(GLD) Archives - Page 15 of 43 - Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 1 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the November 1 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Boca Raton.

Q: Earlier you said that the bull market should start from here—are you sticking to that argument?

A: Yes, there are all kinds of momentum and cash flow indicators that are flashing “buy right now.” The market timing index got down to 24—couldn’t break below 20. Hedge fund shorts: all-time highs. Quant shorts: all the time highs, creating a huge amount of buying power for the market. And, of course, the seasonals have turned positive. So yes, all of that is positive and if bonds can hold in here, then it’s off to the races.

Q: Do you have a year-end target for Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/B)?

A: Up. They have a lot of exposure to the falling interest rate trade such as its very heavy weighting in banks; and if interest rates go down, Berkshire goes up—it’s really very simple. You can’t come up with specific targets for individual stocks for year-end because of the news, and things can happen anytime. I love Berkshire; it's a very strong buy here.

Q: Tesla (TSLA) is not doing well; what's the update here?

A: It always moves more than you think, both on the upside and the downside. Last year, we thought it would drop 50%, it dropped 80%. Suffice it to say that, with the price war continuing and Tesla determined to wipe out the 200 other new entrants to the EV space, they’ll keep price cutting until they basically own that market. While that’s great for market share, it’s not great for short-term profits. Yes, Tesla could be going down more, but from here on, if you’re a long-term investor in Tesla, as you should be, you should be looking to add positions, not sell what you have and average down. Also, we’re getting close to Tesla LEAPS territory. Those have been huge winners over the years for us and I’ll be watching those closely.

Q: Any trade on the Japanese yen?

A: We broke 150 on the yen—that was like the make-or-break level. I’m looking at a final capitulation selloff on the yen, and then a decade-long BUY. The Bank of Japan is finally ending its “easy money” zero-interest-rate policy, which it’s had for 30 years, and that will give us a stronger yen when it happens, but not until then. So watch the yen carefully, it could double from here over the long term, especially if it’s the same time the US starts cutting its interest rates.

Q: What do you think about Eli Lilly (LLY)?

A: We love Eli Lilly; they’re making an absolute fortune on their weight loss drug, and they have other drugs in the pipeline being created by AI. This is really the golden age for biotech because you have AI finding cures for diseases, and then AI designing molecules to cure the diseases. It’s shortened the pipeline for new drugs from 5-10 years to 5-10 weeks. If you’re old and sick like me, this is all a godsend.

Q: Do you like Snowflake (SNOW)?

A: Absolutely, yes—killer company. Warren Buffet loves it too and has a big position; I’d be looking to buy SNOW on any dip.

Q: Would you do LEAPS on Netflix (NFLX)?

A: I would, but I would go out two years, and I would go at the money, not out of the money, Even then you’ll get a 100-200% return. You’ll get a lot even on just a 6-month call spread. These tech stocks with high volatility have enormous payoff 3-6 months out.

Q: Projection for iShares 20 Plus Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) in the next 6 months?

A: It’s up. We could hit $110, that would be my high, or up $25 points or so from here.

Q: Would you buy biotech here through the ProShares Ultra Nasdaq Biotechnology (BIB)?

A: Probably, yes. The long-term story is overwhelming, but it’s not a sector you want to own when the sentiment is terrible like it is now. I guess “buy the bad news” is the answer there.

Q: What did you learn from your dinner with General Mattis?

A: Quite a lot, but much of it is classified. When you get to my age, you can’t remember which parts are classified and which aren't. However, his grasp of the global scene is just incredible. There are very few people in the world I can go one on one with in geopolitics. Of course, I could fill in stuff he didn’t know, and he could fill in stuff for me, like: what is the current condition of our space weaponry? If I told you, you would be amazed, but then I would get arrested the next day, so I’ll say nothing. He really was one of the most aggressive generals in American history, was tremendously underrated by every administration, was fired by both Obama and Trump, and recently is doing the speaker circuit which is a lot of fun because there’s no question he doesn’t know the answer to! We actually agreed to do some joint speaking events sometime in the future.

Q: I have some two-year LEAPS now but I’m worried about adding too much. Could we get a final selloff in 2024?

A: The only way we could get another leg down in the market is number one if the Fed raises interest rates (right now, we’re positioned for a flat line and then a cut) or number two, another pandemic. You could also get some election-related chaos next year, but that usually doesn’t affect the market. But for those who are prone to being nervous, there are certainly a lot of reasons to be nervous next year.

Q: What iShares 20 Plus Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) level would we see with a 5.2% yield?

A: How about $79? That’s exactly why I picked that strike price. The $76-$79 vertical bill call spread in the (TLT) is a bet that we don’t go above 5.20% yield, and we only have 10 days to do it, so things are looking better and then we’ll see what’s available in the market once our current positions all expire at max profit.

Q: The first new nuclear power plant of 30 years went online in Georgia. Do you see more being built in the future?

A: It’s actually been 40 years since they’ve built a new plant, and it wasn’t a new plant, it was just an addition to an existing plant with another reactor added with an old design. I think there will be a lot more nuclear power plants built in the future, but they will be the new modular design, which is much safer, and doesn’t use uranium, by the way, but other radioactive elements. If you want to know more about this, look up NuScale (SMR). They have a bunch of videos on how their new designs work. That could be an interesting company going forward. The nuclear renaissance continues, and of course, China’s continuing to build 100 of the old-fashioned type nuclear power reactors, and that is driving global uranium demand.

Q: Would you hold Cameco Corp (CCJ) or sell?

A: I would keep it, I think it’s going up.

Q: How to trade the collapse of the dollar?

A: (FXA), (FXB), (FXE), and (EEM). Those are the quick and easy ways to do it. Also, you buy precious metals—gold (GLD) and silver (SLV) do really well on a weak dollar.

Q: Conclusion on the Ukraine war?

A: It will go on for years—it’s a war of attrition. About half of the entire Russian army has been destroyed as they’re working with inferior weapons. However, it’s going to be a matter of gaining yards or miles at best, over a long period of time. So, they will keep fighting as long as we keep supplying them with weapons, and that is overwhelmingly in our national interest. Plus, we’re getting a twofer; if we stop Russia from taking over Ukraine, we also stop China from invading Taiwan because they don’t want to be in for the same medicine.

Q: If more oil is released from the strategic petroleum reserve, what is our effect on security?

A: Zero because the US is a net energy producer. If our supplies were at risk, all we’d have to do is cut off our exports to China and tell them to find their oil elsewhere—and they’re obviously already trying to do that with the invasion of the South China Sea and all the little rocks out there. So, I am not worried. And also remember, every year as the US moves to more EVs and more alternatives, it is less and less reliant on oil. I would advise the administration to get rid of all of it next time we go above $100 a barrel. If you’re going to sell your oil, you might as well get a good price for it. If you look at the US economy over the last 30 years, the reliance of GDP on oil has been steadily falling.

Q: Are US exports of Cheniere Energy (LNG) helping to drive up prices here?

A: I would say yes, it’s got to have an impact on prices. We’re basically supplying Germany with all of its natural gas right now. We did that starting from scratch at the outset of the Ukraine war, and it’s been wildly successful. That avoided a Great Depression in Europe. Europe, by the way, is the largest customer for our exports. That was one of the arguments for us going into the United States Natural Gas (UNG) LEAPS in the first place.

To watch a replay of this webinar with all the charts, bells, whistles, and classic rock music, just log in to www.madhedgefundtrader.com, go to MY ACCOUNT, select your subscription (GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH, TECHNOLOGY LETTER, or Jacquie's Post), then click on WEBINARS, and all the webinars from the last 12 years are there in all their glory.

Good Luck and Stay Healthy,

John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader

2023 Krakow Poland

November 2, 2023

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
November 2, 2023
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(THE SECOND AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION),
(INDU), (SPY), (QQQ), (GLD), (DBA),
(TSLA), (GOOGL), (XLK), (IBB), (XLE)
(TESTIMONIAL)

The Second American Industrial Revolution

Diary, Newsletter

Circulating among the country’s top global strategists this year, visiting their corner offices, camping out in their vacation villas, or cruising on their yachts, I am increasingly hearing about a new investment theme that will lead markets for the next 20 years:

The Second American Industrial Revolution.

It goes something like this.

You remember the first Industrial Revolution, don’t you? I remember it like it was yesterday.

It started in 1775 when a Scottish instrument maker named James Watt invented the modern steam engine. Originally employed for pumping water out of a deep Shropshire coalmine, within 32 years it was powering Robert Fulton’s first commercially successful steamship, the Clermont, up the Hudson River.

The first Industrial Revolution enabled a massive increase in standards of living, kept inflation near zero for a century, and allowed the planet’s population to soar from 1 billion to 7 billion. We are still reaping its immeasurable benefits.

The Second Industrial Revolution is centered on my own neighborhood of San Francisco. It seems like almost every garage in the city is now devoted to a start-up.

The cars have been flushed out onto the streets, making urban parking here a total nightmare. These are turbocharging the rate of technological advancement.

Successes go public rapidly and rake in billions of dollars for the founders overnight. Thirty-year-old billionaires wearing hoodies are becoming commonplace.

However, unlike with past winners, these newly minted titans of industry don’t lock their wealth up in mega mansions, private jets, or the Treasury bond market. They buy a Tesla Plaid for $150,000 with a great sound system and full street-to-street auto-pilot (TSLA), and then reinvest the rest of their windfall in a dozen other startups, seeking to repeat a winning formula.

Many do it.

Thus, the amount of capital available for new ideas is growing by leaps and bounds. As a result, the economy will benefit from the creation of more new technology in the next ten years than it has seen in the past 200.

Computing power is doubling every year. That means your iPhone will have a billion times more computing power in a decade. 3D printing is jumping from the hobby world into large-scale manufacturing. In fact, Elon Musk’s Space X is already making rocket engine parts on such machines.

Drones came out of nowhere and are now popping up everywhere.

It is not just new things that are being invented. Fantastic new ways to analyze and store data, known as “big data” are being created.

Unheard new means of social organization are appearing at breakneck, leading to a sharing economy. Much of the new economy is not about invention, but organization.

The Uber ride-sharing service created $50 billion in market capitalization in only five years and is poised to replace UPS, FedEx, and the US Postal Service with “same hour” intracity deliveries. Now they are offering “Uber Eats” in my neighborhood, which will deliver you anything you want to eat, hot, in ten minutes!

Airbnb is arranging accommodation for 1 million guests a month. They even had 189 German guests staying with Brazilians during the World Cup there. I bet those were interesting living rooms on the final day! (Germany won).

And you are going to spend a lot of Saturday nights at home, alone if you haven’t heard of Match.com, eHarmony.com, or Badoo.com.

“WOW” is becoming the most spoken word in the English language. I hear myself saying I every day.

Biotechnology (IBB), an also-ran for the past half-century, is sprinting to make up for lost time. The field has grown from a dozen scientists in my day 40 years ago, to several hundred thousand today.

The payoff will be the cure for every major disease, like cancer, Parkinson’s, heart disease, AIDS, and diabetes, within ten years. Some of the harder cases, such as arthritis, may take a little longer. Soon, we will be able to manipulate our own DNA, turning genes on and off at will. The weight loss drugs Wegovy and Ozempic promise to eliminate 75% of all self-inflicted illnesses.

The upshot will be the creation of a massive global market for these cures, generating immense profits. American firms will dominate this area, as well.

Energy is the third leg of the innovation powerhouse. Into this basket, you can throw in solar, wind, batteries, biodiesel, and even “new” nuclear (see NuScale (SMR)). The new Tesla Powerwall will be a game changer. Visionary, Elon Musk, is ramping up to make tens of millions of these things.

Use of existing carbon-based fuel sources, such as oil and natural gas, will become vastly more efficient. Fracking is unleashing unlimited new domestic supplies.

Welcome to “Saudi America.”

The government has ordered Detroit to boost vehicle mileage to an average of 55 miles per gallon by 2030. The big firms have all told me they plan to beat that deadline, not litigate it, a complete reversal of philosophy.

Coal will be burned in impoverished emerging markets only, before it disappears completely. Energy costs will drop to a fraction of today’s levels, further boosting corporate profits.

Coal will die, not because of some environmental panacea, but because it is too expensive to rip out of the ground and transport around the world, once you fully account for all its costs.

Years ago, I used to get two pitches for venture capital investments a quarter, if any. Now, I am getting two a day. I can understand only half of them (those that deal with energy and biotech, and some tech).

My friends at Google Venture Capital are getting inundated with 20 a day each! How they keep all of these stories straight is beyond me. I guess that’s why they work for Google (GOOGL).

The rate of change for technology, our economy, and for the financial markets will accelerate to more than exponential. It took 32 years to make the leap from steam engine-powered pumps to ships and was a result of a chance transatlantic trip by Robert Fulton to England, where he stumbled across a huffing and puffing steam engine.

Such a generational change is likely to occur in 32 minutes in today’s hyper-connected world, and much shorter if you work on antivirus software (or write the viruses themselves!). And don’t get me started on AI!

The demographic outlook is about to dramatically improve, flipping from a headwind to a tailwind in 2022. That’s when the population starts producing more big spending Gen Xers and fewer over-saving and underproducing baby boomers. This alone should be at least 1% a year to GDP growth.

China is disappearing as a drag on the US economy. During the nineties and the naughts, they probably sucked 25 million jobs out of the US.

With an “onshoring” trend now in full swing, the jobs ledger has swung in America’s favor. This is one reason that unemployment is steadily falling. Joblessness is becoming China’s problem, not ours.

The consequences for the financial markets will be nothing less than mind-boggling. The short answer is higher for everything. Skyrocketing earnings take equity markets to the moon. Multiples blast off through the top end of historic ranges. The US returns to a steady 5% a year GDP growth, which it clocked in the recent quarter.

What am I bid for the Dow Average (INDU), (SPY), (QQQ) in ten years? Did I hear 240,000, a seven-fold pop from today’s level? Or more?

Don’t think I have been smoking the local agricultural products from California in arriving at these numbers. That is only half the gain that I saw from 1982 to 2000, when the stock average also appreciated 17-fold, from 600 to 10,000.

They’re playing the same movie all over again. Except this time, it’s on triple fast forward.

There will also be commodities (DBA) and real estate booms. Even gold (GLD) gets bid up by emerging central banks bent in increasing their holdings to Western levels as well as falling interest rates.

I tell my kids to save their money, not to fritter it away day trading now because anything they buy in 2020 will increase in value tenfold by 2033. They’ll all look like geniuses like I did during the eighties.

What are my strategist friends doing about this forecast? They are throwing money into US stocks with both bands, especially in technology (XLK), biotech (IBB), and bonds (JNK).

This could go on for decades.

Just thought you’d like to know.

It’s Amazing What You Pick Up on These Things!

October 27, 2023

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
October 27, 2023
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(SIX REASONS WHY GOLD WILL CONTINUE RISING),
($GOLD), (GLD), (IAU), (NEM), (GOLD), ($TNX),
(A CONVERSATION WITH THE BOOTS ON THE GROUND)

Six Reasons Why Gold Will Keep Rising

Diary, Newsletter

If you are a current gold investor, you have to love the latest monthly statistics just published by the World Gold Council.

After years of a death by a thousand cuts inflicted by endless redemptions of gold ETFs and ETNs, recent reports showed a sudden influx into the barbarous relic.

North American ETFs led the charge, with some 28.8 metric tonnes valued at $1.3 billion pouring into the funds.

The SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) took in the most, 22.4 tonnes worth $1.03 billion, followed by the IShares Gold Trust (IAU), which added 4.6 tonnes worth $266 million.

Europe followed with 6.4 tonnes worth $321 million.

Asia was a net seller of 2 tonnes worth $80 million as investors pulled money out of precious metals and placed it in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies.

Global gold-based ETFs collectively hold 2,295 metric tonnes of gold valued at and have picked up 143.5 tonnes so far this year.

For those used to using American measurements of precious metals, there are 32,150.7 troy ounces in one metric tonne.

The figures augur well for continued cash inflows and higher gold prices.

My experience is that sudden directional shifts of fund flows like this are NOT one-offs. They continue for months, if not years.

Of course, the trigger for these large inflows was the yellow metal’s decisive breakout on big volume from a two-year trading range.

Not only did now longs pile into the market, there was frantic short covering as well.

Too many options traders had gotten comfortable selling short gold call options just above the $1,800 level.

Once key upside resistance was shattered, gold tacked on another $50 very quickly. Bearish traders were smartly spanked.

Gold plays that did well, including Van Eck Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX), Barrick Gold (ABX), Newmont Mining (NEM), and Global X Silver Miners ETF (SIL), turned profitable.

There are six reasons why gold has gone off to the races.

1) Ten-year Treasury bond yields are peaking out at 5.0%. The opportunity cost of holding gold is about to drop sharply.

2) Falling interest rates guarantee a weaker US dollar, another big pro gold development.

3) The last of the pandemic stimulus is fading fast.

4) The new conflict in the Middle East has poured the fat on the fire.

5) General concerns about the increasing instability in Washington have driven nervous investors into EVERY flight to safety play.

6) The collapse of trust in crypto has propelled a lot of assets back into gold.

Inflation has historically been the great driver of all hard asset prices.

After such a meteoric move, I would expect gold to consolidate here around this level for a while to digest the recent action. It may drift sideways, or fall slightly.

That’s when I’ll pick up my next basket of longs.

October 2, 2023

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
October 2, 2023
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or BACK IN BUSINESS)
(TLT), (GLD), (SLV), (XLU), (IWM), (EEM), (FXA), (FXE), (FXB), (USO), (UUP), (AMZN), (TSLA), (F)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Back in Business

Diary, Newsletter

It’s a good thing I don’t rely on my Social Security Check to cover my extravagant cost of living, which is the maximum $4,555 a month. For it came within hours of coming to a halt when an agreement was passed by Congress to renew funding for another 45 days. It was almost an entirely Democratic bill, passing 335 to 91 in the House and the Senate by 88 to 9.

Unfortunately, that does put me in the uncomfortable position of delivering humanitarian aid to Ukraine right when $6.2 billion in US assistance is cut off. That was the price the Dems had to pay to get the Republicans on board needed to pass the bill. Better a half a loaf than no loaf at all. Still, I am going to have some explaining to do next week in Kiev, Mykolaiv, and Kherson. It’s a big win for Vladimir Putin.

Funding now ends on November 17, when the next crisis begins. The big question is when the markets will deliver a sigh of relief rally on Congress hitting the “snooze” button, or whether it will focus on the next disaster in November.

We’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, all eyes are on the market’s leading falling interest rate plays, which continue to go from bad to worse. Those include bonds (TLT), precious metals (GLD), (SLV), utilities (XLU), small-cap stocks (IWM), emerging markets (EEM), and foreign currencies (FXA), (FXE), (FXB).

Consider this your 2024 shopping list.

Ten-year US Treasury bond yields reached a stratospheric 4.70% last week a 17-year high and up a monster 0.90% since the end of June. Summer proved a fantastic time to take a vacation from the bond market.

They could easily reach 5% before the crying is all over. Perhaps this is why my old friend, hedge fund legend David Tepper, said his best investment right now is a subprime six-month certificate of deposit yielding 7.0%.

What we might be witnessing here is a return to the “old normal” when bonds spent most of their time ranging between 2%-6%. The 60-year historic average bond yield is 2% over the inflation rate (see chart below). That alone takes us to a 5.0% bond yield.

Interest rates have been kept artificially low for 15 years because no one wanted a recession in 2008 and no one wanted a recession during the pandemic in 2000. It all melded into one big decade-and-a-half period of easy money. Pain avoidance wasn’t just the universal American monetary policy, it was the global policy.

Now it’s time to pay the piper and unwind the thousands of business models that depended on free money. There will be widespread pain, as we are now witnessing in commercial real estate and private equity. Perhaps it is best to take the 5.5% bribe 90-day Treasury bond yield is offering you and stay out of the market.

While Detroit remains mired by the UAW strike, EVs have catapulted to an amazing 8% of the new car market. They have been helped by a never-ending price war and generous government subsidies. EV sales are now up a miraculous 48% YOY and are projected to account for a stunning 23% of all California sales in Q3.

Tesla is the overwhelming leader with a 52% share in a rapidly growing market, distantly followed by Ford (F) at 7% and Jeep at 5%.

However, a slowdown may be at hand, with EV inventories running at 97 days, double that of conventional ICE cars. This could create a rare entry point for what will be the leading industry of this decade, if not the century. Buy more Tesla (TSLA) on bigger dips, if we get them.

Hedge Funds are Cutting Risk at Fastest Pace Since 2020, when the pandemic began. From retail investors to rules-based systematic traders, appetite for equities is subsiding after a 20% rally this year that’s fueled by euphoria over artificial intelligence. Fast money investors increased their bearish wagers to drive down their net leverage — a gauge of risk appetite that measures long versus short positions — by 4.2 percentage points to 50.1%, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s prime brokerage. That’s the biggest week-on-week decline in portfolio leverage since the depths of the pandemic bear market.

The Treasury Bond Freefall Continues, as long-term yields probe new highs. New issue of $134 billion this week didn’t help. Nothing can move on the risk until rates top out, even if we have to wait until 2024.

Oil (USO) Hits $95, a one-year high, as the Saudi/Russian short squeeze continues. $100 a barrel is a chipshot and much higher if we get a cold winter. Inventories at the Cushing hub are at a minimum.

The US Dollar (UUP) Hits New Highs, as “high for longer” interest rates keep powering the greenback. The buck is also catching a flight to safety bid from a potential government shutdown. It should be topping soon.

Moody’s Warns of Further US Government Downgrades, in the run up to the Saturday government shutdown. The shutdown lasts, the more negative its impact would be on the broader economy. Unemployment could soar. It would also render all US government data releases useless for the next three months.

ChatGPT Can Now Browse the Internet, according to its creator, OpenAI. Until now, the chatbot could only access data posted before September 2021. The move will exponentially improve the quality and effectiveness of AI apps, including my own Mad Hedge AI

Amazon (AMZN) Pouring $4 Billion into AI, with an investment in Anthropic, a ChatGPT competitor. (AMZN) is racing to catch up with (MSFT) and (GOOGL). Its chatbot is caused Claude 2. Amazon’s card to play here is its massive web services business AWS. The AI wars are heating up.

Hollywood Screenwriters Guild Strike Ends, after 150 days, which is thought to have cost the US economy $5 billion in output. The hit was mostly taken by Los Angeles, where 200,000 are employed. The Actor’s union is still on strike. Talk shows should be offering new content in a few days.

S&P Case Shiller Rises to New All-Time High, for the sixth consecutive month as inventory shortages drove up competition. In July, the index in increased 0.6% month over month and 1% over the last 12 months, on a seasonally adjusted basis. July’s movement reached a new high for the nationwide home index, surpassing the record set in June 2022. Chicago (+4.4%), Cleveland (+4.0%), and New York (+3.8%) delivered the biggest gains. The median home price for existing homes rose to 1.9 to $406,700 according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The robust housing market suggests that while some buyers pulled back due to high borrowing costs, demand continues to outweigh supply.

This is the Unit I Will be Joining at the Front in Ukraine, as made clear by their YouTube recruiting video. They asked me to assist with mine removal on territory formerly occupied by Russia. I really don’t know what I’m getting into. Improvision is key. It’s better than playing golf in retirement. Polish up your Ukrainian first.

So far in August, we are down -4.70%. My 2023 year-to-date performance is still at an eye-popping +60.80%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +17.10% so far in 2023. My trailing one-year return reached +92.45% versus +8.45% for the S&P 500.

That brings my 15-year total return to +657.99%. My average annualized return has fallen back to +48.15%, another new high, some 2.50 times the S&P 500 over the same period.

Some 41 of my 46 trades this year have been profitable.

My Ten-Year View

When we come out the other side of the recession, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. The economy decarbonizing and technology hyper accelerating, creating enormous investment opportunities. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The new America will be far more efficient and profitable than the old.

Dow 240,000 here we come!

On Monday, October 2, at 8:30 PM EST, the ISM Manufacturing PMI is out.

On Tuesday, October 3 at 8:30 AM, the JOLTS Job Openings Report is released.

On Wednesday, October 4 at 2:30 PM, the ISM Services Report is published.

On Thursday, October 5 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced.

On Friday, October 6 at 2:30 PM the September Nonfarm Payroll Report is published. At 2:00 PM the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.

As for me, I will try to knock out a few memories early this morning while waiting for the Matterhorn to warm up so I can launch on another ten-mile hike. So I will reach back into the distant year of 1968 in Sweden.

My trip to Europe was supposed to limit me to staying with a family friend, Pat, in Brighton, England for the summer. His family lived in impoverished council housing.

I remember that you had to put a ten pence coin into the hot water heater for a shower, which inevitably ran out when you were fully soaped up. The trick was to insert another ten pence without getting soap in your eyes.

After a week there, we decided the gravel beach and the games arcade on Brighton Pier were pretty boring, so we decided to hitchhike to Paris.

Once there, Pat met a beautiful English girl named Sandy, and they both took off to some obscure Greek island, the ultimate destination if you lived in a cold, foggy country.

That left me stranded in Paris with little money.

So, I hitchhiked to Sweden to meet up with a girl I had run into while she was studying English in Brighton. It was a long trip north of Stockholm, but I eventually made it.

When I finally arrived, I was met at the front door by her boyfriend, a 6’6” Swedish weightlifter. That night found me bedding down in a birch forest in my sleeping bag to ward off the mosquitoes that hovered in clouds.

I started hitchhiking to Berlin, Germany the next day, which offered paying jobs. I was picked up by Ronny Carlson in a beat-up white Volkswagen bug to make the all-night drive to Goteborg where I could catch the ferry to Denmark.

1968 was the year that Sweden switched from driving English style on the left side of the road to the right. There were signs every few miles with a big letter “H”, which stood for “hurger”, or right. The problem was that after 11:00 PM, everyone in the country was drunk and forgot what side of the road to drive on.

Two guys on a motorcycle driving at least 80 mph pulled out to pass a semi-truck on a curve and slammed head-on to us, then were thrown under the wheels of the semi. The motorcycle driver was killed instantly, and his passenger had both legs cut off at the knees.

As for me, our front left wheel was sheared off and we shot off the mountain road, rolled a few times, and was stopped by this enormous pine tree.

The motorcycle riders got the two spots in the only ambulance. A police car took me to a hospital in Goteborg and whenever we hit a bump in the road bolts of pain shot across my chest and neck.

I woke up in the hospital the next day, with a compound fracture of my neck, a dislocated collar bone, and paralyzed from the waist down. The hospital called my mom after booking the call 16 hours in advance and told me I might never walk again. She later told me it was the worst day of her life.

Tall blonde Swedish nurses gave me sponge baths and delighted in teaching me to say Swedish swear words and then laughed uproariously when I made the attempt.

Sweden had a National Health care system then called Scandia, so it was all free.

Decades later a Marine Corps post-traumatic stress psychiatrist told me that this is where I obtained my obsession with tall, blond women with foreign accents.

I thought everyone had that problem.

I ended up spending a month there. The TV was only in Swedish, and after an extensive search, they turned up only one book in English, Madame Bovary. I read it four times but still don’t get the ending. And she killed herself because….?

The only problem was sleeping because I had to share my room with the guy who lost his legs in the same accident. He screamed all night because they wouldn’t give him any morphine.

When I was released, Ronny picked me up and I ended up spending another week at his home, sailing off the Swedish west coast. Then I took off for Berlin to get a job since I was broke. Few Germans wanted to live in West Berlin because of the ever-present risk of a Russian invasion so there we always good-paying jobs.

I ended up recovering completely. But to this day whenever I buy a new Brioni suit in Milan they have to measure me twice because the numbers come out so odd. My bones never returned to their pre-accident position and my right arm is an inch longer than my left. The compound fracture still shows up on X-rays.

And I still have this obsession with tall, blond women with foreign accents.

Go figure.

Brighton 1968

Ronny Carlson in Sweden

Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader

August 25, 2023

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
August 25, 2023
Fiat Lux

Featured Trades:

(THE NEXT COMMODITY SUPERCYCLE HAS ALREADY STARTED),
(COPX), (GLD), (FCX), (BHP), (RIO), (SIL),
(PPLT), (PALL), (GOLD), (ECH), (EWZ), (IDX)

CLICK HERE to download today's position sheet.

The Next Commodity Supercycle Has Already Started

Diary, Newsletter

When I closed out my position in Freeport McMoRan (FCX) near its max profit earlier this year, I received a hurried email from a reader if he should still keep the stock. I replied very quickly:

“Hell, yes!”

When I toured Australia a couple of years ago, I couldn’t help but notice a surprising number of fresh-faced young people driving luxury Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porsches.

I remarked to my Aussie friend that there must be a lot of indulgent parents in The Lucky Country these days. “It’s not the parents who are buying these cars,” he remarked, “It’s the kids.”

He went on to explain that the mining boom had driven wages for skilled labor to spectacular levels. Workers in their early twenties could earn as much as $200,000 a year, with generous benefits.

The big resource companies flew them by private jet a thousand miles to remote locations where they toiled at four-week on, four-week off schedules.

This was creating social problems, as it is tough for parents to manage offspring who make far more than they do.

The Next Great Commodity Boom has started and, in fact, we are already years into a prolonged supercycle that could stretch into the 2030s.

China, the world’s largest consumer of commodities, is currently stimulating its economy on multiple fronts, to break the back of a Covid hangover.

Those include generous corporate tax breaks, relaxed reserve requirements, government bailouts of financial institutions, and interest rate cuts. Get triggers like the impending moderation of its trade war with the US and it will be off to the races once more for the entire sector.

The last bear market in commodities was certainly punishing. From the 2011 peaks, copper (COPX) shed 65%, gold (GLD) gave back 47%, and iron ore was cut by 78%. One research house estimated that some $150 billion in resource projects in Australia were suspended or cancelled.

Budgeted capital spending during 2012-2015 was slashed by a blood-curdling 30%. Contract negotiations for price breaks demanded by end consumers broke out like a bad case of chicken pox.

The shellacking was reflected in the major producer shares, like BHP Billiton (BHP), Freeport McMoRan (FCX), and Rio Tinto (RIO), with prices down by half or more. Write-downs of asset values became epidemic at many of these firms.

The selloff was especially punishing for the gold miners, with lead firm Barrack Gold (GOLD) seeing its stock down by nearly 80% at one point, lower than the darkest days of the 2008-9 stock market crash.

You also saw the bloodshed in the currencies of commodity-producing countries. The Australian dollar led the retreat, falling 30%. The South African Rand has also taken it on the nose, off 30%. In Canada, the Loonie got cooked.

The impact of China cannot be underestimated. In 2012, it consumed 11.7% of the planet’s oil, 40% of its copper, 46% of its iron ore, 46% of its aluminum, and 50% of its coal. It is much smaller than that today, with its annual growth rate dropping by more than half, from 13.7% to 3.50% today.

What happens to commodity prices when China recovers even a fraction of the heady growth rates of yore? It boggles the mind.

The rise of emerging market standards of living will also provide a boost to hard asset prices. As China goes, so does its satellite trading partners, who rely on the Middle Kingdom as their largest customer. Many are also major commodity exporters themselves, like Chile (ECH), Brazil (EWZ), and Indonesia (IDX), who are looking to come back big time.

As a result, Western hedge funds will soon be moving money out of paper assets, like stocks and bonds, into hard ones, such as gold, silver (SIL), palladium (PALL), platinum (PPLT), and copper.

A massive US stock market rally has sent managers in search of any investment that can’t be created with a printing press. Look at the best-performing sectors this year and they are dominated by the commodity space.

The bulls may be right for as long as a decade thanks to the cruel arithmetic of the commodities cycle. These are your classic textbook inelastic markets.

Mines often take 10-15 years to progress from conception to production. Deposits need to be mapped, plans drafted, permits obtained, infrastructure built, capital raised, and bribes paid in certain countries. By the time they come online, prices have peaked, drowning investors in red ink.

So a 1% rise in demand can trigger a price rise of 50% or more. There are not a lot of substitutes for iron ore. Hedge funds then throw gasoline on the fire with excess leverage and high-frequency trading. That gives us higher highs, to be followed by lower lows.

I am old enough to have lived through a couple of these cycles now, so it is all old news for me. The previous bull legs of supercycles ran from 1870-1913 and 1945-1973. The current one started for the whole range of commodities in 2016. Before that, it was down from seven years.

While the present one is short in terms of years, no one can deny how business cycles will be greatly accelerated by the end of the pandemic.

Some new factors are weighing on miners that didn’t plague them in the past. Reregulation of the US banking system is forced several large players, like JP Morgan (JPM) and Goldman Sachs (GS) to pull out of the industry completely. That impairs trading liquidity and widens spreads— developments that can only accelerate upside price moves.

The prospect of falling US interest rates is also attracting capital. That reduces the opportunity cost of staying in raw metals, which pay neither interest nor dividends.

The future is bright for the resource industry. While the gains in Chinese demand are smaller than they have been in the past, they are off of a much larger base. In 20 years, Chinese GDP has soared from $1 trillion to $14.5 trillion.

Some 20 million people a year are still moving from the countryside to the coastal cities in search of a better standard of living and improved prospects for their children.

That is the good news. The bad news is that it looks like the headaches of Australian parents of juvenile high earners may persist for a lot longer than they wish.

Buy all commodities on dips for the next several years.