InvestWithAlex.com 

What Jim Rogers Thinks You Should Know About Gold

Daily Ticker Writes: Jim Rogers Forecasts a Drop to $900

gold2 investwithalex

Commodities investor Jim Rogers tells The Daily Ticker that gold, having lost its luster as a safe haven, could drop to $900 or $1,000 in the next 1-2 years. Longer term, he has a very different forecast. Gold will soar to “well beyond $1,900 an ounce,” topping its record $1,920 high reached in September 2011, says Rogers, author of Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets. The reason: “massive currency debasement” around the world. “Every major central bank in the world is printing a lot of money plus war, chaos, riots in the street, governments failing,” says Rogers.

Despite that forecast, Rogers warns investments not to consider gold – or any other investment — safe. “I would never use the word ‘safe’ when I’m speaking about investing.”

There are only a few investors that I listen to when they speak. Jim Rogers is one of them. A brilliant and very interesting guy.  So, when he says something you better listen. I highly recommend that you click on the link and listen what he has to say. The video is just 2 minutes long. 

My stock market timing work kind of confirms his thesis on gold. I already talked about gold in one of my previous posts CLICK HERE and the fact that I don’t really understand it or know how to value it properly.

Jim mentions that he anticipates gold to decline further over the next few years to shake out the bulls before resuming its bull market due to currency debasement and inflation. My work confirms this as a highly probably scenario. 

As the markets and the economy decline over the next few years in a deflationary environment, so should the gold.  As we bottom in 2016 and begin the inflation cycle I talked about before, gold should start appreciating. Perhaps significantly. Just my two cents. 

Did you enjoy this article? If so, please share our blog with your friends as we try to get traction. Gratitude!!!

Timing The Market With Cycles (Part 2)

Orchestra

Continuation of part 1 

Imagine for a second that you are watching the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. As the show starts you see over 50 musicians sitting on stage and playing their musical instruments. The instruments themselves vary across the board.  There is a piano, dozens of violins, trombones, cellos, bass, etc…  As musicians begin to play, beautiful and harmonious music begins to flood the concert venue. If we stop at this juncture, we would miss an important clue that can help us time the markets with great precision.

As the music plays, a number of very important developments occur behind the scenes. To begin with, music itself is nothing more than a vibration or a wave or a cycle or an oscillation.  Each musical instrument and each player produce a range of vibrations while playing their instruments. That creates music. So a single musician will produce  a rate of vibration/oscillation that at least in technical terms is identical to the structure of the cycle. Now, having 50 musicians in our orchestra simply means that at any given second there are 50 different cycles (vibrations/waves) being created by 50 different musicians and instruments. They vary across the board and are as diverse as possible.

Yet, they all come together to create beautiful and harmonious music.  I cannot stress this enough. All 50 of the cycles (vibrations/waves)  unify  into 1 primary cycle by the time music reaches your eardrum.  No longer are you listening to 50 different vibrations, you are now listening to only one.  You are listening to the summation of these vibration, to the final result.  Finally, this end product or the summation of all of these cycles could be represented on the chart as a singular wave moving up and down over time.

What does this have to do with the stock market?

If you are to chart the final result or the final musical wave generated by the 50 musicians above it would look identical to the 2-Dimensional chart of any given stock or of the overall chart of the stock market.  It wouldn’t be identical, but it would look identical as if the music you have just heard is being tracked by the stock market charting service. This yields an important clue when it comes to the stock market cycle analysis.

Basically, there are many different cycles working in the stock market at the same time. Their range, structure, power and amplitude are as diverse as you can imagine. While some cycles last for decades and even centuries, others oscillate every few minutes. However, once we identify all of these cycles and put them all together, we end up with an exact representation of the overall stock market. When I say exact, I mean exact.

Let me repeat this. If the cycle structure is fully understood and constructed properly you can build an exact replica of the stock market. Not only for the past, but also for the future. Once the cycles are known you can predict the exact structure of all upcoming stock market moves to the point and to the day. Confirming both the fundamental and 3-DV analysis work described earlier.  

To be continued…… 

Did you enjoy this article? If so, please share our blog with your friends as we try to get traction. Gratitude!!!



 

Timing The Market With Cycles (Part 2) 

European Union to Buy USA

Bloomberg Writes: The U.S. Economy Is Turning European

United States Of Europe Investwithalex

The U.S. economy is getting as bad as Europe at bouncing back from recessions and generating jobs, and a decrease in societal trust may be a big factor, according to a research paper presented today at the Brookings Institution.

The paper is called “Amerisclerosis? The Puzzle of Rising U.S. Unemployment Persistence,” and it’s by Olivier Coibion of the University of Texas at Austin and Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Dmitri Koustas of the University of California at Berkeley.

Amerisclerosis is the economic version of atherosclerosis, also known as hardening of the arteries—a disease that contributes to heart attacks and strokes. In the 1980s, economists coined the term Eurosclerosis to describe Europe’s malfunctioning jobs market. The U.S. is going the same direction, the authors say.

Read The Full Article Here

Amerisclerosis.  Seriously??? Is that the best US Economist can come up with?

I am not sure why so many smart people find it so difficult to understand our current economic environment and/or lack of economic growth/improvement. It is as easy as 1-2-3.

1. We exist in an artificial Credit Finance Economy:  Meaning that whatever recovery we have seen was financed not by real money, but “out of thin air” printed money to sustain the US Economy and to prevent a collapse/recession. The velocity of that money is slowing down now and the US Economy will soon roll over into a recession.

2. Robotics and Outsourcing: Brace yourself over the next 10-20 years. Whatever jobs robots can do or that can be outsourced  will disappear over that time frame. Nothing can be done about it. With real unemployment/underemployment already as high as 15-20% in the US, it doesn’t bode well for the overall economy.

3. Structural Problems: There are so many that I will just mention a few. Attempted currency debasement, healthcare, artificially low interest rates, unemployment, housing bubble, cost of education, car sales bubble, etc….  Of course most of these can be directly tied to issue #1 above.

Until these 3 issues are dealt with, the US Economy is not going anywhere. The only way to deal with it is to stop insane fiscal policies by the FED and the Federal Government and let the US Economy go through a severe recession and defaults.

Unfortunately, no one in the US Government has the balls to do just that as they all practice their can kicking ability. Since that is the case I would expect the US Economy to slowly decline over the next decade to further deteriorate the American standard of living.

Did you enjoy this article? If so, please share our blog with your friends as we try to get traction. Gratitude!!!

 

Worlds Largest Hedge Fund Confirms, Epic Credit Bubble Is About To Blow Up

CNBC Writes: Blackstone: We’re in an ‘epic credit bubble’

too much credit investwithalex

One of the world’s largest investment firms believes the financial system is overly leveraged.

“We are in the middle of an epic credit bubble, in my opinion, the likes of which I haven’t seen in my career in private equity,” Joseph Baratta, The Blackstone Group (BX)’s global head of private equity, said Thursday night at the Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst Conference in New York City. “The cost of a high yield bond on an absolute coupon basis is as low as it’s ever been.”

“We’re not just levering up U.S. GDP into multiples today,” Baratta said. “I do expect mean reversion to happen at some point on interest rates, on credit spreads, on the cost of some investment grade corporate credit.”

The high valuation of many companies today makes it harder for them to grow. “The biggest risk to returns of this vintage is that exit multiples are depressed,” Baratta said.

Read The Full Article Here

I strongly agree with Blackstone on this point.  In relative terms we are in the largest credit bubble mankind has ever seen. The situation we find ourselves in now is like a very bad runaway science experiment that cannot be stopped.

How will it end? No one knows, but the outcome cannot be pretty. What we have experienced in 2007-2009 was just a preview. Now that the credit bubble is much bigger only time will tell us how this experiment will end.  Perhaps with a bang or perhaps with an extended period of economic suffering.

What I do not agree with is that Blackstone doesn’t necessary see it as a problems by indicating that they are still bullish on the economy. The only reasons we haven’t seen the full impact of this massive credit bubble is because “so far” the Fed has been able to control the interest rates. As soon as the Fed losses this control (and they will) the interest rates will zoom up.  At that point anticipate the credit bubble to implode and take the housing market, the stock market, car sales, retails sales and the overall economy down with it.

So, what’s the point here? I am not the only crazy person running around and screaming that we are in a massive credit bubble that is soon to explode. World’s largest hedge fund believes that much as well. As such, you have been warned. 

Did you enjoy this article? If so, please share our blog with your friends as we try to get traction. Gratitude!!!  

Timing The Market With Cycles

marketcycle

Thus far we have looked at the3-Dimensional stock market analysis as the primary tool in predicting the stock market or individual stocks in both price and time. Yet, there is another way to perform the same type of analysis.  It is called cycle work.

At the same time it is not the typical cycle work associated with the stock market. Relatively speaking cycle analysis has been around for as long as the stock market has been opened. People have been using various cycle constructs to try and predict the market.  Thus far without too much luck. Any analyst working with trying to time the markets through the use of cycle work would soon tell you that at times his cycles work perfectly fine, being able to predict the market with great accuracy and at times, they don’t work at all.  Believe it or not, there is a reason for it and that reason will be discussed in greater detail shortly.  

However, before we go any further we need to define what cycle analysis really means. In traditional sense of the word, it means studying various time cycles and then trying to apply them towards the stock market.  The simplest form of such exercise is identifying one market cycle and then trying to fit it into your market forecast. As a hypothetical example, an analyst studying NASDAQ market structure is able to determine that all stocks in the index go up for 14 trading days and then decline for 5 trading days. Then they go up for another 8 trading days and then decline for next 3 trading days. Thereafter, the cycle repeats itself indefinitely.

Of course, no such cycles exist, but it gives you an idea of how you should think about cycles. On a more complex level an analyst might put together hundreds of various cycles in order to try and predict not only the time but the value of the move.  While such cycle analysis is fairly complex, it does produce interesting and sometimes incredibly accurate results. The keyword is….sometimes.

Which begs the question, why does cycle analysis only works on limited basis?

The simple answer has to do with the 3-Dimensional analysis discussed in the previous section. The cycles do not work very well or they do break down after a certain period of time because they are being applied in the wrong medium. In this case, the 2-Dimensional chart of price moving over time. As mentioned earlier in the book, the 2-Dimensional chart construct is nothing more than a shadow of the real stock market movement. As you can imagine, no proper outcome can come from studying the shadow as opposed to studying the real move.

At the same time, when we apply cycle analysis to the 3-Dimensional construct of the market we begin to see a completely different picture. We begin to see periodicity in the cycle analysis that can be used to predict the markets with great accuracy. Not only that, but we gain a further understanding of how the markets truly works. Let me give you an example.

To be continued…… 

Did you enjoy this article? If so, please share our blog with your friends as we try to get traction. Gratitude!!! 

Timing The Market With Cycles 

The Future of Gold

investwithalex gold

 

People keep asking me about Gold and other precious metals.

Short Answer:  I have no idea. I am too stupid to understand the metals in order to predict them.

Longer Answer: I have studied Gold for a while now and have heard every bullish and bearing argument for or against it. I understand inflation, deflation, safety and currency issues associated with precious metals. However,  I cannot put a complete analysis together in order to give you a legitimate answer.

Basically, precious metals are too complicated.  Some people see it as money, others as inflation/deflation hedge, then you have fundamental/industrial demands for the metals, then there are national reserves, etc….

All of those points are easy enough individually, but when you put them all together you get a lot of interference and noise without any clear direction. Perhaps it is easier for other people to understand, but it simply does not make sense for me.

I cannot see any fundamental reasons for owning gold.  Is it a hedge against inflation/deflation?  Not really. I would rather hold US Dollars in a deflationary environment and a portfolio of inflation protected stocks in an inflationary environment. Plus, the long term gold chart doesn’t look good from a technical stand point. It is either showing a sideways movement or a breakdown.

investwithalex gold chart

Can Gold and other precious metals appreciate significantly here? Sure, but they can also break down. Once again, I have no idea, nor do I find myself qualified to issue an appropriate opinion. 

Did you enjoy this article? If so, please share our blog with your friends as we try to get traction. Gratitude!!!

The difference between Bernanke and a Cocaine Dealer

It was well past midnight, but everyone was still partying.  Although the booze and drugs were running low, the party was still in full swing.  The entire school was there. Real estate alphas, derivative betas, the car club and who could forget about the speculator zetas.  As sunrise approached everyone was starting to get tired. Some people were even talking about calling it a night and going home.

That was until a good lad Ben Bernanke kicked in the door and yelled  “I got it, let’s party”.  As he opened his duffle bag and emptied the contents on the couch, everyone in the house went wild. There it was. Two kilos of pure Columbian coke. More than enough for everyone.  The party was back on.

As the clock hit 9 am, the house was surprisingly silent.  When the campus police opened the door there were bodies everywhere. Some were laying there motionless and not breathing, some were simply passed out, some were twitching while others sat silently staring at the wall.  As the medical examiner took the bodies out, it was not till much later that the cause of the tragedy was revealed.  For most, there was simply too much coke that night. 

If you are wondering, that is exactly what happened in the stock market today. 

Did you enjoy this article? If so, please share our blog with your friends as we try to get traction. Gratitude!!!

Warning: Top Investors Expect Market Collapse

Business Week Writes:  Investors are buying high, yet again.

investors are stupid investwithalex

Sell low, buy high. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Investors have indulged that predilection time and again—most recently piling into the stock market just ahead of collapses in 2008 and 2001. Now it seems as if everyone again wants in big, even as the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has rallied 150 percent from its lows, corporate profits and cash hoards are at records, and the Federal Reserve has expanded its balance sheet to nearly $4 trillion. Equity funds drew $26 billion in the week ended September 18, breaking the previous record set six years ago, according to EPFR Global, which tracks investor flows. Domestic stock funds notably took in just under $17 billion of that total.

FED balance sheet at $4 Trillion is downright scary.  This is how market tops are set.

And with such timing: U.S. shares hit record highs on Wednesday, the last day of EPFR’s reporting period, after the Fed said it would hold off from tapering its bond purchases. The market is up 20 percent this year and has jumped by a third just since last summer, having gone without a correction since 2011. The tech-laden Nasdaq is up 25 percent in 2013, visiting highs unseen since the starry-eyed turn of the century.

In a show of “you buy/we sell,” companies are racing to go public (Chrysler, anyone?). At least 200 firms are gearing to have their IPOs this year, the most since 2007. Meanwhile, in the interest of full and fair disclosure, buyout shops might want to rebrand as sellout shops, so eager have they been to cash out.

If history teaches us anything, this is a clear indication that the market is close to a top. Insiders realize that the market is overpriced and are trying to cash out.

Similarly, some legendary pros say they are in no rush to join the recent buying stampede. “Stocks were very cheap five years ago, ridiculously cheap,” Warren Buffett last week said. “That’s been corrected . . . . We’re having a hard time finding things to buy.”

I confirm this. Everything is too expensive. I cannot find anything to buy outside of a few special situations (here and there) and technically driven plays.

“Right now,” remarked Carl Icahn, “the market is giving you a false picture. The market tells you that you are doing well, but I don’t think a lot of companies are doing that well. They are taking advantage of very low interest rates. So, obviously, you don’t have to be a financial genius to understand if I can borrow at 3 percent or 4 percent and buy assets maybe my own stock that is yielding 9 percent, 10 percent, or 11 percent, I am going to make a lot of money. In one sense or another that is what is going on . . . I do think at [the market’s price-to-earnings ratio] of 17 that you have to be pretty well hedged.”

Bingo Mr. Icahn. That is exactly what is going on. Everyone is playing this stupid carry trade financial shell game. As of right now the music is still playing, the question is….when will it stop. I assure you there won’t be enough chairs. 

 “If you tell me quantitative easing is going to be removed over nine or 12 months,”said Stanley Druckenmiller, “that’s a big deal because it’s my belief that QE has subsidized all asset prices. And you remove that subsidization, the market will go down . . . The minute you have this phony buying stop, [stocks] can go down on no volume and just reprice immediately.”

Exactly. The only thing that is keeping this markets up, artificially I might add, in an insane amount of credit infusion through QE and low interest rates.  When it stops, most asset classes WILL collapse.  The only thing I would disagree with is the fact that the FED has control. The FED has only “perceived” control and the market might take that away at any moment.

In the meantime, keep your eyes on the tidy sum of $1.4 trillion. That’s how much investors have crammed into bond funds between the January 2009 and May 2013, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. In the just the past four months, however, they have unwound $173 billion from that mega-trade—an enormous redemption but still just a sliver of $1.4 trillion.

How much of that unwind makes its way to equities, especially when the Fed’s taper starts in earnest? For the market—loved once again, after so long—it’s a question that could trump all others.

At least for now, the paper shuffling game continues. However, be careful here. We are at the 12th inning of the bull run that has started in March of 2009. The bear market should resume soon. 

Did you enjoy this article? If so, please share our blog with your friends as we try to get traction. Gratitude!!! 

Why Rating Agencies Are As Worthless As Obamacare

Bloomberg Writes:  Gross Says Investors Shouldn’t Trust Moody’s on U.S. AAA Rating

 

I dream of the day when this happens in the US Senate. Why should Koreans have all the fun
I dream of the day when this happens in the US Senate. Why should Koreans have all the fun

Investors shouldn’t trust the opinion of Moody’s Investors Service on the U.S.’s Aaa rating and should rely instead on the company’s competitors, according to Pacific Investment Management Co. founder Bill Gross.

Moody’s and the U.S. Treasury are one “happy family,” Gross, manager of the world’s biggest bond fund, said today in a post on Twitter. “Trust S&P, Fitch & Egan Jones” for credit ratings, he wrote. Mark Porterfield, a spokesman for Newport Beach, California-based Pimco, said Gross was referring to Moody’s stance on the U.S. debt limit and potential for a government shutdown.

Standard & Poor’s cut the U.S. rating to AA+ from AAA in August 2011, a move that reflected the impasse over raising the debt limit as well as the government’s lack of a plan to rein in its debt load.

Read The Rest Of The Article

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t Trust Moody’s with watching my dead grandmother. I am not trying to be boastful, but you could have seen 2007-2009 meltdown coming from 10 miles away. I am not sure why an organization such as Moody’s with hundreds of financial analysts on stuff across multiple industries couldn’t see it coming. As you remember they have downgraded companies after the fact. Well, late enough for most investors to lose a lot of their money.

Actually, I do know. It’s called the “conflict of interest”. Bill Gross is absolutely correct. Basically Moody’s and the US Government are now a one entity scratching each other’s back. Should you care? Not really, but I do want you to be aware of the fact. Next time they either upgrade or downgrade something, view it with some skepticism at best. Know that they do not work for you, but large financial interests who’s objective might be counter to yours.  Either way, you should always do your own research and not depend on somebody else’s opinion.

On a related note, there is a parade of Senators and Congressman running around on TV. They are yelling and screaming that if the debt ceiling is not raised, the US Government will shut down and that will lead to a Great Depression. Something along those lines.  Do me a favor and tune them out. The stock market could care less and so should you. They will pass it and everything will be fine. 

Did you enjoy this article? If so, please share our blog with your friends as we try to get traction. Gratitude!!! 

Stock Market And 3-Dimensional Analysis (Part 12)

trading rules investwithalex

Continuation of part 11

Avoid Loss Averaging: Contrary to a popular believe, it is not a good idea to buy more stock when the price declines after your purchase.  Buying more at a discounted price means you are going against the main trend and not with it. While you lower your overall purchasing price, the main issue remains. The main trend is down. Instead, you should average up when the stock price is going up. That way you are going with the trend.  

Now that we have looked at the overall rules to the profitable stock market operations, let’s take a quick look at a simple set of specific trading rules.

Rules For Trading In Stocks

RULE 1:  Buy at new high prices or old top levels.

RULE 2: Buy when prices advance above old low prices.

RULE 3: Sell when prices decline below old top levels or high prices.

RULE 4: Sell at new low price levels.  

RULE 5: Wait to buy or sell until prices CLOSE above old highs or below old lows on the daily charts. Closing price is incredibly important.

RULE 6: Use stop losses. Your capital and your profits must be protected at all times with STOP LOSSES. Implement stop losses at 1-3 points above or below your original price and at the time of the original trade.

RULE 7: Do not lose money.

In this section we have looked at 3-DV analysis, triangulation and various trading rules associated with trading the markets. By performing 3-Dimensional analysis for the DOW between 1994-today I have demonstrated without a shadow of the doubt the hidden structure within the stock market. Once that structure is fully understood (well, even before), an exact forecasts could be made. Once the analyst understands the lattice structure of the market, he can calculate it 1 year, 10 years or 100 years into the future with astonishing accuracy.

Further, we have looked at triangulation and various trading rules to minimize the risk associated with 3-Dimensional analysis.  By following all the rules described above, any stock market participant should be able to profit greatly. After all, an analyst using the work above in an appropriate fashion should know what the market will do and should act accordingly. In the next section we will look at another powerful tool to time the market with great precision. 

Did you enjoy this article? If so, please share our blog with your friends as we try to get traction. Gratitude!!!   

Stock Market And 3-Dimensional Analysis (Part 12)