Any trader will tell you the trend is your friend, and the overwhelming direction for the US dollar (UUP) for the last 242 years has been down.
Our first Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, found himself constantly embroiled in sex scandals. Take a ten-dollar bill out of your wallet and you’re looking at a world-class horn dog, a swordsman of the first order.
When he wasn’t fighting scandalous accusations in the press and the courts, he spent much of his six years in office orchestrating a rescue of our new currency, the US dollar.
Winning the Revolutionary War bankrupted the young United States, draining it of resources and leaving it with huge debts.
Hamilton settled many of these by giving creditors notes exchangeable for then-worthless Indian land west of the Appalachians.
As soon as the ink was dry on these promissory notes, they traded in the secondary market for as low as 25% of face value, beginning a centuries-long government tradition of stiffing its lenders, a practice that continues to this day.
My unfortunate ancestors took him up on his offer, the end result being that I am now writing this letter to you from California—and am part Cherokee, Delaware, and Sioux.
It all ended in tears for Hamilton, who, misjudging former Vice President Aaron Burr’s true intentions in a New Jersey duel, ended up with a bullet in his back that severed his spinal cord.
Since Bloomberg machines weren’t around in 1782, we have to rely on alternative valuation measures for the dollar then, like purchasing power parity, and the value of goods priced in gold.
A chart of this data shows an undeniable permanent downtrend, which greatly accelerated after 1933 when FDR banned private ownership of gold and devalued the dollar.
Today, going short the currency of the world’s largest borrower, running the greatest trade and current account deficits in history, with a diminishing long-term growth rate is a no-brainer.
But once it became every hedge fund trader’s free lunch, and positions became so lopsided against the buck, a reversal was inevitable.
We seem to be solidly in one of those periodic corrections, which began a few years ago and could continue for months, or even years more.
The euro has its own particular problems, with the cost of a generous social safety net sending EC budget deficits careening. Add to that the gargantuan cost of a burgeoning refugee crisis.
Use this strength in the greenback to scale into core long positions in the currencies of countries that are major commodity exporters, boast rising trade and current account surpluses, and possess small consuming populations.
I’m talking about the Canadian dollar (FXC), the Australian dollar (FXA), and the New Zealand dollar (BNZ), all of which will eventually hit parity with the greenback once again.
Think of these as emerging markets where they speak English, best played through the local currencies.
I’m sure that if Alexander Hamilton were alive today, he would counsel our modern Treasury Secretary to talk the dollar up but to do everything he could to undermine the buck behind the scenes, thus over time depreciating our national debt down to nothing through a stealth devaluation.
Given the Treasury’s performance so far regarding the dollar, I’d say they studied history well.
Hamilton must be smiling from the grave.
A 242 Year Chart of the US Dollar priced in Hard Goods
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/10-dollar-bill-story-2-image-3.jpg135320MHFTRhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMHFTR2024-06-13 09:02:292024-06-13 10:52:56The Two Century Dollar Short
Malls are dying. Commerce is moving online at a breakneck pace. Investing in retail is a death wish.
No less a figure than Bill Gates, Sr. told me before he died that in a decade, malls would only be inhabited by climbing walls and paintball courses, and that was a decade ago.
Except it didn’t quite work out that way. Lesser quality malls are playing out Mr. Gates’ dire forecast. But others are booming. It turns out that there are malls, and then there are malls.
Let me expand a bit on my thesis.
We are just entering a decade-long decline in interest rates, probably starting in June. Malls are highly leveraged entities that often are financed by Real Estate Investment Trusts) REITS. That makes some mall-based REITS some of the most attractive investments in the market.
Technology is moving forward at an exponential rate. As a result, product performances are improving dramatically, while costs are falling. Commodity and energy prices are also rising, they are but a tiny fraction of the cost of production.
In other words, DEFLATION IS HERE TO STAY!
The nearest hint of real inflation won’t arrive until the late 2020s, when Millennials become big spenders, driving up the cost of everything.
So, let's go back to the REIT thing. Real Estate Investment Trusts are a creation of the Internal Revenue Code, which gives preferential tax treatment for investment in malls and other income-generating properties.
There are 1,100 malls in the United States. Some 464 of these are rated as B+ or better and are concentrated in the biggest spending parts of the country (San Francisco, North New Jersey, Greenwich, CT, etc).
Trading and investing for a half-century, I have noticed that most managers are backward-looking, betting that existing trends will continue forever. As a result, their returns are mediocre at best and terrible at worst.
Truly brilliant managers make big bets on what is going to happen next. They are constantly on the lookout for trend reversals, new technologies, and epochal structural changes to our rapidly evolving modern economy.
I am one of those kinds of managers.
These are not your father’s malls. It turns out the best quality malls are booming, while second and third-tier ones are dying the slow painful death that Mr. Gates outlined.
It is all a reflection of the ongoing American concentration of wealth at the top. If you are selling to the top 1% of wealth owners in the country, business is great. If fact, if you cater even to the top 20%, things are pretty damn fine.
You can see this in the top income-producing tenants in the “class A” malls. In 2000, they comprised J.C. Penney. Sears, and Victoria’s Secret. Now Apple, L Brands, and Foot Locker are sought-after renters. Put an Apple store in a mall, and it is golden.
And what about that online thing?
After 25 years of online commerce, the business has become so cutthroat and competitive that profit margins have been beaten to death. You can bleed yourself white watching Google AdWords empty out your bank account. I know, because I’ve tried it.
Many online-only businesses are now losing money, desperately searching for that perfect algorithm that will bail them out, going head-to-head against the geniuses at Amazon.
I open my email account every morning and find hundreds of solicitations for everything from discount deals on 7 For All Mankind jeans, to the new hot day trading newsletter, to the latest male enhancement vitamins (although why they think I need the latter is beyond me).
Needless to say, it is tough to get noticed in such an environment.
It turns out that the most successful consumer products these days have a very attractive tactile and physical element to them. Look no further than Apple products, which are sleek, smooth, and have an almost sexual attraction to them.
I know Steve Jobs drove his team relentlessly to achieve exactly this effect. No surprise then that Apple is the most successful company in history and can pay astronomical rents for the most prime of prime retail spaces.
It turns out that “Clicks to Bricks” is becoming a dominant business strategy. A combination of the two is presently generating the highest returns on investment in retail today.
People start out by finding a product online and then going to the local mall to try it on, touch it, and feel it. Apple does this.
Research shows that two-thirds of Millennials prefer buying their clothes and shoes at malls. Once there, the probability of a serendipitous purchase is far greater than online, anywhere from 20% to 60% of the time.
This explains why pure online businesses by the hundreds are rushing to get a foothold in the highest-end malls.
Immediate contact with a physical customer gives retailers a big advantage, gaining them the market intelligence they need to stay ahead of the pack. In “fast fashion” retailers like H&M and Uniqlo, which turn over their inventories every two weeks, this is a really big deal.
There’s more to the story. Malls are not just shopping centers they have become entertainment destinations as well. With an ever-increasing share of the population chained to their computers all day, the demand for a full out-of-the-house shopping, dining, and entertainment family experience is rising.
Notice how Merry Go Rounds have started popping up at the best properties? Imax Theaters are spreading like wildfire. And yes, they have climbing walls too. I haven’t seen any paintball courses yet, but the guns and accessories are for sale.
And notice that theaters are now installing first-class adjustable heated seats and will serve you dinner while the movie is playing. (Warning: if you eat in the dark, you will end up wearing half of it home).
This is why all of the highest-rated malls in the country are effectively full. If you want space, there you have to wait in line. REIT managers pray for tenant bankruptcies so that can jack up rents on the next incoming client or pivot their strategy towards the newest retail niche.
Malls are also in the sweet spot in the alternative energy game. Lots of floor space means plenty of roof space. That means they can cash in on the 30% federal investment tax credit for solar roof installations. Some malls in sunny southwestern states are net power generators, effectively turning them into min local power utilities. By the way, the cost of solar has recently crashed.
Fortunately for us investors, we are spoiled for choice in the number of securities we can consider, most which can now be bought for bargain basement prices. Many have a return on investment of 9-11%, a portion of which is passed on to the end investor.
There are now 25 REITs in the S&P 500. The sector has become so important that the ratings firm is about to create a separate REIT subsector within the index.
According to NAREIT.com (click here for the link), these are some of the largest mall-related investment vehicles in the country.
Simon Growth Property (SPG) is the largest REIT in the country, with 241 million square feet in the US and Asia. It is a fully integrated real estate company that operates from five retail real estate platforms: regional malls, Premium Outlet Centers, The Mills, community/lifestyle centers, and international properties. It pays a 4.88% dividend.
Macerich Co. (MAC) is a California-based company that is the third largest REIT operator in the country. It has been growing through acquisitions for the past decade. It pays a 5.31% dividend.
Mind you, REITs are not exactly risk-free investments. To get the high returns you take on more risk. We remember how disastrously the sector did when the credit crunch hit during the 2009 financial crisis. Many went under, while others escaped by the skin of their teeth.
There are a few things that can go wrong with malls. Local economies can die, as it did in Detroit. Populations age, shifting them out of a big spending age group. And tax breaks can be here today and gone tomorrow.
These are all highly leveraged companies, so any prolonged rise in interest rates could be damaging. But as I pointed out below, there is little chance of that in the near future.
The bottom line here is that we are seeing anything but the death of the mall. It just depends on the mall.
All in all, if you are looking for income and yield, which everyone on the planet is currently pursuing, then picking up some REITs could be one of your best calls of the year.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Mall-e1461879279977.jpg303400MHFTRhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMHFTR2024-03-26 09:04:412024-03-26 12:20:27The Death of the Mall
Ignore the lessons of history, and the cost to your portfolio will be great. Especially if you are a bond trader!
Meet deflation, upfront and ugly.
If you look at a chart for data from the United States consumer prices are rising at an annual 3.2% rate. The long-term average is 3.0%.
This is above the Federal Reserve’s own 2.0% annual inflation target, with most of the recent gains coming from housing costs.
We are not just having a deflationary year or decade. We may be having a deflationary century.
If so, it will not be the first one.
The 19th century saw continuously falling prices as well. Read the financial history of the United States, and it is beset with continuous stock market crashes, economic crises, and liquidity shortages.
The union movement sprung largely from the need to put a break on falling wages created by perennial labor oversupply and sub-living wages.
Enjoy riding the New York subway? Workers paid 10 cents an hour built it 125 years ago. It couldn’t be constructed today, as other more modern cities have discovered. The cost would be wildly prohibitive. Look no further than the California Bullet Train, now expected to cost $100 billion. A second transbay tube in San Francisco will cost $29 billion.
The causes of the 19th-century price collapse were easy to discern. A technology boom sparked an industrial revolution that reduced the labor content of end products by ten to a hundredfold.
Instead of employing 100 women for a day to make 100 spools of thread, a single man operating a machine could do the job in an hour.
The dramatic productivity gains swept through the developing economies like a hurricane. The jump from steam to electric power during the last quarter of the century took manufacturing gains a quantum leap forward.
If any of this sounds familiar, it is because we are now seeing a repeat of the exact same impact of accelerating technology. Machines and software are replacing human workers faster than their ability to retrain for new professions. If you want to order a Big Mac at McDonald’s these days, you need a PhD in Computer Science from MIT. The new stores have no humans to take orders.
This is why there has been no net gain in middle-class wages for the past 40 years. That is until the pandemic hit which created labor shortages that are still working their way out. It is the cause of the structurally high U-6 “discouraged workers” employment rate, as well as the millions of millennials still living in their parent’s basements.
To the above add the huge advances now being made in healthcare, biotechnology, genetic engineering, DNA-based computing, and big data solutions to problems. Did anyone say “AI”?
If all the major diseases in the world were wiped out, a probability within 10 years, how many healthcare jobs would that destroy?
Probably tens of millions.
So the deflation that we have been suffering in recent years isn’t likely to end any time soon. In fact, it is just getting started.
Why am I interested in this issue? Of course, I always enjoy analyzing and predicting the far future, using the unfolding of the last half-century as my guide. Then I have to live long enough to see if I’m right.
I did nail the rise of eight-track tapes over six-track ones, the victory of VHS over Betamax, the ascendance of Microsoft (MSFT) operating systems over OS2, and then the conquest of Apple (AAPL) over Motorola. So, I have a pretty good track record on this front.
For bond traders especially, there are far-reaching consequences of a deflationary century. It means that there will be no bond market crash, as many are predicting, just a slow grind up in long-term bond prices instead.
Amazingly, the top in rates in this cycle only reaches the bottom of past cycles at 5.49% for ten-year Treasury bonds (TLT), (TBT).
The soonest that we could possibly see real wage rises will be when a generational demographic labor shortage kicks in during the late2020s.
I say this not as a casual observer, but as a trader who is constantly active in an entire range of debt instruments.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/john-thomas-08.jpg400400MHFTRhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMHFTR2024-03-20 09:02:142024-03-20 09:57:37Welcome to the Deflationary Century
SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbor.
COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some watered-down milk.
FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk at an inflated price.
NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sends you to a concentration camp.
BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the
milk away.
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income, but worry about your cholesterol level and blood pressure.
ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND (VENTURE) CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of
credit opened by your brother-in-law at the nontax treaty offshore bank then executes a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an anonymous intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option for one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet was provided with the release. The public then buys your bull. You are lauded as a titan of free market capitalism.
SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow has dropped dead. PETA sues you and pickets your office.
A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads because you
want three cows. And you have a fabulous time doing all this. The world is shocked.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and
produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called a Cowkimona and market
it worldwide. Then your stock crashes.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two really fine, stylish cows that cost a fortune, but you don't know where they are.
You decide to have lunch with a fine bottle of Antinori, and top it all off with a potent grappa and double espresso.
A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.
The US IRS launches a criminal investigation, and arrests every Swiss banker when they go shopping in New York.
A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation. Then your stock crashes.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them and feed them all your garbage.
A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad, but drink great beer.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Cow.jpg273276The Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngThe Mad Hedge Fund Trader2023-12-05 09:02:042023-12-05 11:51:42A Cow Based Economics Lesson
And if you lose your job to AI in five years you will be one of the lucky ones.
It’s possible that your job is already gone, they just haven’t told you yet.
The shocking conclusion I am getting from dozens of research fronts is that artificial intelligence and automation are accelerating far faster than anyone realizes.
It is all extraordinarily disruptive.
This will cause corporate profits to rocket and share prices to soar but at the price of higher nationwide political instability.
A big leap took place at the beginning of the year when suddenly it appeared that everything got a lot smarter.
My local Safeway has started using self-checkout scanners to enable customers to avoid the long lines still operated by humans.
I hate them because I can never get them to scan pineapples correctly.
Soon, Amazon (AMZN) opened a supermarket in Seattle where there is no checkout stand at all. You simply just pick up whatever products you want, and it will scan them all on the way out to the parking lot.
Once the software is perfected (it is self-learning), and the consumers are educated, 5 million checkout clerks will be joining the unemployment lines.
Uber has been testing self-driving taxis in Phoenix, AZ, with sometimes humorous results. It seems that other human-driven cars like crashing into them. There has been one fatality so far when the human safety driver was caught texting.
When they figure this out, probably in two years, 180,000 taxi drivers and 600,000 Uber and Lyft drivers will have to hit the road.
Some 3 million truck drivers will be right behind them.
Notice that I am only a couple of paragraphs into this peace and already 8,780,000 jobs are about to imminently disappear out of a total of 150 million in the US.
Two decades from now, only vintage car collectors or the very poor will be driving their cars if Tesla (TSLA) has anything to do with it.
I let my Model X drive me around most of the time. It has reaction time, night vision, and a 360-degree radar system that are far better than my 71-year-old senses.
However, all new Teslas now come equipped with the hardware to use it. They are all only one surprise overnight software upgrade away from the future.
And it's not just the low-end high school dropout jobs that are being thrown in the dustbin of history.
Automation is now rapidly moving up the value chain.
A rising share of online news is machine-generated and is targeting you based on your browsing history. You just didn’t know it.
It was a major influence in the last election.
Blackrock (BLK), the largest fund manager in the country, has announced that it is laying off dozens of stock analysts and turning to algorithms to manage its vast $8.6 trillion in assets under management.
As the April 15 tax deadline relentlessly approaches, you are probably totally unaware that an algorithm prepared your return, particularly if you use a low-end service like H & R Block (HRB) or Intuit’s (INTU) TurboTax.
Because of the simultaneous convergence of multiple technologies, half of all current jobs will likely disappear over the next 20 years.
If this sounds alarming, don’t worry.
We’ve been through all of this before.
From 1900 to 1950 farmers fell from 40% to 2% of the labor force. The food output of that 2% has tripled over the last 60 years, thanks to improved seed varieties and farming methods.
The remaining 38% didn’t starve.
They retrained for the emerging growth industries of the day, automobiles, aircraft, and radio.
But there had to be a lot of pain along the way.
More recently, some 30% of all job descriptions listed on the Department of Labor website today didn’t exist 20 years ago.
Yes, disruption happens fast.
And here’s where it gets personal.
Since I implemented an AI-driven, self-learning Mad Hedge Market Timing algorithm to assist me in my own Trade Alert service six months ago, MY PERFORMANCE HAS ROCKETED, FROM A 21% ANNUAL RATE TO 51%!
As a result, YOU have been crying all the way to the bank!
The proof is all in the numbers (see chart below).
Those trading without the tailwind of algorithms today suddenly find the world a very surprising and confusing place.
They lose money too.
The investment implications of all of this are nothing less than mind-boggling.
Wages are almost always the largest cost for any business, especially the labor-intensive ones like retailing, fast food, and restaurants.
Reduce your largest expense by 90% or more, and the drop through to the bottom line will be enormous.
Stock markets have already noticed.
Maybe this is why price-earnings multiples are trading at a multi-decade high of 19.5X.
Perhaps, the markets know something that we mere humans don’t?
It also is the largest budgetary item in any government-supplied service.
I bet that half of the country’s 7 million teaching jobs will be gone in a decade, taken over by much cheaper online programs.
Today, my kids do their homework on their iPhones, complete class projects on Google Docs, and get a report card that is updated and emailed to me daily.
They’re probably to last generation to ever go to a physical school.
(That’s life. Just as the cost of driving them to school every day becomes free, they don’t have to go anymore).
You can always adopt a “King Canute” strategy and order the tide not to rise.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/12-month-story-2-1-e1521668829556.jpg349580MHFTRhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMHFTR2023-11-14 09:02:152023-11-14 12:13:57Why You Will Lose Your Job in the Next Five Years, and What to do About it
While recently winging my way across the South Pacific a few years ago and browsing the local papers, I spotted an unusual job offer:
WANTED: Social worker, tax-free salary of $60,000 with free accommodation and transportation, no experience necessary, must be flexible and self-sufficient.
With the unemployment rate rising for recent college grads, I was amazed that they were even advertising for such a job. Usually, such plum positions get farmed out to a close relative of the hiring officials involved.
Intrigued, I read on.
To apply, you first had to fly to Auckland, New Zealand, then catch a flight to Tahiti. After that you must endure another long flight to the remote Gambler Island, then charter a boat for a 36-hour voyage.
Once there, you had to row ashore to a hidden cove on the island, as there was no dock or even a beach.
It turns out that the job of a lifetime is on remote Pitcairn Island, some 2,700 miles ENE of New Zealand, home to the modern descendants of the mutineers of the HMS Bounty.
History buffs will recall that in 1790, Fletcher Christian led a rebellion against the tyrannical Captain William Bligh, casting him adrift in a lifeboat.
He then kidnapped several Tahitian women and disappeared off the face of the earth. When he stumbled across Pitcairn, which was absent from contemporary naval charts, he burned the ship to avoid detection.
An off-course British ship didn’t find the island until some 40 years later, only to find that Christian had been killed for his involvement in a love triangle decades earlier.
The job is not without its challenges. There is only one doctor, and electric power is switched on only 10 hours a day. Supply ships visit every three months. The local language is a blend of 18th century English and Tahitian called Pitkern, for which there is no dictionary.
Previous workers have a history of going native. Oh, and 10% of the island’s 54 residents are registered sex offenders, due to its long history of incest.
The next time someone you know complains about being unable to find a job, just tell them they are not looking hard enough, and to brush up on their Pitkern.
For more on the job situation, please visit my website by clicking here.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Bounty-ship-story-2-image-1-e1526508746559.jpg242350MHFTRhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMHFTR2023-10-03 09:02:382023-10-03 12:51:08Who Says There Aren't Any Good Jobs?
I have long told my listeners at conferences, webinars, and strategy luncheons my definition of the “new inflation”: the price for whatever you have to buy is rising, as with your home, health care, and a college education.
The price of the things you need to sell, such as your labor and services, is falling.
So while official government numbers show that the overall rate of inflation is muted at multigenerational highs, the reality is that the standard of living of most Americans is being squeezed at an alarming rate by both startling price increases and real wage cuts.
I finally found someone who agrees with me.
David Stockman was president Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981-1985. I regularly jousted with David at White House press conferences, pointing out that the budgets he was proposing would not produce a balanced budget, as he claimed.
Instead, I argued that they would lead to an enormous expansion of the federal deficit. In the end, I was right, with the national debt growing 400% during the Reagan years.
To his credit, David later admitted to running two sets of books for the national accounts, one for external consumption for people like me, and a second internal one for the president with much more dire consequences.
When David finally made the second set of books public, there was hell to pay. It was a fiery departure. I knew Ronald Reagan really well, and when the cameras weren’t rolling, he could get really angry.
After a falling out with Reagan over exactly the issues I brought up, Stockman disappeared for three decades.
He is now back with a vengeance.
He is running a blog named David Stockman’s Contra Corner (click here for the link at http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com ), a site he says “where mainstream delusions and cant about the Welfare State, the Bailout State, Bubble Finance, and Beltway Banditry are ripped, refuted and rebuked.” (Good writing was never his thing).
Despite this rant, there is no place I won’t go to discover some valid arguments and useful statistics, and Stockman is no exception.
For a start, home utility prices have been skyrocketing for the past decade, nearly doubling. Over the last 12 months alone, it has jumped by 5.3%, while natural gas is up more than 10%, compared to an annual Consumer Price Index rise of only 3.3%.
But utilities have such a low 5% weighting in the Fed’s inflation calculation it barely moves the needle.
Wait, it gets better.
Gasoline costs have also been on a relentless uptrend since the nineties. Crude oil is up from a $10 low to today’s print of $95. Retail gasoline has popped from $1 a gallon to $5.50 in California, and that’s off from the year’s high at $3.50.
That works out to an annualized increase of 57%, or more than triple the official inflation rate.
The nation’s 40 million renting households have been similarly punished with price increases. They have averaged a 5.0% annual rate, nearly double the inflation rate.
The country’s 75 million homeowners are getting hit in the pocketbook as well. They have seen the cost of water, sewer, and trash collection balloon at a 4.8% annualized rate. And this has been an almost entirely straight-line move, with no pullbacks. And home insurance? It is absolutely through the roof.
David recites a dirty laundry list of Fed omissions and understatements on the inflation front, including gold, silver, and commodities prices.
All of these nickels and dimes add up to quite a lot for a family of four who is trying to scrape by on a median household income of $69,000 a year. And Heaven help you if you try to live on that in California.
The cost of a few items has declined, but not by much. They are largely composed of cheap import substitutes from Asia, including apparel, shoes, household furniture, consumer electronics, toys, and appliances.
One area the Fed data doesn’t remotely come close to measuring is the plunging cost of technology. How do you measure the savings from products that didn’t exist 20 years ago, like smart phones, iPods, iPads, and solid-state hard drives? How do you measure the cost of services that are handed out for free as Google, Facebook, and X do?
I can personally tell the cost of my own business is probably 90% cheaper to run than it would have three decades ago. I remember shelling out $5,000 for a COMPAQ PC that costs $300 today but has 1,000 times the performance.
David finishes withhis usual tirade against the Fed, accusing them of obsessing over the noise of the daily data releases and missing the long-term trend.
Anyone like myself who watched in horror how long it took our central bank to recognize the seriousness of the 2008 financial crisis pr the pandemic would agree.
This all reminds me of what a college Economics professor once told me during the late 1960’s. “Statistics are like a bikini bathing suit. What they reveal is fascinating, but what they conceal is essential.”
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Bikini-Clad-Girl.jpg410316Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2023-09-20 09:02:032023-09-20 16:22:14Tackling the Low Inflation Myth
Mr. John Thomas, you have changed my life. Before I found your service, I bounced from one terrible service to another, losing money at every step of the way. Even when I found you, I was pretty leery. I then pulled off 22 money-making trades in a row. I gained so much confidence that I really poured money into your strategies. Since I met you last year, I have made over $10 million. I bought call options on Tesla when it was at $80. I also filled all 45 trade alerts you send out selling short the (TLT). It really has been an amazing run.
Please accept the attached case of cabernet. It is a mixed case from boutique vineyards that aren’t sold to the public. These are all “know somebody” wines. If you could buy them, they would cost from $220-$500 a bottle.
If there are any charities you would like me to send a check to, just let me know. You’re really great!
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You remember the two oil shocks, don’t you? The endless lines at gas stations, soaring prices, and paying close attention to OPEC’s every murmur?
Now we are about to get the 2020’s environmentally friendly, decarbonizing economy version: the copper shock.
For copper is about to become the new oil.
The causes of the coming supply crunch for the red metal are manifold.
If you take all of the commitments to green energy made by the Paris Climate Accord, which the US just reentered, they amount to demand for copper about three times current world production.
Oops, nobody thought of that.
Copper is needed in enormous quantitates to build millions of electric cars, solar panels, batteries, windmills, and long-distance transmission lines for a power grid that is going to have to triple in size. Lift a 50-pound rotor from a Tesla wheel as I have and most of the weight is in the copper.
You basically don’t have a green movement without copper.
In addition, existing copper miners seem utterly clueless about the coming shortage of their commodities. Capital spending has been deferred for decades and maintenance delayed.
New greenfield mines are scant and far between. Copper inventories are at a ten-year low. Mines were closed for months in 2020 thanks to a shortage of workers caused by the pandemic.
Copper is the last of the old-school commodities that are still actively traded. It takes 5-10 years at a minimum to bring new mines online. By the time potential sites are surveyed, permits obtained, heavy equipment moved on-site, rail lines laid, water supplies obtained, and bribes paid, it can be a very expensive proposition.
That’s why near-term prospects are only to be found in Chile, Peru, and South Africa, not your first choices when it comes to political stability.
Copper is the single best value-for-money conductor of electricity for which there are very few replacements. Aluminum melts and corrodes. And then there is silver (SLV), right below copper of the periodic chart, which gangster Al Capone used to wire his bulletproof 1928 Cadillac so electricity could move faster. Below silver is gold (GLD), a fine conductor of electricity but is somewhat cost-prohibitive.
As a result, base metal copper prices could more than quadruple from here to $15,000 a metric tonne or more. The last time the price was that high was in 1968, when the Vietnam War was in full swing, as the military needs a lot of copper to fight wars. The economy was then booming.
You can’t have a synchronized global economic recovery without a bull market in commodities, and the mother of all recoveries is now in play according to the latest economic data. Phoenix, AZ Freeport-based McMoRan (FCX) is one of the world’s largest producers of copper and a long-time Mad Hedge customer.
The stock has been on a tear for a month. (FCX) has soared from a 25 low in October to near $39 at the recent high. I believe this move will continue for years with a final target of $100. The old high for the stock in the last cycle was $50.
Short term, the demand for copper will be driven by Chinese real estate constructions, with all the Covid lockdowns now weak.
Long term it will be driven by EV production, which will soar from 1.5 million units this year to 20 million by 2030. Each EV required 200 pounds of copper.
I’ll let you do the math.
These Tesla Copper Rotors Weigh About 50 Pounds Each
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Listen to all 28 speakers opine on the best strategies, tactics, and instruments to use in these volatile markets. It is a true smorgasbord of investment strategies. Find the best one to suit your own goals.
The product discounts offered last week are still valid. Start, stop, and pause the videos at your leisure. Best of all, access to the videos is FREE. Access them all by going to www.madhedge.com, clicking on SEPTEMBER 2022 SUMMIT REPLAYS at the upper right hand corner, and then choosing the speaker of your choice.
We look forward to working with you. The next summit is scheduled for December 6-8, 2022.
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