Global Market Comments
November 16, 2015
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(SAUDI ARABIA?S SECRET PLAN FOR GLOBAL PROSPERITY),
(USO), (UNG),
(CHINA?S VIEW OF CHINA),
(FXI), (BIDU), (BABA), (JD)
United States Oil (USO)
United States Natural Gas (UNG)
iShares China Large-Cap (FXI)
Baidu, Inc. (BIDU)
Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA)
JD.com, Inc. (JD)
Friends of mine at my former employer, the Financial Times, have met with the senior Saudi leadership in recent weeks and confirmed what I already knew.
The implications for your trading account and retirements funds are nothing less than far reaching.
The Kingdom?s long-term strategic goal is to create a global economic boom.
If they are successful, the value of all assets sensitive to the business cycle will explode in value. Those include stocks, commodities real estate, precious metals, and commodities. Only bonds, and other fixed income investments will suffer.
Saudi financial planners are betting that such a comeback is only one to two years off.
They will accomplish this by creating a world wide economic recovery that will eventually take the price of oil back up to at least $70-$80 a barrel, close to the price they need to maintain the world?s most generous social service system and balance their budget.
But to get there, they have to keep the price lower for longer.
So far, so good.
Since Saudi Arabia began its war for market share 18 months ago, $40 West Texas Intermediate is 63% off its 2014 high, and 74% down from the 2011 all time high.
At today?s prices, the global tax cut amounts to $2.24 trillion a year ($67/barrel saved X 92 million barrels/day global consumption X 365 days).
Saudi Arabia can easily add 1%-2% to global growth simply by keeping oil prices at the present level.
They can do this because they have oil reserves far beyond the understanding of all but a few industry experts.
I have traveled in the Middle East for 48 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.
The only mistake I made in my Texas fracking investments is that I sold out too soon in 2005, when natural gas traded from $2 a BTU to $5, and missed the spike to $17.
So let me tell you about the price of oil.
I?ll make it easy, and distill everything down to one single fact.
Saudi Arabia?s entire production of 11.5 million barrels a day, 14% of the world?s total, comes from 11 major fields.
THEY HAVE 70 OTHER SUCH FIELDS, which have yet to be surveyed and drilled. We know they are there because the geology is identical and the ultrasound data pans out.
So if Saudi Arabia wants to increase production to the point where every other producer in the world goes broke, THEY HAVE THE RESOURCES TO DO SO FOR ANOTHER CENTURY!
Saudi Arabia is not undergoing their current aggressive strategy without any pain. They are currently running an unprecedented 20% budget deficit (compared to America?s 12% in red ink).
For the first time, they have also emerged as massive borrowers in the international debt markets to bridge the funding gap.
But don?t expect the Saudis to change their posture one iota at the upcoming December 4 OPEC meeting in Vienna. They clearly see the present low price strategy as in their own best interest.
In my many dealings with the Saudis I have learned one thing.
They are playing the long game, the very long game. They obviously believe that global oil consumption will be greater over the next decade by keeping prices lower for longer, now.
And if every producer in the Bakken shale, the Marcellus shale, the Eagleford shale, and the Monterrey shale goes bankrupt first, that?s fine too.
It?s all about maximizing long-term market share.
Saudis have grown weary of being the free de facto put option for the world?s high cost producers, like American shale, Canadian tar sands, the Arctic, and offshore anywhere.
There has long been a belief that if oil prices fell below $100 for any period of time, the Saudis would simply throttle back their production and bump it back up.
Those days are long gone.
I have another theory about what?s going on.
If alternative energy sources maintain their current rate of expansion, oil will be rendered worthless by 2035.
For example, California has mandated that 50% of its energy will come from alternatives within 15 years. Many other states and countries will follow.
Therefore, it?s in the Kingdom?s interest to shift as much of their inventory before prices collapse to their production cost of $5/barrel.
If they can accomplish this faster than their oil producing, hostile competitors in the Middle East and Russia, so much the better.
You may say this all sounds like pie in the sky stuff.
But I happen to know that the Saudis are massive investors throughout the entire alternative energy venture capital spectrum, including solar, wind, ocean waves, geothermal, and even biodiesel (which I don?t believe in for two seconds).
They are NOT doing this because they need new energy sources for themselves.
The irony here is that if the Saudi plan is successful, it will add another 2-3 years to the Great American bull market that is now entering its sixth year.
The Saudis are also one of the biggest foreign Investors in US shares. It?s in their own self-interest to keep prices rising.
You have more in common with the Saudi royal family than you think.
How Much Did You Say You Wanted?
Global Market Comments
November 13, 2015
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(NOVEMBER 18 GLOBAL STRATEGY WEBINAR),
(WOE THE AUSTRLIAN DOLLAR!),
(FXA), (BHP), (KOL), (GLD), (USO), (BABA), (BIDU), (JD)
(AMERICA?S DEMOGRAPHIC TIME BOMB), (EEM),
(TESTIMONIAL)
CurrencyShares Australian Dollar ETF (FXA)
BHP Billiton Limited (BHP)
Market Vectors Coal ETF (KOL)
SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)
United States Oil (USO)
Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA)
Baidu, Inc. (BIDU)
JD.com, Inc. (JD)
iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (EEM)
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?
Noted Aussie Dollar Hater
Holy smokes! You really did it with the UNG trade. Up 25% in two hours? How did you do that? It was the best trade you?ve ever done. It?s the best trade I?ve ever done.
It was the right thing to do at the right time. And you had the balls to put it on after the (UNG) opened down a dollar. The follow up report was one of your best ever written as well. I will never again doubt your advice.
The next chicken fried steak at Billy Bob?s is on me. Thank?s a million.
George
Tampa, Florida
?
?Investing and investment is the one sphere of life where victory, security, and success are always to the minority and never to the majority. When you find anyone agreeing with you, change your mind,? said the famous economist, John Maynard Keynes.
Global Market Comments
November 12, 2015
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(NEW TRAINING VIDEO ON VERTICAL BEAR PUT SPREADS),
(HAPPY BIRTHDAY IRS!)
Some taxpayers have been sending birthday cards in with their tax returns this year. That?s because the International Revenue Service, the collector of America?s tax revenues, is 102 years old this year.
Although the wealthy have been paying income taxes since the 1861-65 Civil War, they did not apply to the rest of us until the passage of the 16th Amendment.
The original form 1040, of which I have included a copy below, was one page long and imposed a starting tax rate of 1% over incomes of $3,000. The maximum tax rate was 7%. It included a deduction for shipwrecks.
When WWI broke out, that rate was taken up to 77%. Only 3% of the population had tax liabilities, compared to 54% today.
Since 1913, the pages of instructions and deductions have soared from one to over 73,000. Today, some 6.6 billion man hours are spent preparing US tax returns. That works out to keeping 3.3 million people on the job full time. Talk about a growth business!
According to the Pew Research Center, 56% of Americans dislike taxes, but 71% feel they have a moral responsibility to pay what they owe. Yet, 34% say they pay more than their fair share of taxes, while 60% believe they are paying the right amount.
In 1775, the American Revolution first started as a tax revolt, with American merchants protesting the special exemptions enjoyed by British ones. That led to the Boston Tea Party whereby Americans masquerading as Indians dumped competing duty free imports overboard.
Fairness of the system has been a recurring theme ever since. That is why Mitt Romney?s 13.9% tax rate was such a big deal in the 2012 presidential election.
About 1% of taxpayers are audited each year, with the wealthiest 12 times more likely to get audited than the middle class. This brings a famous Willy Sutton quote to mind: ?Why rob banks? Because that?s where the money is.?
Where are residents least like to be audited by the IRS? The Aleutian Islands in Alaska. And the most likely? Beverly Hills, California. Small businesses top the list, with those in the real estate and construction industries dominating.
The Justice Department brings about 1,000 criminal tax evasion cases a year. Jail times have only been required since 1987 (thank you Ronald Reagan!).
That works out to one return out of every 150,000, so play audit roulette if you will. Their success rate in obtaining convictions is a mathematically impossible 98.5%. Some 70% of jurors believe the defendant is guilty before the case is even heard.
Today is probably the best time ever to cheat on your taxes. The IRS is wilting from millions of fraudulent tax returns returns filed by Internet scammers to obtain stolen refunds. I got hit by one of these myself, and it took six months for me to get my rightful refund (click here for ?The Letter From the IRS You Should Dread?).
There is also a major offensive underway to close down illicit offshore bank accounts. The agency is gaining traction on this with a reward program that offers snitches 10% of the funds recovered.
If you have one of these operated by a shell company in the British Virgin Island or Belize, you?re better off fessing up now. Remember that the Justice Department can track the movement of a dollar anywhere in the world at any time, whether a foreign country cooperates or not.
The burden to deliver the data always traces back to an American bank, when funds are transferred, even between foreign countries.
What is the most common error committed on tax returns? Divorced parents both claiming the same children as dependents. The mistake is automatically caught by electronic filing with the earliest filer getting the tax savings. So don?t bother.
Now how much did I lose on that shipwreck last year?
Equalizing the Tax System
?I?d rather have Tim Cook running my company than Carl Icahn,? said Internet journalist and biographer, Walter Isaacson.
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