Global Market Comments
August 15, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD,
or WHAT THE MARKET IS REALLY DISCOUNTING NOW),
(SPY), (TLT), (AAPL), (AXP), (KO), (XOM). (TBT), (SNOW), (NFLX), (ARKK), (ETHE),
(NLR), (CCR), CORN), (WEAT), (SOYB), (DBA), (UUP), (FXA), (FXC), (BA), (TSLA)
After a half-century in the markets, I have noticed that it is the investors with the correct long-term views who make the biggest money. My favorite example is my friend, Warren Buffet, who doesn’t care if an investment turns good in five minutes or five years.
Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB) is the largest outside investor in Apple (AAPL). And guess what his cost has been? By the time you add up the compounded dividends he has collected since he started buying the stock in 2011, it's zero. The value today? $15.5 billion.
Buffet didn’t buy Apple for its hardware, iPhone, or iTunes. He bought it for the brand, which has improved astronomically. Look at Berkshire’s portfolio and it is packed with brands, like American Express (AXP), Coca-Cola (KO), and Exxon (XOM).
When did Buffet last buy Apple? In May when it hit $130.
That’s why Warren Buffet is Warren Buffet and you are you.
While the inflation news last week has been great and it is likely to get better, I believe that investors are missing the bigger, more important long-term picture.
The fact is that markets are now discounting an earlier than expected end to the Ukraine War, much earlier.
I get constant updates on the war from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Britain’s Defense Committee, and NATO headquarters and I can tell you that the war has taken a dramatic turn in Ukraine’s favor just in the last two weeks.
Russian casualties have topped 80,000, nearly half the standing army. They have lost 2,200 of their 2,800 operational tanks. Some 120 front line aircraft have been destroyed. This week, Ukraine attacked the principal Russian air base in Crimea, leaving the smoking ruins of seven more aircraft there.
Russia is in effect fighting a modern digitized war with 50-year-old Cold War weapons and it isn’t working. Its generals have no experience fighting wars against determined opposition. Putin would do better listening to the retired generals on CNN for military advice.
America’s High HIMARS (the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) has become the Stinger missile of this war. The Lockheed Martin (LMT) factory in Camden, Arkansas that makes these missiles is running 24/7 on doubled orders.
The sanctions against Russia have been wildly successful. The Russian economy is utterly collapsing. What oil they are selling now is at half price. Aircraft are being cannibalized for parts to keep others flying. Much of the educated middle class has fled the country. Draft dodging is rampant.
What does all this mean for you and me?
The commodity price spike the war prompted has ended and most are now in steep downtrends. Gold (GLD), where the Russians were major buyers, has been flat as a pancake. This has put our inflation numbers into freefall. Interest rate fears peaked in June and are now in the rear-view mirror.
As is always the case, markets have seen these developments and correctly ascertained their consequences far before we humans did (except for maybe me). It has been no surprise that they have been tracking the Russian defeat day by day and have been on an absolute tear since June 15.
Even small techs suffering 18-month bear markets have now begun major recoveries, with companies like Snowflake (SNOW), up 50%, Netflix (NFLX), up 39%, and Cathie Wood’s Innovation Fund (ARKK) up 57%. Even crypto has returned from the grave, with Ethereum (ETHE) up an eye-popping 105%.
But don’t go gaga over stocks just yet.
The Fed ramps up quantitative tightening in September to $95 billion a month and will deliver another interest rate hike. That's why I am running a double short in the bond market (TLT), (TBT) once again.
We also have the midterms to worry about which, with recent developments, promise to be more contentious than ever. Look for another round of tiring new election fraud claims.
That’s great because these events will give us good entry points lower down for trade alerts, not the short-term top we are looking at right now.
It helps that with ten-year US Treasury yields at 2.80%, it has an effective price earning multiple of 37, while stocks growing earnings at 10% a year boast a price earnings multiple of only 16. That sets up a massive, long stock/short bond trade which Mad Hedge will be pushing well on into 2023.
And you know what?
The smart guys I know in the hedge fund community are starting to model for the next Fed interest rate CUT. Markets will love it and discount this far in advance.
If you want to get on the train with me before it leaves the station, just keep reading this newsletter.
Yes, markets are now being driven by rate cuts and peace prospects, not rate rises and war!
Your retirement fund will love it.
I just thought you’d like to know.
CPI Dives to 8.5%, down 0.6% in July. The peak is in, and stocks rallied 500. Look for another drop in August, with gasoline prices falling daily. The 800-pound gorilla in the room has exited.
The Producer Price Index Dives 0.5%, confirming last week’s weak CPI number. And many core prices are indicating that we will get another drop when the August numbers are reported in September. It was worth another 300-point rally in the Dow Average, which is getting seriously overbought.
Consumer Inflation Expectations dive to 6.2% for the coming year and only 3.2% for three years. according to a New York Fed Survey. Expectations for food costs saw the largest decline. The CPI is out on Wednesday. No doubt a media onslaught over a coming recession has a lot to do with it.
Elon Musk Sells $6.9 billion worth of Tesla (TSLA) Stock, explaining the $100 drop in the shares last week. Ostensibly, this is to pay for Twitter if he loses his court case. Musk clearing took advantage of a 60% rise in (TSLA) to head off distress sales in the future. Musk also opened the door to share buy backs in the future. Buy (TSLA) on dips.
85,000 IRS Agents are Headed Your Way, but only if the government can hire them and only if you are a billionaire or a profitable large oil company. The rest of us will be ignored by this unpublicized portion of the Biden inflation bill.
US Dollar (UUP) Takes a Hit on CPI Report, which effectively showed that the US saw deflation in July. The greenback is pulling back the 20-year highs which gave you the cheapest European vacation in your lives. The prospect of interest rates rising at a slower pace is dollar negative. Buy (FXA) and (FXC) on dips.
Boeing (BA) Delivered its First 787 Dreamliner in a year, after long-awaited regulatory approval. The monster 30% rise in the shares off the June low predicted as much. A global aircraft shortage helps. Airbus is going to have to start earnings its money again. Keep buying (BA) on dips.
Weekly Jobless Claims Pop 12,000 to 262,000, a new high for the year. It’s not at concerning levels yet but is definitely headed in the wrong direction. Maybe it’s just a summer slowdown? Maybe not.
Shipping Container Charges are Plunging Everywhere, except in the US, which currently has the world’s strongest economy. It’s a sign that global supply chain problems are easing. But the US leads the world in demurrage, or delays, with New York the worst, followed by Long Beach.
Import Prices are Plunging, thanks to a super strong dollar, taking more pressure off of inflation. They fell 1.4% in July according to the Department of Labor. Easing supply chain problems are helping. Biden has had the run of the table for months now
My Ten-Year View
When we come out the other side of pandemic and the recession, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With oil prices now rapidly declining, and technology hyper accelerating, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The America coming out the other side will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 240,000 here we come!
My August performance climbed to +2.14%. My 2022 year-to-date performance ballooned to +56.97%, a new high. The Dow Average is down -7.0% so far in 2022. It is the greatest outperformance on an index since Mad Hedge Fund Trader started 14 years ago. My trailing one-year return maintains a sky-high 74.76%.
That brings my 14-year total return to 569.53%, some 2.56 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period and a new all-time high. My average annualized return has ratcheted up to 44.96%, easily the highest in the industry.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Coronavirus cases at 93 million, up 300,000 in a week and deaths topping 1,037,000 and have only increased by 2,000 in the past week. You can find the data here.
On Monday, August 15 at 8:30 AM EDT, the New York Empire State Manufacturing Index for August is released.
On Tuesday, August 16 at 8:30 AM, the Housing Starts for July are out.
On Wednesday, August 17 at 8:30 AM, Retail Sales for July are published. At 11:00 AM the Fed Minutes from the last meeting are printed.
On Thursday, August 18 at 8:30 AM, Weekly Jobless Claims are announced. Existing Home Sales for July are announced.
On Friday, August 19 at 2:00 the Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count is out.
As for me, while we’re all waiting for the dog days of August to end, it is time to reminisce about my old friend George Schultz who passed away last year at the age of 101.
My friend was having a hard time finding someone to attend a reception who was knowledgeable about financial markets, White House intrigue, international politics, and nuclear weapons.
I asked who was coming. She said Reagan’s Treasury Secretary George Shultz. I said I’d be there wearing my darkest suit, cleanest shirt, and would be on my best behavior, to boot.
It was a rare opportunity to grill a high-level official on a range of top-secret issues that I would have killed for during my days as a journalist for The Economist magazine. I guess arms control is not exactly a hot button issue these days.
I moved in for the kill.
I have known George Shultz for decades, back when he was the CEO of the San Francisco-based heavy engineering company, Bechtel Corp in the 1970s.
I saluted him as “Captain Schultz”, his WWII Marine Corp rank, which has been our inside joke for years. Now that I am a major, I guess I outrank him.
Since the Marine Corps didn’t know what to do with a PhD in economics from MIT, they put him in charge of an anti-aircraft unit in the South Pacific, as he was already familiar with ballistics, trajectories, and apogees.
I asked him why Reagan was so obsessed with Nicaragua, and if he really believed that if we didn’t fight them there, would we be fighting them in the streets of Los Angeles as the then-president claimed.
He replied that the socialist regime had granted the Soviets bases for listening posts that would be used to monitor US West Coast military movements in exchange for free arms supplies. Closing those bases was the true motivation for the entire Nicaragua policy.
To his credit, George was the only senior official to threaten resignation when he learned of the Iran-contra scandal.
I asked his reaction when he met Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986 when he proposed total nuclear disarmament.
Shultz said he knew the breakthrough was coming because the KGB analyzed a Reagan speech in which he had made just such a proposal.
Reagan had in fact pursued this as a lifetime goal, wanting to return the world to the pre nuclear age he knew in the 1930s, although he never mentioned this in any election campaign. Reagan didn’t mention a lot of things.
As a result of the Reykjavik Treaty, the number of nuclear warheads in the world has dropped from 70,000 to under 10,000. The Soviets then sold their excess plutonium to the US, which has generated 20% of the total US electric power generation for two decades.
Shultz argued that nuclear weapons were not all they were cracked up to be. Despite the US being armed to the teeth, they did nothing to stop the invasions of Korea, Hungary, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Kuwait.
Schultz told me that the world has been far closer to an accidental Armageddon than people realize.
Twice during his term as Secretary of State, he was awoken in the middle of the night by officers at the NORAD early warning system in Colorado to be told that there were 200 nuclear missiles inbound from the Soviet Union.
He was given five minutes to recommend to the president to launch a counterstrike. Four minutes later, they called back to tell him that there were no missiles, that it was just a computer glitch projecting ghost images on a screen.
When the US bombed Belgrade in 1989, Russian president Boris Yeltsin, in a drunken rage, ordered a full-scale nuclear alert, which would have triggered an immediate American counter-response. Fortunately, his generals ignored him.
I told Schultz that I doubted Iran had the depth of engineering talent needed to run a full-scale nuclear program of any substance.
He said that aid from North Korea and past contributions from the AQ Khan network in Pakistan had helped them address this shortfall.
Ever in search of the profitable trade, I asked Schultz if there was an opportunity in nuclear plays, like the Market Vectors Uranium and Nuclear Energy ETF (NLR) and Cameco Corp. (CCR), that have been severely beaten down by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
He said there definitely was. In fact, he was personally going to lead efforts to restart the moribund US nuclear industry. The key here is to promote 5th generation technology that uses small, modular designs, and alternative low-risk fuels like thorium.
Schultz believed that the most likely nuclear war will occur between India and Pakistan. Islamic terrorists are planning another attack on Mumbai. This time, India will retaliate by invading Pakistan. The Pakistanis plan on wiping out this army by dropping an atomic bomb on their own territory, not expecting retaliation in kind.
But India will escalate and go nuclear too. Over 100 million would die from the initial exchange. But when you add in unforeseen factors, like the broader environmental effects and crop failures (CORN), (WEAT), (SOYB), (DBA), that number could rise to 1-2 billion. This could happen as early as 2023.
Schultz argued that further arms control talks with the Russians could be tough. They value these weapons more than we do because that’s all they have left.
Schultz delivered a stunner in telling me that Warren Buffet had contributed $50 million of his own money to enhance security at nuclear power plants in emerging markets.
I hadn’t heard that.
As the event ended, I returned to Secretary Shultz to grill him some more about the details of the Reykjavik conference held some 36 years ago.
He responded with incredible detail about names, numbers, and negotiating postures. I then asked him how old he was. He said he was 100.
I responded, “I want to be like you when I grow up”.
He answered that I was “a promising young man.” I took that as encouragement in the extreme.
Stay healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
We’re Getting Pretty High
While we?re all sitting on our hands waiting for Janet Yellen to make her move, or non move, it is time to reminisce.
My friend was having a hard time finding someone to attend a reception who was knowledgeable about financial markets, White House intrigue, international politics, and nuclear weapons.
I asked who was coming. She said Reagan?s Treasury Secretary George Shultz, Clinton?s Defense Secretary William Perry, and Senate Armed Services Chairman Sam Nunn.
I said I?d be there wearing my darkest suit, cleanest shirt, and would be on my best behavior, to boot.
When I arrived at San Francisco?s Mark Hopkins Hotel, I was expecting the usual mob scene. I was shocked when I saw the three senior statesmen making small talk with their wives and a handful of others.
It was a rare opportunity to grill high level officials on a range of top secret issues that I would have killed for during my days as a journalist for The Economist magazine. I guess arms control is not exactly a hot button issue these days. I moved in for the kill.
I have known George Shultz for decades, back when he was the CEO of the San Francisco based heavy engineering company, Bechtel Corp in the 1970's. I saluted him as ?Captain Schultz?, his WWII Marine Corp rank, which has been our inside joke for years.
Since the Marine Corps didn?t know what to do with a PhD in economics from MIT, they put him in charge of an anti-aircraft unit in the South Pacific, as he already was familiar with ballistics, trajectories, and apogees.
I asked him why Reagan was so obsessed with Nicaragua, and if he really believed that if we didn?t fight them there, we would be fighting them in the streets of Los Angeles.
He replied that the socialist regime had granted the Soviets bases for listening posts that would be used to monitor US West Coast military movements in exchange for free arms supplies. Closing those bases was the true motivation for the entire Nicaragua policy.
To his credit, George was the only senior official to threaten resignation when he learned of the Iran-contra scandal.
I asked his reaction when he met Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986 when he proposed total nuclear disarmament.
Shultz said he knew the breakthrough was coming because the KGB analyzed a Reagan speech in which he had made just such a proposal.
Reagan had in fact pursued this as a lifetime goal, wanting to return the world to the pre nuclear age he knew in the 1930?s, although he never mentioned this in any election campaign.
As a result of the Reykjavik Treaty, the number of nuclear warheads in the world has dropped from 70,000 to under 10,000. The Soviets then sold their excess plutonium to the US, which today generates 20% of the total US electric power generation.
Shultz argued that nuclear weapons were not all they were cracked up to be. Despite the US being armed to the teeth, they did nothing to stop the invasions of Korea, Hungary, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Kuwait.
I had not met Bob Perry since the late nineties when I bumped into his delegation at Tokyo?s Okura Hotel during defense negotiations with the Japanese. He told me that the world was far closer to an accidental Armageddon than people realized.
Twice during his term as Defense Secretary he was awoken in the middle of the night by officers at the NORAD early warning system to be told that there were 200 nuclear missiles inbound from the Soviet Union.
He was given five minutes to recommend to the president to launch a counterstrike. Four minutes later, they called back to tell him that there were no missiles, that it was just a computer glitch.
When the US bombed Belgrade in 1999, Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, in a drunken rage, ordered a full-scale nuclear alert, which would have triggered an immediate American counter response. Fortunately, his generals ignored him.
Perry said the only reason that Israel hadn?t attacked Iran yet, was because the US was making aggressive efforts to collapse the economy there with its oil embargo.
Enlisting the aid of Russia and China was key, but difficult since Iran is a major weapons buyer from these two countries.
His argument was that the economic shock that a serious crisis would bring would damage their economies more than any benefits they could hope to gain from their existing Iranian trade.
I told Perry that I doubted Iran had the depth of engineering talent needed to run a full scale nuclear program of any substance.
He said that aid from North Korea and past contributions from the AQ Khan network in Pakistan had helped them address this shortfall.
Ever in search of the profitable trade, I asked Perry if there was an opportunity in nuclear plays, like the Market Vectors Uranium and Nuclear Energy ETF (NLR) and Cameco Corp. (CCR), that have been severely beaten down by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
He said there definitely was. In fact, he personally was going to lead efforts to restart the moribund US nuclear industry. The key here is to promote 5th generation technology that uses small, modular designs, and alternative low risk fuels like thorium.
I had never met Senator Sam Nunn and had long been an antagonist, as he played a major role in ramping up the Vietnam War. Thanks to his efforts, the Air Force, at great expense, now has more C-130 Hercules transport planes that it could ever fly because they were assembled in his home state of Georgia. Still, I tried to be diplomatic.
Nunn believes that the most likely nuclear war will occur between India and Pakistan. Islamic terrorists are planning another attack on Mumbai. This time India will retaliate by invading Pakistan. The Pakistanis plan on wiping out this army by dropping an atomic bomb on their own territory, not expecting retaliation in kind.
But India will escalate and go nuclear too. Over 100 million would die from the initial exchange. But when you add in unforeseen factors, like the broader environmental effects and crop failures (CORN), (WEAT), (SOYB), (DBA), that number could rise to 1-2 billion. This could happen as early as 2016.
Nunn applauded current administration efforts to cripple the Iranian economy which has caused their currency to fall 50% in the past two years. The strategy should be continued, even if innocents are hurt.
He argued that further arms control talks with the Russians could be tough. They value these weapons more than we do, because that?s all they have left.
Nunn delivered a stunner in telling me that Warren Buffet had contributed $50 million of his own money to enhance security at nuclear power plants in emerging markets.
I hadn?t heard that.
As the event drew to a close, I returned to Secretary Shultz to grill him some more about the details of the Reykjavik conference held some 30 years ago. He responded with incredible detail about names, numbers, and negotiating postures.
I then asked him how old he was. He said he was 94. I responded ?I want to be like you when I grow up?. He answered that I was ?a promising young man?. It was the best 63th birthday gift I could have received.
Oops, Wrong Number
Southern California Edison (SCE/PF) has announced that it is permanently shuttering its controversial nuclear power plant at San Onofre, California.
The move is only the latest in a series of closures implemented by utilities around the country, and could well spell the end of this flagging industry.
This is further dismal news for holders of ETF?s in the sector, like the Market Vector Uranium + Nuclear Energy ETF (NLR) and Cameco (CCJ).
SCE?s problems started in July, 2012 when a faulty steam generator tube released a small amount of radioactive steam and the plant was immediately shut down.
An inspection revealed that 3,000 additional tubes were showing excessive wear, possibly due to a design flaw, or perhaps their exposure to 45 years of high intensity radiation.
Supplier, Westinghouse, owned by Japan?s Toshiba Group, rushed in with a replacement generator, which failed within a month. That prompted the Nuclear Regulator Commission to demand a full license reapplication, which promised to be a contentious and expensive multiyear legal slugfest.
That was all SCE needed to throw in the towel and move for permanent closure. About 1,100 workers will be laid off.
San Onofre has been a continuous target of environmentalist litigation since it was opened in 1968. You could have found a better place to build a nuclear power plant than the birthplace of the environmental movement.
After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2010, another Westinghouse plant, Senator Barbara Boxer was not too happy about it either.
It turns out there was no practical evacuation plan in the event of an emergency. Some 25 million people live within 100 miles of the facility, and there is no way you move these numbers anywhere in a hurry.
The region is totally gridlocked even in a normal rush hour. That prompted Boxer to lead a series of congressional hearings, not just about San Onofre, but the entire aging nuclear industry nationwide.
The development means that Southern California Edison will have to write off the $2.1 billion in capital investment and upgrades that it has carried out over the last 20 years. Decommissioning will cost another $2 billion.
These are the most expensive and toxic demolitions on the planet. Stored nuclear waste will remain on sight until a national solution is found. The costs will be entirely passed on to the region?s long-suffering electric power consumers.
I know the San Onofre plant well, as it is right on the border of the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton. My dad was stationed there during WWII and was followed by a long succession of descendants.
I used it as a landmark for inbound VFR flights to the base. I also practiced amphibious assaults on the beach, with traditional landing craft, light armored reconnaissance vehicles (LAR), and advanced hovercraft (LCAC). I also had to swim once. On R&R, San Onofre offered one of the best surfing beaches on the coast.
I am not holding my breath for the nuclear industry. It will be years before it can recover from the massive blow from Fukushima. And these days it has the additional problem in that (NLR) and (CCJ) are tied to the flagging price of oil and other commodities.
?You might as well tie lead weights to them.
For more depth on the topic, please see my earlier piece, ?New Nuclear Demolished by New Natural Gas?.
Not Exactly a Crowd Pleaser
A Navy Assault LCAC
My friend was having a hard time finding someone to attend a reception who was knowledgeable about financial markets, White House intrigue, international politics, and nuclear weapons.
I asked who was coming. She said Reagan?s Treasury Secretary, George Shultz, Clinton?s Defense Secretary, William Perry, and Senate Armed Services Chairman, Sam Nunn. I said I?d be there wearing my darkest suit, cleanest shirt, and would be on my best behavior, to boot.
When I arrived at San Francisco?s Mark Hopkins Hotel, I was expecting the usual mob scene. I was shocked when I saw the three senior statesmen making small talk with their wives and a handful of others.
It was a rare opportunity to grill high-level officials on a range of top secret issues that I would have killed for during my days as a journalist for The Economist magazine. I guess arms control is not exactly a hot button issue these days. I moved in for the kill.
I have known George Shultz for decades, back when he was the CEO of the San Francisco based heavy engineering company, Bechtel Corp. I saluted him as ?Captain Schultz?, his WWII Marine Corp rank, which has been our inside joke for years. Since the Marine Corps didn?t know what to do with a PhD in economics from MIT, they put him in charge of an anti-aircraft unit in the South Pacific, as he already was familiar with ballistics, trajectories, and apogees.
I asked him why Reagan was so obsessed with Nicaragua, and if he really believed that if we didn?t fight them there, we would be fighting them in the streets of Los Angeles. He replied that the socialist regime had granted the Soviets bases for listening posts that would be used to monitor US West Coast military movements in exchange for free arms supplies. Closing those bases was the true motivation for the entire Nicaragua policy. To his credit, George was the only senior official to threaten resignation when he learned of the Iran-contra scandal.
I asked his reaction when he met Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986 when he proposed total nuclear disarmament. Shultz said he knew the breakthrough was coming because the KGB analyzed a Reagan speech in which he had made just such a proposal.
Reagan had in fact pursued this as a lifetime goal, wanting to return the world to the pre nuclear age he knew in the 1930?s, although he never mentioned this in any election campaign. As a result of the Reykjavik Treaty, the number of nuclear warheads in the world has dropped from 70,000 to under 10,000. The Soviets then sold their excess plutonium to the US, which today generates 10% of the total US electric power generation.
Shultz argued that nuclear weapons were not all they were cracked up to be. Despite the US being armed to the teeth, they did nothing to stop the invasions of Korea, Hungary, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Kuwait.
I had not met Bob Perry since the late nineties when I bumped into his delegation at Tokyo?s Okura Hotel during defense negotiations with the Japanese. He told me that the world was far closer to an accidental Armageddon than people realized.
Twice during his term as Defense Secretary he was awoken in the middle of the night by officers at the NORAD early warning system to be told that there were 200 nuclear missiles inbound from the Soviet Union. He was given five minutes to recommend to the president to launch a counterstrike. Four minutes later, they called back to tell him that there were no missiles, that it was just a computer glitch.
When the US bombed Belgrade in 1999, Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, in a drunken rage, ordered a full-scale nuclear alert, which would have triggered an immediate American counter response. Fortunately, his generals ignored him.
Perry said the only reason that Israel hadn?t attacked Iran yet, was because the US was making aggressive efforts to collapse the economy there with its oil embargo. Enlisting the aid of Russia and China was key, but difficult since Iran is a major weapons buyer from these two countries. His argument was that the economic shock that a serious crisis would bring would damage their economies more than any benefits they could hope to gain from their existing Iranian trade.
I told Perry that I doubted Iran had the depth of engineering talent needed to run a nuclear program of any substance. He said that aid from North Korea and past contributions from the AQ Khan network in Pakistan had helped them address this shortfall.
Ever in search of the profitable trade, I asked Perry if there was an opportunity in the nuclear plays, like the Market Vectors Uranium and Nuclear Energy ETF (NLR) and Cameco Corp. (CCJ) that have been severely beaten down by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. He said there definitely was. In fact, he personally was going to lead efforts to restart the moribund US nuclear industry. The key here is to promote 5th generation technology that uses small, modular designs, and alternative low risk fuels like thorium.
I had never met Senator Sam Nunn and had long been an antagonist, as he played a major role in ramping up the Vietnam War. Thanks to his efforts, the Air Force, at great expense, now has more C-130 Hercules transport planes that it could ever fly because they were assembled in his home state of Georgia. Still, I tried to be diplomatic.
Nunn believes that the most likely nuclear war will occur between India and Pakistan. Islamic terrorists are planning another attack on Mumbai. This time India will retaliate by invading Pakistan. The Pakistanis plan on wiping out this army by dropping an atomic bomb on their own territory, not expecting retaliation in kind. But India will escalate and go nuclear too. Over 100 million would die from the initial exchange. But when you add in unforeseen factors, like the broader environmental effects and crop failures (CORN), (WEAT), (SOYB), (DBA), that number could rise to 1-2 billion. This could happen as early as this year.
Nunn applauded current administration efforts to cripple the Iranian economy, which has caused their currency to fall 70% in the past six months. The strategy should be continued, even if innocents are hurt. He argued that further arms control talks with the Russians could be tough. They value these weapons more than we do, because that?s all they have left. Nunn delivered a stunner in telling me that Warren Buffet had contributed $50 million of his own money to enhance security at nuclear power plants in emerging markets. I hadn?t heard that.
As the event drew to a close, I returned to Secretary Shultz to grill him some more about the details of the Reykjavik conference held some 26 years ago. He responded with incredible detail about names, numbers, and negotiating postures. I then asked him how old he was. He said he was 92. I responded ?I want to be like you when I grow up?. He answered that I was ?a promising young man.? It was the best 62nd birthday gift I could have received.
Oops, Wrong Number
Following Howard Ruff for the last 40 years has always been eye opening, if not entertaining. The irascible Mormon is the publisher of Ruff Times, one of the oldest investment letters in the business, and one of the original worshipers of hard assets.
Ruff says that any investment denominated in dollars is a mistake, which is in a long term down trend, along with all paper assets. Silver (SLV) is his first choice, which will outperform gold, and eventually top $100 from the current $22. His personal target for the barbarous relic (GLD) is $2,300, but that might prove conservative.
With the Chinese building 100 nuclear power plants over the next ten years, uranium (CCJ), (NLR) has great potential. Equities may never come back from their lost decade. Don?t buy ETF?s because they are just another form of paper, and may not actually own the gold or silver they claim. The government is laying the foundation for a massive inflation, which will begin soon.
Howard has long been considered a card-carrying member of the lunatic fringe of the investment world, sticking with hard assets throughout their 20 year bear market during the eighties and nineties, and annually predicting the demise of the federal government.
Maybe it?s a case of a broken clock being right twice a day, but in recent years I find myself agreeing with Howard more and more. Whether that means I?m now a lunatic too, only time will tell.
Southern California Edison (SCE/PF) has announced that it is permanently closing its controversial nuclear power plant at San Onofre. The move is only the latest in a series of closures implemented by utilities around the country, and could well spell the end of this flagging industry. This is further dismal news for holders of ETF?s in the sector, like the Market Vector Uranium + Nuclear Energy ETF (NLR) and Cameco (CCJ).
SCE?s problems started in July, 2012 when a faulty steam generator tube released a small amount of radioactive steam and the plant was immediately shut down. An inspection revealed that 3,000 additional tubes were showing excessive wear, possible due to a design flaw, or perhaps their exposure to 45 years of high intensity radiation.
Supplier, Westinghouse, owned by Japan?s Toshiba Group, rushed in with a replacement generator, which failed within a month. That prompted the Nuclear Regulator Commission to demand a full license reapplication, which promised to be a contentious and expensive multiyear slugfest. That was all SCE needed to throw in the towel and move for permanent closure. About 1,100 workers will be laid off.
San Onofre has been a continuous target of environmentalist litigation since it was opened in 1968. You could have found a better place to build a nuclear power plant than the birthplace of the environmental movement. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2010, another Westinghouse plant, Senator Barbara Boxer was not too happy about it either. It turns out there was no practical evacuation plan in the event of an emergency. Some 25 million people live within 100 miles of the facility, and there is no way you move these numbers anywhere in a hurry. The region is totally gridlocked even in a normal rush hour. That prompted Boxer to lead a series of congressional hearings, not just about San Onofre, but the entire aging nuclear industry nationwide.
The development means that Southern California Edison will have to write off the $2.1 billion in capital investment and upgrades that it has carried out over the last 20 years. Decommissioning will cost another $2 billion. These are the most expensive and toxic demolitions on the planet. Stored nuclear waste will remain on sight until a national solution is found. The costs will be entirely passed on to the region?s long-suffering electric power consumers.
I know the San Onofre plant well, as it is right on the border of the Marine Corps. base at Camp Pendleton. My dad was stationed there during WWII and was followed by a long succession of descendants. I used it as a landmark for inbound VFR flights to the base. I also practiced amphibious assaults on the beach, with traditional landing craft, light armored reconnaissance vehicles (LAR), and advanced hovercraft (LCAC). I also had to swim once. On R&R, San Onofre offered one of the best surfing beaches on the coast.
I am not holding my breath for the nuclear industry. For more depth on the topic, please see my earlier piece, ?New Nuclear Demolished by New Natural Gas? by clicking here.
Not Exactly a Crowd Pleaser
A Navy Assault LCAC
Four years ago, the dreams of a nuclear renaissance seemed close to coming to fruition. President Obama supported it. Congress passed a raft of new subsidies, tax breaks, liability caps, and cost overrun indemnifications, to grease the works. The goal was to bring the private sector back in a non-oil, non-carbon energy source which had seen no new construction in 34 years.
For a while, things were looking good. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was flooded by 24 new applications for plants to join America?s 104 existing ones, from utilities largely in the southeast. Then a development far more devastating than the most egregious environmentalist lawsuit stopped the movement dead in its tracks. The price of natural gas crashed (UNG).
In 2008, CH4 peaked at $14/MM btu in 2008 in the wake of the last big oil spike to $149. It then utterly collapsed to $1.90, a vaporization of 86%. It was like someone snuffed your pilot light, turned all you gas burners on, and let your house blow up. Much of the industry was decimated, and gas investors got wiped out in droves. It also became one of my favorite short plays. Although gas has since recovered to $4/MM btu, it has completely demolished the economics of new nuclear.
At current prices, analysts now peg operating costs for new gas fired power plants at four cents a kilowatt-hour, compared to ten cents for nuclear. And this turns a blind eye to other problems endemic to nuclear, like expensive waste disposal, environmental litigation, lender nervousness, consumer backlash, humongous capital costs, and a long history of spectacular cost overruns.
It?s not like gas is going away anytime soon. Over the last five years, a new 100-year supply has been discovered in the US. Another 100 years is there, but exploration companies basically quit looking. What?s the point, when you are already drowning in the stuff. It turns out that about half of the land area of the United States is sitting on an exploitable natural gas field.
The finds assure US energy independence within 3-5 years, and will change the economy beyond all recognition. The risk is that gas gets cheaper, yet again, rather than ease nuclear?s competitive predicament. Just to bring nuclear back to even, gas has to roar back to $10/btu
The utilities have read the writing on the wall and are scrambling to lose their plans behind the radiator, post haste. Duke Energy (DUK), the poster child for new nuclear, has said it is calling off plans to build six new behemoths. Dominion Resources (DRU), in Wisconsin, is closing a nuclear plant which still has 20 years remaining on its license because it is simply too expensive to run. NRG Energy (NRG) dumped plans to build two Texas plants after blowing $331 million on preliminary planning and applications.
The new malaise in nuclear has placed a giant black cloud over the sector?s beleaguered ETF?s, including Market Vector Uranium + Nuclear Energy ETF (NLR) and Cameco (CCJ). Not only did these securities get the stuffing knocked out of them in the wake of Japan?s Fukushima tsunami and nuclear disaster, they have also suffered from this year?s general antipathy towards commodities.
I always had my misgivings about the return of big nuclear, the constructions of plants based on 50-year-old designs. There are too many other intelligent ways to do this from an engineering point of view. On the short list are alternative, cooler, non-weaponizeable fuels, like thorium. Small, modular, and even portable designs that mitigate and distribute risk is another idea. We may have to wait a while until better, more competitive nuclear strategies hit the market.
In the meantime, there are too many better fish to fry. Shop elsewhere.
What?s the Market for a Half Built Nuclear Plant?
Following Howard Ruff for the last 35 years has always been eye opening, if not entertaining. The irascible Mormon is the publisher of Ruff Times, one of the oldest investment letters in the business, and one of the original worshipers of hard assets.
Ruff says that any investment denominated in dollars is a mistake, which is in a long term down trend, along with all paper assets. Silver (SLV) is his first choice, which will outperform gold, and eventually top $100 from the current $22. His personal target for the barbarous relic (GLD) is $2,300, but that might prove conservative.
With the Chinese building 100 nuclear power plants over the next ten years, uranium (CCJ), (NLR) has great potential. Equities may never come back from their lost decade. Don?t buy ETF?s because they are just another form of paper, and may not actually own the gold or silver they claim. The government is laying the foundation for a massive inflation, which will begin soon.
Howard has long been considered a card-carrying member of the lunatic fringe of the investment world, sticking with hard assets throughout their 20 year bear market during the eighties and nineties, and annually predicting the demise of the federal government. Maybe it?s a case of a broken clock being right twice a day, but in recent years I find myself agreeing with Howard more and more. Whether that means I?m now a lunatic too, only time will tell.
My friend was having a hard time finding someone to attend a reception who was knowledgeable about financial markets, White House intrigue, international politics, and nuclear weapons.
I asked who was coming. She said Reagan?s Treasury Secretary George Shultz, Clinton?s Defense Secretary William Perry, and former Senate Armed Services Chairman Sam Nunn. I said I?d be there wearing my darkest suit, cleanest shirt, and would be on my best behavior, to boot.
When I arrived at San Francisco?s Mark Hopkins Hotel, I was expecting the usual mob scene. I was shocked when I saw the three senior statesmen making small talk with their wives and a handful of others.
It was a rare opportunity to grill high-level officials on a range of top-secret issues that I would have killed for during my days as a journalist for The Economist magazine. I guess arms control is not exactly a hot button issue these days. I moved in for the kill.
I have known George Shultz for decades, back when he was the CEO of the San Francisco based heavy engineering company, Bechtel Corp. I saluted him as ?Captain Schultz?, his WWII Marine Corp rank, which has been our inside joke for years. Since the Marine Corps didn?t know what to do with a PhD in economics from MIT, they put him in charge of an anti-aircraft unit in the South Pacific, as he already was familiar with ballistics, trajectories, and apogees.
I asked him why Reagan was so obsessed with Nicaragua, and if he really believed that if we didn?t fight them there, we would be fighting them in the streets of Los Angeles. He replied that the socialist regime had granted the Soviets bases for listening posts that would be used to monitor US West Coast military movements in exchange for free arms supplies. Closing those bases was the true motivation for the entire Nicaragua policy. To his credit, George was the only senior official to threaten resignation when he learned of the Iran-contra scandal.
I asked his reaction when he met Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986 when he proposed total nuclear disarmament. Shultz said he knew the breakthrough was coming because the KGB analyzed a Reagan speech in which he had made just such a proposal.
Reagan had in fact pursued this as a lifetime goal, wanting to return the world to the pre nuclear age he knew in the 1930?s, although he never mentioned this in any election campaign. As a result of the Reykjavik Treaty, the number of nuclear warheads in the world has dropped from 70,000 to under 10,000. The Soviets then sold their excess plutonium to the US, which today generates 10% of the total US electric power generation.
Shultz argued that nuclear weapons were not all they were cracked up to be. Despite the US being armed to the teeth, they did nothing to stop the invasions of Korea, Hungary, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Kuwait.
I had not met Bob Perry since the late nineties when I bumped into his delegation at Tokyo?s Okura Hotel during defense negotiations with the Japanese. He told me that the world was far closer to an accidental Armageddon than people realized.
Twice during his term as Defense Secretary he was awoken in the middle of the night by officers at the NORAD early warning system to be told that there were 200 nuclear missiles inbound from the Soviet Union. He was given five minutes to recommend to the president to launch a counterstrike. A minute latter, they upgraded the count to 2,000 missiles. Four minutes later, they called back to tell him that there were no missiles, that it was just a computer glitch.
When the US bombed Belgrade in 1999, Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, in a drunken rage, ordered a full-scale nuclear alert, which would have triggered an immediate American counter response. Fortunately, his generals ignored him.
Perry said the only reason that Israel hadn?t attacked Iran yet, was because the US was making aggressive efforts to collapse the economy there with its oil embargo. Enlisting the aid of Russia and China was key, but difficult since Iran is a major weapons buyer from these two countries. His argument was that the economic shock that a serious crisis would bring would damage their economies more than any benefits they could hope to gain from their existing Iranian trade.
I told Perry that I doubted Iran had the depth of engineering talent needed to run a nuclear program of any substance. He said that aid from North Korea and past contributions from the AQ Khan network in Pakistan had helped them address this shortfall.
Ever in search of the profitable trade, I asked Perry if there was an opportunity in nuclear plays, like the Market Vectors Uranium and Nuclear Energy ETF (NLR) and Cameco Corp. (CCR), which have been severely beaten down by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. He said there definitely was. In fact, he personally was going to lead efforts to restart the moribund US nuclear industry. The key here is to promote 5th generation technology that uses small, modular designs, and alternative low risk fuels like thorium.
I had never met Senator Sam Nunn and had long been an antagonist, as he played a major role in ramping up the Vietnam War. Thanks to his efforts, the Air Force, at great expense, now has more C-130 Hercules transport planes that it could ever fly because they were assembled in his home state of Georgia. Still, I tried to be diplomatic.
Nunn believes that the most likely nuclear war will occur between India and Pakistan. Islamic terrorists are planning another attack on Mumbai. This time India will retaliate by invading Pakistan. The Pakistanis plan on wiping out this army by dropping an atomic bomb on their own territory, not expecting retaliation in kind. But India will escalate and go nuclear too. Over 100 million would die from the initial exchange. But when you add in unforeseen factors, like the broader environmental effects and crop failures (CORN), (WEAT), (SOYB), (DBA), that number could rise to 1-2 billion. This could happen as early as 2013.
Nunn applauded current administration efforts to cripple the Iranian economy, which has caused their currency to fall 70% in the past six months. The strategy should be continued, even if innocents are hurt. He argued that further arms control talks with the Russians could be tough. They value these weapons more than we do, because that?s all they have left. Nunn delivered a stunner in telling me that Warren Buffet had contributed $50 million of his own money to enhance security at nuclear power plants in emerging markets. I hadn?t heard that.
As the event drew to a close, I returned to Secretary Shultz to grill him some more about the details of the Reykjavik conference held some 26 years ago. He responded with incredible detail about names, numbers, and negotiating postures. I then asked him how old he was. He said he was 92. I responded ?I want to be like you when I grow up?. He answered that I was ?a promising young man.? It was the best 61st birthday gift I could have received.
