Category Archives: Investing

Prepare For 10 Years of Global Destruction, by Egon von Greyerz

Posted on March 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

Popping a bubble that’s been going for as long as the present one has inevitably entails tragic consequences. From Egon von Greyerz at goldswitzerland.com:

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The final stages of major economic cycles are always accompanied by the maximum amount of bad news as well as heinous events. This time is no different as the West is in the process of committing Harakiri (Seppuku). 

As Elon Musk said: 

“My mentality is that of a Samurai. I would rather commit Seppuku than fail.”

Sadly, the problem for the West is that it is both committing Harakiri and failing.

For at least half a century, the world has been in a process of self-destruction. 

As the decline accelerates, the next phase of 5-10 years will include major political, social, economic as well as wealth – destruction.

What can be more heinous than a total economic and financial collapse accompanied by a potential World War III that at worst could destroy the world totally. 

A recent article of mine discussed global fragility due to War, Debt and Energy Depletion.

In this article I outline the major risks today, financial and geopolitical and also discuss the best way to protect against these risks. Physical Gold is of course the ultimate wealth preservation investment. The next major move up in gold is not far away. See further on.

Biden’s recent visit to Ukraine and whistle stop tour of Europe confirmed that there is no desire to make peace but only war. More support of weapons and money from the US is forthcoming. And whatever the US dictates, Europe follows without considering the consequences. 

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Posted in Banking, Business, Economy, Geopolitics, Governments, Investing, Money

What If the Whole Point Is to End “The Fed Put”? By Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on March 6, 2023 | 1 comment

Alan Greenspan initiated the “Fed Put” back in 1987 when the stock market crashed. Now, Jerome Powell may be the buy who ends it. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Choose one, and only one: a stock market that inflates and pops in an endless series of ever-more destructive bubbles, or a real economy that is no longer in thrall to the engines of wealth inequality and speculative frenzy.

“The Fed Put”–the implicit Federal Reserve policy of bailing out the stock market as soon as it swoons by unleashing a flood of monetary stimulus–is now accepted as a guarantee not unlike financial gravity. Regardless of the bleatings of Fed officials, “everyone knows” the Fed will quickly “pivot” should the market swoon, slashing interest rates and ramping up liquidity via Quantitative Easing (QE).

Recall the definition of excess liquidity: the difference between real money growth and economic growth. The Fed juices excess liquidity not to further expansion in the real economy but to force-feed new money into the stock market and other risk assets.

The only possible result of “The Fed Put” is a credit/asset bubble, which is why we’re currently experiencing the third such monumental speculative bubble in 23 years.

“The Fed Put” is the logical endpoint of neoliberalism, which places “markets” (and thus finance) at the core of the real economy. The neoliberal fantasy is that “markets” solve all problems via the magic of “the invisible hand” and so everything becomes subservient to the gyrations of “markets.”

The second part of the fantasy is that “markets” are self-regulating, meaning there’s no need for a moral order or government regulations; the magic of markets includes a godlike ability to restrict its own motivations, i.e. greed and exploitation to maximize gains by any means available.

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Vanguard CEO Abandons ESG Investing Alliance: “Not In The Game Of Politics”, by Tyler Durden

Posted on February 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

Trendy investment strategies don’t generally produce better than average returns. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) has been a hotly debated topic over the last few years.

The seemingly unquestioned march towards corporate utopia has met with resistance among those who oppose the idea that government oligarchs should dictate the affairs of private business firms. The long-term effects of the ESG movement are largely ignored by the mainstream.

As Tom Czitron previously commented, ESG is largely justified on the basis that corporations and financial institutions should be socially responsible. They should work obsessively to address the perceived menaces of climate change, racism, sexism, and a host of subjects. Our benevolent political and economic elite define what is virtuous and what is not for a grateful public.

But, as of late, there are some naysayers that dare to stand up to the socialism-by-stealth promoters with Tim Buckley, chief executive at Vanguard, perhaps the biggest name yet to buck the ESG orthodoxy.

“Our research indicates that ESG investing does not have any advantage over broad-based investing,” Mr. Buckley said in a recent interview with the Financial Times.

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Posted in Environment, Financial markets, Investing, Politics, Propaganda

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Bill Gates Makes 10x Investment on mRNA Vaccines, by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Posted on February 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

Selfless saint Bill Gates had to settle for only a 10X return on his mRNA vaccine investment. It’s ugly for the rest of us when crony capitalism and medical totalitarianism crawl into bed together. From Dr. Joseph Mercola at theburningplatform.com:

Story at-a-glance

  • In 2019, Bill Gates invested $55 million in BioNtech, which developed the COVID-19 shot for Pfizer; it’s now worth $550 million
  • Gates sold some of the stock at the end of 2022, when the share price was over $300
  • After reaping huge profits, Gates criticized COVID-19 jabs, stating they don’t block infection, aren’t effective against variants and have “very short duration”
  • Gates’ motivations run far deeper than making money off shrewd investments; by funding WHO, Gates is able to ensure that the decisions it makes end up profiting his own interests and those of his Big Pharma partners
  • Gates, via collaborations with WHO, Anthony Fauci and others, is aiming to have absolute power to control pandemic declarations and responses worldwide

In The Hill video above, Bill Gates trashes mRNA COVID-19 shots, naming three problems with them that need to be fixed. “The current vaccines are not infection-blocking,” Gates says, “They’re not broad — so when new variants come up you lose protection — and they have very short duration, particularly in the people who matter, which are old people.”1

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Prepare to Be Bled Dry by a Decade of Stagflation, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on February 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

We can hardly wait. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Our reliance on the endless expansion of credit, leverage and credit-asset bubbles will have its own high cost.

The Great Moderation of low inflation and soaring assets has ended. Welcome to the death by a thousand cuts of stagflation. It was all so easy in the good old days of the past 25 years: just keep pushing interest rates lower to reduce the cost of borrowing and juice credit expansion ((financialization) and offshore industrial production to low-cost nations with few environmental standards and beggar-thy-neighbor currency policies (globalization).

Both financialization and globalization are deflationary forces, as they reduce costs. They are also deflationary to the wages of bottom 90%, as wages are pushed down by cheap global labor and stripmined by financialization, which channels the vast majority of the economy’s gains into the top tier of the workforce and those who own the assets bubbling up in financialization’s inevitable offspring, credit-asset bubbles.

To keep the party going, central banks and governments pushed both forces into global dominance: hyper-financialization and hyper-globalization. Policy extremes were pushed to new extremes: “temporary” zero-rate interest policy (ZIRP) stretched on for 6 years as every effort was made to lower the cost of credit to bring demand forward and inflate yet another credit-asset bubble, as the “wealth effect” of the top 5% gaining trillions of dollars in unearned wealth as asset bubbles inflated pushed consumption higher.

Corporate profits soared as credit became essentially free and super-abundant and globalization lowered costs and institutionalized planned obsolescence, the engineered replacement of goods and software that forces consumers to replace their broken / outdated products every few years.

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Seven Points on Investing in Treacherous Waters, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on February 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

There are very few good investors. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

What’s truly valuable has no price and cannot be bought.

If all investments are being cast into Treacherous Waters, our investment strategy must adapt accordingly. Once we set aside denial and magical thinking as strategies and accept that we’re in treacherous waters, a prudent starting point is to discern the most consequential contexts of all decisions about where and how we invest our time, energy and capital.

The most consequential global context is to first and foremost “invest in yourself”: invest in forms of capital that cannot lose value (for example, integrity, skills and experience) and assets that are not dependent on fluctuations in valuations for their utility. This is the essence of Self-Reliance.

For example, tools retain their utility regardless of their current market value, and so does a house as shelter and yard to grow food. Whether the value drops to $1,000 or soars to $1 million, the property provides the same utility of shelter and sustenance.

In other words, the mindset of speculation–buy low and sell high to accumulate as much money as possible–is not the only context to consider.

A second global context is that speculative winners–assets that rise sharply in value–will increasingly be targets for “windfall” and/or wealth taxes, as well as capital controls, such as limits on selling. If you log a 500% gain, then paying a wealth tax is a small price to pay for such a handsome gain. But such enormous gains will very likely be far more scarce going forward as speculative bets become net drains on capital and speculators exit because their gambling chips are gone or they realize they better conserve what capital is still left.

Meanwhile, back on the Government Ranch, the crying need for more tax revenues will become increasingly dire. As speculative bubbles pop, capital gains will dry up and blow away, and this rich source of tax revenues will have to be replaced with higher taxes and junk fees on whatever income and assets are available for “revenue enhancement,” ahem.

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Understanding the Geopolitical Landscape in 2023… What It Means for Your Portfolio, by Chris MacIntosh

Posted on January 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

Buy companies that make ships. From Chris MacIntosh at internationalman.com:

Global Geopolitical Landscape

Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital put out a note to clients sometime ago, “I Beg to Differ” and the below paragraph in particular resonated with me.

First-level thinking is simplistic and superficial, and just about everyone can do it (a bad sign for anything involving an attempt at superiority). All the first-level thinker needs is an opinion about the future, as in “The outlook for the company is favorable, meaning the stock will go up.”

Second-level thinking is deep, complex, and convoluted. The second-level thinker takes a great many things into account:

  • What is the range of likely future outcomes?
  • What outcome do I think will occur?
  • What’s the probability I’m right?
  • What does the consensus think?
  • How does my expectation differ from the consensus?
  • How does the current price for the asset compare with the consensus view of the future, and with mine?
  • Is the consensus psychology that’s incorporated in the price too bullish or bearish?
  • What will happen to the asset price if the consensus turns out to be right, and what if I’m right?

The difference in workload between the first-level and second-level thinking is clearly massive, and the number of people capable of the latter is tiny compared to the number capable of the former.

First-level thinkers look for simple formulas and easy answers. Second-level thinkers know that success in investing is the antithesis of simple.

Here is a brief example of how to employ second-order thinking with Taiwan

It is worth considering a lesson from World War 2 because it’s vitally important, and — as far as I can tell — not only do most Americans not know it, but the current bunch of podium donuts in the US don’t appear to either.

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Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, Investing, Military, Politics, Propaganda, Trade, War

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Japan Is Perhaps the Most Important Risk in the World, an Interview with Jim Grant and Christoph Gisiger

Posted on January 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

The Japanese bond market is a financial time bomb whose fuse has been lit. From Christoph Gisiger and Jim Grant at themarket.ch:

Speculation is mounting that the Bank of Japan is losing control of the bond market. Jim Grant, editor of «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer», believes this could trigger a shock to the global financial system. He also explains why he expects further surges in inflation and why gold should be part of your portfolio.

The news caught markets off guard: On December 20th, the Bank of Japan surprisingly extended the target range for the yield on ten-year government bonds to plus/minus 0.5%. A move that not a single economist had expected.

This week, the Bank of Japan could announce a major policy shift amid rising government bond yields and a strengthening yen. Although barely a month has passed since the BoJ’s last meeting, the bond market is already testing the new upper limit of the yield curve control regime.

«To us, Japanese interest rate policy resembles the Berlin Wall of the late Cold War era, a stale anachronism that must sooner or later fall,» says Jim Grant. For the editor of the iconic investment bulletin «Grants’ Interest Rate Observer,» recent developments in Japan pose an underestimated risk to global financial markets. Not least because virtually no one is talking about it.

In an in-depth interview with The Market NZZ, which has been slightly edited for clarity, Mr. Grant explains what it means for financial markets if the Bank of Japan is forced to scrap its yield curve control policy. But first, he says why he doesn’t believe inflation will end soon, why bonds may be at the start of a long bear market, and why he believes gold is the best choice as a store of value.

«If the past is prologue and if the great bond bull market is over, then on form, we are looking at what could be a very prolonged and perhaps gradual move higher in interest rates»: Jim Grant.

«If the past is prologue and if the great bond bull market is over, then on form, we are looking at what could be a very prolonged and perhaps gradual move higher in interest rates»: Jim Grant.

What do you observe when you look at the financial world today?

Well, it’s always the same, and – here’s the catch – it’s always a little different. The trick is to identify the unique or unusual feature of a familiar cycle. In this regard, it helps to know a little bit of financial history, and to just that extent it helps to be a little old. But what is not helpful is to mistake the past for a certain roadmap to the future.

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Posted in Banking, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Governments, History, Investing, Money

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Ominous Military & Financial ‘Nuclear Threats’ Could Erupt in 2023, by Egon von Greyerz

Posted on January 11, 2023 | Leave a comment

The financial threat looks like a sure thing, and the military threat is not far behind. From Egon von Greyerz at goldswitzerland.com:

The world is today confronted with two nuclear threats of a proportion never previously seen in history. These threats are facing us at a time when the world economy is about to turn and decline precipitously not just for years but probably decades.

The obvious nuclear threat is the war between the US and Russia which currently is playing out in Ukraine.

The other nuclear threat is the financial weapons of mass destruction in the form of debt and derivatives amounting to probably US$ 2.5 quadrillion.

If we are lucky, the geopolitical event can be avoided but I doubt that the explosion/implosion of the Western financial timebomb can be stopped.

More about these risks later in the article.

There is also a summary of my market views for 2023 and onwards at the end of the article.

CURIOSITY AND RISK

With a business life of over 52 years in banking, commerce and investments, I am fortunate to still learn every day and learning is really the joy of life. But the more you learn, the more you realise how little you really know.

Being a constant and curious learner means that life is never dull.

As Einstein said:

“The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

There has been another important constancy in my life which is understanding and protecting RISK.

I learnt early on in my commercial life that it is critical to identify risk and endeavour to protect the downside. If you can achieve that, the upside normally takes care of itself.

Sometimes the risk is so clear that you want to stand on the barricades and shout. But sadly most investors are driven by greed and seldom see when markets become high risk.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Governments, Investing, Politics, War

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What if the “Black Swan” of 2023 Is the Fed Succeeds? by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on January 10, 2023 | 1 comment

Higher interest rates may end up hurting and helping all the right people. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

If the Fed succeeding is a “Black Swan,” bring it on.

What if the “Black Swan” of 2023 is the Federal Reserve succeeds? Two stipulations here:

1. “Black Swan” is in quotes because the common usage has widened to include events that don’t match Nassim Taleb’s original criteria / definition of black swan; the term now includes events considered unlikely or that are off the radar screens of both the media and the alt-media.

2. The definition of “Fed success” is not as simple as the media and the alt-media present it.

In the conventional telling, the Fed made a policy mistake in keeping interest rates and quantitative easing (QE) in place for too long, and now it’s made a policy mistake in reversing those policies. Huh? So ZIRP/QE was a policy mistake, OK, we get that. But reversing those policy mistakes is also a policy mistake? Then what isn’t a policy mistake? Doing nothing? But wait, isn’t “doing nothing” maintaining ZIRP/QE or ZIRP/QE Lite?

This narrative makes no sense.

The other conventional narrative has the Fed’s policy mistake as tightening financial conditions, a.k.a. reversing ZIRP/QE, too much too quickly, as this will cause a recession. OK, we get the avoidance of recession is considered “a good thing,” but aren’t recessions an essential cleansing of excessive debt and speculation, i.e. an essential part of the business cycle without with bad debt, zombies and malinvestments build up to levels that threaten the stability of the entire system?

Yes, recessions are an essential part of the business cycle. So avoiding recessions is systemically disastrous. So according to this narrative, the Fed should “do whatever it takes” to avoid recession, even though a long-overdue recession is desperately needed to cleanse the deadwood, bad debt, zombie enterprises and speculative excesses from the system.

So this narrative is also nonsense.

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