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2015 Annual Asset Class Review

I am once again writing this report from a first class sleeping cabin on Amtrak?s California Zephyr. By day, I have two comfortable seats facing each other next to a broad window. At night, they fold into bunk beds, a single and a double. There is a shower, but only Houdini could get in and out of it.

We are now pulling away from Chicago?s Union Station, leaving its hurried commuters, buskers, panhandlers, and majestic great halls behind. I am headed for Emeryville, California, just across the bay from San Francisco. That gives me only 56 hours to complete this report.

I tip my porter, Raymond, $100 in advance to make sure everything goes well during the long adventure, and to keep me up to date with the onboard gossip.

The rolling and pitching of the car is causing my fingers to dance all over the keyboard. Spellchecker can catch most of the mistakes, but not all of them. Thank goodness for small algorithms.

As both broadband and cell phone coverage are unavailable along most of the route, I have to rely on frenzied searches during stops at major stations along the way to chase down data points.

You know those cool maps in the Verizon stores that show the vast coverage of their cell phone networks? They are complete BS. Who knew that 95% of America is off the grid? That explains a lot about our politics today. I have posted many of my better photos from the trip below, although there is only so much you can do from a moving train and an iPhone.

After making the rounds with strategists, portfolio managers, and hedge fund traders, I can confirm that 2014 was one of the toughest to trade for careers lasting 30, 40, or 50 years. Yet again, the stay at home index players have defeated the best and the brightest.

With the Dow gaining a modest 8% in 2014, and S&P 500 up a more virile 14.2%, this was a year of endless frustration. Volatility fell to the floor, staying at a monotonous 12% for seven boring consecutive months. Most hedge funds lagged the index by miles.

My Trade Alert Service, hauled in an astounding 30.3% profit, at the high was up 42.7%, and has become the talk of the hedge fund industry. That was double the S&P 500 index gain.

If you think I spend too much time absorbing conspiracy theories from the Internet, let me give you a list of the challenges I see financial markets facing in the coming year:

The Ten Highlights of 2015

1) Stocks will finish 2015 higher, almost certainly more than the previous year, somewhere in the 10-15% range. Cheap energy, ultra low interest rates, and 3-4% GDP growth, will expand multiples. It?s Goldilocks with a turbocharger.

2) Performance this year will be back-end loaded into the fourth quarter, as it was in 2014. The path forward became so clear, that some of 2015?s performance was pulled forward into November, 2014.

3) The Treasury bond market will modestly grind down, anticipating the inevitable rate rise from the Federal Reserve.

4) The yen will lose another 10%-20% against the dollar.

5) The Euro will fall another 10%, doing its best to hit parity with the greenback, with the assistance of beleaguered continental governments.

6) Oil stays in a $50-$80 range, showering the economy with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of de facto tax cuts.

7) Gold finally bottoms at $1,000 after one more final flush, then rallies (My jeweler was right, again).

8) Commodities finally bottom out, thanks to new found strength in the global economy, and begin a modest recovery.

9) Residential real estate has made its big recovery, and will grind up slowly from here.

10) After a tumultuous 2014, international political surprises disappear, the primary instigators of trouble becalmed by collapsed oil revenues.

The Thumbnail Portfolio

Equities - Long. A rising but low volatility year takes the S&P 500 up to 2,350. This year we really will get another 10% correction. Technology, biotech, energy, solar, and financials lead.

Bonds - Short. Down for the entire year with long periods of stagnation.

Foreign Currencies - Short. The US dollar maintains its bull trend, especially against the Yen and the Euro.

Commodities - Long. A China recovery takes them up eventually.

Precious Metals - Stand aside. We get the final capitulation selloff, then a rally.

Agriculture - Long. Up, because we can?t keep getting perfect weather forever.

Real estate - Long. Multifamily up, commercial up, single family homes sideways to up small.

1) The Economy - Fortress America

This year, it?s all about oil, whether it stays low, shoots back up, or falls lower. The global crude market is so big, so diverse, and subject to so many variables, that it is essentially unpredictable.

No one has an edge, not the major producers, consumers, or the myriad middlemen. For proof, look at how the crash hit so many ?experts? out of the blue.

This means that most economic forecasts for the coming year are on the low side, as they tend to be insular and only examine their own back yard, with most predictions still carrying a 2% handle.

I think the US will come in at the 3%-4% range, and the global recovery spawns a cross leveraged, hockey stick effect to the upside. This will be the best performance in a decade. Most company earnings forecasts are low as well.

There is one big positive that we can count on in the New Year. Corporate earnings will probably come in at $130 a share for the S&P 500, a gain of 10% over the previous year. During the last five years, we have seen the most dramatic increase in earnings in history, taking them to all-time highs.

This is set to continue. Furthermore, this growth will be front end loaded into Q1. The ?tell? was the blistering 5% growth rate we saw in Q3, 2014.

Cost cutting through layoffs is reaching an end, as there is no one left to fire. That leaves hyper accelerating technology and dramatically lower energy costs the remaining sources of margin increases, which will continue their inexorable improvements. Think of more machines and software replacing people.

You know all of those hundreds of billions raised from technology IPO?s in 2014. Most of that is getting plowed right back into new start ups, accelerating the rate of technology improvements even further, and the productivity gains that come with it.

You can count on demographics to be a major drag on this economy for the rest of the decade. Big spenders, those in the 46-50 age group, don?t return in large numbers until 2022.

But this negative will be offset by a plethora of positives, like technology, global expansion, and the lingering effects of Ben Bernanke?s massive five year quantitative easing. A time to pay the piper for all of this largess will come. But it could be a decade off.

I believe that the US has entered a period of long-term structural unemployment similar to what Germany saw in the 1990?s. Yes, we may grind down to 5%, but no lower than that. Keep close tabs on the weekly jobless claims that come out at 8:30 AM Eastern every Thursday for a good read as to whether the financial markets will head in a ?RISK ON? or ?RISK OFF? direction.

Most of the disaster scenarios predicted for the economy this year were based on the one off black swans that never amounted to anything, like the Ebola virus, ISIS, and the Ukraine.

Being continually afraid is expensive.

A Rocky Mountain Moose Family

2) Equities (SPX), (QQQ), (AAPL), (XLF), (BAC), (EEM),(EWZ), (RSX), (PIN), (FXI), (TUR), (EWY), (EWT), (IDX)

With the economy going gangbusters, and corporate earnings reaching $130 a share, those with a traditional ?buy and hold? approach to the stock market will do alright, provided they are willing to sleep through some gut churning volatility. A Costco sized bottle of Jack Daniels and some tranquillizers might help too.

Earnings multiples will increase as well, as much as 10%, from the current 17X to 18.5X, thanks to a prolonged zero interest rate regime from the Fed, a massive tax cut in the form of cheap oil, unemployment at a ten year low, and a paucity of attractive alternative investments.

This is not an outrageous expectation, given the 10-22 earnings multiple range that we have enjoyed during the last 30 years. If anything, it is amazing how low multiples are, given the strong tailwinds the economy is enjoying.

The market currently trades around fair value, and no market in history ever peaked out here. An overshoot to the upside, often a big one, is mandatory.
After all, my friend, Janet Yellen, is paying you to buy stock with cheap money, so why not?

This is how the S&P 500 will claw its way up to 2,350 by yearend, a gain of about 12.2% from here. Throw in dividends, and you should pick up 14.2% on your stock investments in 2015.

This does not represent a new view for me. It is simply a continuation of the strategy I outlined again in October, 2014 (click here for ?Why US Stocks Are Dirt Cheap?).

Technology will be the top-performing sector once again this year. They will be joined by consumer cyclicals (XLV), industrials (XLI), and financials (XLF).

The new members in the ?Stocks of the Month Club? will come from newly discounted and now high yielding stocks in the energy sector (XLE).

There is also a rare opportunity to buy solar stocks on the cheap after they have been unfairly dragged down by cheap oil like Solar City (SCTY) and the solar basket ETF (TAN). Revenues are rocketing and costs are falling.

After spending a year in the penalty box, look for small cap stocks to outperform. These are the biggest beneficiaries of cheap energy and low interest rates, and also have minimal exposure to the weak European and Asian markets.

Share prices will deliver anything but a straight-line move. We finally got our 10% correction in 2014, after a three-year hiatus. Expect a couple more in 2015. The higher prices rise, the more common these will become.

We will start with a grinding, protesting rally that takes us up to new highs, as the market climbs the proverbial wall of worry. Then we will suffer a heart stopping summer selloff, followed by another aggressive yearend rally.

Cheap money creates a huge incentive for companies to buy back their own stock. They divert money from their $3 trillion cash hoard, which earns nothing, retire shares paying dividends of 3% or more, and boost earnings per share without creating any new business. Call it financial engineering, but the market loves it.

Companies are also retiring stock through takeovers, some $2 trillion worth last year. Expect more of this to continue in the New Year, with a major focus on energy. Certainly, every hedge fund and activist investor out there is undergoing a crash course on oil fundamentals. After a 13-year bull market in energy, the industry is ripe for a cleanout.

This is happening in the face of both an individual and institutional base that is woefully underweight equities.

The net net of all of this is to create a systemic shortage of US equities. That makes possible simultaneous rising prices and earnings multiples that have taken us to investor heaven.

Frozen Headwaters of the Colorado River

3) Bonds ?(TLT), (TBT), (JNK), (PHB), (HYG), (PCY), (MUB), (HCP), (KMP), (LINE)

Amtrak needs to fill every seat in the dining car, so you never know who you will get paired with.

There was the Vietnam vet Phantom jet pilot who now refused to fly because he was treated so badly at airports. A young couple desperate to get out of Omaha could only afford seats as far as Salt Lake City, sitting up all night. I paid for their breakfast.

A retired British couple was circumnavigating the entire US in a month on a ?See America Pass.? Mennonites returning home by train because their religion forbade airplanes.

If you told me that US GDP growth was 5%, unemployment was at a ten year low at 5.8%, and energy prices had just halved, I would have pegged the ten-year Treasury bond yield at 6.0%. Yet here we are at 2.10%.

Virtually every hedge fund manager and institutional investor got bonds wrong last year, expecting rates to rise. I was among them, but that is no excuse. At least I have good company.

You might as well take your traditional economic books and throw them in the trash. Apologies to John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Paul Samuelson.

The reasons for the debacle are myriad, but global deflation is the big one. With ten year German bunds yielding a paltry 50 basis points, and Japanese bonds paying a paltry 30 basis points, US Treasuries are looking like a bargain.

To this, you can add the greater institutional bond holding requirements of Dodd-Frank, a balancing US budget deficit, a virile US dollar, the commodity price collapse, and an enormous embedded preference for investors to keep buying whatever worked yesterday.

For more depth on the perennial strength of bonds, please click here for ?Ten Reasons Why I?m Wrong on Bonds?.

Bond investors today get an unbelievable bad deal. If they hang on to the longer maturities, they will get back only 80 cents worth of purchasing power at maturity for every dollar they invest.

But institutions and individuals will grudgingly lock in these appalling returns because they believe that the potential losses in any other asset class will be worse. The problem is that driving eighty miles per hour while only looking in the rear view mirror can be hazardous to your financial health.

While much of the current political debate centers around excessive government borrowing, the markets are telling us the exact opposite. A 2%, ten-year yield is proof to me that there is a Treasury bond shortage, and that the government is not borrowing too much money, but not enough.

There is another factor supporting bonds that no one is looking at. The concentration of wealth with the 1% has a side effect of pouring money into bonds and keeping it there. Their goal is asset protection and nothing else.

These people never sell for tax reasons, so the money stays there for generations. It is not recycled into the rest of the economy, as conservative economists insist. As this class controls the bulk of investable assets, this forestalls any real bond market crash, possibly for decades.

So what will 2015 bring us? I think that the erroneous forecast of higher yields I made last year will finally occur this year, and we will start to chip away at the bond market bubble?s granite edifice. I am not looking for a free fall in price and a spike up in rates, just a move to a new higher trading range.

The high and low for ten year paper for the past nine months has been 1.86% to 3.05%. We could ratchet back up to the top end of that range, but not much higher than that. This would enable the inverse Treasury bond bear ETF (TBT) to reverse its dismal 2014 performance, taking it from $46 back up to $76.

You might have to wait for your grandchildren to start trading before we see a return of 12% Treasuries, last seen in the early eighties. I probably won?t live that long.

Reaching for yield will continue to be a popular strategy among many investors, which is typical at market tops. That focuses buying on junk bonds (JNK) and (HYG), REITS (HCP), and master limited partnerships (KMP), (LINE).

There is also emerging market sovereign debt to consider (PCY). At least there, you have the tailwinds of long term strong economies, little outstanding debt, appreciating currencies, and higher interest rates than those found at home. This asset class was hammered last year, so we are now facing a rare entry point. However, keep in mind, that if you reach too far, your fingers get chopped off.

There is a good case for sticking with munis. No matter what anyone says, taxes are going up, and when they do, this will increase tax free muni values. So if you hate paying taxes, go ahead and buy this exempt paper, but only with the expectation of holding it to maturity. Liquidity could get pretty thin along the way, and mark to markets could be shocking. Be sure to consult with a local financial advisor to max out the state, county, and city tax benefits.

A Visit to the 19^th Century

4) Foreign Currencies (FXE), (EUO), (FXC), (FXA), (YCS), (FXY), (CYB)

There are only three things you need to know about trading foreign currencies in 2015: the dollar, the dollar, and the dollar. The decade long bull market in the greenback continues.

The chip shot here is still to play the Japanese yen from the short side. Japan?s Ministry of Finance is now, far and away, the most ambitious central bank hell bent on crushing the yen to rescue its dying economy.

The problems in the Land of the Rising Sun are almost too numerous to count: the world?s highest debt to GDP ratio, a horrific demographic problem, flagging export competitiveness against neighboring China and South Korea, and the world?s lowest developed country economic growth rate.

The dramatic sell off we saw in the Japanese currency since December, 2012 is the beginning of what I believe will be a multi decade, move down. Look for ?125 to the dollar sometime in 2015, and ?150 further down the road. I have many friends in Japan looking for and overshoot to ?200. Take every 3% pullback in the greenback as a gift to sell again.

With the US having the world?s strongest major economy, its central bank is, therefore, most likely to raise interest rates first. That translates into a strong dollar, as interest rate differentials are far and away the biggest decider of the direction in currencies. So the dollar will remain strong against the Australian and Canadian dollars as well.

The Euro looks almost as bad. While European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, has talked a lot about monetary easing, he now appears on the verge of taking decisive action.

Recurring financial crisis on the continent is forcing him into a massive round of Fed style quantitative easing through the buying of bonds issued by countless European entities. The eventual goal is to push the Euro down to parity with the buck and beyond.

For a sleeper, use the next plunge in emerging markets to buy the Chinese Yuan ETF (CYB) for your back book, but don?t expect more than single digit returns. The Middle Kingdom will move heaven and earth in order to keep its appreciation modest to maintain their crucial export competitiveness.

5) Commodities (FCX), (VALE), (MOO), (DBA), (MOS), (MON), (AGU), (POT), (PHO), (FIW), (CORN), (WEAT), (SOYB), (JJG)

There isn?t a strategist out there not giving thanks for not loading up on commodities in 2014, the preeminent investment disaster of 2015. Those who did are now looking for jobs on Craig?s List.

2014 was the year that overwhelming supply met flagging demand, both in Europe and Asia. Blame China, the big swing factor in the global commodity.

The Middle Kingdom is currently changing drivers of its economy, from foreign exports to domestic consumption. This will be a multi decade process, and they have $4 trillion in reserves to finance it.

It will still demand prodigious amounts of imported commodities, especially, oil, copper, iron ore, and coal, all of which we sell. But not as much as in the past. The derivative equity plays here, Freeport McMoRan (FCX) and Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (VALE), have all taken an absolute pasting.

The food commodities were certainly the asset class to forget about in 2014, as perfect weather conditions and over planting produced record crops for the second year in a row, demolishing prices. The associated equity plays took the swan dive with them.

However, the ags are still a tremendous long term Malthusian play. The harsh reality here is that the world is making people faster than the food to feed them, the global population jumping from 7 billion to 9 billion by 2050.

Half of that increase comes in countries unable to feed themselves today, largely in the Middle East. The idea here is to use any substantial weakness, as we are seeing now, to build long positions that will double again if global warming returns in the summer, or if the Chinese get hungry.

The easy entry points here are with the corn (CORN), wheat (WEAT), and soybeans (SOYB) ETF?s. You can also play through (MOO) and (DBA), and the stocks Mosaic (MOS), Monsanto (MON), Potash (POT), and Agrium (AGU).

The grain ETF (JJG) is another handy fund. Though an unconventional commodity play, the impending shortage of water will make the energy crisis look like a cakewalk. You can participate in this most liquid of assets with the ETF?s (PHO) and (FIW).

Snow Angel on the Continental Divide

6) Energy (DIG), (RIG), (USO), (DUG), (DIG), (UNG), (USO), (OXY), (XLE), (X)

Yikes! What a disaster! Energy in 2014 suffered price drops of biblical proportions. Oil lost the $30 risk premium it has enjoyed for the last ten years. Natural gas got hammered. Coal disappeared down a black hole.

Energy prices did this in the face of an American economy that is absolutely rampaging, its largest consumer.

Our train has moved over to a siding to permit a freight train to pass, as it has priority on the Amtrak system. Three Burlington Northern engines are heaving to pull over 100 black, brand new tank cars, each carrying 30,000 gallons of oil from the fracking fields in North Dakota.

There is another tank car train right behind it. No wonder Warren Buffett tap dances to work every day, as he owns the road. US Steel (X) also does the two-step, since they provide immense amounts of steel to build these massive cars.

The US energy boom sparked by fracking will be the biggest factor altering the American economic landscape for the next two decades. It will flip us from a net energy importer to an exporter within two years, allowing a faster than expected reduction in military spending in the Middle East.

Cheaper energy will bestow new found competitiveness on US companies that will enable them to claw back millions of jobs from China in dozens of industries. This will end our structural unemployment faster than demographic realities would otherwise permit.

We have a major new factor this year in considering the price of energy. Peace in the Middle East, especially with Iran, always threatened to chop $30 off the price of Texas tea. But it was a pie-in-the-sky hope. Now there are active negotiations underway in Geneva for Iran to curtail or end its nuclear program. This could be one of the black swans of 2015, and would be hugely positive for risk assets everywhere.

Enjoy cheap oil while it lasts because it won?t last forever. American rig counts are already falling off a cliff and will eventually engineer a price recovery.

Add the energies of oil (DIG), Cheniere Energy (LNG), the energy sector ETF (XLE), Conoco Phillips (COP), and Occidental Petroleum (OXY). Skip natural gas (UNG) price plays and only go after volume plays, because the discovery of a new 100-year supply from ?fracking? and horizontal drilling in shale formations is going to overhang this subsector for a very long time.

It is a basic law of economics that cheaper prices bring greater demand and growing volumes, which have to be transported. However, major reforms are required in Washington before use of this molecule goes mainstream.

These could be your big trades of 2015, but expect to endure some pain first.

7) Precious Metals (GLD), (DGP), (SLV), (PPTL), (PALL)

The train has added extra engines at Denver, so now we may begin the long laboring climb up the Eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains.

On a steep curve, we pass along an antiquated freight train of hopper cars filled with large boulders. The porter tells me this train is welded to the tracks to create a windbreak. Once, a gust howled out of the pass so swiftly that it blew a train over on to its side.

In the snow filled canyons we sight a family of three moose, a huge herd of elk, and another group of wild mustangs. The engineer informs us that a rare bald eagle is flying along the left side of the train. It?s a good omen for the coming year. We also see countless abandoned gold mines and the broken down wooden trestles leading to them, so it is timely here to speak about precious metals.

As long as the world is clamoring for paper assets like stocks and bonds, gold is just another shiny rock. After all, who needs an insurance policy if you are going to live forever?

We have already broken $1,200 once, and a test of $1,000 seems in the cards before a turnaround ensues. There are more hedge fund redemptions and stop losses to go. The bear case has the barbarous relic plunging all the way down to $700.

But the long-term bull case is still there. Someday, we are going to have to pay the piper for the $4.5 trillion expansion in the Fed?s balance sheet over the past five years, and inflation will return. Gold is not dead; it is just resting. I believe that the monetary expansion arguments to buy gold prompted by massive quantitative easing are still valid.

If you forgot to buy gold at $35, $300, or $800, another entry point is setting up for those who, so far, have missed the gravy train. The precious metals have to work off a severely, decade old overbought condition before we make substantial new highs. Remember, this is the asset class that takes the escalator up and the elevator down, and sometimes the window.

If the institutional world devotes just 5% of their assets to a weighting in gold, and an emerging market central bank bidding war for gold reserves continues, it has to fly to at least $2,300, the inflation adjusted all-time high, or more.

This is why emerging market central banks step in as large buyers every time we probe lower prices. For me, that pegs the range for 2015 at $1,000-$1,400. ETF players can look at the 1X (GLD) or the 2X leveraged gold (DGP).

I would also be using the next bout of weakness to pick up the high beta, more volatile precious metal, silver (SLV), which I think could hit $50 once more, and eventually $100.

What will be the metals to own in 2015? Palladium (PALL) and platinum (PPLT), which have their own auto related long term fundamentals working on their behalf, would be something to consider on a dip. With US auto production at 17 million units a year and climbing, up from a 9 million low in 2009, any inventory problems will easily get sorted out.

Would You Believe This is a Blue State?

8) Real Estate (ITB)

The majestic snow covered Rocky Mountains are behind me. There is now a paucity of scenery, with the endless ocean of sagebrush and salt flats of Northern Nevada outside my window, so there is nothing else to do but write. My apologies to readers in Wells, Elko, Battle Mountain, and Winnemucca, Nevada.

It is a route long traversed by roving banks of Indians, itinerant fur traders, the Pony Express, my own immigrant forebears in wagon trains, the transcontinental railroad, the Lincoln Highway, and finally US Interstate 80.

There is no doubt that there is a long-term recovery in real estate underway. We are probably 8 years into an 18-year run at the next peak in 2024.

But the big money has been made here over the past two years, with some red hot markets, like San Francisco, soaring. If you live within commuting distance of Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), or Facebook (FB) headquarters in California, you are looking at multiple offers, bidding wars, and prices at all time highs.

From here on, I expect a slow grind up well into the 2020?s. If you live in the rest of the country, we are talking about small, single digit gains. The consequence of pernicious deflation is that home prices appreciate at a glacial pace. At least, it has stopped going down, which has been great news for the financial industry.

There are only three numbers you need to know in the housing market: there are 80 million baby boomers, 65 million Generation Xer?s who follow them, and 85 million in the generation after that, the Millennials.

The boomers have been unloading dwellings to the Gen Xer?s since prices peaked in 2007. But there are not enough of the latter, and three decades of falling real incomes mean that they only earn a fraction of what their parents made.

If they have prospered, banks won?t lend to them. Brokers used to say that their market was all about ?location, location, location?. Now it is ?financing, financing, financing?. Banks have gone back to the old standard of only lending money to people who don?t need it.

Consider the coming changes that will affect this market. The home mortgage deduction is unlikely to survive any real attempt to balance the budget. And why should renters be subsidizing homeowners anyway? Nor is the government likely to spend billions keeping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alive, which now account for 95% of home mortgages.

That means the home loan market will be privatized, leading to mortgage rates higher than today. It is already bereft of government subsidies, so loans of this size are priced at premiums. This also means that the fixed rate 30-year loan will go the way of the dodo, as banks seek to offload duration risk to consumers. This happened long ago in the rest of the developed world.

There is a happy ending to this story. By 2022 the Millennials will start to kick in as the dominant buyers in the market. Some 85 million Millennials will be chasing the homes of only 65 Gen Xer?s, causing housing shortages and rising prices.

This will happen in the context of a labor shortfall and rising standards of living. Remember too, that by then, the US will not have built any new houses in large numbers in 15 years.

The best-case scenario for residential real estate is that it gradually moves up for another decade, unless you live in Cupertino or Mountain View. We won?t see sustainable double-digit gains in home prices until America returns to the Golden Age in the 2020?s, when it goes hyperbolic.

But expect to put up your first-born child as collateral, and bring your entire extended family in as cosigners if you want to get a bank loan.

That makes a home purchase now particularly attractive for the long term, to live in, and not to speculate with. This is especially true if you lock up today?s giveaway interest rates with a 30 year fixed rate loan. At 3.3% this is less than the long-term inflation rate.

You will boast about it to your grandchildren, as my grandparents once did to me.

Crossing the Bridge to Home Sweet Home

9) Postscript

We have pulled into the station at Truckee in the midst of a howling blizzard.

My loyal staff have made the 20 mile trek from my beachfront estate at Incline Village to welcome me to California with a couple of hot breakfast burritos and a chilled bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne, which has been resting in a nearby snowbank. I am thankfully spared from taking my last meal with Amtrak.

Well, that?s all for now. We?ve just passed the Pacific mothball fleet moored in the Sacramento River Delta and we?re crossing the Benicia Bridge. The pressure increase caused by an 8,200 foot descent from Donner Pass has crushed my water bottle. The Golden Gate Bridge and the soaring spire of the Transamerica Building are just around the next bend across San Francisco Bay.

A storm has blown through, leaving the air crystal clear and the bay as flat as glass. It is time for me to unplug my Macbook Pro and iPhone 6, pick up my various adapters, and pack up.

We arrive in Emeryville 45 minutes early. With any luck, I can squeeze in a ten mile night hike up Grizzly Peak and still get home in time to watch the season opener for Downton Abbey season five. I reach the ridge just in time to catch a spectacular pastel sunset over the Pacific Ocean. The omens are there. It is going to be another good year.

I?ll shoot you a Trade Alert whenever I see a window open on any of the trades above.

Good trading in 2015!

John Thomas
The Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Omens Are Good for 2015!

Why All Shares Are Now Oil Shares

Diary, Newsletter, Research

After the market closes every night, I usually don a 60 pound backpack and climb the 2,000 foot mountain in my back yard.

To pass the time, I listen to audio books on financial and historical topics, about 200 a year (I?ve really got President Grover Cleveland nailed!). That?s if the howling packs of coyotes don?t bother me too much.

I also engage in mental calisthenics, engaging in complex mathematical calculations. How many grains of sand would you have to pile up to reach from the earth to the moon? How many matchsticks to circle the earth?

For last night?s exercise, I decided to quantify the impact of this year?s oil price crash on the global economy.

The world is currently consuming about 92 million barrels a day of Texas tea, or 33.6 billion barrels a year. In May, at the $107.50 high, that much oil cost $3.6 trillion. At today?s $53.60 low you could buy that quantity of oil for a bargain $1.8 trillion.

Buy a barrel of crude, and you get one for free!

This means that $1.8 trillion has suddenly been taken out of the pockets of oil producers, and put into the pockets of oil consumers. Over the medium term, this is fantastic news for oil consumers. But for the short term, things could get very scary.

$1.8 trillion is a lot of money. If you had that amount in hundred dollar bills, it would rise to 180 million inches, 15 million feet, or 2,840 miles, or 1.2% of the way to the moon (another mental exercise).

The global financial system cannot move this amount of money around on short notice without causing some pretty severe disruptions.

For a start, there is suddenly a lot less demand for dollars with which to buy oil. This has triggered short covering rallies in the long beleaguered Japanese Yen (FXY) and the Euro (FXE), which are just now backing off of long downtrends. The fundamentals for these currencies are still dire. But the short term trend now appears to be an upward one.

The US Federal Reserve certainly sees the oil crash as an enormously deflationary event. The use of energy is so widespread that it feeds into the cost of everything. That firmly takes the chance of any interest rate rise off the table for 2015. The Treasury bond market (TLT) has figured this out and launched on a monster rally.

Traders are also afraid that the disinflationary disease will spread, so they have been taking down the price of virtually all other hard commodities as well, like coal (KOL), iron ore (BHP), and copper (CU). For more depth on this, see yesterday?s piece on ?The End of the Commodity Super Cycle?.

The precipitous fall in energy investments everywhere will be felt principally in the 15 US states involved in energy production (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and North Dakota, etc.). So, the consumers in the other 35 states should be thrilled.

However, the plunge in energy stocks is getting so severe, that it is dragging down everything else with it. ALL shares are effectively oil shares right now. In fact, all asset classes are now moving tic for tic with the price of oil.

Throw on top of that the systemic risk presented by the ongoing collapse of the Russian economy. The Ruble has now fallen a staggering 70% in six months, and there is panic buying of everything going on in Moscow stores. The means that the dollar denominated debt owed by local firms has just risen by 70%. Any foreign banks holding this debt are now probably regretting ever watching the film, Dr. Zhivago.

Russian interest rates were just skyrocketed from 10.50% to 17%. The Russian stock market (RSX) is the world?s worst performing bourse this year. How do you spell ?depression? in the Cyrillic alphabet?

And guess what the new Russian currency is?

IPhone 6.0?s, of which Apple is now totally sold out in Alexander Putin?s domain!

Thankfully, this is more of a European than an American problem. But nobody likes systemic risks, especially going into illiquid yearend trading conditions. It?s a classic case of being careful what you wish for.

Of the $1.8 trillion today, about $430 billion is shifting between American pockets. That amounts to a hefty 2.5% of GDP.

Money spent on oil is burned. However, money spent by newly enriched consumers has a multiplier effect. Spend a dollar at Wal-Mart, and the company has to hire more workers, who then have more money to spend, and so on. So a shifting of funds of this magnitude will probably add 1% to U.S. economic growth next year.

Unfortunately, we will lose a piece of this from the obvious slowdown in housing. Deflation means that home prices will stagnate, or even fall. This is a major portion of the US economy which, for the most part, has been missing in action for most of this recovery.

Ultimately, cheap energy as far as the eye can see is a key element of my ?Golden Age? scenario for the 2020?s (click here for ?Get Ready for the Coming Golden Age? ).

But you may have to get there by riding a roller coaster first.

Oil at $53?

End of the Commodity Super Cycle

Diary, Newsletter, Research

When the Trade Alerts quit working. I stop sending them out. That?s my trading strategy right now. It?s as simple as that.

So when I received a dozen emails this morning asking if it is time to double up on Linn Energy (LINE), I shot back ?Not yet!? There is no point until oil puts in a convincing bottom, and that may be 2015 business.

Traders have been watching in complete awe the rapid decent the price of Linn Energy, which is emerging as the most despised asset of 2014, after commodity producer Russia (RSX).

But it is becoming increasingly apparent that the collapse of prices for the many commodities is part of a much larger, longer-term macro trend.

(LINN) is doing the best impersonation of a company going chapter 11 I have ever seen, without actually going through with it. Only last Thursday, it paid out a dividend, which at today?s low, works out to a mind numbing 30% yield.

I tried calling the company, but they aren?t picking up, as they are inundated with inquires from investors. Search the Internet, and you find absolutely nothing. What you do find are the following reasons not to buy Linn Energy today:

1) Falling oil revenue is causing Venezuela to go bankrupt.
2) Large layoffs have started in the US oil industry.
3) The Houston real estate industry has gone zero bid.
4) Midwestern banks are either calling in oil patch loans, or not renewing them.
5) Hedge Funds have gone catatonic, their hands tied until new investor funds come in during the New Year.
6) Every oil storage facility in the world is now filled to the brim, including many of the largest tankers.

Let me tell you how insanely cheap (LINN) has gotten. In 2009, when the financial system was imploding and the global economy was thought to be entering a prolonged Great Depression, oil dropped to $30, and (LINN) to $7.50. Today, the US economy is booming, interest rates are scraping the bottom, employment is at an eight year high, and (LINE) hit $9.70, down $70 in six months.

Go figure.

My colleague, Mad Day Trader, Jim Parker, says this could all end on Thursday, when the front month oil futures contract expires. It could.

It isn?t just the oil that is hurting. So are the rest of the precious and semi precious metals (SLV), (PPLT), (PALL), base metals (CU), (BHP), oil (USO), and food (CORN), (WEAT), (SOYB), (DBA).

Many senior hedge fund managers are now implementing strategies assuming that the commodity super cycle, which ran like a horse with the bit between its teeth for ten years, is over, done, and kaput.

Former George Soros partner, hedge fund legend Paul Tudor Jones, has been leading the intellectual charge since last year for this concept. Many major funds have joined him.

Launching at the end of 2001, when gold, silver, copper, iron ore, and other base metals, hit bottom after a 21 year bear market, it is looking like the sector reached a multi decade peak in 2011.

Commodities have long been a leading source of profits for investors of every persuasion. During the 1970?s, when president Richard Nixon took the US off of the gold standard and inflation soared into double digits, commodities were everybody?s best friend. Then, Federal Reserve governor, Paul Volker, killed them off en masse by raising the federal funds rate up to a nosebleed 18.5%.

Commodities died a long slow and painful death. I joined Morgan Stanley about that time with the mandate to build an international equities business from scratch. In those days, the most commonly traded foreign securities were gold stocks. For years, I watched long-suffering clients buy every dip until they no longer ceased to exist.

The managing director responsible for covering the copper industry was steadily moved to ever smaller offices, first near the elevators, then the men?s room, and finally out of the building completely. He retired early when the industry consolidated into just two companies, and there was no one left to cover. It was heartbreaking to watch. Warning: we could be in for a repeat.

After two decades of downsizing, rationalization, and bankruptcies, the supply of most commodities shrank to a shadow of its former self by 2000. Then, China suddenly showed up as a voracious consumer of everything. It was off to the races, and hedge fund managers were sent scurrying to look up long forgotten ticker symbols and futures contracts.

By then commodities promoters, especially the gold bugs, had become a pretty scruffy lot. They would show up at conferences with dirt under their fingernails, wearing threadbare shirts and suits that looked like they came from the Salvation Army. As prices steadily rose, the Brioni suits started making appearances, followed by Turnbull & Asser shirts and Gucci loafers.

There was a crucial aspect of the bull case for commodities that made it particularly compelling. While you can simply create more stocks and bonds by running a printing press, or these days, creating digital entries on excel spreadsheets, that is definitely not the case with commodities. To discover deposits, raise the capital, get permits and licenses, pay the bribes, build the infrastructure, and dig the mines and pits for most commodities, takes 5-15 years.

So while demand may soar, supply comes on at a snail pace. Because these markets were so illiquid, a 1% rise in demand would easily crease price hikes of 50%, 100%, and more. That is exactly what happened. Gold soared from $250 to $1,922. This is what a hedge fund manager will tell us is the perfect asymmetric trade. Silver rocketed from $2 to $50. Copper leapt from 80 cents a pound to $4.50. Everyone instantly became commodities experts. An underweight position in the sector left most managers in the dust.

Some 14 years later and now what are we seeing? Many of the gigantic projects that started showing up on drawing boards in 2001 are coming on stream. In the meantime, slowing economic growth in China means their appetite has become less than endless.

Supply and demand fell out of balance. The infinitesimal change in demand that delivered red-hot price gains in the 2000?s is now producing equally impressive price declines. And therein lies the problem. Click here for my piece on the mothballing of brand new Australian iron ore projects, ?BHP Cuts Bode Ill for the Global Economy?.

But this time it may be different. In my discussions with the senior Chinese leadership over the years, there has been one recurring theme. They would love to have America?s service economy.

I always tell them that they have a real beef with their ancient ancestors. When they migrated out of Africa 50,000 years ago, they stopped moving the people exactly where the natural resources aren?t. If they had only continued a little farther across the Bering Straights to North America, they would be drowning in resources, as we are in the US.

By upgrading their economy from a manufacturing, to a services based economy, the Chinese will substantially change the makeup of their GDP growth. Added value will come in the form of intellectual capital, which creates patents, trademarks, copyrights, and brands. The raw material is brainpower, which China already has plenty of.

There will no longer be any need to import massive amounts of commodities from abroad. If I am right, this would explain why prices for many commodities have fallen further that a Middle Kingdom economy growing at a 7.5% annual rate would suggest. This is the heart of the argument that the commodities super cycle is over.

If so, the implications for global assets prices are huge. It is great news for equities, especially for big commod
ity importing countries like the US, Japan, and Europe. This may be why we are seeing such straight line, one way moves up in global equity markets this year.

It is very bad news for commodity exporting countries, like Australia, South America, and the Middle East. This is why a large short position in the Australian dollar is a core position in Tudor-Jones? portfolio. Take a look at the chart for Aussie against the US dollar (FXA) since 2013, and it looks like it has come down with a severe case of Montezuma?s revenge.

The Aussie could hit 80 cents, and eventually 75 cents to the greenback before the crying ends. Australians better pay for their foreign vacations fast before prices go through the roof. It also explains why the route has carried on across such a broad, seemingly unconnected range of commodities.

In the end, my friend at Morgan Stanley had the last laugh.

When the commodity super cycle began, there was almost no one around still working who knew the industry as he did. He was hired by a big hedge fund and earned a $25 million performance bonus in the first year out. And he ended up with the biggest damn office in the whole company, a corner one with a spectacular view of midtown Manhattan.

He is now retired for good, working on his short game at Pebble Beach.

Good for you, John.

Not as Shiny as it Once Was

Loading Up On Linn Energy

Diary, Newsletter, Research

You can pay up to $17 a unit for (LINN) and have a good chance of making a quick, snapback profit.

All of a sudden, everyone I know in Texas, and there are quite a few of them, called to tell me to buy Linn Energy, all within the space of one hour. I summarize their diverse comments below.

We have reached a margin call induced capitulation sell off in Linn Energy this morning, when oil was trading as low as $64 a barrel at the European opening.

There were obviously also a couple of leveraged energy and commodity funds that blew up and are undergoing forced liquidation at the market.

Add to that all the individuals who bought (LINN) on margin when the yield was only 8% so they would take 16% home to the bank.

This has taken the price of the units down to an artificial, and hopefully temporary, low of $15.90. At that price, the yield was a mind blowing 17% (after all, this is California).

It was a classic ?Throwing out the baby with the bathwater? moment. (LINN) gets 54% of its $1.6 billion in revenues from natural gas, which has held up remarkably well in the energy melt down, thanks to the early arrival of the polar vortex this winter.

Only 22% of its income derives from oil related projects, and half of this is hedged in the futures market from any downside exposure in the price of oil, according to the company?s recent pronouncements. Linn has actually plunged more than oil from its recent peak.

Does a loss on 10% of its revenues justify a gut wrenching 50% drop in the units? I think not.

But then, I am being rational and analytical, and I can assure you that the energy markets are now anything but rational and analytical.

Its not like oil is going to stay this low forever. Try to buy oil for delivery in the futures market two years out, and it has already recovered to $75/barrel, and there is very little available at that price.

What happens when the price of something goes down? Demand increases, and that will be good for Linn Energy, which is inherently more of a volume play on gas and oil, not a price play.

Keep also in mind that the absurd salaries the company was paying for workers in the Midwest has also vaporized. Roustabouts can now be had for as little as $75,000 a year compared to $200,000 only six months ago. This will cut (LINN)?s costs quickly and flow straight to the bottom line.

Falling costs and rising volumes sound like a winning formula to me.

And if you have the courage to buy the units here on margin, the yield rockets to a breathtaking 34%. It therefore can?t stay this low for long.

Linn Energy, LLC is an independent oil and natural gas company based in Houston, Texas. It holds oil and gas producing assets in many parts of the United States: Mid-Continent, including properties in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma; the Hugoton Basin in Kansas; the Green River Basin in Wyoming; East Texas; California, including the Brea-Olinda Oil Field in Los Angeles and Orange Counties; the Williston/Powder River Basin, which includes a position in the Bakken Formation; Michigan/Illinois; and the Permian Basin in Texas.

At the end of 2012, the firm reported proved reserves of 4,796 bcfe (billion cubic feet equivalent) of oil and gas combined. Of this total, 24% was crude oil, 54% natural gas, and 22% natural gas liquids.

Structured as a master limited partnership for tax purposes, the firm is required to pay out most of its cash reserve to unitholders (stockholders) each quarter as distributions, thereby ducking the double taxation of corporate taxation.

However Linn retains some attributes of a limited liability corporation, including giving voting rights to its unitholders. Linn Energy also operates a subsidiary, LinnCo, a C Corporation, which is subject to different tax rules from its parent company.

All we have to do is survive the near term volatility and Linn Energy will be a winner.

An Iran Peace Deal and Your Portfolio

Diary, Newsletter, Research

With the price of oil (USO), (XLE) hitting an eye popping $64 this morning, in the wake of the failed OPEC summit in Vienna, it is clear that something long term, structural, and epochal is going on.

But what is it?

We mere mortals are blind to it, but the financial markets haven?t the slightest doubt. Blame the wisdom of crowds. There is something big going on somewhere.

So I thought it would be a good time to check in with my friend and expert on all things international, David Hale, of David Hale Global Economics.

I have been relying on David as my global macro economist for decades, and I never miss an opportunity to get his updated views.

The challenge is in writing down David?s eye popping, out of consensus ideas fast enough, because he spits them out in such a rapid-fire succession.

Since David is an independent economic advisor to many of the world?s governments, largest banks, and investment firms, I thought his views would be of riveting interest. For my last interview with David, please click here.

On November 21, David was on Capitol Hill testifying in front of congress about the implications of a peace deal with Iran. He was kind enough to pass on to me a transcript of his talk.

The Iran nuclear negotiations broke up last week, extending the deadline for the current round by another seven months, to June 2015.

What David had to say was eye opening. If successful, a deal would have momentous implications for not just the US, but the global economy as well.

All trade with Iran ceased in the wake of the overthrow of the Shah of Iran by fundamentalist religious fanatics led by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The tortuous yearlong Iran Hostage Crisis followed, and relations with the US went into a deep freeze.

US Secretary of State John Kerry certainly has his work cut out for him today. Iran and America deeply distrust each other and philosophically couldn?t be further apart. They have been fighting proxy wars against each other for three decades, both in the analogue and digital worlds.

Remember Stuxnet?

It also doesn?t engender Iranian trust that the US has decimated a half dozen Arab countries in 30 years, and has more than the means to continue on that path, if it so desires.

Now 35 years later, America and Iran oddly find themselves on the same side of the latest Middle Eastern conflict. Sunni extremist forces lead by ISIL has launched a full-scale invasion of Iraq, capturing about one third of the country, and butchering Shiite opponents along the way in true, barbaric, 14^th century fashion.

It has not gone unnoticed in Tehran that steady US air attacks against ISIL have meshed nicely with Iranian ground support to accomplish the same, although ?officially? there has been no cooperation whatsoever.

Not surprisingly, nuclear talks between the two countries, long considered a pipedream and simmering on a distant back burner have suddenly come to life.

If successful, a nuclear deal with Iran would have momentous implications, for not just the US, but the global economy as well.

First and foremost, Iran would be able to increase its oil exports by 1 million barrels a day, and then 1.5 million barrels a day over 2-3 years. The deluge could take the price of Texas tea down to $50-$60 a barrel and keep it there for a while.

Such a collapse, down 56% from the June peak, would amount to a $400 billion annual tax cut for the global economy. It would add 0.2% a year of GDP growth for every $10 price drop.

So the boost that we have seen so far amounts to an impressive 1% growth pop. That is an enormous number, increasing the world?s projected economic activity by a full third.

Major energy importers, like Europe, Japan, China, and India would benefit mightily. The US would prosper as well, as one third of its oil still comes from abroad.

It would be a disaster for high cost energy exporters, including Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Canadian tar sands.

Russia, in particular, would get it right between the eyes. Oil and gas account for a whopping 68% of Russian exports and 45% of government revenues. To defend a crashing Ruble, the central bank has embarked on a series of gut wrenching interest rate hikes.

Russia is now looking into the jaws of its own Great Recession. After seeing its economy shrink this year by -0.2%, it could nosedive by at least 5% in 2015.

When they talk about self-sufficiency, they really mean starvation. This is why I have been saying all along that the Ukrainian crisis is going nowhere, except to create buying powers for equity investors.

Venezuela is a basket case, depending on oil for 90% of its exports. Expect hyperinflation, leading to a headline grabbing default on its national debt. Political instability is to follow.

Another big plus for the world economy is the reemergence of Iran as a significant consumer. This is not a small country. It has a population of 78 million and a $369 billion GDP. Sanctions have successfully crippled the economy, shrinking its GDP by -5.8% in 2012 and another -1.9% last year.

The sanctions have not been a one-way street. They have cost the US a not inconsequential $175 billion in sales over the past 17 years. A rebound would lead to a surge of exports of consumer goods (iPhones), and oil drilling equipment to facilitate a long delayed modernization of the industry there.

A major roadblock to peace has been the Revolutionary Guard. Originally an elite group of fighters during the revolution, it has evolved into a modern day Mafia.

It controls the black market, smuggling and a host of other illegal activities, earning billions in illicit profits along the way. It has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. War with America is good business for them.

Iran is now a classic case of where the government hates us, and the people love us.

I have written extensively in the past about the global implications of peace with Iran. For my latest opus, please click the titles: Here Comes the Next Peace Dividend and Why You Should Care About the Iranian Rial Collapse.

To learn more about David Hale and the extensive list of services he offers; please visit the website of David Hale Global Economics, http://www.davidhaleweb.com.

Loading the Boat with Solar City

Diary, Newsletter, Research

In recent weeks, I couldn?t help but notice the green and white vans of Solar City (SCTY) visiting my neighbors. My trader?s radar went up, so I thought there might be an opportunity here.

What I found made an intriguing investment opportunity. As a preeminent supplier of solar energy, Solar City is a de facto indirect call option on the price of oil, not a bad bet here at $74 and change.

As a huge consumer of capital, the company is a major beneficiary of the prolonged low interest rate scenario which I envision.

A 30% tax credit on any alternative energy investment is set to expire at the end of 2016. I think this will trigger the mother of all stampedes by consumers to buy solar systems while they can still get the government to pick up one third of the tab.

Solar City has also recently completed several high tech acquisitions which will enable it to lower costs while enhancing output efficiencies.

Did I mention that anything Elon Musk Touches turns to gold?

The stock here also looks attractive. Collapsing oil prices had a leveraged effect on (SCTY) shares, dropping a heart stopping 42% in only three months. Heaven knows investors are starved for cheap stocks these days.

This week, (SCTY) poked its nose above the 50 day moving average. If it hold?s then it is off to the races. My only concern here is the volatility that the Thursday OPEC meeting in Vienna is certain to bring to energy markets.

With my second Tesla (TSLA) about to be delivered, the Model X SUV, it was time for me to review my electricity bill.

My first Tesla, a very early Model S-1 (chassis number 125), boosted my monthly power consumption from 600 kWh to 1,800 kWh per month, about what a small industrial facility might use.

Yet, my bill from PG&E increased from only $350 to $450 a month. This is because they effectively give away power for free from 12:00 AM to 7:00 AM to qualified EV users, charging me only a scant 4.7 cents per kWh.

On my suggestion, Tesla then upgraded their software so vehicles could be programmed to recharge only at these hours. That means it is costing me $4.00 for a full 80 kWh charge that can take me 255 miles, or 1.6 cents a mile. That doesn?t include the enormous savings on maintenance (there is none).

Well then! The IRS currently allows a mileage deduction of 56 cents per mile for business purposes, so that?s an opportunity to exploit right there.

Given that the average US car now gets 25 miles per gallon of gasoline (and that is being generous), that means my equivalent cost for running my S-1 works out to paying a scant 40 cents a gallon.

This compares to the $2.79 at the local service station ($2.57 at Costco), which is at a four year low, or a savings of 86%. That is a little more than I paid for gas when I first started driving a beat up VW Bug at the Santa Anita Race Track parking lot back in 1967.

That sounds like a deal to me.

However, the second Tesla is likely to boost my monthly power consumption from 1,800 kWh to 3,000. When PG&E sees bills that big, they assume someone is operating an illegal marijuana grow house and send the DEA to kick your door down at 5:00 AM on a Monday morning.

So I was on the phone to Solar City the next morning. What I heard was nothing less than amazing.

For a start, they called up a Google Earth mapping program that focused on a picture of my roof from a low earth orbit satellite (Google has invested $280 million in Solar City). Then a second program autofits their existing solar panels to my roof and spit out a mass of numbers.

This complete stranger told me things about my roof that I never knew, like it was 4,000 square feet of flat concrete tiles on 14 planes. Welcome to the 21^st century.

I nervously looked down and made sure my fly was fully zipped up.

He went on to tell me that he could fit a 15 kW DC system on my roof that would generate 106% of my power needs, generating 19,365 kWh a year. That would make me completely self sufficient in electricity, even though I will be charging two hulking Tesla 1,000 pound lithium ion batteries every day.

They will install a ?net? two-way electric meter on my house. When the sun shines, it will run backwards as I can sell power to PG&E at high prices. So many people are doing this now that the traditional afternoon price spike in electricity had virtually disappeared.

At night, when I recharge my cars, I would then buy cheap power from Solar City. No storage devices are required. The PG&E grid is effectively the storage system. That would turn me into a day trader of electricity, selling high by day and buying low by night. I love it!

How did their satellite know I was a hedge fund trader? What else does it know?

Now comes the best part. The cost of the installation and panels was $66,000. Solar City would do it for free. Yes, free, as in gratis, with no money down.

They would lease me the panels for 20 years, with an annual price increase of 6.2%. That would cut my monthly electricity bill from $450 to $200. It does this by eliminating the tier 3, 4, and 5 prices I am currently paying PG&E.

If I sell my house, I can either buy out my contract at the discounted, fully depreciated value, or pass it on to the new owners. It is well known that solar panels significantly increase the value of existing homes.

Installation can be done in a day. But it can only take place on unbreakable concrete tile roofs. Those made of clay tiles, metal, tar and gravel, wood shakes, or slate don?t work for various reasons. You need a FICO score of 680 or better to qualify. There is a 60-day waiting list to get this done.

It didn?t take me long to figure out the game here. By purchasing the panels and leasing them to me, they keep the 30% government subsidy for capital investments in alternative energy, which works out to $19,890 for my house alone. Solar City also gets to depreciate these panels on an accelerated schedule, mostly in the first five years.

This explains why Solar City has grown larger than the next 15 competitors combined. Solar City?s largest customer is the US Army, which has already installed panels on 1 million structures.

There is one cautionary note to add here. The government subsidies that help float the company expire in 2018, making the entire proposition financially less attractive. That is, unless they get renewed. Think President Hillary.

The only things that would save them are dramatically higher conventional energy costs. However, right now energy costs are heading the opposite direction, thanks to fracking and a well-publicized war for market share at OPEC.

As with everything else Elon Musk touches, an investment in Solar City has been wildly successful. Since the company went public at the end of 2012, the shares have risen by an awesome 670%. Needless to say, with no earnings, and no dividend, the $5.5 billion market cap company may appear hopelessly expensive.

Like with Elon?s other company, Tesla, you aren?t betting on the value of the business today, but where it will be in five years, when it has a far larger share of the market.

Given Musk?s track record so far, that is a bet that I am willing to take.

For a detailed training video on how to execute a vertical bull call spread, please click here at https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/ltt-executetradealerts/.

My Home from Outer Space

It?s Been a Long and Winding Road Driving From this?

To This

There?s a Profit in Here Somewhere

Why Fracking Will Make Your 2015 Performance

Diary, Newsletter, Research

Be nice to investors on the way up, because you always meet them again on the way down. This is the harsh reality of those who have placed their money in the fracking space this year.

The hottest sector in the market for the first half of the year, investors have recently fallen on hard times, with the price of oil collapsing from a $107 high in June to under $77 this morning, a haircut of some 28% in just five months.

Prices just seem to be immune to all the good news that is thrown at them, be it ISIL, the Ukraine, or Syria.

It wasn?t supposed to be like that. Using this revolutionary new technology, drillers are in the process of ramping up US domestic oil production from 6 million to 10 million barrels a day.

The implications for the American economy have been extraordinarily positive. It has created a hiring boom in the oil patch states, which has substantially reduced blue-collar unemployment. It has added several points to US GDP growth.

It has also reduced our dependence on energy imports, from a peak of 30 quadrillion Btu?s in 2005 to only 13 quadrillion Btu?s at the end of last year. We are probably shipping in under 10 quadrillion Btu?s right now, a plunge of 66% from the top in only 9 years.

The foreign exchange markets have taken note. Falling imports means sending hundreds of billions of dollars less to hostile sellers abroad. Am I the only one who has noticed that we are funding both sides of all the Middle Eastern conflicts? The upshot has been the igniting of a huge bull market in the US dollar that will continue for decades.

That has justified the withdrawal of US military forces in this volatile part of the world, creating enormous savings in defense spending, rapidly bringing the US Federal budget into balance.

The oil boom has also provided ample fodder for the stock market, with the major indexes tripling off the 2009 bottom. Energy plays, especially those revolving around fracking infrastructure, took the lead.

Readers lapped up my recommendations in the area. Cheniere Energy (LNG) soared from $6 to $85. Linn Energy (LINE) ratcheted up from $7 to $36. Occidental Petroleum moved by leaps and bounds, from $35 to $110.

Is the party now over? Are we to dump our energy holdings in the wake of the recent calamitous falls in prices?

I think not.

One of the purposes of this letter is to assist readers in separating out the wheat from the chaff on the information front, both the kind that bombards us from the media, and the more mundane variety emailed to us by brokers.

When I see the quality of this data, I want to throw up my hands and cry. Pundits speculate that the troubles stem from Saudi Arabia?s desire to put Russia, Iran, the US fracking industry, and all alternative energy projects out of business by pummeling prices.

The only problem is that these experts have never been to Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Barnett Shale, and wouldn?t know which end of a solar panel to face towards the sun. Best case, they are guessing, worst case, they are making it up to fill up airtime. And you want to invest your life savings based on what they are telling you?

I call this bullpuckey.

I have traveled in the Middle East for 46 years. I covered the neighborhood wars for The Economist magazine during the 1970?s.

When representing Morgan Stanley in the firm?s dealings with the Saudi royal family in the 1980?s, I paused to stick my finger in the crack in the Riyadh city gate left by a spear thrown by King Abdul Aziz al Saud when he captured the city in the 1920?s, creating modern Saudi Arabia.

They only mistake I made in my Texas fracking investments is that I sold out too soon in 2005, when natural gas traded at $5 and missed the spike to $17.

So let me tell you about the price of oil.

There are a few tried and true rules about this industry. It is far bigger than you realize. It has taken 150 years to build. Nothing ever happens in a hurry. Any changes here take decades and billions of dollars to implement.

Nobody has ever controlled the market, just chipped away at the margins. Oh, and occasionally the stuff blows up and kills you.

As one time Vladimir Lenin advisor and Occidental Petroleum founder, the late Dr. Armand Hammer, once told me, ?Follow the oil. Everything springs from there.?

China is the big factor that most people are missing. Media coverage has been unremittingly negative. But their energy imports have never stopped rising, whether the economy is up, down, or going nowhere, which in any case are rigged, guessed, or manufactured. The major cities still suffer brownouts in the summer, and the government has ordered offices to limit air conditioning to a sweltering 82 degrees.

Chinese oil demand doubled to 8 million barrels a day from 2000-2010, and will double again in the current decade. This assumes that Chinese standards of living reach only a fraction of our own. Lack of critical infrastructure and storage prevents it from rising faster.

Any fall in American purchases of Middle Eastern oil are immediately offset by new sales to Asia. Some 80% of Persian Gulf oil now goes to Asia, and soon it will be 100%. This is why the Middle Kingdom has suddenly started investing in aircraft carriers.

So, we are not entering a prolonged, never ending collapse in oil prices. Run that theory past senior management at Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Occidental (OXY), as I have done, and you?ll summon a great guffaw.

It will reorganize, restructure, and move into new technologies and markets, as they have already done with fracking. My theory is that they will buy the entire alternative energy industry the second it become sustainably profitable. It certainly has the cash and the management and engineering expertise to do so.

What we are really seeing is the growing up of the fracking industry, from rambunctious teenage years to a more mature young adulthood. This is its first real recession.

For years I have heard complaints of rocketing costs and endless shortages of key supplies and equipment. This setback will shake out over-leveraged marginal players and allow costs to settle back to earth.

Roustabouts who recently made a stratospheric $200,000 a year will go back to earning $70,000. This will all be great for industry profitability.

What all of this means is that we are entering a generational opportunity to get into energy investments of every description. After all, it is the only sector in the market that is now cheap which, unlike coal, has a reasonable opportunity to recover.

Oil will probably hit a low sometime next year. Where is anybody?s guess, so don?t bother asking me. It is unknowable.

When it does, I?ll be shooting out the Trade Alerts as fast as I can write them.

Where to focus? I?ll unfurl the roll call of the usual suspects. They include Occidental Petroleum (OXY), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Devon Energy (DVN), Anadarko Petroleum (APC) Cabot Oil & Gas (COG), and the ProShares 2X Ultra Oil & Gas ETF (DIG).

Fracking investments should be especially immune to the downturn, because their primary product is natural gas, which has not fallen anywhere as much as Texas tea. Oil was always just a byproduct and a bonus.

CH4 was the main show, which has rocketed by an eye popping 29% to $4.57 in the past two weeks, thanks to the return of the polar vortex this winter. We are now close to the highs for the year in natural gas.

The cost of production of domestic US oil runs everywhere from $28 a barrel for older legacy fields, to $100 for recent deep offshore. Many recent developments were brought on-stream around the $70-$80 area. So $76 a barrel is not the end of the world.

On the other hand, natural gas uniformly cost just under $2/Btu, and that number is falling. Producers are currently getting more than double that in the market.

And while on the subject of this simple molecule, don?t let ground water pollution ever both you. It does happen, but it?s an easy fix.

Of the 50 cases of pollution investigated by MIT, most were found to be the result of subcontractor incompetence, natural causes, or pollution that occurred 50 or more years ago. Properly regulated, it shouldn?t be happening at all.

When I fracked in the Barnett Shale 15 years ago, we used greywater, or runoff from irrigation, to accelerate our underground expositions. The industry has since gotten fancy, bringing in highly toxic chemicals like Guar Gum, Petroleum Distillates, Triethanolamine Zirconate, and Potassium Metaborate.

However, the marginal production gains of using these new additives are not worth the environmental risk. Scale back on the most toxic chemicals and go back to groundwater, and the environmental, as well as the political opposition melts away.

By the way, can any readers tell me if my favorite restaurant in Kuwait, the ship Al Boom, is still in business? The lamb kabob there was to die for.

Don?t Throw Out the Baby with the Bathwater

Oil Isn't What It Used to Be

Diary, Free Research, Newsletter

With the International Energy Agency cutting global consumption by 200,000 barrels a day in 2014 and 300,000 barrels a day in 2015, all eyes were on the oil market today. I had to slap myself when I saw the $81 handle for West Texas intermediate, it had gotten so cheap so fast.

Virtually every stock market analyst has been puzzled by the seeming immunity of stock markets to the good news of collapsing oil prices (USO), (DIG), (DUG) this year.

In fact, stocks and crude have been tracking almost one to one on the downside. The charts below, sent by a friend at JP Morgan, go a long way towards explaining this apparent dichotomy.

The first shows the number of barrels of oil needed to generate a unit of GDP, which has been steady declining for 30 years. The second reveals the percentage of hourly earnings required to buy a gallon of gasoline in the US, which has been mostly flat for three decades, although it has recently started to spike upwards.

The bottom line is that conservation, the roll out of more fuel-efficient vehicles and hybrids, and the growth of alternatives, are all having their desired effect.

Notice how small all the new cars on the road are these days, many of which get 40 mpg with conventional gasoline engines. As for my own household, it has gone all-electric.

Developed countries are getting six times more GDP growth per unit of oil than in the past, while emerging economies are getting a fourfold improvement.

The world is gradually weaning itself off of the oil economy. But the operative word here is ?gradually?, and it will probably take another two decades before we can bid farewell to Texas tea, at least for transportation purposes.

It took 150 years for America to build its oil infrastructure. Don?t expect it to disappear in 10 or 20 years. Those outside the oil industry are totally unaware how massive the industry is that has to move around our country?s 18.8 million barrels a day, refine it into usable products, and get it to the end individual, industrial and government consumer.

But the Mileage is Great!

Gasoline? What?s that?

How Low is Low for Oil?

Diary, Newsletter, Research

With the recent collapse in oil prices, down a whopping $20 in just four months, I am starting to get a lot of emails from followers looking for Trade Alerts to buy the energy companies.

After all, energy is one of my three core industries in which to invest over the next two decades. Why not now?

The short answer is: Not yet. Don?t ever confuse a stock that has gone down a lot with ?cheap.?

The share prices for this sector are getting so low, they are starting to redefine the meaning of ?bargain.? The major integrated oil companies are now trading under book value with single digit multiples.

They are now at liquidation values, assuming that the fall in the price of Texas tea halts at $80. Those are valuations almost as low as Apple (AAPL) saw a year ago.

The absence of my Trade Alerts in this fertile field is happing because things could get worse for oil before they get better. There is now a war for market share occurring between the world?s second and third largest producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia (the US is now number 1).

Both countries desperately depend of rising prices and export volumes to maintain domestic political stability. When that doesn?t happen, budget deficits explode, spending gets cut, revolutions occur, and governments fall.

And these aren?t countries that send former leaders to country clubs to practice their golf swings in retirement. Firing squads are more the order of the day. In fact, countries maintaining high oil revenues is a matter of personal survival for their leaders.

Until recently, I would have said that China would step in and put a floor under the market to fuel their insatiable demand for energy. But they have run out of storage, and are unable to take more.

There is just no place to put it. They have even resorted to long-term charters of ultra large tankers, like the 434,000 tonne TI Europe, purely to build reserves.

The shake out is especially bad in the offshore sector, the planet?s most expensive source of crude. A glut of new drilling rigs is about to hit the market, ordered during more prosperous times years ago, while existing ones can be snapped up for 60 cents on the dollar.

Oil suffers from the additional damnation in that it is being dragged down by the global commodity collapse. Unless an asset class is made out of paper and pays an interest rate or a dividend, it is getting dissed to an unbelievable degree.

All of this means that the price of oil could fall further before we hit bottom and bounce. Now that $90 has been decisively broken, $80 is in the cards, and possibly $70 on a spike.

If you had told me when I was fracking for natural gas in the Barnett Shale 15 years ago that this process would ultimately cause the collapse of Russia and Saudi Arabia, me and my roustabout buddies would have said you were nuts. Yet, that is precisely what seems to be happening.

If there is one thing saving Texas tea, it is that the US can?t build energy infrastructure fast enough to get burgeoning new supplies to market. After the Keystone Pipeline got stalled by regulatory roadblocks, giant 100 car oil trains sprang out of nowhere overnight.

So many railcars have been diverted to the oil trade that farmers are now having trouble getting a record grain crop to market. This is why railroads have been booming (click here for ?Railroads Are Breaking Out All Over?).

The energy research house, Raymond James, recently put out an estimate that domestic American oil production (USO) would rise to 9.1 million barrels a day by 2015. That means its share of total consumption will leap to 46% of our total 20 million barrels a day habit. These are game changing numbers.

Names like the Eagle Ford Shale, Haynesville, and the Bakken Shale, once obscure references on geological maps, are now a major force in the country?s energy picture.

Ten years ago, North Dakota was suffering from depopulation. Now, itinerate oil workers must brave -40 degree winter temperatures in their recreational vehicles pursuing their $150,000 a year jobs.

The value of this extra 3.5 million barrels/day works out to $115 billion a year at current prices (3.5 million X 365 X $90). That will drop America?s trade deficit by nearly 25% over the next three years, and almost wipe out our current account deficit.

Needless to say, this is a hugely dollar positive development, and my own Trade Alerts have profitably been reflecting that.

This 3.5 million barrels will also offset much of the growth in China?s oil demand for the next three years. Fewer oil exports to the US also vastly expand the standby production capacity of Saudi Arabia.

If you want proof of the impact this will have on the economy, look no further than the coal (KOL), which has been falling in a rising market. Power plant conversion from coal to natural gas (UNG) is accelerating at a dramatic pace. That leaves China as the remaining buyer, and their economy is slowing.

It all makes the current price of oil at $90 look a little rich. As with the last oil spike four years ago, this one is occurring in the face of a supply glut. Cushing, Oklahoma is awash in Texas tea, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve stashed away in salt domes in Texas and Louisiana is at its maximum capacity of 727 million barrels.

It was concerns about war with Syria, Iran, ISIL, and the Ukraine that took prices to $107 in the spring. My oil industry friends tell me this fear premium added $30-$40 to the price of crude. That premium is now disappearing.

It seems that every time a new group grabs an oil field in the Middle East, they ramp up production, rather than destroy it, so they can milk it for the cash. This is why 15 tankers are afloat around the world carrying Kurdish crude to sell on the black market.

Once Europe and Asia return to a solid growth track, oil will recover to $100 a barrel or more. Until then, discretion is the better part of valor, and I?ll be sitting on those Trade Alerts.

It is also why I am keeping oil companies with major onshore domestic assets, like Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Occidental Petroleum (OXY), in my long term model portfolio.

Sorry, but We?re Full

How the Ukraine Crisis Will Play Out

Newsletter, Research

I can tell you exactly how the crisis in the Ukraine is going to play out. This has major implications for the global economy, financial markets and your personal portfolio, so listen up!

The key to deciphering this puzzle is oil, far and away Russia?s largest export. At 10 million barrels a day, the country is taking in $360 billion a year in revenues from oil shipments.

You can analyze Russia all day long, and come up with bullish arguments for the country, like the emerging middle class, its huge hoard of basic commodities, and substantial wheat exports. But Texas tea (Russian tea?) overwhelms everything else in its impact on the national accounts.

The bottom line is that Russia is basically a call option on oil. This is why I never buy the Market Vectors ETF Trust (RSX). Look at the charts below for oil, and it is clear that it almost trades tick for tick with the (RSX).

If I?m bullish on oil, I go straight to the end commodity, and not the intermediary, where price earnings multiples are permanently low, corruption is rampant and the rule of law is absent.

And therein lies the problem for Vladimir Putin.

Any chink in the global growth picture flows straight into the price of oil. Slower growth brings lower oil prices and therefore smaller incomes for the Russians. And guess who the principal threat to global growth is? Vladimir Putin and his attempt to take over the Ukraine by force.

So far, crude has dropped by 10% from the May peak of $107.60. That may not sound like a lot. But this is not your father?s Russian oil industry.

Back in the old days, when my friend, Occidental Petroleum?s (OXY) Dr. Armand Hammer and Fred Koch were the only Americans running around the Caucasus, oil there was incredibly cheap. There, technology was 50 years old and labor was virtually free. Slave labor is great for profit margins. If you don?t believe me, just ask Wal-Mart (WMT) and Apple (AAPL).

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union brought many far-reaching, unintended consequences. A big one is that Russia?s dependence on international trade grew tremendously. The country was also able to modernize its oil industry with extensive American assistance.

Russian oil production exploded, as did the cost of production. In my lifetime, expenses have soared from $5 to $70 a barrel. So when oil dips by 10% on the international markets, Russian incomes plunge by 25%. The Russian oil industry has become a highly leveraged affair.

This is why such relatively minor price declines brought apparently desperate actions by the Russian authorities to prop up the economy. They have imposed a 3% emergency VAT, or sales tax. While I was in Europe, four Russian tour companies were driven into bankruptcy by the banking sanctions, stranding some 10,000 tourists on Mediterranean beaches.

Now there is a ban on food imports from Europe, stranding thousands of trucks at the Russian borders. Russia doesn?t grow much food, thanks to their horrendous winters and short growing seasons. Essentially, it?s just wheat and potatoes.

Everything else has to be imported. Some of the lost food can be made up with new imports from emerging, non sanctioning economies, but not much. In the meantime, some 350 McDonald?s franchises in Russia are trying to figure out how to make Big Macs purely from domestic supplies. Good luck to that!

The thing that really struck me speaking to Russians in Europe this summer was Putin?s unbelievably high 85% approval rating (our congress is at 14%!). They trotted out the most incredible conspiracy theories which painted them as the injured party. (The Ukraine was trying to assassinate Putin when it shot down Malaysian Air 17, and then blamed it on Russia).

It almost reminded me of home. The Russians are calling their opponents ?fascists.? This is a people who act like WWII ended last week.

Which leads me to believe that Putin?s popularity is peaking. The sanctions coupled with falling oil revenues are starting to have a severe impact on Russian standards of living. It is a matter of time before this feeds into poor election results for Putin. Nationalism is great, but who wants to live on canned food left over from the Soviet Union (yuck!).

Putin knows this. So to head off the riot, he is going to declare victory in the Ukraine fairly soon, and then take his troops home. This will enable the Ukraine to snuff out the separatists and return to an uneasy peace. We might even luck out and get a written treaty.

If that is a case, you can expect global financial markets to rocket. There would me a massive shift of capital out the risk spectrum, out of bonds and into stocks. This would give the green light for my scenario where S&P 500 adds 10% from last week?s low to end of 2014.

Maybe this is what stocks are trying to tell us by refusing to go down more that 5% this summer and the face of a host of geopolitical disasters.

As for the exact timing for all of this, just watch the price of oil. The lower it goes, the sooner we will get a favorable resolution. The charts are hinting that another $5-$10 break to the downside is imminent.

The last Cold War drove the Soviet Union broke and Putin definitely has no interest in repeating the exercise.

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Not as Shiny as it Once Was

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Oil at $53?

But the Mileage is Great!

Gasoline? What?s that?