The Threat to Muddle Through
by ilene - March 20th, 2010 4:56 pm
The Threat to Muddle Through
Courtesy of John Mauldin, at FrontlineThoughts.com
If the Chinese allowed the renminbi to rise, would that make the USA better off? That is the contention of a cabal of critics from Senators to Nobel laureates. Paul Krugman wants to see a 25% tariff on Chinese goods. Today we examine that idea, and look at the real problems that we face. If only it were so easy. The numbers just don’t add up. The fault, dear Brutus…
O Canada
But first, and quickly, and in keeping with the spirit of the recent Olympics in Canada, I want to let my Canadian readers know that I am excited to announce a new Canadian partner, Nicola WealthManagement, based in Vancouver. Why Nicola Wealth Management? I have spent some time getting to know them and have come to have a great deal of trust in and respect for John Nicola (President) and his team. In my opinion, they are one of the premier wealth management firms in Canada. Further, they are as committed to helping you find high-quality investments, including absolute-return strategies, as I am.
If you are from Canada, get started now by going to www.accreditedinvestor.ws and signing up, and I will make sure one of the team at Nicola Wealth Management will call and qualify you to receive our Accredited Investor Communications.
And of course, if you are in the US, Latin America, Europe, or South Africa, and if you are an accredited investor (basically a net worth of $1 million or more), you can go to that link and I will have one of my partners in those areas contact you about the various absolute-return strategy funds that are available to you. (In this regard, I am president of and a registered representative of Millennium Wave Securities, LLC, member FINRA.)
The Threat to Muddle Through
I have pretty well laid out over the past decade that I think the US will Muddle Through what promises to be a period of below-trend growth and a long-term secular bear market. It will not be pleasant or fun - there will be a lot of pain - but we will get through the coming crisis (note: I think the Big One is still in our future). That is what we do in a more or less free-market world. But, as I wrote 7 years ago and have written since, there is one caveat that turns me from a Muddle Through-er into a…
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The Implications of Velocity
by ilene - March 13th, 2010 3:09 pm
The Implications of Velocity
Courtesy of John Mauldin at Thoughts from the Frontline
The Velocity of Money
Our Little Island World
GDP = (P) x (T)
P=MV
A Slowdown in Velocity
Dallas and Thoughts on the Economy
This week we do some review on a very important topic, the velocity of money. If we don’t understand the basics, it is hard to make sense of the hash that our world economy is in, much less understand where we are headed.
But before we jump into that, I want to let my Conversations subscribers know that we have posted a recent conversation with two hedge-fund managers, Kyle Bass of Hayman Advisors [and his staff] here in Dallas and Hugh Hendry of the Eclectica Fund in London. Our discussions centered on what we all think has the potential to be the next Greece, but on a far more serious level. It was a fascinating time.
Then next Wednesday we will post a Conversation I had with George Friedman of Stratfor fame, and then the following Wednesday a Conversation that I just completed with Dr. Ken Rogoff and Dr. Carmen Reinhart, the authors of This Time Is Different.
For new readers, Conversations with John Mauldin is my one subscription service. While this letter will always be free, we have created a way for you to "listen in" on my conversations with some of my friends, many of whom you will recognize and some whom you will want to know after you hear our conversations. Basically, I will call one or two friends each month and, just as we do at dinner or at meetings, we will talk about the issues of the day, with back and forth, give and take, and friendly debate. I think you will find it very enlightening and thought-provoking and a real contribution to your education as an investor.
And as you can see, I can get some rather interesting people to come to the table. Current subscribers can renew for a deeply discounted $129, and we will extend that price to new subscribers as well. To learn more, go to http://www.johnmauldin.com/newsletters2.html. Click on the Subscribe button, and join me and my friends for some very interesting Conversations.
The Velocity of Money
The Federal Reserve and central banks in general are running a grand experiment on the economic body, without the benefit of anesthesia. They are testing the theories of Irving Fisher (representing the classical economists), John Keynes (the Keynesian school) Ludwig von Mises…
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Welcome to the Future
by ilene - March 6th, 2010 8:25 pm
Welcome to the Future
Courtesy of John Mauldin at Thoughts from the Frontline
I, Robot
The Mauldin Test
Who Stole My Nanotech?
Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink
The Promise of Biotech
DIY-Bio
Random Takeaways
Home Again, Cambridge, and Cincinnati
We are in an era of accelerating change, moving toward a future that will be profoundly different from the past we grew up in. But what will the nature of that change be? What will the future look like? For the last 7 days I have been in an executive program designed by Singularity University (www.singularityu.org) to give some insight into that complex question. We looked at a number of technological fields, lectured by experts assembled to give us some idea as to where current research is and to where it is going. We visited some of the cutting-edge companies here in Silicon Valley.
Just as interesting, I got to visit with 44 of my fellow information seekers from 15 countries and extremely diverse backgrounds, along with a dozen college students, as well as the faculty. The group ranged from very successful entrepreneurs to academics to relatively high-level government workers to starry-eyed young people just starting out. There were a lot more applicants than could be accommodated, and the staff did a good job of choosing a group of people who all "brought something to the table" besides their entry fee of $15,000. The days were typically 14-15 hours, and there was a lot of discussion amongst us on the topics of the day.
This week we depart from my usual letter on finance and economics so I can report on a few of the ideas I came across. Some truly grabbed my interest, some confirmed my thinking, and others quite frankly either disappointed or alarmed me. This will not be my normal narrative, but rather short observations cribbed from my notes and thoughts. As I am on (yet again) a plane to San Antonio for a speech tomorrow morning, there will not be the usual links; and in some cases I must confess I made notes without writing down the name of the speaker. Mea culpa. So, sit back and let me share what has been a great week. (And I suspect that a few of you will be happy that we are ignoring Greece for at least one week!)
Quick note. My Strategic Investment Conference is almost sold out. Details at the end of the letter.
I, Robot
I think the…
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THE MULTIPLICATION OF MONEY
by ilene - February 27th, 2010 11:27 am
THE MULTIPLICATION OF MONEY
Courtesy of John Mauldin at Thoughts from the Frontline
Where Is All that Greek Gold?
The Greeks Write Back
The Euro and a Conspiracy of Hedge Funds
So Where’s the Inflation?
No Help for Homebuilders
The economy grew in the fourth quarter by 5.9%, the most in years. The adjusted monetary base is exploding. Bank reserves are literally through the roof. The Fed is flooding money into the system in an effort to get banks to lend. An historically normal response by banks (to increase lending) would have been massively inflationary, causing the Fed to stomp on the brakes. Despite raising the almost meaningless discount rate (as who uses it?), this week Ben Bernanke assured Congress of an easy monetary policy, with rates remaining low for a long time. Many ask, how can this not be inflationary?
This week we look at some fundamentals of money supply and the economy. If you understand this, you won’t get misled by people selling investments, telling you to buy this or that based on some chart that shows whatever they are selling to be what you absolutely have to have to protect your portfolio and/or make massive profits. And we touch on a few odds and ends. And yes, I can’t resist, a few more thoughts on
Before we get into the meat of the letter, I want to give you a chance to register for my 7th (where do the years go?!) annual Strategic Investment Conference, cosponsored with my friends at Altegris Investments. The conference will be held April 22-24 and, as always, in La Jolla, California. The speaker lineup is powerful. Already committed are Dr. Gary Shilling, David Rosenberg, Dr. Lacy Hunt, Dr. Niall Ferguson, and George Friedman, as well as your humble analyst. We are talking with several other equally exciting speakers and expect those to firm up shortly.
Look at that lineup. These are the guys who got the calls right over the past few years. They called the housing crisis, the credit bubble, and the recession. And, in my opinion, these are some of the best in the world at giving us ideas about where we are headed.
Comments from those who attend the annual affair generally run along the lines of, “This is the…
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The Pain in Spain
by ilene - February 20th, 2010 3:29 pm
The Pain in Spain
Courtesy of John Mauldin at Thoughts from the Frontline
Germany, Greece, and Spain
Two Views on the Euro
The Pain in Spain
How Much Is Too Much?
Last week we talked about Greece. But the problems are more than just Greece. We look at two very different views of the euro, and then opposing thoughts on Spain. Is Spain a problem or not? And how can the US keep on spending? Is there a limit? There is a lot to cover in what has been an interesting, if confusing, week.
Before we get into the meat of the letter, I want to give you a chance to register for my 7th (where do the years go?!) annual Strategic Investment Conference, cosponsored with my friends at Altegris Investments. The conference will be held April 22-24 and, as always, in La Jolla, California. The speaker lineup is powerful. Already committed are Dr. Gary Shilling, David Rosenberg, Dr. Lacy Hunt, Dr. Niall Ferguson, and George Friedman, as well as your humble analyst. We are talking with several other equally exciting speakers and expect those to firm up shortly.
Look at that lineup. These are the guys who got the calls right over the past few years. They called the housing crisis, the credit bubble, and the recession. And, in my opinion, these are some of the best in the world at giving us ideas about where we are headed.
Comments from those who attend the annual affair generally run along the lines of, "This is the best conference we have ever been to." And each year it seems to get better. This year we are going to focus on "The End Game," that is, on the paths the various nations are likely to take as they try to solve their various deficit problems, and how that will affect the world and local economies and our investments. We make sure you have access to our speakers and get your questions answered, and you’ll come away with excellent, practical investment ideas.
This conference sells out every year, and it looks like it will do so this year. You do not want to miss it. There is a physical limit to the space. Every year I have to tell people, including good friends, that there is no more room. Don’t wait to sign up. There is still an early-registration discount. And while it pains me to say it, you must be an…
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Dow’s Theory of Markets
by ilene - February 16th, 2010 10:38 pm
Here’s the second chapter from Pharmboy’s “Handbook of Technical Analysis.” If you missed the introduction and first chapter, click on “Understanding Market Cycles: The Art of Market Timing” to read from the beginning. – Ilene
Dow’s Theory of Markets
Courtesy of Pharmboy of Phil’s Stock World
Technical analysis dates back hundreds of years. According to historical records, a great Japanese rice trader named Homma Munehisa (1724-1803) developed a form of TA known as candlestick charting.[1] A candlestick chart is a style of bar-chart used primarily to describe price movements of securities, derivatives, and currencies over time. It combines aspects of a line-chart and a bar-chart, in that each bar represents the range of price movement over a given time interval. It is most often used in TA of equity and currency price patterns.
Technical analysis is an art. With focus and diligence, TA can often be learned within a short period. A chartist using TA reads and interprets chart patterns and then attempts to predict the most likely short-term outcome based on his methods. Figure 1 shows a 6 month Diamonds (DIA) candlestick chart and many patterns and studies that traders often use to enhance their trading. Moving averages convergence divergence (MACD) and relative strength index (RSI) are two studies very commonly used by technical analysts. MACD is a trend-following momentum indicator that shows the relationship between two moving averages of prices, while RSI is a technical momentum indicator that compares the magnitude of recent gains to recent losses in trying to decide overbought and oversold conditions of an asset. Because candlestick charting is the basis of this handbook, I use these types of charts almost exclusively in my examples.
In the U.S., TA first gained a following from Charles Dow’s Dow Theory in the late 19th century. The six basic tenets of Dow Theory, as summarized by Hamilton, Rhea, and Schaefer, are as follows:
Tenant 1. The market has three movements (Figure 2):
- The primary trend, or major trend, may last from less than a year to several years. It is bullish or bearish.
- A secondary trend moves in the opposite direction of the primary trend, or as a correction to the primary trend. For example, an upward primary trend will be composed of secondary downward trends. This is the movement from a consecutively lower high to a consecutively higher high. In a primary downward trend the secondary trend will be an upward move, or a rally. This is the movement from a consecutively higher low to a consecutively lower low.…
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Goldman Goes Rogue – Special European Audit To Follow
by ilene - February 15th, 2010 11:10 am
Here’s the full article by Simon Johnson that Joe at Business Insider referred to in the last post. One of the most outrageous aspects of the financial crisis fall-out is that we let this behavior go on and on after it became apparent, even to outsiders, that conflicts of interest, unethical activity, and perhaps out-and-out fraud, were the rules in government-financial sector marriages, no matter what the official explanations. - Ilene
Goldman Goes Rogue – Special European Audit To Follow
Courtesy of Simon Johnson at Baseline Scenario
At 9:30 pm on Sunday, September 21, 2008, Goldman Sachs was saved from imminent collapse by the announcement that the Federal Reserve would allow it to become a bank holding company – implying unfettered access to borrowing from the Fed and other forms of implicit government support, all of which subsequently proved most beneficial. Officials allowed Goldman to make such an unprecedented conversion in the name of global financial stability. (The blow-by-blow account is in Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail; this is confirmed in all substantial detail by Hank Paulson’s memoir.)
We now learn – from Der Spiegel last week and today’s NYT – that Goldman Sachs has not only helped or encouraged some European governments to hide a large part of their debts, but it also endeavored to do so for Greece as recently as last November. These actions are fundamentally destabilizing to the global financial system, as they undermine: the eurozone area; all attempts to bring greater transparency to government accounting; and the most basic principles that underlie well-functioning markets. When the data are all lies, the outcomes are all bad – see the subprime mortgage crisis for further detail.
A single rogue trader can bring down a bank – remember the case of Barings. But a single rogue bank can bring down the world’s financial system.
Goldman will dismiss this as “business as usual” and, to be sure, a few phone calls around Washington will help ensure that Goldman’s primary supervisor – now the Fed – looks the other way.
But the affair is now out of Ben Bernanke’s hands, and quite far from people who are easily swayed by the White House. It goes immediately to the European Commission, which has jurisdiction over eurozone budget issues. Faced with enormous pressure from those eurozone countries now on the hook for saving Greece, the Commission will surely launch a special audit of Goldman and all its European clients.
This audit should focus on ten sets of questions.
- Which eurozone governments have worked with Goldman, and on what…
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Weekend Reading - Greecing the Wheels
by Phil - February 8th, 2010 3:51 am
I’m done with Greece.
I was getting sick of it last week and now I’m really done after doing some research: First of all, Greece’s deficit (as we discussed last week) is a shocking 12% of their GDP and their national debt is 120% of their GDP (ours is about 100% now so something about glass economies and stones comes to mind) BUT, their whole GDP is $343Bn so we’re looking at a grand total of $41Bn to completely bail them out this year - the boyz at Goldman probably took about that much home in bonuses just betting on Greece to fail!
Do we really believe the $16,000,000,000,0000 EU economy is going to go down over $42,000,000,000 (0.26%)? Kind of hard to imagine when put in perspective. Of course it’s not just Greece, there’s Spain, Portugal and Ireland, although Ireland was last year’s worry with a $100Bn debt that they ended up fixing themselves by tightening their belts. For the Greeks, it’s more a matter of is there a will than a way as Greece has long been the EU’s least productive economy (followed by Portugal), which has historically made them uncompetitive with their northern cousins.
All it would take to fix Greece ($343Bn GDP) and Portugal’s ($220Bn) deficits is for Germany ($3,235Bn) and the UK ($2,200Bn) to buy a few extra Greek and Portugese goods and the factories would be humming again. The two countries each have about 1M people out of work (10% of the population) and if we assume 5% is close to full employment then we’re just talking about employing 1M people. Even if we pay those people $50,000 a year each, that’s "just" $50Bn and suddenly, everyone in Greece and Portugal is back at work, off the dole, paying taxes (iffy in Greece) and contributing to the GDP, which fixes the deficit.
$50Bn is just 1% of the GDP of Germany and the UK and back to 0.3% of the EU’s GDP. Hell, the global markets have lost $4,000,000,000,0000 in the last two weeks worrying about this $50,000,000,000 - THAT’s the magic of Credit Default Swaps - we get to leverage relatively small and correctable global problems into market catastrophes so fast that heads of state don’t even have time to call a meeting before the bankers have slashed and burned their economies.
So I was leaning this way at the end of last week and, now that I’ve had a chance to dig into it, I’ve decided it’s…
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Weekly Charts + The Reverse Cup & Handle Chart Pattern
by markettamer - February 7th, 2010 9:10 pm
Courtesy of Market Tamer
Weekly Charts
Dow Jones
S&P 500
NASDAQ
The Reverse Cup & Handle Chart Pattern
- The inverse of a Cup & Handle Chart Pattern.
-The stock bounces off of a support level and moves higher on unremarkable volume.
- A “Rounded Top” forms and then subsequently moves lower on increasing volume producing “The Cup”.
- The pattern is completed when a Bear Flag forms producing the handle.
- The breakdown occurs when the stock breaks the low of the handle on increasing volume.
(What's this?)
(THE PRAGMATIC CAPITALIST, 3/13/10)
(Red Hot Energy and Gold - Global…, 3/18/10)
(Scott's Investments, 3/17/10)
Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI),
S&P 500 (SPX)
at Wikinvest
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A BUBBLE IN SEARCH OF A PIN
by ilene - February 6th, 2010 2:20 pm
A BUBBLE IN SEARCH OF A PIN
A Bubble in Search of a Pin
Unemployment Numbers: A Mixed Bag
A Bubble in Search of a Pin
And Speaking of Bubbles
Help in Europe, California, Tampa, and Becoming our Parents
Should Greenspan and Bernanke have seen the bubble in housing and other assets and acted, or should we accept their defense that you can’t know whether there is a bubble until after the fact? We will look at research that suggests they should have known, and, at the least, policy makers should no longer be allowed to say, “How could I have known?”
Of course, the
But first, and quickly, as I wrote in Outside the Box a few weeks ago, I am starting to very selectively buy biotech stocks, and mostly, though not exclusively, companies associated with the regenerative genetic revolution that is coming our way. I am convinced that this is going to be a decade of the most amazing medical breakthroughs, which will literally change (and in many cases extend) our lives, as therapies to treat all sorts of diseases become available.
This is the last time I am going to mention it, but here is the link to that OTB, which analyzes why we may see a bubble in biotech stocks before the end of the decade. The OTB was written by my friend Pat Cox, who covers these stocks and other technological marvels in his newsletter, Breakthrough Technology Alert. I have been following Pat for some time now, have talked extensively with him, and think he is one of those guys who have a handle on what by all accounts is going to be an amazing decade of breakthroughs.
I have asked his publisher to offer my readers a very discounted subscription price for one more week. (Ignore the deadline of February 5.) And yes, the promotional piece is a little over the top, as it is for most subscription newsletters (I am lucky mine is free – I don’t have to do that). But…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(