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“The Federal Reserve Is Clearly Trapped”: Lawrence Lepard
“The Federal Reserve Is Clearly Trapped”: Lawrence Lepard
Friend of Fringe Finance Lawrence Lepard released his most recent investor letter this week.
Friend of Fringe Finance Lawrence Lepard released his most recent investor letter this week. He gets little coverage in the mainstream media, which, in my opinion, makes him someone worth listening to twice as closely.
Larry was kind enough to allow me to share his thoughts heading into Q2 2024. The letter has been edited ever-so-slightly for formatting, grammar and visuals.
QUARTERLY OVERVIEW
Globally, the stock markets continued their 45-degree angle rise during the first quarter. Crude oil, and commodities broadly, also had a stair-step rise consistently during the quarter. Gold and silver and the miners were an interesting dichotomy. Bullion prices were flat to slightly down in January and February, and the miners were clobbered during those early months of Q1. However, in March the price of gold broke through the long-standing $2,070 ceiling and the miners responded, driving the Fund up by 25.4%. Gold miner indices were down 17% in the first two months before the March move.
Note that the gold mining stocks still have not provided any leverage to the price of gold. In fact, in the first quarter they did not even keep pace with the increase in the price of gold. With gold up 8.1% in the quarter, the gold mining indices were up 2%. Typically, gold miners provide 2x to 3x leverage in terms of returns; so with gold up 8%, the miners would typically have been up 16% to 24%. This supports our thesis that the miners are still undervalued and are going to mean revert with a vengeance as this bull market in gold continues. The gold mining shares have a long way to go before they reflect fair value.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Insanity: Celebrating Rate Cuts At A Shiller PE Of 31x
Insanity: Celebrating Rate Cuts At A Shiller PE Of 31x
Last week ended the way all weeks have been ending: with the stock market raging higher based on future expectations of rate cuts that (1) have not happened yet (2) probably won’t happen until next year, unless a market crash happens first and (3) won’t make their way through the economy for another 18 to 24 months.
But nonetheless, the S&P is looking to finish the year nearing astronomical 20% gains, something that I would have thought to have been impossible with rates raging higher over the last 2 years. But, then again, remember as I wrote in September — rate cuts are usually the signal for the market to crash — not rate hikes: Fed Rate Cuts Should Scare The Shit Out Of You
Is that something I wish I had understood better heading into the last few years? Absolutely. Have I taken an ass whooping betting on volatility and being mostly net short? Absolutely. Does that mean I’m going to be deadass wrong again in 2024?
Not necessarily.
After all, look at gold. As I’ve noted, gold is one of the very few names I’d consider ever being “all in”. And, as I have written about extensively, I find the setup for the precious metal heading into 2024 to be outstanding. I’ve been harping on this since the inception of this blog and it took until this week for gold to hit new all time highs: The Fed Can’t, And Won’t, Nail The Dismount
So let’s just hope it isn’t my analysis that’s wrong, but rather, just my timing.
Anyway I took the time this week to offer up my updated thoughts on Elon Musk and Tesla, after both Musk’s outburst at the DealBook conference and Tesla’s Cybertruck reveal. I explain my thoughts and continued stance on Tesla here: Elon Musk And Dark Forces
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Covid Emergency, Climate Emergency: Same Thing
Covid Emergency, Climate Emergency: Same Thing
Would a ‘Climate Emergency’ Open the Same Door to Authoritarian Governance as the ‘COVID Emergency?’
I am always happy to welcome new content from The Brownstone Institute, one of the last few beacons of common sense left in the world.
This week they published a new piece on how, as the Covid emergency fades away, the climate emergency is becoming prominent. After lamenting the rights that were taken from citizens during the Covid emergency, the article looks at exactly what superpowers the government would get in declaring a climate emergency. You guessed it: more power to ram through ways for government to micromanage your life, interfere with the economy and – best of all – further the Keynesian nightmare by printing and spend as many U.S. dollars as they want without consequences.
I reached out to the publication last year and requested permission to share their content when I enjoy it, in full, with my readers, which they kindly granted. If you’re interested in the topic – or simply just having a grasp on the objective truth – I believe it is a “must read”.
The article is written by W. Aaron Vandiver, a writer, former litigator, and wildlife conservationist. He is the author of the novel, Under a Poacher’s Moon. Photographic annotations have been added by QTR.
In February 2022, 1,140 organizations sent President Biden a letter urging him to declare a “climate emergency.” A group of US Senators did the same, in October 2022, and a House bill, introduced in 2021, also called on the president to “declare a national climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act.”
Biden has considered declaring such an emergency, but so far he has declined, to the disappointment of many progressives.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
World Economic Fuck’em
World Economic Fuck’em
Nothing more than an unelected globalist government slowly emerging behind the curtains, eager to abscond with your rights and tell you how to live. Really…nothing to see here.
Among the many wretched, slimy and odious things that are increasingly giving me the creeps as the sands of my life’s hourglass continue to fall is the World Economic Forum: a collective of self-righteous global elites handing down virtues, values, lessons, lectures and political initiatives to us peons out here in the rest of the world.
The “Forum” is increasingly starting to resemble a globalist government, stocked with globally unelected turbo-douchebags, who have been assembling quietly in the background while no one has noticed.
One minute you’ve never heard of them – did you know the WEF has been around for about 5 decades? – the next, the “Forum” is harboring incredible influence, mostly with “useful” bureaucratic idiots on the left who are happy to take their cues on how to napalm individual rights for betterment of advancing their agendas from anyone who will help, regardless of their motivation.
That’s right: gone are the days of joking about The Great Reset, owning nothing and liking it and shifting to a diet of mealworms and crickets.
I’ve arrived at a point past that – a point of being sickened by watching people that in no way, shape or form represent me or the people in my life, yammer on about what my future will or won’t look like and what things I stand for are “right” or “wrong”.
It’s right in the WEF’s mission statement:
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Lying About The Economy Will Only Make The Coming Crash Worse
Lying About The Economy Will Only Make The Coming Crash Worse
I don’t know who needs to hear this. Wait, yes I do. The Biden Administration.
I really don’t know how to describe the disturbing trend over the last few months of the Biden administration, along with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, simply lying to the American people about the economy.
Months worth of political spin has culminated in embarrassing recent attempts to redefine the word “recession”: a futile effort to pull the wool over an American public that is growing increasingly suspect both Biden and Yellen’s competence to be overseeing the the country, and the economy, respectively.
By now, the administration’s pathetic falsehood of a narrative about our economy has been called out, ridiculed, dismantled and generally beaten to death by anyone with a shred of common sense.
However, there is something far more important that people aren’t talking about: the administration lying about the health of the economy could wind up exacerbating any financial crisis that we have in the near future.
Put simply, the more you tell people that “everything is fine” when it isn’t, the more surprised and shocked they are going to be when markets start to panic.
I don’t think a market crash is an outrageous scenario that has no chance of happening, either. I noted in my latest portfolio update that I thought the market could have a short-term rally based on the idea of participants thinking that the Fed is preparing to pivot.
But over the course of the longer-term, the rate hikes that have already been put into place are going to eventually make their way to the economic-narrative-foreground in the form of huge forthcoming aftershocks throughout the economy.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Putin Knows The Monetary System Is A Credit Based Ponzi Scheme: Lawrence Lepard
Putin Knows The Monetary System Is A Credit Based Ponzi Scheme: Lawrence Lepard
Larry also lays out 4 key catalysts for higher gold, silver and bitcoin prices.
Friend of Fringe Finance Lawrence Lepard released his most recent investor letter a few days ago with his updated take on the seismic changes occurring in monetary policy globally as a result of the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
He takes us through history as to how this landscape has changed in the past, and what could be coming in years ahead.
Larry had joined me for several interviews last year and I believe him to truly be one of the muted voices that the investing community would be better off for considering. He’s the type of voice that gets little coverage in the mainstream media, which, in my opinion, makes him someone worth listening to twice as closely.
Larry was kind enough to allow me to share his most recent thoughts. Part 2 is below and Part 1 can be found at this link.
In Part 1, Larry reminded us of the history and structure of the world monetary system, starting in 1944 and ending in 1980, and how he uses that to make his investment decisions.
In Part 2, he picks up around 1980 and discusses current problems the Fed has.
1980-Present Gold Market
In the chart below, you can see the effect that Paul Volcker’s policies had on the dollar price of gold. By pushing interest rates up to 20%, he managed to cool inflation and ultimately stop it. This brought the gold price back to the $260 to $400 range where it lived for quite some time.
The 1980’s and 1990s were marked by a period of dis-inflation and ultimately deflation given technological innovations and productivity gains from Microsoft, Intel and the like in the 1980s, and then the Internet in the 1990s…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why We Could Be Staring Down The Barrel of A Catastrophic NASDAQ Crash And Not Even Know It
Why We Could Be Staring Down The Barrel of A Catastrophic NASDAQ Crash And Not Even Know It
Covid. Gamma. Options. Is it any wonder we haven’t noticed that we are teetering on the edge just yet?
It would certainly take a special confluence of factors for us to be staring down the barrel of a an unprecedented crash in tech stocks without noticing it’s coming. But I’m starting to entertain the idea that that is exactly where we are, we may not know how much pain we are truly in for – and we might not fathom how quickly it could come on and surprise us.
For a little while now my friend on Twitter @rosemontseneca has been quietly pontificating that we are living 1999 all over again, we just don’t notice it yet. I’m starting to seriously agree with him and I have been thinking to myself over the past week: “Why aren’t other people making this comparison yet? Stocks are extremely overvalued. What’s ‘different this time’?”
Indeed, I believe the next crash is going to come as a breakneck-style surprise. If I had a chance to publish this piece before Halloween, I was going to make the analogy of somebody sneaking in the back door of the house and waiting around the corner in the kitchen to hack us to death when we went to make our “stoned-in-our-underwear at 2AM” bologna sandwich. But instead I wound up going with the gun analogy for the title because I was too lazy to get this article out in the month of October.
But analogies aside, the point is still the same: the next big market plunge could be any day now, and will likely be led by tech. Let me explain my reasoning.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
