'Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids,' said humorist Erma Bombeck.

SPECIAL HARD ASSET ISSUE Featured Trades: (NEW YORK HARD ASSET CONFERENCE) Note to Chicago area readers: Please get your orders in for my June 11 Chicago strategy luncheon. As I am an out-of-towner and one of those suspicious left coaters, the Union League Club is asking me to confirm firm numbers well in advance.   [...]

SPECIAL HARD ASSET ISSUE Featured Trades: (GOLD), (GLD) 2) How Far will Gold Run? The good news is that you no longer have to be crazy to buy gold. Until recently, certifiable believers chasing the barbaric relic were driven by a host of urban legends and conspiracy theories, such as the imminent bankruptcy of the [...]

'I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone', said John F. Kennedy about our third president.

Featured Trades: (IAN BREMMER), (GOOG), (SPX), (EZU), (FXI), (FXE), (EWA), (EWC), (EWY), (EWT), (THD), (IDX), (EWS), (EWZ), (ECH), (EWW), (RSX) 1) Where to Buy on the Dip. There is a new war underway between two forms of capitalism. The traditional type is driven by the big global multinationals we all know and love which are [...]

'If you get to the point where there is a war between states and corporations, the corporations lose,' said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group.

Featured Trades: (SPX), (YCS), (TBT) 1) The Real Cause of the ‘Flash Crash.’ When I boarded my plane in San Francisco on Thursday morning, May 6, the Dow was down an uncomfortable, but tolerable 150 points. When I arrived in New York that night I was greeted with headlines screaming ‘CRASH: DOW PLUNGES 1,000.’ I [...]

Featured Trades: (SHRINKING LIQUIDITY) 2) Why Real Market Liquidity has Been Shrinking for Decades. The ‘flash crash’ is in effect the little boy who shouted out that the emperor has no clothes. It was a day that has been long in coming. The screaming great weakness in the global capital markets has long been that [...]

Featured Trades:  (PALL), (PPLT), (LUMBER), (NATURAL GAS), (EURO), (SUGAR) 3) Palladium is the Top Performing Asset of the Year. Here’s an update of YTD asset class performance. Palladium (PALL), one of my favorites (click here) is now on top with a 33.3% return, followed by my lumber call at number three (+24.8%), and my platinum [...]

'Don't forget folks, market internals here are very strong,' said a TV reporter who shall remain nameless, on March 7, 2000.

Featured Trades: (GLOBAL RISK REVERSAL)   1) There’s a Massive Global Risk Reversal Going on. The Gulfstream is fueled up, the flight plan filed, and my pilot is carping about missing our IFR clearance slot, so I’ll just quickly dash off a few words here before I take off for the Big Apple. They are [...]

Featured Trades: (NEW YORK PARTY) 2) It's been a great year so far for readers of The Mad Hedge Fund Trader, so to celebrate, I'm throwing a party in New York at 7:00 pm on Monday, May 10. You are all invited to the posh midtown nightclub, the Metropolitan Room, at 34 West 22nd Street, [...]

Featured Trades: (BP), (RIG) 3) Is a Nuclear Winter Coming for the Offshore Oil Industry? Besides developing some great gas wells costing $1/MCF when it was selling for $2, the fruit of my four years of wildcatting in the Barnet shale was many great relationships in the energy industry. Over the years, I have not [...]

Featured Trades: (DBA), (MOO), (PHO), (FIW) 4) An Environmental Activist’s Take on the Markets. I spent an evening with Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and a winner of the coveted MacArthur Prize, for some long term thinking about the environment and its investment implications. Global warming is causing the melting of ice [...]