Tag: investing

BUY IT NOW

For Australian investors, the month of May is “budget” month and, again, Australia’s “conservative” administration, delivered enough debt and deficit to keep even the most hardened lefty blushing. 

It’s a real sign of the times, get on board with debt spending or get left behind other “respected” central bank supported administrations around the globe.

The effects are starting to pop up everywhere. 

Like we’ve warned many times on this website, populations may wake too late to potential consequences of these policies. 

Some laws of economic nature still apply and inflation has been constantly stated as a preferred consequence by global central banks. Other choices are politically unpalatable. The problem is, Central Banks, and their fellow believers, still believe they can reign inflation in once it gets going.

Even more unrealistic, even humorous, is main stream financial media and central bank whisperers attempts to label the rising costs of everything as……., wait for it, …….. “transitionary”, or temporary. 

It’s our view that nothing could be further from the truth.

Central Banks will do nothing to combat inflation because they can do nothing.

From time to time you may hear some noise about winding back spending and stimulus, tapering bond purchases or even rate rises.

Not going to happen. Too much debt for rates to rise, too much ESG/climate change policy to implement, too much infrastructure spending to politic. Then add in the risk of bubble pricking! They aren’t going to risk it.

As you can see in the charts below from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, food price index increased for an 11thconsecutive month in April, hitting levels not seen in recent times, with sugar prices leading the main index.

It’s not just commodity related inputs, cars, housing and soon to be labour in Australia, the US itself is already on its it way to a double digit inflation print this year, even after they’ve taken all the inputs out that make the number bigger, just check out http://www.shadowstats.com if you’re interested in the make-up.

Anyway, this below, is Temporary?

Transitionary

Not temporary!

Temporary?

The aforementioned commitment of global central banks to multiyear infrastructure spending and stimulus almost guarantees a continuation of the above commodity price performance of the last few months. Fortunately, we are sure followers of these pages are well set to benefit from this commodity cycle.

More copper might be better, if you can find it. As usual, this presents an incredible back drop for precious metals and particularly that other super conductor of energy, Silver!

In spite of the obvious inflationary pressures, precious metals have, so far, failed to launch until this month.

This chart above is very bullish, especially from a technical perspective. A double bottom followed by a multiple moving average take out.

We think one should thank the main stream media for keeping many investors thinking that this whole inflationary thing will be temporary and easily bought into line by central bank rate rises! (A negative for Gold)!! 

It’s not, and investors still have time to get set. Especially, profitable gold producers look incredibly cheap.

As we’ve often stated in the past, precious metals are not the only way to protect ones purchasing power but have proved pretty reliable over a few millennia.

In the energy sector, funding for any fossil fuel project, new and existing, has virtually dried up in the new woke world. A world where the difference between metallurgical coal and coking coal is irrelevant!! 

It’s only a matter of time before markets wake to the reality that wind and solar aren’t going to cut it, for the time being, and the world just needs energy, for everything!!!

Check out this for a set of Alligator Jaws, just waiting to close?

And within the alligator jaws of energy there is Uranium! 

One of the greatest potential supply demand mismatches of the last decade! Potentially.

Finally, when a consumer “buy all the things now before prices rise” mentality kicks in you’ll know that this inflationary bout is more than a supply chain glitch. 

Peace!

Inflation, just Biden its time?

Here we are, Post Easter 2021, and still, not once have global financial markets been allowed to properly “clear” since the beginning of the 2007 GFC.

It’s just one bail out after another, every year, or in the case of recent months, weekly.

Last week’s largest Hedge Fund blow up since LTCM in 1998 barely sent a ripple through financial markets.

We’re guessing you might not know who Archegos was? It WAS an unhinged, Prime Broker funded, Over the Counter (OTC) derivative laden hedge fund investment gambling house. 

And then, “poof”, it’s gone! The last players at the table torched another 10-20BILLION!

But hey, plenty more where that came from so why wouldn’t Financial markets just shrug at this? 

In the US, only weeks after the US Biden administration put in place its latest $2Trillion “package”, the next $2trillion is already on deck, with promises of many more to come.

Right now, the US Fed alone injects 120BILLION per month in financial “stability stimulus”. 

It’s not just the US, everyone is “in” on this money creation malarkey, check the Europeans in the chart below.

So, if everyone is in on it, and all currencies start to debase at an even faster pace (known as inflation), investors would be wise to reassess ways and means of preparing for potential knock on effects or “systemic wobbles”!

In past millennia one way to store value was investing in precious metals.

However, these days, precious metals are as under owned at any time in (just about) recorded history, RELATIVE TO investable financial assets.

This is why this post Easter 2021 note is all about gold.

The other reason, as you will see below, is normally we have to wait until the mid-year for the guys n gals at Incrementum to bring us the always incredible “In Gold We Trust” report but for some reason they’ve pre released some of their hard work!! Thanks.

We’re not sure whether our commentary to the charts below will be helpful but the pictures are great, enjoy.

This chart below is almost out of date, given the rate of TRILLION creations in recent weeks.

Grease the wheels with some money printing! 

 Who gives a sh!t about Silver anyway?

Miners looking good…………

Gold ETF’s have claims to real paper…….

Many financial market participants will never realise the meaning, or reasons, for their being so much derivative leverage in Precious Metals than “other” commodities as laid out in the chart below.

Some Know!

Peace!

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

After a continued jack up in rates at the long end of the US Govt Bond Yield curve last week, markets are serious questioning how long the US Fed allow this to continue.

Before we look put our 2c worth into an answer, lets assess the state of some key players.

The Good

The Bad

More Bad

The Ugly

Quasimodo

Totally Awesome

In the first “bad” chart above, you’ll hopefully notice the correlation between Gold and said rising rates.  As Rates have risen, the US Gold price has come off, this has been the trend since last August.

USD gold has been in a downward channel since last August but certainly not a -40% channel that gold stocks have produced! Cripes, AUD Gold still sits at $2270 this morning. 

As stated above, for investors and markets, the biggest question of the moment is, “how long will the US Fed allow rates to rise”.? There are some pretty large effects of rising rates in a world drowned in debt. 

Louis Gave, of Gavekal fame, was asked on Macro Voices last week, whether he thought Central banks will resort to “Yield control” (rate suppression through printing money to buy more bonds), or, let rates run.

He said, “A 50basis point (0.5%) increases borrowing costs to the US govt that which is equivalent to the cost of running the entire US Navy”. “A 30 basis point rise is close to the cost of running the US Marine Corp”. “The US 10 year has risen by at least 80 points since August last year”.

It’s fair to say he thought rising rates are quite damaging to the US budget position.

Furthermore, The Fed (without having decided on Yield Control yet) printed another $100 BILLION last week alone, to help things out. If you add up all the money the US has ever printed, 40% was in 2020 alone. In three months last year, the US increased its deficit by more than it had in the previous 5 recessions, COMBINED!! Under Jerome Powell, the Fed bought more Treasuries in 6 WEEKS than in 10 years under Bernanke and Yellen.

And coming to you soon, from all quarters of Central Banking is the “Build Back Better” BS rhetoric and associated “stimulus” chatter.

It’s with this background we find it very difficult to imagine anything but more of the same and rates not to rise. As usual, we could be wrong and timing is the ultimate unknown.

We raise the rate issue, again, to reiterate how important it is to have a view on rates when making asset allocation decisions. 

The reality so far is, after 12 years of rate compression and “mission accomplished”, Central Banks have completely distorted the price of money and cost of capital to the point where the steep “blow off” charts in this note above, have become the new normal.

For us, meaningful tinkering in December, such as increasing allocations to industrial metal commodity positions have been rewarding. As well, we continue to add to our “non ethical” energy positions.

It’s also been entertaining watching the crypto space as we’ve long held small Ethereum and Bitcoin positions. They have now reached the moon, on their way to another galaxy. 

And, we’d love to see some real time weakness in global equities in the near future in order to increase emerging market positions, Asia specific.

As far as Asia goes, you just need to look at the container ships continuing to line up off the West Coast of America to appreciate how much better certain Asian economies are going to come out of this Covid funk.

A view we’ve been sharing for a few years now is that Central Banks have signalled, globally, that they are going to continue to de base currencies through inflation, whatever acronyms they may use as disguise.

The reason is quite simply known as “TINA”!!  There Is No Alternative!! 

Place your bets accordingly!!

And none of the above is advice!! DYOR!!

On a side note, Could this:

Be related to this:

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