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Fred Hickey: Why A Lifelong Technology Expert Favors Owning Gold
Fred Hickey, frequent cited expert on Bloomberg News and Barron’s Roundtable, has been publishing his author extremely well-respected investment newsletter, The High-Tech Strategist, for 31 years. And he is more worried about the state of the financial markets today than he’s ever been.
While his primary focus has been on analyzing Tech stocks, over the years he has expanded into macro trend analysis as the central banks starting increasingly intervening in world markets and distorting the price of money.
He now finds asset prices dangerously overvalued (within Tech and without) and worries — as we do — about the risk of a major market correction and possible currency crises.
Ironically, this lifelong expert in “all things technology” has concluded that gold (the “barbaric relic”) is the sanest asset to put one’s capital in these days — both due to its safety factor and it’s current level of undervaluation. He expects the precious metals to fare well during the downward market volatility he foresees, and he is now tracking the mining stocks closely as he predicts they will experience dramatic appreciation from here.
What’s happening to gold mining stocks right now is an amazing story. They’re extremely undervalued. Just this year, we’ve seen the price of gold hold up during this market decline, yet the miners have been getting slaughtered.
One of the things we look at is the HUI-to-gold ratio, or the gold miner index to gold. That is down to 0.133. Now, that’s lower than it was at the 20-year bear market bottom in 2000. It was slightly lower than that at the end of 2015, but we’re talking about near record lows here when the price of gold is up. It looks to me that gold is in a bull market.
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Danielle DiMartino Booth: Don’t Count On The Powell Fed To Rescue The Markets
Danielle DiMartino Booth: Don’t Count On The Powell Fed To Rescue The Markets
The recent gut-wrenching drop in asset prices began on the first day of the job for new Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
How is Mr. Powell likely to react to a suddenly sick-looking market? Will he step in forcefully to reassure investors that there’s a “Powell put” in place as a backstop?
To address these questions, former analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Danielle DiMartino Booth, returns to the podcast this week. In her opinion, having studied Powell’s previous statements, she thinks those expecting him to continue the market support his predecessors provided will likely be quite disappointed.
Powell appears to be no large fan of continued quantitative easing, and has long been on the record as concerned about the eventual pain its unwind will cause. He very well may resist riding to the market’s rescue at this time, allowing natural market forces to finally have their way:
Look, this is a message that market participants do not want to hear: It is not the Federal Reserves job to put a floor under risky asset prices.
Compare and contrast Jerome Powell’s silence in the wake of the flash crash on his first day at work to Alan Greenspan — who got on an airplane the day after the Black Monday crash of 1987, canceling an appearance he was to have made, and reassuring the markets with a statement on Tuesday morning that the Federal Reserve was standing by and ready and willing and available to satisfy any kind of disruption in the banking and financial systems. That was the day — October 20, 1987 — that the Greenspan put was born.
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Red Screen At Morning, Investor Take Warning
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Red Screen At Morning, Investor Take Warning
Growing up as I did in coastal New England, this old rhyme was drilled into us as children:
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight;
Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.
Because many of the people in town still made their living on the sea, the safety of person and property depended on being able to recognize the signs of approaching danger.
A notably red sky at morning is usually due to sunrise reflection off of moisture-bearing clouds, signifying an arriving a storm system bringing rain, wind and rough seas. Those who ignored a red sky warning often did so at their peril.
Red Sky In The Markets
I’m reminded of that childhood rhyme because the markets are giving us a clear “red sky” warning right now. One that comes after (too) many years of uninterrupted fair winds and smooth sailing.
The markets have plunged nearly 8% over just a single week. And the losses are across the board. Nearly every asset class from stocks to bonds to commodities to real estate are participating in the pain. Market displays are a sea of red.
We’ve written so often and recently of the dangerous level of over-valuation in asset prices (caused by years of central bank intervention) that to re-hash the premise again feels unnecessary.
But the chart below is worth our attention now, as it really drives home just how dangerously over-extended the markets have become. It’s a 20-year chart of the S&P 500, showing how it has traded vs its 50-month moving average (the thin green line).
Importantly, the chart also plots the Bollinger bands for this moving average. These are the thin red (upper) and purple (lower) lines above and below the green one.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Art Berman: Like It Or Not, The Future Remains All About Oil
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Art Berman: Like It Or Not, The Future Remains All About Oil
Art Berman, 40-year veteran in the petroleum production industry and respected geological consultant, returns to the podcast this week to talk about oil.
After the price of oil fell from its previous $100+/bbl highs to under $30/bbl in 2015, many declared dead the concerns raised by peak oil theorists. Headlines selling the “shale miracle” have sought to convince us that the US will one day eclipse Saudi Arabia in oil production. In short: cheap, plentiful oil is here to stay.
How likely is this?
Not at all, warns Berman. World demand for oil shows no signs of abating while the outlook for future production looks increasingly scant. And the competition among nations for this “master resource” will be much more intense in future decades than we’ve been used to:
Since the 1980s, we simply have not been replacing reserves with new discoveries. So how does that work? Well, obviously, we’ve got a lot of oil on production and in reserves, so we’re essentially drawing down our savings account if you want to think about it that way. You can do that for a long time if you’ve got a whole lot of money in your savings account, and we as a planet do. But you can’t do it forever.
Eventually, you either have to stop spending as much so you don’t draw down your savings, or you need to put some money back in the account. And it doesn’t seem like we’re doing much of either, and haven’t been doing much of either for a long time. So the concern is tremendous, at least, in my estimation(…)
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Drowning In The Money River
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Drowning In The Money River
It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.
~ George Carlin
If you suspect society is unfair, that there’s a different set of rules the rich live by, you’re right.
I’ve had ample chance to witness first-hand evidence of this in my time working on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. Simply put: our highly financialized economy is gamed to enrich those who run it, at the expense of everybody else.
The Money River
A recent experience really drove this home for me.
Having received my MBA from Stanford in the late 90s, I remain on several alumni discussion groups. Recently, a former classmate of mine, who now runs her own asset management firm, circulated her thoughts on how today’s graduating students could best access an on-ramp to the ‘money river’.
What’s the ‘money river’? Good question.
The money river is the huge tsunami of investment capital sloshing around the globe, birthed by the historically-unprecedented money printing conducted by the world’s central banks over the past decade. Since 2008, they’ve more than tripled their collective balance sheet:
(Source)
The $13+ trillion in new thin-air money issued to achieve this is truly staggering. It’s so large that the human brain really can’t wrap around it. (For those who haven’t seen it, watch our brief video How Much Is A Trillion? to better understand this.)
But suffice it to say, all that money has to go somewhere. And it first goes into the pockets of those with closest access to it, and of those who direct where it flows.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Gail Tverberg: The Coming Energy Depression
Gail Tverberg: The Coming Energy Depression
As most PeakProsperity.com readers know, we fully agree with the statement: Energy is THE master resource.
Without it, nothing can get done.
Energy analyst and professional actuary Gail Tverberg returns to the podcast this week to revisit the global energy outlook. And fair warning, Gail warns it’s quite grim.
To her, it’s a simple math problem. We have too many people placing too much demand on the world’s depleting energy resources. The cost of energy is rising, which we are compensating for in the short term by using financial gimmicks to make “affordable” — when all we’re really doing is creating future promises that cannot possibly be repaid.
The increasing cost of energy is manifesting in higher prices (for everything, not just fuels) and lower real wages, a divergence she sees only worsening from here. This path leads to another Great Depression-style crisis from which she does not see a clear path out of:
What we really live on is what we pull out of the ground each year, in terms of oil or coal or natural gas or whatever. So what we have is just what we pull out.
Now, you accurately point out that we’re making too many claims on the future using debt. We’re actually doing this via a couple of different ways, which are pretty much equivalent. One of them is by issuing equity. This has the equivalent effect as using debt because what you’re saying is I’ll pay you dividends, and you’re going to get a higher price in the future. This is simply different kind of claim on the future. Another way to borrow from the future is through government promises.
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Doug Noland: There Will Be No Way Out When This Market Bubble Bursts
Doug Noland: There Will Be No Way Out When This Market Bubble Bursts
This week Doug Noland joins the podcast to discuss what he refers to as the “granddaddy of all bubbles”.
Noland, a 30-year market analyst and specialist in credit cycles, currently works at McAlvany Wealth Management and is well known for his prior 16-year stint helping manage the Prudent Bear Fund.
He certainly shares our views that prices in nearly every financial asset class have become remarkably distorted due to central bank intervention, first with Greenspan’s actions to backstop the markets in the late-1980’s, and more recently (and more egregiously) with the combined central banking cartel’s massive and sustained liquidity injections in the years following the Great Financial Crisis.
All of which has blown the biggest inter-connected set of asset price bubbles the world has ever seen.
Noland foresees tremendous losses as inevitable, as the central banks lose control of the monstrosity they have created:
This is the granddaddy of all bubbles. We are at the end a long cycle where the bubble has reached the heart of money and credit.
There will be no way out. We’re not going to get enough private credit growth to reflate things when this bubble bursts. It’s going to have to come from central bank credit; it’s going to have to come from sovereign debt.
When this bubble bursts, it will shock people how far the central banks will have to expand their balance sheet just to accommodate the deleveraging in the system. And they won’t really be able to add new liquidity to the market; they’re just going to allow the transfer of leveraged positions from the leveraged players onto the central bank balance sheets.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
If You Don’t Own Any Bitcoin, Read This
If You Don’t Own Any Bitcoin, Read This
Wow. Just….wow.
Bitcoin’s price has gone ‘beyond exponential’ this week. Just yesterday, as I started working on this article, it shot up 22% — from $14,000 to $17,000 (hitting an intraday high of over $19,000).
And that’s after a mind-blowing upwards rocket ride over the past several months.
I think it’s safe to say that the vicious melt-up in price over such a short timeframe has surpassed the expectations of even the starriest-eyed Bitcoin fanboys.
The whole world, especially the 99.99% of us that own zero cryptocurrency, is asking: What happens next? And, What should I do?
Is this insane trajectory going to continue for a lot longer? Do I need to get in now to avoid missing this once-in-lifetime fortune-making opportunity?
Or is this a classic bubble blow-off top? Is this the deadliest time to enter, right before the price implodes?
An Expert’s Take
I had the chance to ask these questions Wednesday to a long-time veteran in the digital currency space. We met at a gathering of online media ‘mavens’; this guy has published news and analysis on cryptocurrencies since 2011, for both investors and developers. He knows the space exceedingly well.
Unsurprisingly, he holds a lot of Bitcoin. I didn’t ask directly how much; but knowing that he was covering the space back when Bitcoin traded in the single-dollars range, my conservative mental math quickly concluded he’s probably worth more than most people I’ve met in my life.
So here what I learned during my chat with him:
- He thinks the current price action is “nuts”: To his veteran eye, the current frenzy is a speculative mania and will end in a massive sell-off, resulting in huge losses for those buying in at these prices. He’s watched Bitcoin long enough to have seen it experience several 70%+ corrections. In his mind, this will simply be the latest one. And there will be more in the future, he predicts.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Importance Of Knowing
At Peak Prosperity, we strive to help people advance in three key areas: Knowing, Doing and Being.
Doing and Being are the resilience-building steps we recommend. Helping folks develop their own personal action plans in these areas is the main focus of the seminars we run.
But Knowing? That’s the essential first part to master. Without sufficient understanding and insight to guide you, any action you take is merely groping in the dark.
That’s why Chris and I spend the majority of our time info-scouting: following the data and analyzing where macro trends are likely to head next given the latest developments.
We dedicate so much time and energy to this because it’s not the domino that’s falling today that matters. What’s much more important is: Which dominoes will fall tomorrow as a result?
And make no mistake, the pace of falling dominoes is accelerating. From the geo-politically destabilizing regime change in Saudi Arabia, to the ending of the central bank liquidity bubble, to the largest species extinction wave in millennia, to the bursting retirement dreams of the Baby Boomer generation, to the fast-worsening net energy predicament — change is afoot. The relative calm of the false ‘recovery’ that the world’s central planners engineered in response to the Great Financial Crisis has reached its terminus.
Now, more than ever in recent years, understanding where events are headed next is critical to preserving your wealth and well-being.
Being keenly aware of this, Chris and I have been working for months on solving the question: How can we better arm people with the insights and answers they need to take informed action in their lives?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Great Retirement Con
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The Great Retirement Con
The Origins Of The Retirement Plan
Back during the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress promised a monthly lifetime income to soldiers who fought and survived the conflict. This guaranteed income stream, called a “pension”, was again offered to soldiers in the Civil War and every American war since.
Since then, similar pension promises funded from public coffers expanded to cover retirees from other branches of government. States and cities followed suit — extending pensions to all sorts of municipal workers ranging from policemen to politicians, teachers to trash collectors.
A pension is what’s referred to as a defined benefit plan. The payout promised a worker upon retirement is guaranteed up front according to a formula, typically dependent on salary size and years of employment.
Understandably, workers appreciated the security and dependability offered by pensions. So, as a means to attract skilled talent, the private sector started offering them, too.
The first corporate pension was offered by the American Express Company in 1875. By the 1960s, half of all employees in the private sector were covered by a pension.
Off-loading Of Retirement Risk By Corporations
Once pensions had become commonplace, they were much less effective as an incentive to lure top talent. They started to feel like burdensome cost centers to companies.
As America’s corporations grew and their veteran employees started hitting retirement age, the amount of funding required to meet current and future pension funding obligations became huge. And it kept growing. Remember, the Baby Boomer generation, the largest ever by far in US history, was just entering the workforce by the 1960s.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
William Rees: What’s Driving The Planet’s Accelerating Species Collapse?
The data regarding planetary species loss just gets more alarming.
Today’s podcast guest is bioecologist and ecological economist Dr. William Rees, professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. Rees is best known for his development of the “ecological footprint” concept as a way to measure the demand a particular population places on the environmental resources it needs to survive.
Since the beginning of modern agriculture (around 1800), human activity has increased demand on planetary resources at an exponential rate. More energy has been expended — and more resources consumed — in the past 40 years than in all of human existence beforehand. That is placing a greater and greater strain on ecosystems that are now dangerously depleted:
At the dawn of agriculture, just ten thousand years ago, human beings accounted for less than 1% of the total mammalian biomass on the planet. Today, there’s been a sevenfold increase, roughly speaking, in the biomass of vertebra species on the planet — but most of that is human-induced. Today, human beings account for about 32 – 35%of the total biomass of mammals, a much greater biomass than at the dawn of agriculture. But when we throw in our domesticated animals and our pets, humans and their domesticated animals amount to 98.5% of the total weight of mammals on planet Earth.
So we’re engaged here, through sheer growth, in the scale of the human enterprise in what ecologists refer to as “competitive displacement”. This is a finite planet. There’s a finite flow, a limited flow, of photosynthetic energy through the planet which we share with millions of other species. Now, on a finite planet with limited energy flow, the more any one species takes the less is available for everything else.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Ron Paul: We Are Reaching A Point Of No Return
Ron Paul: We Are Reaching A Point Of No Return
Dr. Ron Paul has long been a leading voice for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, sound money, civil liberty, and non-interventionist foreign policies.
Dr. Paul served as the US Representative for Texas’s 27th Congressional District from 1976 to 1985. He then represented the 14th district from 1977 to 2013. He ran for the office of US President, three times, most recently in the 2012 Republican primaries. Dr. Paul also had a long career as an OBGYN over which he delivered more than 4,000 babies.
The recent author of the book, The Revolution At Ten Years, Dr. Paul looks ahead at the future of the movement he helped launch — tackling central planning, the military empire, cultural Marxism, the surveillance state, the deep state, and the real threats from these institutions to our civil liberties.
As a multi-term member of Congress, Dr. Paul knows the players and policies responsible for the growing unfairness and inequality now rampant in society. He does not expect the offenders will reform willingly. Instead, he predicts the system will collapse under its own unsustainability — offering a rare and valuable chance then for more sound and fair solutions to prevail:
Wealth doesn’t come from the creation of money, especially a fiat system. With too much fiat money and all this credit, eventually the economy becomes exhausted and engulfed with debt and mal-investments. The treatment for this is a correction; you have to allow the debt to be liquidated. You have to get rid of the mal-investment and you have and to allow real economic growth to start all over again. But that wasn’t permitted in ’08 and ’09, which is why there’s been stagnation.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Tim Jackson: The High Price Of Growth
Tim Jackson: The High Price Of Growth
Modern society is addicted to and engineered for perpetual economic growth.
Now, a fourth-grader can tell you that nothing can grow forever, especially if you have finite resources. But that simple realization is eluding today’s central planners, despite multiplying evidence that growth is becoming harder and harder to come by.
This week’s podcast guest is Professor Tim Jackson, sustainability advisor for the UK government, professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey and Director of CUSP. Tim is also a full member of the Club of Rome.
He explains why the exponential growth rates of today’s economies, and their associated rates of resource extraction/consumption, will not be able to continue for much longer — and why a pursuit of “prosperity” (defined much more broadly than simple consumerism) is a much healthier goal for humanity.
Anyone who thinks that exponential growth can go on forever on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist.
Those very steep lines that rise very sharply as we approach the 21st century and show us that we are exceeding our carrying capacity in all sorts of ways are quite compelling. I think people actually feel this to some extent, that having more and more ‘stuff’ going through the system is somehow unsustainable. And not just in environmental ways, but even in social ways.
It’s the classic challenge of the irresistible force meeting the unmovable object. This pervasive idea of prosperity consisting of exponential growth, while the planet is not getting any bigger, is putting ecosystems under lots of stress. The pressures that human society puts on our environment is increasingly obvious.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Too Good For Too Long
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Too Good For Too Long
It’s amazing how instantly the status quo where I live has changed. The world my neighbors and I lived in when we all went to bed on Sunday night simply no longer existed by the time we woke up on Monday morning. Lives have been lost. Entire neighborhoods — thousands of homes — have burned to the ground. Businesses, hospitals and schools are now shuttered.
Having now experienced this personally — on top of watching news reports over the previous weeks of similarly abrupt “before/after” transitions in Houston, Florida, Puerto Rico, Mexico City, Las Vegas and Catalonia — I have a new-found appreciation for the maxim that when it arrives, change happens quickly — usually much more quickly than folks ever imagined, catching the general public off-guard and unprepared.
We humans tend to think linearly and comparatively. In other words, we usually assume the near future will look a lot like the recent past. And it does much of the time.
But other times it doesn’t. And that’s where the danger lies.
The Cruel Math
In 1987 a Danish physicist named Per Bak released a landmark paper introducing the concept of self-organized criticality. Bak observed that complex systems draw stability through an ongoing cycle of corrective collapses that keep the overall system from becoming too over-extended.
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