It’s that time of year again, when finance ministers, central bank governors, hedge fund managers, and assorted rock stars hold their annual confab high in the Alps at Davos, Switzerland. When I was a director of one of the largest banks in Switzerland, I found myself a frequent visitor to the Alpine village of Davos. In years gone by, we provided the loans to the Canton of … [Read more...]

Subscribers to Global Trading Dispatch and Mad Hedge Fund Trader PRO are able to receive instantaneous text messages of my proprietary Trade Alerts. This eliminates frustrating delays caused by traffic surges on the Internet itself, and by your local server. To activate your free service, please log in to your account at www.madhedgefundtrader.com, look under your name on the … [Read more...]

Well, I’m not really having luncheons in all those places. But it is just a quick hop on a plane to escape your harsh winters and meet me in the balmy climes at my Global Strategy Luncheon in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s Global Strategy Update will be conducted in Honolulu, Hawaii on Friday, April 3, 2015. An excellent meal will be followed by a wide-ranging … [Read more...]

Diary Entry for Monday, January 12, 2015 Dear Diary, 4:30 PM Sunday-the day before - Thought I’d check my Bloomberg to see how the Asian markets were opening. Yikes! Oil is down another buck. Looks like it is going to be a “RISK OFF” day. Better fasten my seat belt, put on my hard hat, and get ready for a rough day. No rest for the wicked. At least for the first 15 minutes. … [Read more...]

There is nothing more enjoyable than partaking in an all you can eat Christmas buffet lunch with a group of friends. That was how my Chicago Global Strategy Luncheon turned out two weeks ago. Guests came from Detroit, Canada, and remote Illinois. The abundance of roast beef, ham, and turkey on our plates matched the tales of outsized trading returns in 2014. We all had much … [Read more...]

Passing through Los Angeles for a day, I thought I would take a walk down Nostalgia Lane and have breakfast at the historic Langham Huntington Hotel, the venue for my 1970 senior prom. I was half way through my eggs Benedict in the Terrace Room when, who sits at the next table, but bond giant PIMCO’s brilliant former CEO and co-CIO, Mohamed El-Erian. That’s the last time he … [Read more...]

I managed to get a copy of “Flash Boys”, Michael Lewis’s latest bestseller about high frequency trading, and plowed through it over the weekend. In it, Lewis claims the markets are “rigged” for the ordinary investor, and they are getting ripped off, in effect, paying a giant “tax” to Wall Street to get their trades done. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have known … [Read more...]

This year I had the pleasure of spending a nostalgic Christmas day in Virginia City, Nevada, now a national historic monument. The old western town is the home of the famed Comstock load, once the world’s largest silver deposit, discovered in 1859. The ore mined here played a major role in building San Francisco into an important city, and financed the Union’s victory in the … [Read more...]

Onshoring, the return of US manufacturing from abroad, is rapidly gathering pace. It is increasingly playing a crucial part in the unfolding American industrial renaissance. It could well develop into the most important new trend on the global economic scene during the early 21st century. It is also paving the way for a return of the roaring twenties to our home shores. Of … [Read more...]

I spent a sad and depressing, but highly instructional evening with Dr. Stephen Greenspan, who had lost most of his personal fortune with Bernie Madoff. The University of Connecticut psychology professor had poured the bulk of his savings into Sandra Mansky's Tremont feeder fund; receiving convincing trade confirms and rock solid custody statements from the Bank of New … [Read more...]

Buried in the recently passed Dodd-Frank financial reform bill are massive financial rewards for turning in your crooked boss. The SEC is hoping that multimillion dollar rewards amounting to 10%-30% of sanction amounts will drive a stampede of whistleblowers to their doors with evidence of malfeasance and fraud by their employers. If such rules were in place at the time of the … [Read more...]

I have spent many hours speaking at length with the generals who are running our wars in the Middle East, like David Petraeus, and James E. Cartwright. To get the boots on the ground view, I attended the graduation of a friend at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, the world's preeminent language training facility. As I circulated at the reception at the … [Read more...]

I spent the evening speaking to Gao Jie, a Beijing civil judge who left the bench to join China's growing environmental movement when her kids came home from school one day coughing and wheezing. You only have to inhale in the capitol city these days to understand that they have a huge problem there. One of the dirty little secrets of international trade for the last three … [Read more...]

The focus of this letter is to show people how to make money through investing in fast growing, highly profitable companies which have stiff, long term macroeconomic winds at their backs. That means I ignore a large part of the US economy whose time has passed and are headed for the dustbin of history. According to the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, the ten … [Read more...]

When I was growing up in Los Angeles during the fifties, the most exciting day of the year was when my dad took me to buy a Christmas tree. With its semi desert climate, Southern California offered pine trees that were scraggly at best, and we didn’t want to chop down the view that we had. So the Southern Pacific Railroad made a big deal out of bringing trees down from much … [Read more...]

According to my old friend, Rick Sopher, chairman of LCH Investments in London, the top ten hedge funds have earned $153 billion for their investors since inception. Rick, who runs his business from an elegant flat on posh Eaton Square, compiled the list after a comprehensive survey of the still operating 7,000 hedge funds worldwide. It is dominated by marquee names like Bruce … [Read more...]

If you have been living in a cave for the last 74 years and missed the work of management guru, Peter F. Drucker, here is your chance to catch up. I just finished reading The Essential Drucker, a weighty tome of 368 pages which summarized the high points and pearls of wisdom of the author's 38 books published since 1939. A self-described 'social ecologist', Drucker was a … [Read more...]

Come join me for lunch for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s Global Strategy Update, which I will be conducting in Chicago on Tuesday, December 23. A three course lunch will be followed by a PowerPoint presentation and an extended question and answer period. I’ll be giving you my up to date view on stocks, bonds, foreign currencies, commodities, precious metals, and real estate. And … [Read more...]

I feel obliged to reveal one corner of this bubbling market that might actually make sense. By 2050 the population of California will soar from 37 million to 50 million, and the US from 300 million to 400 million, according to data released by the US Census Bureau and the CIA fact Book (check out the population pyramid below). That means enormous demand for the low end of the … [Read more...]

Legendary Fortune Magazine editor, Winslow Jones, created the first hedge fund out of a shabby office on Broadway in New York City in 1948, and generated monster returns over the next 20 years. He got the idea of a 20% performance bonus, now an industry standard, from ancient Phoenician sea captains who kept a fifth of the profits from successful voyages. Jones must have had … [Read more...]

You are in safe hands now, with your trading portfolios up 34% on the year, if you had followed every one of my Trade Alerts to the letter. So I am calling it quits for the year. By the time you read this, I will be winging my way to Chicago to deliver the last global strategy lunch of the year (click here to buy). After that, I will be making a beeline for my beachfront … [Read more...]