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Tag Archive for: (GLD)

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Watch Out for the Head and Shoulders

Diary, Newsletter, Research

The market has been chattering quite a lot about the massive downside bets on the S&P 500 being placed by some of the industry?s best known players.

That is something I would expect from my long time client and mentor George Soros.

But Warren Buffett as well? He is one of the greatest long term, pro America bulls out there.

It is the sort of news that gives investors that queasy, seasick feeling in the pit of their stomachs. You know, like when a new Tesla owner shows off his warp speed ?ludicrous mode??

That is unless you are running heavy short positions in stocks, as I am.

Every technical analyst in the world is pouring over their charts and coming to the same conclusion. A ?Head and Shoulders? pattern is setting up for the major indexes, especially for the S&P 500 (SPY).

And if you think the (SPY) chart is bad, those for the NASDAQ (QQQ), and the Russell 2000 (IWM), look much worse.

This is terrible news for stock investors, as well as owners of other risk assets like commodities, oil and real estate. It is wonderful news for those long of Treasury bonds (TLT), the Euro (FXE), gold (GLD), and silver (SLV).

A head and shoulders pattern is one of the most negative textbook indicators out there for financial markets. It means that there is only enough cash coming in to take prices up to the left shoulder, but no higher.

There is not even enough to challenge the old high, taking a double top decidedly off the table.

The bottom line: the market has run out of buyers. Be very careful of markets where everyone is bullish long term, but no one is doing any buying.

When the hot, fast money players see momentum rapidly fading, they pick up their marbles and go home. Some of the most aggressive, like me, even flip to the short side and make money in the falling market.

If we make it down to the ?neckline? and it doesn?t hold, then the sushi really hits the fan. Right now, that neckline is at $204.60 in the S&P 500 (SPY). Break that, and it?s hasta la vista baby. See you later.

Stop losses get triggered, the machines takeover, and shares move to the downside with a turbocharger. Distress margin calls on the most levered players (usually the youngest ones) add further fuel to the fire. We might even get a flash crash

This is when the really big money is made on the short side.

There is a new wrinkle this year that could make this sell off particularly vicious. To see a formation like this setting up during May is particularly ominous. It means that ?Sell in May? is going to work one more time

?It?s not like we have any shortage of bearish headlines to prompt a stampede by the bears.

The turmoil in Europe, one of the largest buyers of American exports, could cause the US to catch a cold. This is what the latest round of earnings disappointments has been hinting at.

Margin debt to own stocks has recently exploded to an all time high.

It could well be that the market action is just the dress rehearsal for a deeper correction in the summer, when markets are supposed to go down.

If markets do breakdown, it won?t be bombs away. The (SPY) might make it down to $181, $177, or in an extreme case $174. But to get sustainably below that, we really need to see an actual recession, not just a growth scare.

Remember that earnings are still growing year on year, once you take out the oil industry. That is not a formula for any kind of recession.

It is a formula for a 10% sell off in an aged bull market. That?s where you load the boat with the best quality stocks (MSFT), (FB), (GOOG), (CELG), etc., which should be down 25-35%, and then clock your +25% year in your equity trading portfolio.

If you are NOT a trader, but a long-term investor monitoring you retirement funds, just go take a round-the-world cruise and wake me up on December 31. You should be up 5% or more, with dividends, and skip the volatility.

SPYQQQIWM

 

Head-Shoulder

Head & Shoulders ShampooIgnore It at Your Peril

John in Owner's SuiteVolatility? What Volatility?

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Head-Shoulders-Shampoo.jpg 363 189 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2016-05-18 01:08:012016-05-18 01:08:01Watch Out for the Head and Shoulders
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Case for Europe

Diary, Newsletter

I have been to Greece many times over the past 45 years, and I?ll tell you that I just love the place. The beaches are perfect, the Ouzo wine enticing, and I?ll never say ?No? to a good moussaka.

However, I don?t let Greece dictate my investment strategy.

Greece, in fact, accounts for less than 2% of Europe?s GDP. It is not a storm in a teacup that is going on there, but a storm in a thimble. Greece is really just a full employment contract for financial journalists, who like to throw around big words like bankruptcy, default and contagion.

I have other things to worry about.

In fact, I am starting to come around to the belief that Europe is looking pretty good right here. Cisco (CSCO) CEO, John Chambers, announced that he was seeing the early signs of a turnaround.

Fiat CEO, Sergio Marchionne, the brilliant personal savior of Chrysler during the crash, thinks the beleaguered continent is about to recover from ?hell? to only ?purgatory.?

Only a devout Catholic could come up with such a characterization. But I love Sergio nevertheless because he generously helps me with my Italian pronunciation when we speak (aspirapolvere for vacuum cleaner, really?).

What are the two best performing stock markets since the big ?RISK ON? move started last Thursday? Greece (GREK) (+5%) and Russia (RSX) (+7.5%)!

And here is where I come in with my own 30,000 foot view.

The undisputed lesson of the past five years is that you always want to own stock markets that are about to receive an overdose of quantitative easing.

Since the US Federal Reserve launched their aggressive monetary policy, the S&P 500 (SPY) nearly tripled off the bottom.? Look how well US markets have performed since American QE ended 18 months ago.

Europe has only just barely started QE, and it could run for five more years. Corporations across the pond are about to be force-fed mountains of cash at negative interest rates, much like a goose being fattened for a fine dish of foie gras (only decriminalized in California last year).

Mind you, it could be another year before we get another dose of Euro QE, which is why I just bought the Euro (FXE) for a short-term trade.

A cheaper currency automatically reduces the prices of continental exports, making them more competitive in the international markets, and boosting their economies. Needless to say, this is all great new for stock markets.

Get Europe off the mat, and you can also add 10% to US share prices as well, as the global economy revives. The Euro drag dies and goes to heaven.

Buy the Wisdom Tree International Hedged Equity Fund ETF (HEDJ) down here on dips, which is long a basket of European stocks and short the Euro (FXE). This could be the big performer this year.

Praise the Lord and pass the foie gras!

 

HEDJ

 

GREK

 

RSX

 

Foie Gras

 

It?s all a Matter of Perspective in Greece

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Foie-Gras-e1423777772497.jpg 303 400 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2016-02-17 01:07:062016-02-17 01:07:06The Case for Europe
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Coming Bull Market in Gold

Diary, Newsletter

Loyal followers of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader are well aware that I have been bearish on gold for the past five years.

However, it may be time for me to change that view.

A number of fundamental factors are coming into play that will have a long-term positive influence on the price of the barbarous relic. The only question is not if, but when the next bull market in the yellow metal will begin.

All of the positive arguments in favor of gold all boil down to a single issue: they?re not making it anymore.

Take a look at the chart below and you?ll see that new gold discoveries are in free fall. That?s because falling prices have caused exploration budgets to fall off a cliff.

Gold production peaked in the fourth quarter of 2015, and is expected to decline by 20% for the next four years.

The industry average cost is thought to be around $1,400 and ounce, although some legacy mines can produce for as little as $600. So why dig out more of the stuff if it means losing more money?

It all sets up a potential turn in the classic commodities cycle. Falling prices demolish production, and wipe out investors. This inevitably leads to supply shortages.

When the buyers finally return, there is none to be had and price spikes can occur which can continue for years. In other words, the cure for low prices is low prices.

Worried about new supply quickly coming on-stream and killing the rally?

It can take ten years to get a new mine started from scratch by the time you include capital rising, permits, infrastructure construction, logistics and bribes. It turns out that the brightest prospects for new gold mines are all in some of the world?s most inaccessible, inhospitable, and expensive places.

Good luck recruiting for the Congo!

That?s the great thing about commodities. You can?t just turn on a printing press and create more, as you can with stocks and bonds.

Take all the gold mined in human history, from the time of the ancient pharaohs to today, and it could comprise a cube 63 feet on a side. That includes the one-kilo ($38,720) Nazi gold bars stamped with German eagles upon them, which I saw in Swiss bank vaults during the 1980?s.

In short, there is not a lot to spread around.

The long-term argument in favor of gold never really went away. That involves emerging nation central banks, especially those in China and India, raising gold bullion holdings to western levels. That would require them to purchase several thousand tonnes of the yellow metal!

So watch the iShares Emerging Market ETF (EEM). A bottom there could signal the end of the bear market for gold as well.

Sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East have recently been dumping gold to raise money. The collapse of oil prices has made it impossible to meet their wildly generous social service obligations.

Hint: governments in that part of the world that fail to deliver on promises are often taken out and shot.

When this selling abates, it also could well signal the final low in gold. That?s why I have been strongly advising readers to watch the price of Texas tea careful, as both it an gold should bottom on the same day.

Let me throw out one more possibility for you to cogitate over. Another big winner of rising precious metal prices is residential real estate, which people rush to buy as an inflation hedge. Remember inflation?

Tally ho!

Gold Discoveries

GOLD 1-22-16

GDX 1-25-16

ABX 1-25-16

EEM 1-25-16

John Thomas -Gold

Gold IngotLooks Like A ?BUY? to Me

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Gold-Ingot-e1453762150306.jpg 400 311 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2016-01-26 01:08:502016-01-26 01:08:50The Coming Bull Market in Gold
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

It?s Time to Pick Up Some Gold

Diary, Newsletter
bullish on gold

I have not done a gold trade in yonks. That?s because it has been the asset class from hell for the past five years, dropping some 46% from its 2011 $1,927 high.

However, we are now in a brave new, and scarier world.

Given the extreme volatility of financial markets in recent months, all of a sudden keeping hedges on board looks like a good idea. I?m sure the next time stocks take a big dive, the barbarous relic will post a double digit gain.

So, this makes it an excellent hedge for my outstanding long S&P 500 (SPY) and short Treasury (TLT) ?RISK ON? positions.

Also supporting the yellow metal is what I call the ?Big Figure Syndrome?. And there is no bigger number than $1,000, the upper strike on this trade.

While rising interest rates is always bad for gold, the realization is sinking in that it is definitely NOT off to the raises now that the Federal Reserve has at last begun a tightening cycle.

Personally, I expect ?one and done? to gain credence by midyear, once implications of six months of Fed inaction starts to sink in. As long as rates rise slowly, or not at all, we have a gold positive environment.

The Treasury bond market has already figured this out, with yields now lower than when the Fed carried out its 25 basis point snugging.

In addition, gold has recently found some new friends. Russia has come out of nowhere in recent months and emerged as one of the world?s largest buyers. This is because economic sanctions brought down upon them by the invasion of Crimea and the Ukraine is steering them away from dollar assets.

Keep in mind that this is only a trade worth about $200 to the upside. Then, I?ll probably sell it again.

I am avoiding the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX) for now, as the next stock market swoon will take it down as well, no matter what the yellow metal does.

But get me a good price and a rising stock market, and I?ll be in there with another Trade Alert.

My interest might even expand to include the world?s largest gold miners, Barrick Gold (ABX) and Newmont Mining (NEM).

The new bull market in gold is still at least five years off. That?s when it picks up a huge tailwind from a massive demographic expansion by the Millennials, which eventually leads to much higher inflation.

Also by then, China and other emerging nations will begin to raise their gold reserve holdings to western levels. This will require the purchase of several thousand metric tonnes! That?s when my long-term forecast of $5,000/ounce will finally come true.

With conditions as grim as they were in 2015, you would have thought the price of gold was going to zero.

It didn?t.

While no one was looking, the average price of gold production has soared from $5 in 1920 to $1,300 today. Over the last 100 years, the price of producing gold has risen four times faster than the underlying metal.

It?s almost as if the gold mining industry is the only one in the world which sees real inflation, which has seen costs soar at a 15% annual rate for the past five years.

This is a function of what I call ?peak gold.? They?re not making it anymore. Miners are increasingly being driven to higher risk, more expensive parts of the world to find the stuff.

You know those tires on heavy dump trucks? They now cost $200,000 each. Barrick Gold (ABX) didn?t try to mine gold at 15,000 feet in the Andes, where freezing water is a major problem, because they like the fresh air.

What this means is that when the spot price of gold falls below the cost of production, miners will simply shout down their most marginal facilities, drying up supply. That has recently been happening on a large scale.

This inevitably leads to a shortage of supply, and a new bull market, i.e., the cure for low prices is low prices.

They can still operate and older mines carry costs that go all the way down to $600. No one is going to want to supply the sparkly stuff at a loss.

That should prevent gold from falling dramatically from here.

I am constantly barraged with emails from gold bugs who passionately argue that their beloved metal is trading at a tiny fraction of its true value, and that it is really worth $5,000, $10,000 or even $50,000 an ounce.

They claim the move in the yellow metal we are seeing is only the beginning of a 30-fold rise in prices similar to what we saw from 1972 to 1979, when it leapt from $32 to $950.

To match the 1936 monetary value peak, when the monetary base was collapsing and the double top in 1979 when gold futures first tickled $950, this precious metal has to increase in value by eight times, or to $9,600 an ounce.

I am long term bullish on gold, other precious metals, and virtually all commodities for that matter.

The seven year spike up in prices we saw in the seventies, which found me in a very long line in Johannesburg, South Africa to unload my own Krugerrand's in 1979, was triggered by a number of one off events that will never be repeated.

Some 40 years of demand was unleashed when Richard Nixon took the US off the gold standard and decriminalized private ownership in 1972. Inflation then peaked around 20%. Newly enriched sellers of oil had a strong historical affinity with gold.

South Africa, the world?s largest gold producer, was then a boycotted international pariah and teetering on the edge of disaster. We are nowhere near the same geopolitical neighborhood today, and hence my more subdued forecast.

But then again, I could be wrong.

The previous bear market in gold lasted 18 years, from 1980 to 1998, so don?t hold your breath.

What should we look for? When your friends start getting surprise, out of the blue pay increases, the largest component of the inflation calculation. That is happing now in the technology and the new US oil fields, but nowhere else.

It could be a long wait, possibly into the 2020?s, until shocking wage hikes spread elsewhere.

GLD 1-5-16

Gold 1-5-16

GDX 1-5-16

Rusia and China Gold Reserve Changes

John Thomas -GoldReady For a Bounce

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/John-Thomas-Gold-e1455831491219.jpg 297 400 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2016-01-06 01:07:192016-01-06 01:07:19It?s Time to Pick Up Some Gold
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Bring Back QE!

Diary, Newsletter

You wanted clarity in understanding the current state of play in the global financial markets? Here?s your #$%&*#!! clarity.

You should expect nothing less for this ridiculously expensive service of mine.

But maybe that is the cabin fever talking, now that I have been cooped up in my Tahoe lakefront estate for a week, engaging in deep research and grinding out the Trade Alerts, devoid of any human contact whatsoever.

Or, maybe it?s the high altitude.

I did have one visitor.

A black bear broke into my trash cans last light and spread garbage all over the back yard. He then left his calling card, a giant poop, in my parking space.

Judging by the size of the turds, I would say he was at least 600 pounds. This is why you never take out the trash at night in the High Sierras.

Ah, the delights of Mother Nature!

We certainly live in a confusing, topsy-turvy, tear your hair out world this year. Good news is bad news, bad news worse, and no news the worst of all.

The biggest under performing week of the year for stocks is then followed by the best. Net net, we are absolutely at a zero movement, and lots of clients complaining about poor returns on their investment.

I tallied the year-on-year performance of every major assets class and this is what I found.

+16% - Hedged Japanese Stocks (DXJ)
+15% - Hedged European stocks (HEDJ)
+13% - US dollar basket (UUP)
+10% - My house
0% - Stocks (SPY)
0% -? bonds (TLT)
-5% - Japanese Yen (FXY)
-11% - Euro (FXE)
-12% - Gold (GLD)
-18% -? Oil (USO)
-27% -? Commodities (CU)
-27% - Natural Gas (UNG)

There are some sobering conclusions to be drawn from these numbers.

There were very few opportunities to make money this year. If you were short energy, commodities, and foreign currencies, you did very well.

Followers of the Mad hedge Fund Trader can?t help but know and love these ticker symbols. They?ll notice that our long plays were found among the asset classes with the best performance, while our short bets populated the losers.

The problem with that is most financial advisors are not permitted to place client funds in the sort of inverse or leveraged ETF?s that most benefit from these kinds of moves (like the (YCS), (EUO), and (DUG)).

That left them reading about the success of others in the newspapers, even when they knew these trends were unfolding (through reading this letter).

How frustrating is that?

What was one of my best investments of 2015?

My San Francisco home, which has the additional benefit in that I get to live in it, have a place to stash all my junk, and claim big tax deductions (depreciated home office space, business use of phone, blah, blah, blah).

Of course, I do have the advantage of living in the middle of one of the greatest technology and IPO booms of all time. Every time one of these ?sharing? companies goes public, the value of my home rises by a few hundred grand.

The real problem here is that investing since the end of the Federal Reserve?s quantitative easing program ended a year ago has become a real uphill battle.

While the government was adding $3.9 trillion in funds to the economy we traders enjoyed one of the greatest free lunches of all time. It made us all look like freakin? geniuses!

Just maintaining their present $3.9 trillion balance sheet, not adding to it, has left almost every asset class dead in the water.

Heaven help us if they ever try to unwind some of that debt!

Janet has promised me that she isn?t going to engage in such monetary suicide.

The Fed is continuing with Ben Bernanke?s plan to run all of their Treasury bond holdings into expiration, even if it takes a decade to achieve this. And with deflation accelerating (see charts below), the need for such a desperate action is remote.

Still, one has to ponder the potential implications.

It all kind of makes my own 43% Trade Alert gain in 2015 look pretty good. But I don?t want to boast too much. That tends to invite bad luck and losses, which I would much rather avoid.

COPPER 11-20-15

GOLD 11-20-15

WTIC 11-20-15

DUG 11-20-15

NATGAS 11-20-15

 

FXY 11-20-15

UUP 11-20-15

Ship - TorpedoedWhat! No QE?

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Ship-Torpedoed-e1448310356189.jpg 265 400 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-11-24 01:08:272015-11-24 01:08:27Bring Back QE!
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Woe the Australian Dollar!

Diary, Newsletter, Research

If I warned them once, I warned them 1,000 times!

The Australian dollar (FXA) is going to fall.

That?s why I cautioned my Aussie friends to sell their homes, get the money the hell out of the country, and pay for their overseas vacations in advance.

As long as it is a de facto colony of China, the fortunes of the Land Down Under are completely tied to economic prospects there.

It is almost a waste of time looking at the Reserve Bank of Australia?s data releases. They have become a deep lagging, and really irrelevant indicators. You are better off going to the source, and that is in Beijing.

And therein lies the problem.

It is highly unlikely that the government in China has any idea what their economy is actually doing. Sure, they pump out the usual figures on a reliable basis like clockwork. These are educated guesses, at best.

Even in a perfect world, collecting numbers from 1.3 billion participants is a hopeless task. The US is unable to do these with any real accuracy, and we have one quarter of their population and vastly superior technology.

For what it is worth, Chinese President Xi Jinping has promised that his country?s GDP growth will not fall below a 6.5% annual rate for the next five years. At this pace, China is still creating more economic activity that any other country in the world.

Which leaves us nothing else to rely on but commodity prices to look at, far an away Australia?s largest earner. These are suggesting that the worst has yet to come.

Virtually the entire asset class hit new six year lows yesterday. I had to go to the weekly charts to see how ugly things really are.

Australia?s largest exports are iron ore (26%, or $68.2 billion worth), coal (KOL) (16%), gold (GLD) (8.1%), and petroleum (USO) (5.7%). When the world?s largest consumer of these slows down, so does demand for these commodities.

BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), the largest producer of iron ore, has seen its shares plunge 57% from last year?s high.

But wait! It gets worse.

I have written at length about the transition of China from an industrial to a services based economy. You would expect this, as the Middle Kingdom has virtually no commodity resources of its own, but lots of smart people.

In a nutshell, they wish they had America?s economy. Where services now account for a staggering 68% of all economic activity.

This is why China?s future lies with Alibaba (BABA), Baidu (BIDU), and JD.com (JD). It does NOT lie with its steel factories and coalmines, which by the way, recently announced layoffs of 100,000, the largest in history.

To learn more about the structural remaking of China, please click here for ?End of the Commodities Super Cycle?.

There is one bright spot to mention. Australia is making a transition to a services based economy of its own. Tourism is rocketing, as is the influx of flight capital from the Middle Kingdom.

Walk the streets of Brisbane these days, and you are overwhelmed by the abundance of Asians coming here to learn English, attain a high education, or start a new business. When I came here 40 years ago, they were virtually absent.

How low is low?

It doesn?t help that the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Australia?s central bank, Glenn Stevens, despises his nation?s currency.

He has used every rally this year to talk down the Aussie, threatening interest rate cuts and quantitative easing.

The hope is that a deep discount currency will allow the exporters to maintain some pricing edge on the commodities front.

The market chatter is that the Aussie will take a run as low as $0.55, the 2008-09 Great Recession low.

Whether we actually get that far or not is a coin toss.

And will even $0.55 below enough for Glenn Stevens?

FXA 11-12-15

BHP 11-12-15

COPPER 11-11-15

GOLD 11-11-15

Australian Energie Ressources

Glenn StevensNoted Aussie Dollar Hater

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Glenn-Stevens-e1447366356714.jpg 226 400 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-11-13 01:08:222015-11-13 01:08:22Woe the Australian Dollar!
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Death of Gold

Diary, Newsletter, Research
bullish on gold

One of the most impressive moves in the wake of the Fed?s Thursday move to maintain ultra low interest rates was to be found in gold.

In the run up to the flash headline on the Fed non-announcement, the yellow metal rocketed $40. The action was even more impressive in silver (SLV), which tacked on 90 cents, or 6.6%.

Now, here is the really bad new.

The fundamentals for the barbarous relic are about to turn from bad to worse. The prospect is sending perma bulls rushing to update their life insurance policies.

This is the dilemma. To sell, or not to sell?

Gold does well when interest rates are low or falling. That reduces the opportunity cost of owning the barbarous relic, which doesn?t pay any interest or dividends. It just sits there, shines, and collects dust.

It also runs up storage and insurance fees, effectively hampering it with a real negative yield.

So what happens when the fundamentals flip from good to bad?

WARNING: if you have been carefully salting away one ounce American gold eagle coins in your safe deposit box for the past several years, you are not going to want to read this.

If I am right, and we have put in a generational high in bond prices and a low in yields, interest rates are going to rise. Initially, for the first couple of years, they may not do it a lot. But eventually they will.

That is terrible news for gold owners.

The market clearly thinks this is happening. Take a look at the charts below. Gold is making its third run at support at $1,100 over the past 18 months. Break this and cascading, stop loss selling will ensue, taking gold down to $1,000.

That, by the way, is my jeweler?s downside.

Caution: My jeweler is always right. There he plans to load the boat with bullion, which his business consumes in creating baubles for clients, like me.

It wasn?t supposed to be like this, as the arguments in favor of buying the yellow metal were so clear five years ago.

The exploding national debt was about to force the US government to default on its debt. It almost did, thanks to congressional gamesmanship.

Massive trade deficits with China and the Middle East were supposed to collapse the value of the US dollar.

The election of Barack Obama was predicted to lead to the creation of a socialist paradise. We were all going to need gold coins to bribe the border guards in order to get out of the country with only what we could carry.

The problem is that none of this happened.

The US budget deficit is falling at the fastest rate in history, from a $1.5 trillion peak to as low as $400 billion this year. Foreign capital pouring into the US has pushed the greenback to multiyear highs, and loftier altitudes beckon.

Since the 2009 inauguration, the S&P 500 has tripled off its intraday low. This has enriched the 1% more than any other group, who have seen their wealth increase at the fastest pace on record.

The trade deficit with China is now balancing out with America?s own burgeoning surpluses in services and education. As for the Middle East, we make our own oil now, thanks to fracking, so why bother.

To see such dismal price action in the barbarous relic now is particularly disturbing. Traditionally, the Indian ?Diwali? gift giving season heralded the beginning of a multi month bull run in gold. It ain?t happening.

In fact the dumping of speculative long positions by long-term traders used to this is accelerating the melt down. That?s because gold, silver, or any other inflation hedges have no place in a deflationary, reach for yield world.

Mind you, I don?t think gold is going down forever.

Eventually, emerging central banks will bid it back up, as they have to buy an enormous amount just to bring their reserve ownership up to western levels. Inflation is likely to return in the 2020?s, as my ?Golden Age? scenario picks up speed.

In the meantime, you might want to give those gold eagles to your grand kids. By the time they go to college, they might be worth something.

?GOLD 9-17-15

GOLD b 9-17-15

GDX 9-17-15

ABX 9-17-15

SLV 9-17-15

John Thomas -GoldBetter to Look than to Buy

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Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Will Gold Coins Suffer the Fate of the $10,000 Bill?

Diary, Free Research, Newsletter

The conspiracy theorists will love this one.

Buried deep in the bowels of the 2,000 page health care bill was a new requirement for gold dealers to file Form 1099's for all retail sales by individuals over $600. Specifically, the measure can be found in section 9006 of the Patient Protection and Affordability Act of 2010.

For foreign readers unencumbered by such concerns, Internal Revenue Service Form 1099's are required to report miscellaneous income associated with services rendered by independent contractors and self-employed individuals.

The IRS has long despised the barbaric relic (GLD) as an ideal medium to make invisible large transactions. Don?t you ever wonder what happened to $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $100,000 bills?

The $100,000 bill was only used for reserve transfers between banks, and was never seen by the public. The other high denomination bills were last printed in 1945, and withdrawn from circulation in 1969.

Although the Federal Reserve claims on their website that they were withdrawn because of lack of use, the word at the time was that they disappeared to clamp down on money laundering operations by the mafia. In fact, the goal was to flush out income from the rest of us.

Dan Lundgren, a republican from California's 3rd congressional district, a rural gerrymander east of Sacramento that includes the gold bearing Sierras, has introduced legislation to repeal the requirement, claiming that it places an unaffordable burden on small business.

Even the IRS is doubtful that it can initially deal with the tidal wave of paper that the measure would create.

Currency trivia question of the day: whose picture is engraved on the $10,000 bill? You guessed it, Salmon P. Chase, Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury.

GOLD 7-24-15

GDX 7-27-15

$10,000 BillEver Wonder Where The $10,000 Bill Went?

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Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Cashing in on the Greek Crisis

Diary, Newsletter

Try as I may, there is absolutely no way to escape a financial crisis in the modern world anymore, not even in the dusty, remote Western Sahara village of Taghazout, Morocco.

There is an Ebola Virus outbreak 1,000 miles to the south, and 35 British tourists were massacred on a beach in neighboring Tunisia last week. There were exactly four passengers on my flight from Lisbon to Morocco.

Was it a warning, or a confirmation of hubris?

Starving stray dogs and cats wander the street, garbage lines the beach, and raw sewage seeps into the ocean. Rangy, two humped camels vainly await riders at the edge of town.

But satellite dishes sprout from the rooftop of even the most forlorn, impoverished, broken down cinder block structures, and the hum of the global markets is never more than a few channels away.

The CNBC here is available only in Arabic, and is fiercely competing with Omani soap operas and the Iraqi Business Channel (yes, despite ISIS, there is such a thing).

But it didn?t take me long to figure out that the people of Greece rejected the ECB latest bailout proposal by an overwhelming 61.5% to 38.5% margin.

It was no surprise to me.

You would think that voting against punishingly higher taxes and an excruciatingly longer recession was a no brainer. But the markets were expecting otherwise, and have been caught seriously wrong footed. Poor summer liquidity is exacerbating the moves.

My somewhat passable French enabled me to discern that the prices were taking it on the nose. Japan and China each dove 2%, while Australia and the Euro pared 1% apiece.

This was going to be a ?RISK OFF? day on steroids.

Suddenly, I smell opportunity everywhere.

Now we know the kneejerk response to an imminent Greek default.

However, the cold, harsh reality of the situation requires a little deeper analysis.

CNN was utterly useless, choosing instead to focus on the human side of the tragedy, the freshly impoverished Greek goat herder and the island hotel operator who can?t pay his staff.

No great insight there.

Greek citizens are now limited to withdrawing 60 Euros a day from an ATM, if they can find one that has any cash at all. To head off a certain run and Armageddon, the Greek banks have all been closed for a week, with no reopening in sight.

Thousands of foreign tourists are now stranded in the land of moussaka, retsina, and Zorba, cursing their vacation destination choice.

So I?ll refer to my May conversation with former Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, who ran the country from 2009 to 2011, and shepherded the country through the post financial crisis 2010 debacle.

His late father, Andreas, was also a Prime Minister, as was his grandfather, Georgio, who spent time in jail for his services, consider running this ungovernable country the family business.

To a large extent, the ECB (read the Germans) are in a subprime crisis entirely of their own making.

German banks provided funds to their Greek counterparts, initially to build the $8 billion 2000 Athens Olympics, which was almost entirely subcontracted to German engineering firms.

They then fueled the economic boom that followed, making possible the export of tens of thousands of Mercedes, BMW?s and Volkswagens. That bankrolled a major increase in the Greek standard of living, while adding several points to German GDP growth.

When dubious financial statements were presented to justify this lending binge, bankers simply winked, and looked the other way.

A decade and a half later, they are ?shocked, shocked? that some of the accompanying disclosures were inaccurate, as police inspector Claude Rains might have said in Casablanca (which, by the way, is only 400 miles north of here).

?Gambling in the casino? Perish the thought.? How do you say that in German?

The reality is that this is all a storm in a teacup. Accounting for only 2% of European GDP, it is neither here nor there whether the country stays or goes from the European Community or the Euro.

Total Greek debt to the ECB is now $3.5 billion, a drop in the bucket in the global scheme of things.

What?s more, this crisis is far less serious than the ones that occurred in 2010 and 2012. This time around, Greek bonds have already been taken off the books of German and French banks at cost, and placed with numerous multinational agencies, largely the ECB itself.

What is almost completely lacking here is private risk, unless you happen to own a Greek bank, or the shares of other Greek companies.

What?s more, all of this is happening in the face of a massive 60 billion a month ECB quantitative easing program. The amount Greece owes comes to less than two days worth of this amount.

Never take a liquidity crisis in the middle of a structural global cash glut too seriously.

Even this paltry amount can be easily refinanced by the International Monetary Fund on a slow day. That?s what they are there for.

This pales in comparison to the 39 billion euros spent to bail out the Spanish banking system a few years ago, or the $4 billion IMF rescue of the United Kingdom in 1976.

In the end, the amounts are sofa change to the Chinese, who are starved for high yield investments. It was they who nailed the top of the last European bond yield spike (on my advice, I might add), acting as the buyer of last resort then.

In the end this will be solved, as have all international debt crises since time immemorial, since the British seized the Suez Canal from the French as collateral for bad debts in 1882. Extend and pretend. Move debt maturities out another ten years and hope everything gets solved by then.

It always works.

What all of this does do is create a great buying opportunity for the assets not directly involved in this crisis, notably US equities. Modest over valuation has encumbered main indexes with declining volumes, narrowing breadth, and shrinking volatility for all of 2015.

At the very least, the Euro crisis du jour will present a second test of the (SPY) 200-day moving average at $205.74. The best case is that it gives us a real gift, a visit to a full 10% retreat to $193, a pullback whose ferociousness has not been seen since October.

That?s where you load the boat for a rally to new index highs at yearend.

You can expect similar moves in other assets classes.

In this scenario, volatility (VIX) will rocket to 30%. The Euro (FXE) collapses to $103 once more, and the Japanese yen (FXY) revisits $82. Treasury bonds (TLT) enjoy a flight to safety bid that takes yields at least back to 2.30%. Gold (GLD) and silver (SLV) do nothing, as usual.

For followers of my Trade Alert service, this is all a dream come true. Having made 26.71%, or much more, in the first half of this year, you now have the opportunity to repeat this feat in the second half.

Going into a crisis like this with 100% cash and only dry powder is every trader?s wildest fantasy. Make sure you let the current Greek debt crisis play out before you commit.

This is what you all pay me for. At least I?ll get something for suffering through the hell holes and gin joints of West Africa.

I think I?ll go give those camels some business.

SPX 7-2-15

TLT 7-2-15

VIX 7-2-15

FXE 7-2-15

George Papandreou

RetsinaRetsina

John Thomas

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Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Terrible News the Bond Market is Telling to Gold

Diary, Newsletter
bullish on gold

The news from Australia?s Perth Mint was horrific last week. The refiner for the world?s second largest producer reported that sales hit a new three year low.

And the worst is yet to come.

Shipments of gold coins and bars plunged to 21,671 ounces in May, compared to 26,545 ounces in April. Silver sales have seen similar declines.

I have been warning readers for the last four years that investors want paper assets paying dividends and interest, not the hard stuff, now that the world is in a giant reach for yield.

Ten-year US Treasury yields jumping from 1.83% to 2.43% this year is pouring the fat on the fire.

This all substantially raises the opportunity cost of owning the barbarous relic. With bond yields now forecast to reach as high as 3.0% by the end of the year, the allure of the yellow metal is fading by the day.

The gold perma bulls have a lot of splainin? to do.

Long considered nut cases, crackpots, and the wearers of tin hats, lovers of the barbarous relic have just suffered miserable trading conditions since 2011. Gold has fallen some 39% since then during one of the great bull markets for risk assets of all time.

Let me recite all the reasons that perma bulls used your money to buy the yellow metal all the way down.

1) Obama is a socialist and is going to nationalize everything in sight, prompting a massive flight of capital that will send the US dollar crashing.

2) Hyperinflation is imminent, and the return of ruinous double-digit price hikes will send investors fleeing into the precious metals and other hard assets, the last true store of value.

3) The Federal Reserve?s aggressive monetary expansion through quantitative easing will destroy the economy and the dollar, triggering an endless bid for gold, the only true currency.

4) To protect a collapsing greenback, the Fed will ratchet up interest rates, causing foreigners to dump the half of our national debt they own, causing the bond market to crash.

5) Taxes will skyrocket to pay for the new entitlement state, the government?s budget deficit will explode, and burying a sack of gold coins in your backyard is the only safe way to protect your assets.

6) A wholesale flight out of paper assets of all kind will cause the stock market to crash. Remember those Dow 3,000 forecasts?

7) Misguided government policies and oppressive regulation will bring financial Armageddon, and you will need gold coins to bribe the border guards to get out of the country. You can also sew them into the lining of your jacket to start a new life abroad, presumably under an assumed name.

Needless to say, things didn?t exactly pan out that way.

The end-of-the-world scenarios that one regularly heard at Money Shows, Hard Asset Conferences, and other dubious sources of investment advice all proved to be so much bunk.

I know, because I was once a regular speaker on this circuit. I, alone, a voice in the darkness, begged people to buy stocks instead.

Eventually, I ruffled too many feathers with my politically incorrect views, and they stopped inviting me back. I think it was my call that rare earths (REMX) were a bubble that was going to collapse was the weighty stick that finally broke the camel?s back.

By the way, Molycorp (MCP), then at $70 a share, recently announced it was considering bankruptcy. Rare earths didn?t turn out to be so rare after all.

So, here we are, five years later. The Dow Average has gone from 7,000 to 18,000. The dollar has blasted through to a 14 year high against the Euro (FXE).

The deficit has fallen by 75%. Gold has plummeted from $1,920 to $1,150. And no one has apologized to me, telling me that I was right all along, despite the fact that I am from California.

Welcome to the investment business. Being wrong never seems to prevent my competitors from prospering.

Gold has more to worry about than just falling western demand. The great Chinese stock bubble, which has seen prices double in only nine months, has citizens there dumping gold in order to buy more stocks on margin.

This is a huge headache for producers, as the Middle Kingdom has historically been the world?s largest gold buyer. As long as share prices keep appreciating, demand there will continue to ebb.

So now what?

From here, the picture gets a little murky.

Certainly, none of the traditional arguments in favor of gold ownership are anywhere to be seen. There is no inflation. In fact, deflation is accelerating.

The dollar seems destined to get stronger, not weaker. There is no capital flight from the US taking place. Rather, foreigners are throwing money at the US with both hands, escaping their own collapsing economies and currencies.

And with global bond markets having topped out, the opportunity cost of gold ownership returns with a vengeance.

All of which adds up to the likelihood that today?s gold rally probably only has another $50 to go at best, and then it will return to the dustbin of history, and possibly new lows.

I am not a perma bear on gold. There is no need to dig up your remaining coins and dump them on the market, especially now that the IRS has a mandatory withholding tax on all gold sales. I do believe that when inflation returns in the 2020?s, the bull market for gold will return for real.

You can expect newly enriched emerging market central banks to raise their gold ownership to western levels, a goal that will require them to buy thousands of tons on the open market.

Gold still earns a permanent bid in countries with untradeable currencies, weak banks, and acquisitive governments, India, another major buyer.

Remember, too, also that they are not making gold anymore, and that all of the world?s easily accessible deposits have already been mined. The breakeven cost of opening new mines is thought to be around $1,400 an ounce, so don?t expect any new sources of supply anytime soon.

These are the factors which I think will take gold to the $3,000 handle by the end of the 2020?s, which means there is quite an attractive annualized return to be had jumping in at these levels. Clearly, that?s what many of today?s institutional buyers are thinking.

Sure, you could hold back and try to buy the next bottom. Oh, really? How good were you at calling the last low, and the one before that?

Certainly, incrementally scaling in around this neighborhood makes imminent sense for those with a long-term horizon, deep pockets, and a big backyard.

GOLD 6-8-15

GDX 6-9-15

ABX 6-9-15

MCPOops!

 

John Thomas -GoldMaybe It Doesn?t Look So Good After All

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