of society…and to confiscate the wealth of private citizens. As congressman Ron Paul said, “The cashless society is the IRS’s dream: total knowledge of, and control over, the finances of every single American.”

Whether you agree with these regulations or not, the conclusion is obvious. By driving us more and more towards trackable digital payments, the government has made it much, much easier to confiscate our wealth. We’re like sheep that have been “herded” into a corral, ready for shearing. And Hillary Clinton (and her Big Government cronies) is holding the clippers. However, you don’t have to be sheared. You can avoid the shearing by learning how to navigate what will become the largest underground currency market in history.

Hillary Doesn’t Want Your Gold. She Wants Your Cash

On April 5th, 1933, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued one of the most controversial orders in U.S. history. It went by the name “Executive Order 6102” Not one American in 1,000 knows about this order. But to this day, many experts consider it to be one of the most destructive acts in U.S. history. It violated sacred principles held by our founding fathers. It impoverished millions and confiscated the savings of honest, hardworking Americans.

Executive Order 6102 made it illegal for private citizens to own gold. Citizens were ordered to turn in their gold to the government. Why would the government confiscate the wealth of private citizens? You can fill a book on the history surrounding Executive Order 6102. But in a nutshell, it was the act of a desperate government in the midst of a financial crisis. The government wanted the gold in order to increase the nation’s money supply. It believed an increase in the money supply would revive the struggling economy.

Please review those last two paragraphs.....

An increase in the money supply...a struggling economy...a desperate government. Sound similar to what is happening right now? Since the answer to that question is “YES,” we have to ask another question. Could such a confiscation happen again?

As the crisis develops, our deeply indebted government will act like a giant wounded beast, lashing out in all directions. It will grow more desperate for control. It will grow desperate for money. And just like FDR did in the 1930s, it will confiscate the wealth of private citizens. But Hillary Clinton (or Donald Trump, or whoever wins the election) won’t go after your gold. Nowadays, the gold market is very small compared to the overall economy.

Going after gold would be too much work for the government. The government is going to go after YOUR CASH. It will regulate your cash. It will tax your cash. It will take your cash. This has all kinds of implications for banking and the economy.

But here’s the most important thing you need to know as an investor. Negative interest rates and their partner, the War on Cash, will create a renewed interest in gold. This could cause gold to double or even triple in value. Even children know what the government is doing is crazy. And people aren’t going to take this lying down.

Rather than participate in the government’s mgovernment, onetary farce, people will go underground. They will pull cash out of banks and hoard it in safe places. And they will seek the safety, anonymity, and reliability of gold and silver. Gold and silver have served as money for centuries. Gold is the ultimate currency because it doesn’t rot or corrode...it is durable…easily divisible...portable...has intrinsic value…is consistent around the world...and it cannot be created from thin air. It cannot be debased by the government.

By enforcing negative interest rates and fighting a War on Cash, the government will create a huge underground currency market. And the ultimate underground currency will be gold and its sister metal, silver. Gold is trading for around $1,260 an ounce right now. As the government blunders into a negative interest rate disaster, gold will likely rise 50%...100%...possibly even 200% higher. There’s an underground currency market coming to your neighborhood.

If you own enough gold, you’ll be its king.
If you don’t yet own gold, buy it now.
If you own a lot of gold, buy more.

Regards,
Brian Hunt

---

Editor’s Note: Brian just alerted readers to an extremely rare opportunity in the gold market…one that could lead to 500%+ gains in a short period. This situation has only occurred a handful of times in the last 20 years. But every time it occurs, some investors see gains as large as 1,700%, 4,300%, and 5,000%.

If you’re interested in this idea, please act now. With gold prices surging, the window of opportunity won’t be open long. And once it closes, we likely won’t get another one for years. Read more here. The article Hillary’s Scary New Cash Tax was originally published at caseyresearch.com.


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The Secret Behind the $1 Million Option Setup....Here’s Your Private Replay (expires soon)

If you missed John Carter’s special training Tuesday night then you are in luck. The limited replay is online now.

Watch the Private Replay Here [Expires soon] 

Get ready to take notes! Unfortunately, I have no idea how long this replay will be up, so watch it while you can. But I can tell you the feedback from those who attended live is beyond awesome. This was not just another ‘webinar’ featuring ‘hypothetical results’.

John detailed, step by step, how to be consistently profitable in these volatile conditions using just a handful of very simple options setups. There was ZERO hype and total transparency. He showed actual trading accounts with winning AND losing trades for all to see. You gotta see this for yourself.

Here’s just some of what John revealed....

•   Why extreme volatility is the new normal. If you don’t want to crash and burn, you MUST adapt

•   The setup John used to turn $3k into $119k in just 3 weeks (and how to spot these rare, explosive moves)

• The simple signal that allowed John to make $1 million in a single day on TSLA options

• How to pinpoint major reversals in advance by legally ‘spying’ on Wall Street Insiders

• The publically available intel that allowed John to catch the Nasdaq’s historic January collapse, AND then get long for the February rally

• The braindead simple option system that turns crazy market volatility into potentially giant gains (sometimes literally overnight , with strictly limited risk)

• How it’s possible to consistently pull in $100 to $1000 a day by trading from your smart phone (even if you have a job)

Like I said, you don’t want to miss this training. John’s refined these simple strategies over more than 25 years. He shows you what’s really working now and the account killing mistakes that you want to avoid like the plague.

Watch the Limited Replay Now

See you in the markets!
Ray C. Parrish
aka the Crude Oil Trader


Get John's latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Will Your Favorite Oil Company Go Bankrupt?

By Justin Spittler

Oil companies are getting desperate. If you’ve been reading the Dispatch, you know oil is in a horrible bear market. The price of oil has crashed 69% since June 2014. Last month, oil hit its lowest price since 2003.

The world has too much oil..…
For years, many folks thought the world was running out of oil. The price of oil soared more than 1,200% from 1998 to 2008. The “Peak Oil” crowd saw this as proof that oil production was in terminal decline. They were very wrong. “Peak Oil” believers failed to understand that high prices would create huge incentives to develop new ways to produce oil. Oil companies developed new methods like “fracking” to unlock billions of barrels of oil that were once impossible to reach. U.S. oil production has nearly doubled over the last decade. Last year, it hit its highest level since the 1970s. World oil production levels are also near record highs.

The world isn’t consuming oil fast enough..…
The global economy produces about 1.7 million more barrels a day than it needs. With U.S. oil reserves at their highest level since the Great Depression, companies are running out of places to store the extra oil. To deal with the surplus, companies have started storing oil on tankers floating at sea and in empty railcars. Other companies are selling barrels at huge discounts just to get rid of them.

Low oil prices have hammered major oil companies..…
The world’s five biggest oil companies—Exxon (XOM), Chevron (CVX), Total S.A. (TOT), BP (BP), and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A)—have fallen an average 34% since June 2014. Oil services companies, which supply “picks and shovels” to the oil industry, have crashed, too. Schlumberger (SLB), the world’s largest oil services company, has plunged 36% since 2014. Halliburton (HAL), the world’s second biggest, has plunged 53%.

Oil companies have cut spending to the bone..…
Companies have walked away from billion dollar projects. They’ve sold pieces of their businesses. As Dispatch readers know, some have even cut their prized dividends. The industry has laid off more than 250,000 workers since oil prices peaked. Last year, oil and gas companies cut spending by 22%. Reuters reports that the industry could cut spending another 12% this year.

On Thursday, Halliburton laid off 5,000 workers..…
It’s now laid off 29,000 workers, more than a quarter of its workforce, since 2014. Like most companies in the oil business, Halliburton is struggling. Its sales have fallen four straight quarters. Last year, the company lost $671 million, its first annual loss since 2004. The latest round of layoffs suggests Halliburton doesn’t expect business to pick up anytime soon.

The oil market is cyclical..…
It goes through big booms and busts. Right now, it’s going through its worst bust in decades. Eventually, the oil market will boom again. After all, the world needs oil. Companies that survive this bust should deliver huge gains during the next boom. If you can buy great oil companies near the bottom, you could set yourself up for huge gains when the next boom comes. So…is this the bottom?

According to The Wall Street Journal, one third of U.S. oil producers could go bankrupt this year. To be profitable, many companies would need the price of oil to get back up $50. With oil at $32.84 a barrel on Friday, those companies are in trouble. We expect a wave of bankruptcies to rip across the oil industry. This would likely trigger another leg down in oil stocks. So we’re not ready to buy oil stocks yet.

Instead, we recommend “stalking” your favorite oil companies..…
Nick Giambruno, editor of Crisis Investing, just added a world-class oil company to his watch list.
If you don’t know Nick, his specialty is buying beaten-down assets during a crisis. Most investors run away from crisis. But if you can keep your head and buy when everyone else is panicking, you can often pick up a dollar’s worth of assets for a dime or less.

Shale oil stocks are in crisis today. Even the largest shale companies have been obliterated. Major shale oil producer Apache (APA) has plunged 51% since June 2014. Anadarko (APC), another larger shale company, has plummeted 65%. Shale oil is more expensive to extract than conventional oil. And at today’s prices, most shale oil projects can’t make money.

Many shale companies borrowed too much money during oil’s boom times. Now that oil is in a bust, they can’t generate the cash flow to pay back their debts. Last month, investment bank Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. warned that half of all U.S. shale oil producers could go bankrupt before oil prices recover. To survive, these companies would need the price of oil to more than double.

Nick has found a shale company unaffected by these problems. It’s a world-class shale oil company that has virtually no risk of going bankrupt. However, its stock has gotten extremely cheap along with all other shale oil stocks. Nick says this company has “trophy assets in the major U.S. shale basins. It has a solid balance sheet.

And, unlike many of its peers, it didn’t over leverage itself during the last boom.” The company also has the industry’s highest profit margins. Nick plans to buy this company at once in a generation prices. He will tell Crisis Investing readers when it’s time to pull the trigger.

In the meantime, Nick is investing in Cuba..…
As you may know, the U.S. has had a trade embargo against Cuba since 1962. The embargo bans all trade, making it illegal for Americans to invest in Cuba. But that could soon change. About a year ago, Cuba and the U.S. announced they were working to repair diplomatic and economic relations. In August, the two countries reopened their embassies in each other’s capitals. President Obama is going to Cuba next month. He will be the first sitting president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.

Nick thinks the embargo could soon “become a page in the history books”..…
The end of the embargo will create the “potential for enormous profits,” as Nick explained in Crisis Investing.

When the embargo goes away, American tourism to Cuba will explode. The International Monetary Fund estimates there could be up to 10 million visits from Americans every year as soon as the embargo comes down.

Today, it’s still illegal to invest in Cuba. But Nick has a “back door” way to profit from the opening up of Cuba’s economy. Nick’s investment in Cuba legally trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange. It should deliver huge gains when the embargo is lifted…which may happen very soon. You can get in on Nick’s Cuba investment by signing up for Crisis Investing. You’ll also learn about the world class shale oil company on Nick’s watch list. Click here to begin your risk-free trial.

Chart of the Day

Shale oil stocks have been decimated. Today’s chart shows the performance of the Market Vectors Unconventional Oil & Gas ETF (FRAK). This fund tracks 50 companies involved in the shale oil and gas industries. FRAK has crashed 65% since June 2014. Last month, it hit an all-time low. As we mentioned, most shale oil companies simply can’t make money right now.

The article Will Your Favorite Oil Company Go Bankrupt? was originally published at caseyresearch.com.

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How to Spot Big Market Reversals in Advance and Beat Wall Street Silly

Thinking about living a ‘dream lifestyle’ is tough for a lot of traders right now, because they’re getting their faces ripped off. And there’s no doubt, these conditions are some of the craziest that we’ve ever seen. Stocks were down 9% in January, that’s the worst market performance in history.

Predictably, some expected the world to end and loaded up on the short side. Of course, then the market reversed in February and is already up 1.4%. Take a look at the Nasdaq roller coaster that traders just rode for nasty losses or pretty awesome gains.

It’s clear that the bulls got destroyed in January, and then bears gave back all of their profits and then some in February. In other words, both sides got creamed. Classic Wall Street shenanigans, right? In case you were wondering, the markets are designed to deliver maximum pain to the most traders possible. How would you like to turn the tables and finally beat those guys at their own game?

Well, on Tuesday, March 1st at 7pm Central, John Carter is going to show you why his account is up 48% already this year.

For starters, he’ll show you the signal that told him to get short the NQ on the way down, and then buy for the ride back up. As you can imagine, spotting those kinds of reversals in advance would give you an almost unfair advantage. Well, it’s easier than you think and you don’t have to be a psychic. What John is doing isn’t magic. He is just trading simple setups that have passed the test of time.

If you’re getting your clock cleaned by this volatility, we can all relate. It took John years to figure this stuff out. If you join him this Tuesday, March 1st at 7 pm Central, he’ll show you how to use a simple indicator to spot major reversals and piggyback your trades on what the biggest Wall Street institutions are doing. He’ll cover that and a whole lot more.

And let’s take advantage of this "once in a decade" volatility. The next twelve months could offer the best opportunity to rapidly grow your accounts since the 2008 crash. Don’t buy into the myth that volatility automatically means high risk. John will show you how to strictly manage risk and still position your account for major gains.

Put this special webinar on your calendar....Sign Up Right Here!

See you Tuesday.
Ray C. Parrish
aka the Crude Oil Trader

P.S.   John gave us a video primer earlier in the week......Watch That Here



Get John's latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Here’s Why Nobody Understands the Markets

By Jared Dillian

I used to be a big astronomy nerd when I was a kid, locked up in my room, reading space books. I actually was once interested in planetary science. Now I study finance. How depraved. Nassim Taleb is right—finance actually is depraved. If you study finance, you study money, of course. But why is money interesting?  Because it doesn’t sit around in static piles that you shuffle and count. It can grow asymptotically, or else simply disappear.

This is true not just of stocks and bonds, but also of currencies, which are supposed to be worth something, and even commodities, which are really supposed to be worth something. Then you have gold, which is totally useless from a practical standpoint and whose value fluctuates dramatically.

Funny thing about money exploding or disappearing is that it’s so hard to understand that we hire physicists to figure it out.  And then they come up with these really mundane solutions, like an options pricing model that doesn’t work, or a way to forecast future volatility (that also doesn’t work).  None of this ever comes close to figuring out why money explodes or disappears.

Human Behavior is Unquantifiable

The reason we aren’t any closer to the answer is because we keep using the wrong methods.  You can get the math geeks to come up with equations to describe human behavior, but then human behavior changes or does something new, and you are back to square one. The study of money is the study of people, and people behave in sometimes predictable, but often unpredictable ways. Just when you think you have a rubric (like Nate Silver with elections, a related field), along comes a Trump who blows apart the whole model.

I’ve always felt that finance is a very qualitative discipline. You are no worse off hiring English or history majors. It’s no accident that all the heavy hitters in this business are also really great writers. The quants are starting to catch on, and a lot of the algorithmic traders are writing programs to mimic and predict human behavior… though it’s really just technical analysis and trend following in a computer program. Technical analysis has an uneven reputation, but when you can quantify and backtest it and it works, the reputation gets markedly better.

Hard to argue nowadays that even weak-form EMH holds when you have a cottage industry of very profitable systematic strategies. Of course, there is a lot of math behind the quant stuff, and the guys doing it are mathematical geniuses, but the best of them are also very sharp market folks with a nose for when trades start to get crowded.  The quant blowup of 2007 happened because all the smart quants were in all the same ideas. So even in the world of high level mathematics, you still have to deal with unquantifiable stuff: human behavior.

When someone like hedge fund manager Bill Ackman sees his portfolio get slaughtered by about 20% in 2015 and then double digits in the first month of 2016, that’s not just bad stock picking. This is what happens when crowded trades become un-crowded. Computers may be computers, but the people who program the computers are just human and utterly fallible.

Why I Believe in Behavioral Finance 

When I taught my college finance class last semester, I’d say the most consensus long among the students was Disney (DIS) because of Star Wars.

Of course, I had been doing a bunch of work on the short side for months.

Disney has some serious problems like declines in sports viewing and superhero movies and cable industry trends—secular stuff that’s completely out of their control.  Suffice it to say that by the time the MBA students in South Carolina get bulled up on a stock, it is probably pretty close to the end.

That’s behavioral finance in a nutshell.

This is what I do for a living. I watch the market, not the stocks, if that makes any sense. I am always collecting data. Every person I talk to on the phone, every chart I look at, every tweet or article I read, it all goes into the soup, and from that soup, I am trying to gauge sentiment. Sentiment tells you everything. Cheap things get cheap, and expensive things get more expensive. Markets are alternately rational and irrational because people are alternately rational and irrational. Seems like a crazy way to allocate resources, but it works better than all the alternatives. If you want to read more about my investment process, you can choose between the monthly version or the daily.

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A master in behavioral economics, Jared probes the mind of today’s market to gauge the trends of tomorrow. Following his intellectual adventures is a true thrill ride for every investor. Sign up for his weekly missive, and don’t miss another one of his captivating conclusions.

The article Here’s Why Nobody Understands the Markets was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

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Strategies to Profit in this Volatile Market - John Carter's Next Free Webinar

Join our trading partner John Carter this Tuesday evening March 1st at 8 pm est for the next of his wildly popular free webinars. John will walk us through his favorite strategies that he is utilizing to remain profitable in today's volatile market.

Just Sign Up Here

Earlier this week John gave us just a sample of how he uses these methods to trade everything from crude oil to Netflix in this short video....watch it here. Spend an hour or more with John Tuesday night to get a detail explanation on how to find and execute these trades exactly like John does.

John is having another banner year in 2016 and as always he is showing us how to get this done no matter what the size of your account.

Seating is limited so Sign Up Now

See you Tuesday night,
Ray @ the Crude Oil Trader



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New Video: John Carters Strategy for Trading Everything from Crude Oil to NFLX

Our trading partner John Carter of Simpler Options is back with another amazing new video. Join John as he walks us through his favorite strategies to utilize in today's volatile market. Get a sneak peak on how he has already grown his account by 48% in 2016.

Visit Here to Watch John's New Free Video

Learn John's favorite strategy for trading everything from Crude Oil to NFLX and why John believes that decades from now investors will look back at 2016 as the best trading ever. You will also get an insider look at.

•  The reasons why volatility can be your best friend even for newbies with small accounts

•  Why options are the best trading vehicle on the planet right now

•  Why down markets are better than up markets

•  How to make successful trades on your phone while you are at work

Watch John's free video then put his methods to work right away. Take advantage of his ability to help you find your own trading style and how to recognize your own psychological limits. In the process John will help you dispel all of your fear of this volatile market. In fact you will welcome it.

Don't wait any longer.....Just Click Here to Watch John's Free Video

See you in the markets,

Ray @ the Crude Oil Trader

P.S.  Get an even better understand of John's trading methods by downloading his free eBook "Understanding Options".....Get it Right Here

Mike Seery's Weekly Futures Recap - Crude Oil, Natural Gas, U.S. Dollar, Gold, Silver, Sugar

It's Saturday and that means it is time for 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 in the April contract settled last Friday at 31.91 a barrel while currently trading at 32.00 basically unchanged for the trading week with a possible double bottom being created around $29 the level occurring. Crude oil prices are still trading below their 20 and 100 day moving average telling you that the short term trend is to the downside as the long term trend is also to the downside despite the fact that several countries decided to freeze production this week, but that still leaves production at record levels as investors found that as another negative situation.

The volatility in crude oil is extremely high at the current time as I’m looking to possibly enter into a short position on any type of rally as the chart structure has improved tremendously, therefore, lowering monetary risk, but at this point I’m sitting on the sidelines waiting for an opportunity which could develop any day. The commodity markets in general still look weak as I still have many short positions in several different commodity sectors including natural gas which is hitting another contract low today as supplies are just too high across the board despite the fact that the U.S dollar may have topped out.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Poor

Natural gas prices in the April contract settled last Friday in New York at 2.03 while currently trading at 1.89 trading lower 7 out of the last 8 trading sessions as the original recommendation was a short position in the March contract as we rolled over and if you took that trade continue to place your stop loss above the 10 day high which stands at 2.23 as the chart structure is very poor at the present time.

Natural gas prices continue to move lower on a weekly basis as this trade has gone straight down from the original recommendation so continue to place the proper stop loss as the chart structure will start to improve on a daily basis, as I still see lower prices ahead possibly retesting 1.75 and if that is broken I think we can test 1.50 as extremely warm weather in the Midwestern part of the United States continues to plague this commodity.

The fundamentals in natural gas are extremely bearish with all time high inventories as we were producing too many products especially in the energy sector including natural gas so continue to play this to the downside as I'm looking at adding more contracts once some type of price kickback develops, as I still see no reason to own natural gas especially as we enter the month of March, as springtime is upon us.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Poor

The U.S dollar in the March contract settled last Friday at 95.98 while currently trading at 96.92 up around 100 points for the trading week as I’m currently recommending a short position from around the 96.90 level while placing my stop loss above the 10 day high at 97.50 risking around 60 points or $600 per contract plus slippage and commission.

The dollar is trading below its 20 and 100 day moving average telling you that the short term trend is to the downside as prices are near a 4 month low due to the fact that the interest rates in the United States have been dropping dramatically, as lower rates mean a lower U.S dollar generally. Volatility in the dollar certainly has increased because of the stock market which is on a roller coaster ride daily sending shockwaves into currency markets.

The next major level of support is around the 95.00 level and if that is broken I think we can retest the 93 level in the coming weeks as it certainly looks to me that interest rates are even going lower as worldwide rates have turned negative in certain countries which is an amazing situation in my opinion as the risk/reward is in your favor at the present time as I am still recommending this trade even if you did not take the original advice.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Poor

Gold futures in the April contract settled last Friday in New York at 1,239 an ounce while currently trading at 1,231 down about $8 for the trading week trading in a highly volatile manner. Gold prices are trading above their 20 and 100 day moving average telling you that the short term trend is to the upside as prices have skyrocketed from the contract low around 1,050 and now have rallied over $200 in a matter of weeks as panic around the world is sending gold prices sharply higher.

At the current time, I am sitting on the sidelines as the risk is too much for me to tolerate as the only recommendation in the precious metals currently is the silver market as the gold chart structure is terrible. The S&P 500 has been extremely volatile in the year 2016 and that has supported gold prices however the S&P has rallied significantly over the last week, but it has not been a negative influence on gold as there is demand for gold at the current time and I’m certainly not recommending any type of bearish position as that would be counter trend and poor trading in my opinion so avoid this market at the present time.

Trading is all about risk as I see other opportunities in the commodity markets where the risk/reward is in your favor coupled with outstanding chart structure as gold does not meet any of my criteria to enter into a trade as sometimes you miss trades and that’s exactly what has occurred in this situation.
Trend: Higher
Chart Structure: Poor

Silver futures in the March contract settled last Friday in New York at 15.79 an ounce while currently trading at 15.47 down about $.30 in a highly volatile trading week with large swings on a daily basis as I have been recommending a bullish position from around 14.80 and if you took that trade continue to place your stop loss below the 10 day low which now stands at 14.90 a chart structure has improved tremendously over the last several days.

The next major level of resistance in silver is around the $16 level as we will have to roll out of the March contract into the May contract early next week due to expiration as I will give the new stop loss in that blog as well. Silver prices are trading above their 20 and 100 day moving average telling you that the short term trend is to the upside as money flows continue to go back into the precious metals for the first time in several years as the precious metals have fallen tremendously from their highs just hit in the year 2011.

In my opinion, the U.S dollar has topped out which is bullish the precious metals so stay long this market while placing the proper stop loss as volatility has certainly come back into this market which is generally a bullish indicator.
Trend: Higher
Chart Structure: Improving

Sugar futures in the May contract settled last Friday in New York at 13.12 while currently trading at 12.64 a pound hitting a fresh 5 month low as I’ve been recommending a short position originally in the March contract as we rolled over into the May contract and if you took that trade place your stop loss above the 10 day high which stands at 13.50 as the chart structure is poor.

Sugar prices are trading lower for the 3rd consecutive day as I still think there’s a probability that prices will fill the gap at 11.80 which is still another 85 points away as prices are still trading far below their 20 and 100 day moving average telling you that the trend is getting stronger to the downside on a weekly basis so stay short in my opinion while placing the proper stop loss.

Sugar prices experienced a rounding top which I’ve talked about in many previous blogs over the last several weeks peeking out around 15.50 as being nimble is a major key to success in my opinion as waiting for the trade to develop is definitely beneficial in the long run so stay short as I’m looking to add more contracts once the chart structure and the risk/reward meet my criteria as lower prices are ahead in my opinion.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Poor

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These Important Stocks are Trading Like a Financial Crisis Has Begun

By Justin Spittler

European bank stocks are crashing. Deutsche Bank (DB), Germany’s largest bank, has plunged 36% this year. Its stock is at an all time low. Credit Suisse (CS), a major Swiss bank, has plummeted 40% this year to its lowest level since 1991. As you can see in the chart below, the STOXX Europe 600 Banks Index, which tracks Europe’s biggest banks, is down 27% this year. It’s fallen six weeks in a row, its longest losing streak since the 2008 financial crisis.

These are huge drops in a short six week period. It’s the kind of price action you’d expect to see during a major financial crisis. The sell off in Europe’s banks has dragged down other European stocks. The STOXX Europe 600 Index, which tracks 600 large European stocks, is down 15% this year to its lowest level since October 2013.

European banks are struggling to make money…..
Deutsche Bank lost €2.12 billion for the fourth quarter… after making a €437 million profit the year before. Credit Suisse lost €5.83 billion last quarter… after making a €691 million profit the year before. Profits at BNP Paribas (BNP.PA), France’s largest bank, plunged 52% last quarter.

Europe’s crazy monetary policies are starving banks of income..…
Dispatch readers know the Federal Reserve has held interest rates at effectively zero since 2008. The European Central Bank (ECB), Europe’s version of the Fed, also cut rates after the global financial crisis. Unlike the Fed, the ECB didn’t stop at zero. The ECB dropped its key rate to -0.1% in June 2014. It was the first major central bank to introduce negative interest rates. Today, its key rate is -0.3%.

The ECB’s key rate of -0.3% sets the tone for all interest rates in Europe..…
It forces banks to charge a rock-bottom interest rate on loans. This has eaten away at bank profits, as The Wall Street Journal reports:

Very low interest rates hurt the profits banks make on loans, especially when investors believe loose monetary policy is here to stay. Long term rates at which banks lend then fall to be little more than short-term ones at which banks borrow.

The idea of negative interest rates likely sounds bizarre to you..…
After all, the whole purpose of lending money is to earn interest. With negative rates, the lender pays the borrower. So, if you lend $100,000 at -1%, you’ll only get back $99,000.  Negative interest rates are a scheme to get people to spend more money.

According to mainstream economists, spending drives the economy. By cutting its key interest rate to less than zero, the ECB is making it impossible for people to earn interest on their savings. This discourages saving and encourages spending.

But as Casey Research founder Doug Casey says, this isn’t just wrong, it’s the exact opposite of what’s true. Spending doesn’t drive the economy. Production and saving drive the economy. You have to save to build capital, and capital is necessary for everything.

Negative rates haven’t helped Europe’s economy…
Europe’s economy grew at just 0.3% during the third quarter. Europe’s unemployment rate is up to 9%, nearly double the U.S. unemployment rate. And the euro has also lost 17% of its value against the U.S. dollar since June 2014.

If you’ve been reading the Dispatch, you know negative interest rates are a new government scheme..…
Until recently, negative interest rates didn’t exist. Governments invented them to push us further into “Alice in Wonderland.” That’s our nickname for today’s economy, where eight years of extremely low interest rates have warped prices of stocks, bonds, real estate, and nearly everything else.  

For months, we’ve been warning that negative rates are dangerous. Last month, Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, joined the list of countries using negative rates. Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland all have negative rates, too. According to The Wall Street Journal, countries that account for 23% of global output now have negative interest rates. 

This has set the stage for a huge economic disaster..…
To avoid big losses, we recommend owning physical gold. Unlike paper money, central bankers can’t destroy gold’s value with bad policies. Instead, gold’s value usually rises when governments devalue their currencies.

For example, Europe’s currency (the euro) has lost 17% of its value against the dollar since June 2014. But the price of gold measured in euros is up 14% in the same period. We recently put a short presentation together that explains the best ways to “crisis proof” your wealth.  We encourage you to watch this free video here.

Chart of the Day

Deutsche Bank’s stock has been destroyed. Today’s chart shows Deutsche Bank plummeting 46% over the past year. Yesterday, it hit an all time low. Today, Deutsche Bank jumped 10% after the company said it’s considering a bond buyback program. The company hopes this will ease investor concerns.

E.B. Tucker, editor of The Casey Report, doesn’t think the plan will work:

Deutsche Bank is in trouble. It barely survived the last crisis. In the aftermath, it took tremendous risks to make as much profit as possible. But its winning streak is coming to an end… and it still has to pay for all its obligations. Deutsche Bank also has problems beyond its control. Europe isn’t growing. It’s also dealing with negative interest rates. This is a double whammy for big banks, especially ones that took on too much risk.

The article These Important Stocks are Trading Like a Financial Crisis Has Begun was originally published at caseyresearch.com.

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Whoever Does Not Respect the Penny is Not Worthy of the Dollar

By Nick Giambruno

This definitive sign of a currency collapse is easy to see…When paper money literally becomes trash. Maybe you’ve seen images depicting hyperinflation in Germany after World War I. The German government had printed so much money that it became worthless. Technically, German merchants still accepted the currency, but it was impractical to use. It would have required wheelbarrows full of paper money just to buy a loaf of bread.

At the time, no one would bother to pick up money off the ground. It wasn’t worth any more than the other crumpled pieces of paper on the street. Today, there’s a similar situation in the U.S. When was the last time you saw someone make the effort to pick up a penny off the street? A nickel? A dime?

Walking around New York City recently, I saw pennies, nickels, and dimes just sitting there on busy sidewalks. This happened at least five times in one day. Even homeless people wouldn’t bother to bend over and pick up anything less than a quarter. The U.S. dollar has become so debased that these coins are essentially pieces of rubbish. They have little to no practical value.

Refusing to Acknowledge the Truth

It costs 1.7 cents to make a penny and 8 cents to make a nickel, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The U.S. government loses tens of millions of dollars every year putting these coins into circulation. Why is it wasting money and time making coins almost no one uses? Because phasing out the penny and nickel would mean acknowledging currency debasement. And governments never like to do that. It would reveal their incompetence and theft from savers.

This isn’t new or unique to the U.S. For decades, governments around the world have refused to phase out worthless currency denominations. This helps them deny the problem even exists. They refuse to issue currency in higher denominations for the same reason. Take Argentina, for example. The country has some of the highest inflation in the world. In the last 12 months, the peso has lost over half its value.

I was just in Argentina, and the largest bill there is the 100 peso note, which is worth around $7. It’s not uncommon for Argentinians to pay with large wads of cash at restaurants and stores. The sight would unnerve many Americans, who’ve been trained by the government through the War on Cash to view it as suspicious and dangerous.

For many years, the Argentine government refused to issue larger notes. Fortunately, that’s changing under the recently elected pro market president Mauricio Macri. His government has promised to introduce 200, 500 and 1,000 peso notes in the near future.

This is the opposite of what’s happening in the U.S., where the $100 bill is the largest bill in circulation. That wasn’t always the case. At one point, the U.S. had $500, $1,000, $5,000, and even $10,000 bills. The government eliminated these large bills in 1969 under the pretext of fighting the War on Some Drugs. The $100 bill has been the largest ever since. But it has far less purchasing power than it did in 1969.

Decades of rampant money printing have debased the dollar. Today, a $100 note buys less than a $20 note did in 1969. Even though the Federal Reserve has devalued the dollar over 80% since 1969, it still refuses to issue notes larger than $100.

Pennies and Nickels Under Sound Money

For perspective, consider what a penny and a nickel would be worth under a sound money system backed by gold. From 1792 to 1934, the price of gold was around $20 per ounce. Under this system, it took around 2,000 pennies to make an ounce of gold. At today’s gold price, a “sound money penny” would be worth about 55 modern pennies. A “sound money nickel” would be worth about $3. I don’t pick up pennies off the sidewalk. But I would if pennies were backed by gold. If that were to happen, I doubt there would be many pennies sitting on busy New York sidewalks.

Ron Paul said it best when he discussed this issue…

“There is an old German saying that goes, ‘Whoever does not respect the penny is not worthy of the dollar.’ It expresses the sense that those who neglect or ignore the small things cannot be trusted with larger things, and fittingly describes the problems facing both the dollar and our nation today.

Unless Congress puts an end to the Fed’s loose monetary policy and returns to a sound and stable dollar, the issue of U.S. coin composition will be revisited every few years until inflation finally forces coins out of circulation altogether and we are left with only worthless paper.”

There’s an important lesson here.

Politicians and bureaucrats are the biggest threats to your financial security. For years, they’ve been quietly debasing the country’s currency… and inviting a currency catastrophe. Most people have no idea how bad things can get when a currency collapses….let alone how to prepare.

How will you protect your savings in the event of a currency crisis? This just released video will show you exactly how. Click here to watch it now.

The article Whoever Does Not Respect the Penny is Not Worthy of the Dollar was originally published at caseyresearch.com.

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