Fed
by
David Collum
Background
I was just trying to figure it all out.
~ Michael Burry, hedge fund manager
Every December, I write a Year in Review that has now found a home at Chris Martenson’s website PeakProsperity.com.1,2,3 What started as a simple summary intended for a couple dozen people morphed over time into a much more detailed account that accrued over 25,000 clicks last year.4 'Year in Review' is a bit of a misnomer in that it is both a collage of what happened, plus a smattering of issues that are on my radar right now. As to why people care what an organic chemist thinks about investing, economics, monetary policy, and societal moods I can only offer a few thoughts.
For starters, in 33 years of investing with a decidedly undiversified portfolio, I had only one year in which my total wealth decreased in nominal dollars. For the 13 years beginning 01/01/00—the 13 toughest investing years of the new millennium!—I have been able to compound my personal wealth at an 11% annualized rate. This holds up well against the pros. I am also fairly good at distilling complexity down to simplicity and seem to be a congenital contrarian. I also have been a devout follower of Austrian business cycle theory—i.e., free market economics—since the late 1990s.4
Each review begins with a highly personalized analysis of my efforts to get through another year of investing followed by a more holistic overview of what is now a 33-year quest for a ramen-soup-free retirement. These details may be instructive for those interested in my approach to investing. The bulk of the review, however, describes thoughts and observations—the year’s events told as a narrative. The links are copious, albeit not comprehensive. Some are flagged with enthusiasm. Everything can be found here.5
2012 Year in Review
by David CollumBackground
I was just trying to figure it all out.
~ Michael Burry, hedge fund manager
Every December, I write a Year in Review that has now found a home at Chris Martenson’s website PeakProsperity.com.1,2,3 What started as a simple summary intended for a couple dozen people morphed over time into a much more detailed account that accrued over 25,000 clicks last year.4 'Year in Review' is a bit of a misnomer in that it is both a collage of what happened, plus a smattering of issues that are on my radar right now. As to why people care what an organic chemist thinks about investing, economics, monetary policy, and societal moods I can only offer a few thoughts.
For starters, in 33 years of investing with a decidedly undiversified portfolio, I had only one year in which my total wealth decreased in nominal dollars. For the 13 years beginning 01/01/00—the 13 toughest investing years of the new millennium!—I have been able to compound my personal wealth at an 11% annualized rate. This holds up well against the pros. I am also fairly good at distilling complexity down to simplicity and seem to be a congenital contrarian. I also have been a devout follower of Austrian business cycle theory—i.e., free market economics—since the late 1990s.4
Each review begins with a highly personalized analysis of my efforts to get through another year of investing followed by a more holistic overview of what is now a 33-year quest for a ramen-soup-free retirement. These details may be instructive for those interested in my approach to investing. The bulk of the review, however, describes thoughts and observations—the year’s events told as a narrative. The links are copious, albeit not comprehensive. Some are flagged with enthusiasm. Everything can be found here.5
by
Chris Martenson
Bob Wiedemer, author of the best-seller The Aftershock Investor: A Crash Course in Staying Afloat in a Sinking Economy, regards the 2007 puncturing of housing market prices and the 2008 financial market swoon as the precedents to two much larger and much more dangerous bubbles.
These more pernicious threats are the dollar bubble ("printing money") and the government debt bubble ("borrowing money"). While both are expanding at a sickening pace, in the near term they deceptively make things seem much better than they are.
But, like all bubbles, they are unsustainable. And when these collapse, they are going to take the entire financial system, and very possibly the currency, with them (a.k.a. the "aftershock")
Bob predicts that the rupture of both these bubbles will most likely happen in the next 2-4 years and accelerate astonishingly rapidly once it begins.
Robert Wiedemer: Awaiting the Aftershock
by Chris MartensonBob Wiedemer, author of the best-seller The Aftershock Investor: A Crash Course in Staying Afloat in a Sinking Economy, regards the 2007 puncturing of housing market prices and the 2008 financial market swoon as the precedents to two much larger and much more dangerous bubbles.
These more pernicious threats are the dollar bubble ("printing money") and the government debt bubble ("borrowing money"). While both are expanding at a sickening pace, in the near term they deceptively make things seem much better than they are.
But, like all bubbles, they are unsustainable. And when these collapse, they are going to take the entire financial system, and very possibly the currency, with them (a.k.a. the "aftershock")
Bob predicts that the rupture of both these bubbles will most likely happen in the next 2-4 years and accelerate astonishingly rapidly once it begins.
by
charleshughsmith
With the US elections approaching next week, as well as the threat of another fiscal cliff showdown looming, we asked contributing editor Charles Hugh Smith to revisit his eariler work on how the expansive Central State has come to dominate both private society (i.e., the community) and the marketplace, to the detriment of the nation’s social and economic stability.
Anticipating the Devolution of Big Government
by charleshughsmithWith the US elections approaching next week, as well as the threat of another fiscal cliff showdown looming, we asked contributing editor Charles Hugh Smith to revisit his eariler work on how the expansive Central State has come to dominate both private society (i.e., the community) and the marketplace, to the detriment of the nation’s social and economic stability.
by
Chris Martenson
Executive Summary
- Adapting our behavior is a must at this point. We really don't have the option not to.
- The number of claims on real wealth is increasing. How much of the "real wealth" do you own?
- Our economy is now truly a confidence-based system. What will be the fallout when that confidence falters?
- What are the key knowns & unknowns we need to be addressing now?
If you have not yet read Part I: In a Bad Spot, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
What is completely unknown at this point is what will happen to our very complex and interwoven financial system when it finally comes to grips with the idea that old-style growth is never coming back. One worrisome idea is that it will experience something akin to cardiac arrest and simply break down one day.
Maybe this will happen, maybe not. I will note that the degree to which the central banks have set themselves up as the ultimate saviors of the system has both an upside and a downside, and it is the downside that worries me the most at this point.
While all the trillions of dollars of intervention have stabilized the system, which I consider to be a good thing, the downside is that the central banks have placed themselves in a position where they had better succeed. If not? Then we discover just how important confidence is to a monetary system built, owned, and operated on trust. My guess is "very."
If We’re Ever Going to Take Control of Our Destiny, the Time is Now
PREVIEW by Chris MartensonExecutive Summary
- Adapting our behavior is a must at this point. We really don't have the option not to.
- The number of claims on real wealth is increasing. How much of the "real wealth" do you own?
- Our economy is now truly a confidence-based system. What will be the fallout when that confidence falters?
- What are the key knowns & unknowns we need to be addressing now?
If you have not yet read Part I: In a Bad Spot, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
What is completely unknown at this point is what will happen to our very complex and interwoven financial system when it finally comes to grips with the idea that old-style growth is never coming back. One worrisome idea is that it will experience something akin to cardiac arrest and simply break down one day.
Maybe this will happen, maybe not. I will note that the degree to which the central banks have set themselves up as the ultimate saviors of the system has both an upside and a downside, and it is the downside that worries me the most at this point.
While all the trillions of dollars of intervention have stabilized the system, which I consider to be a good thing, the downside is that the central banks have placed themselves in a position where they had better succeed. If not? Then we discover just how important confidence is to a monetary system built, owned, and operated on trust. My guess is "very."
by
Gregor Macdonald
Executive Summary
- Why household balance sheets are worse off than advertised
- Why the recent rosy BLS jobs numbers actually mean bad news
- How the Fed is squeezing investor capital out of other traditional asset pools and into the stock market
- Expect to see the stock market moving higher in 2013; that is, until QE3 fails
- What to expect if QE3 fails sooner than anticipated
If you have not yet read Part I: The Future of Gold, Oil & the Dollar, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
Market historians have recently started to point out that the current advance in the S&P500 is now 40 months old and has made gains of over 115% since the March 2009 lows. In other words, the doubling from the lows in price and the duration of the advance now late in its third year together suggest that a cyclical top is near. Furthermore, despite some noise in U.S. macro data – which has been briefly more hopeful, yet remains well within the phase of stagnation – earnings estimates have been coming down as the world economy continues to shift into lower gear.
Perhaps for the first time in a while, we can actually say that the Fed's decision to start QE3 was moderately anticipatory, in contrast to its ad-hoc and reactive policymaking over the past five years. It is not merely that the Fed soberly accepted that the economy was not getting better. The stagnant, tractionless macro data over the past year has spoken quite loudly to that fact. Indeed, the U.S. economy is merely treading water, and the Fed's move to QE3 serves as a sharp retort to those who would relentlessly attempt to portray stagnation as recovery.
Where Stock Prices Are Headed Over the Next Year
PREVIEW by Gregor MacdonaldExecutive Summary
- Why household balance sheets are worse off than advertised
- Why the recent rosy BLS jobs numbers actually mean bad news
- How the Fed is squeezing investor capital out of other traditional asset pools and into the stock market
- Expect to see the stock market moving higher in 2013; that is, until QE3 fails
- What to expect if QE3 fails sooner than anticipated
If you have not yet read Part I: The Future of Gold, Oil & the Dollar, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
Market historians have recently started to point out that the current advance in the S&P500 is now 40 months old and has made gains of over 115% since the March 2009 lows. In other words, the doubling from the lows in price and the duration of the advance now late in its third year together suggest that a cyclical top is near. Furthermore, despite some noise in U.S. macro data – which has been briefly more hopeful, yet remains well within the phase of stagnation – earnings estimates have been coming down as the world economy continues to shift into lower gear.
Perhaps for the first time in a while, we can actually say that the Fed's decision to start QE3 was moderately anticipatory, in contrast to its ad-hoc and reactive policymaking over the past five years. It is not merely that the Fed soberly accepted that the economy was not getting better. The stagnant, tractionless macro data over the past year has spoken quite loudly to that fact. Indeed, the U.S. economy is merely treading water, and the Fed's move to QE3 serves as a sharp retort to those who would relentlessly attempt to portray stagnation as recovery.
by
Gregor Macdonald
The ability of reflationary policy to mute the worst risks of debt deflation has been a source of enormous frustration for stock market bears ever since the 2008 collapse. Yes, the initial moderate rally out of the S&P500’s black hole was perhaps not so surprising in 2009. Bombed-out stock markets can always manage some sort of rally. But the ability of the rally to continue through 2010, and then 2011, and now 2012 has been quite vexing and painful for bearish investors.
Indeed, the entire post-2008 market phase has now produced an era of consistently poor performance for hedge funds. Recent data, for example, shows that an incredible 90% of hedge funds are underperforming the S&P500 through mid-September.
Will the pain continue?
The Future of Gold, Oil & the Dollar
by Gregor MacdonaldThe ability of reflationary policy to mute the worst risks of debt deflation has been a source of enormous frustration for stock market bears ever since the 2008 collapse. Yes, the initial moderate rally out of the S&P500’s black hole was perhaps not so surprising in 2009. Bombed-out stock markets can always manage some sort of rally. But the ability of the rally to continue through 2010, and then 2011, and now 2012 has been quite vexing and painful for bearish investors.
Indeed, the entire post-2008 market phase has now produced an era of consistently poor performance for hedge funds. Recent data, for example, shows that an incredible 90% of hedge funds are underperforming the S&P500 through mid-September.
Will the pain continue?
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Fauci's Private Diary Exposes Stark Contradictions on Lab Leak, Lethality, Lockdowns & Vaccines
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