SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbor.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some watered-down milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk at an inflated price.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sends you to a concentration camp.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the
milk away.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income, but worry about your cholesterol level and blood pressure.

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND (VENTURE) CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at a non-tax treaty offshore bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an anonymous intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public then buys your bull. You are lauded as a titan of free market capitalism.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow has dropped dead. PETA sues you and pickets your office.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads because you want three cows. And you have a fabulous time doing all this. The world is shocked.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and
produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called a Cowkimona and market
it worldwide. Then your stock crashes.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two really fine, stylish cows which cost a fortune, but you don't know where they are.
You decide to have lunch with a fine bottle of Antinori and top it all off with a potent grappa and double espresso.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them. The US IRS launches a criminal investigation and arrests every Swiss banker when they go shopping in New York.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation. Then your stock crashes.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them and feed them all your garbage.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad but drink great beer.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the ** out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least you are now a Democracy.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers at the barby to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive. But no one cares because you are in New Zealand.

You are in safe hands now, with your trading portfolios up nearly 65% on the year, if you had followed every one of my Trade Alerts to the letter.

I know a lot of you made more, a lot more.

I will be making a beeline for my beachfront estate at Incline Village, Nevada on the pristine shores of Lake Tahoe and work from there for the next two weeks.  That is if I can battle my way through the nightmarish Sacramento holiday traffic.

My Tesla Model X packed to the gills with Christmas presents, ski equipment, snowshoes, board games (yes, “Qi” is a word in Scrabble), and my expedition backpack. No extra food this year because the pandemic has barred all guests. Thank you Elon Musk and your P100D!

For proof that after working 12 hours a day, six hours a week, to make you wealthier and wiser, please read my last research piece of the year below, written tongue in cheek with a certain Hollywood film classic in mind.

And what a year it has been. Pandemics, wildfires, economic collapse, lockdowns, recoveries, and a presidential election still being fought out in the courts. It all seems like some cheap Hollywood thriller!

The research I gathered was enough for me to publish 760 letters totaling one million words, including Global Trading Dispatch, the Mad Hedge Technology Letter, the Mad Hedge Biotech & Health Care Letter, and Mad Hedge Hot Tips.

That is about almost double the length of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but then Tolstoy in his time had to write with a quill and ink, not Word for Windows. I am a writing machine. I haven’t received a single complaint this year that I was not sending out enough content.

I also managed to pump out over 300 trade alerts with a success ratio of 92%. That’s an average of more than one each trading day.

According to the email traffic, many of you did extremely well. If you are into triple digits, please send me an email. I would love to get a testimonial from you. I know that many of you have run out and purchased the new Tesla Model X gullwing P100D with the “ludicrous mode” on my recommendation.

You know that when they are advertising power tools and Pelotons on CNBC, it is time to get out of Dodge. I’ll take the hint.

At Tahoe, I will consume a suitcase full of research and, after much cogitation and contemplation, write my 2021 Annual Asset Review, which I will publish on Wednesday, January 6.

I will also be rethinking my business model, so if any of you have suggestions on how I can improve this service, send me an email at madhedgefundtrader@yahoo.com.

Just put “suggestions” in the subject line. My intention is to never stop improving the product, to always under-promise and over-deliver.

It’s a nostrum of Silicon Valley that whenever you think you're finished, you’re finished.

Please forgive me in advance if I take a few hours catching some “big air” off of Squaw Valley’s treacherous double X black runs.

If you have any trading questions, please seek me out on the northern section of Tahoe Rim Trail around 11,000 feet, where I will be snowshoeing my way around the lake in subzero temperatures.

I will probably be the only guy up there, so you can just follow the first set of tracks you find. That is if hungry mountain lions don’t get you first.

I’ll have my Bowie knife and an industrial-sized can of bear spray, so I’ll be fine. As for you, I’m not so sure. This is what I do during my winter leisure time.

During my absence, I will be posting some of my favorite pieces from the last year which give insights on how markets will play out over the coming decades, and a lot of basic educational pieces.

I have thousands of new subscribers who will be reading these for the first time, and many legacy readers may have missed them the first time around or forgotten the data because they are older than me.

I hope you find them as another useful step towards your education on the global financial markets. Charts and data have been updated to make them relevant.

Finally, I want to thank you all for my incredible life. Thanks to you I have crossed the Atlantic in luxury in the owner’s suite of Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 (My uncle took the Queen Mary 1 in 1943 in somewhat more cramped conditions).

I rode the Orient Express from London to Venice. I lived in the lap of luxury at the Hotel Cipriani in Venice and at the Raffles in Singapore.

And I managed to haggle the merchants in Tangier’s historic bazaar down in the price of the most elegant hand-made carpets.

I had the opportunity to meet heads of state, CEOs, top money managers, our nation’s military leaders, and even a Maori chieftain.

I had the pleasure of flying the length of the Grand Canyon at low altitude as a pilot, weaving my way along the Colorado River. And, oh yes, I made it to the top of the Matterhorn one more time.

I really did get to rub shoulders with the high and mighty who run the world and harvest their pearls of wisdom, which I passed on to you.

I logged 200 hours as a pilot flying to such diverse locations as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and Honda’s loading docks in San Francisco.

I never minded the horrendous jet lag, the well-deserved hangovers, or the traffic jams in China. Your subscriptions to my services, your support of my research, and your endless compliments made it all worth it.

I always tell people that I am not in this for the money, and it’s true.

Not a day goes by when I don’t receive an email from a grateful reader who claims that I have paid off their mortgage, a kid’s college education, a parent’s uninsured operation, or a child’s chemotherapy.

They tell me that I am teaching them to fish; thus, sparing them from the frozen tasteless kind they sell at Safeway, which they must wait in line to pay inflated prices. You can’t buy that kind of appreciation, not with all the money in the world.

It certainly beats the hell out of spending my retirement scoring a 98 on the local golf course. And I’ll never beat Tiger Woods, no matter how many blonds I date.

To leave you all in the Christmas spirit, I have posted a video and pictures of the Polar Express in Portland, Oregon.

Taking my family for a ride has become an annual event, and it is a thrill for my younger kids as well. To watch a short video of one of the largest steam engines in the world, please click here.  

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to All!

Good Trading in 2021!

John Thomas
The Mad Hedge Fund Trader

You Have to Know the Right People to Call This Market