Agile trading needed for more market shaking events!

Friday, 25 March 2022 — Albert Park

[7 min read]

Dear Reader,

So far, 2022 has been nothing short of both breathtaking and shocking. You are seeing the world experience what would typically happen in a matter of decades.

Monumental events are happening in a blur.

Let’s go through the list…

The world is watching inflation spiral out of control. The markets could be up for a hard landing as central banks around the world indicate they would raise rates, and it won’t be in small bites either.

Oil has moved almost 50% since the start of the year, off the back of supply chain shortages AND armed conflict between two nations (Russia and Ukraine).

Russia is looking to topple the petrodollar system by demanding hostile nations pay for oil with Russian rubles instead of US dollars.

The Biden administration is getting hit hard as the media’s attempted cover-up of the Clinton-Russian collusion scandal and the Hunter Biden laptop scandal unravel.

This leaves the administration vulnerable to accusations that it is an illegitimate government, which is still something that many consider as ‘debunked’ and a ‘conspiracy theory’. But with the latest scandals, it seems like the tables are turning against them.

It seems that the things that made Western civilisation the trailblazer and shining light on the hill for humanity — democratically-elected governments, open and free markets, and a press that is meant to keep the authorities accountable — are falling apart.

Not only is it falling apart, but it is now stripped bare and laid out in its shame for the world to see.

Turn hidden traps into your opportunities in the market

Depending on where you source your news from and how you interpret it to help you make decisions, this can mean the difference between being a winner and a victim.

Follow the fake news and misleading information, and you could get hurt badly. Nowadays, can you trust institutions that may release information designed to benefit themselves at the expense of others? They may not be lying (though sometimes they do, as you’ve seen in recent times), but they selectively release what could lead their readers to respond in a particular way.

It’s important that you exercise much discernment.

Here’s an example…

The Federal Reserve said last June that inflation was going to be transitory. It would go away by the end of the year. It then moved the goalposts and said inflation will remain around for longer.

Their changing narrative helped put a lid on any rally by gold, which is the nemesis of the US dollar. It also meant that markets continued its relentless rally, setting up for a bubble to pop. When the bubble pops, the financial institutions get the government bailouts and you are left holding the bag.

All part of ‘The Great Reset’ — you will own nothing and be happy.

If you knew the Federal Reserve’s track record on predicting the future, you wouldn’t have let them take you on a ride.

Here are some gems:

‘U.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. But these increases, reflect strong economic fundamentals, such as strong growth in jobs, incomes and the number of new households.’

Ben Bernanke, 2005 (at his confirmation hearing to join the Federal Reserve)

‘Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? You know probably that would be going too far but I do think we’re much safer and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes and I don't believe it will be.’

Janet Yellen, June 2017 (eight months before the first major market decline in 2018, followed by another at the end of the year)

If you believed in these experts, you would have suffered some painful losses.

It would be better to take a different position to the crowd who trust these experts.

This is what a contrarian would do.

You could be wrong for some time for doing that. After all, the majority of the population line up for the fleecing. And it takes a while before the panic sets in.

How do you increase your chances of success as a contrarian investor? It is a game where the odds are stacked against you.

Timing is of the essence

Most who know me would know that I’m not great at timing the market. I adopt the style of Seth Klarman, author of The Margin of Safety, preferring to buy undervalued assets and camp out waiting for the speculators and investors to jump in and drive prices up.

However, there is someone who is good at anticipating market trends before they happen and takes his positions in a timely manner.

You may know him already. He is my friend and colleague Callum Newman, Editor of Catalyst Trader and Cycles, Trends & Forecasts.

He was trading iron ore stocks last year even as they behaved like a roller coaster, notching up some handsome wins for his subscribers.

But did you know one of his biggest winners was tipping platinum group explorer Chalice Mining [ASX:CHN] when it was still a penny stock back in 2018? He managed to help his subscribers net a four-digit percentage gain.

My wife alerted me to this company a few years ago, but it didn’t align with my style, so I let it slip.

Well, Callum is not one to let these opportunities go.

He’s on top of the latest market trends and is an agile trader, an admirable skill in times of uncertainty and sudden changes as we experience nowadays.

Perhaps you may want to give your portfolio a boost and also notch up some wins buying investments before they become hot stocks.

Check out his work here.

You will hear from me again on Monday...stay tuned.

God bless,

Brian Chu,
Editor, The Daily Reckoning Australia

Dear Reader,

Oh Chelsea!

What a gal. If only we could be her. We’d have it all. Youth. Fame. Fortune. And respectability.

Whether she is sitting in her US$10 million ‘luxury fortress’ apartment in New York…which, we are assured, is ‘environmentally friendly’…or out on the road hustling votes for her mum…she has all the correct thoughts…all the time.

Have you wondered, dear reader, how come almost all US administrations — Republican or Democrat — continue more or less the same policies?

And why do ‘Western’ governments react to crises almost exactly the same way?

When the US confected the ‘War on Terror’, almost all ‘Western’ nations joined in. Remember when, in 2003, practically all the ‘West’ nodded its head as Colin Powell peddled the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ lie to the UN…and most signed up for an invasion of Iraq?

When the mortgage finance crisis sent shock waves through the financial markets, almost all the ‘alliance’ members met the challenge with nearly identical policies — cutting rates and pumping in more credit.

Then, when COVID struck…again, the ‘Western’ nations rolled out the same solutions with few exceptions. Within weeks of the first reports, it was obvious that only a few people were really threatened. They proclaimed lockdowns, mask mandates…and later, vaccines for everyone.

As for controlling the virus, we see now that even the most severe and crippling controls only delayed the inevitable. The ‘zero COVID’ countries eventually had to open. And then…the virus did what viruses do. New Zealand — one of the most successful at staving off COVID-19 — is seeing a spectacular spike in cases, with a higher percentage of cases among the vaccinated than among the un-vaxxed.

Honest mistakes? Maybe.

Elite pedigree

But all the ‘democratic alliance’ nations seem to be making the same ones…following the same playbook — in 2003, 2008, 2020…

And now, in 2022, isn’t it possible that Putin is doing just what he’s been warning about for the last 15 years, trying to secure his southwestern flank against further encroachment by the self-same ‘democratic alliance’? And yet, only one point of view is permitted, and that ain’t it. The ‘new world order’ folks are all piling on Russia…and denouncing Putin as if he were Adolf Hitler reincarnated.

Are they right or wrong? We don’t know, but how come they all think the same things at the same time?

Because they all go to the same schools?

Ms Clinton attended — surprise, surprise — the elite universities…Stanford, Columbia, NYU, and Oxford. Elite by birth. Elite by training. Elite by wealth. Elite by marriage (she hooked up with a man who is the son of TWO members of Congress).

And most importantly, she is elite by gig. With degrees in international relations and history, Ms Clinton must have been delighted when NBC hired her as a ‘special correspondent’ at US$50,000 a month. That’s a lot of money for a rookie reporter with no training.

Does that amount sound familiar? It must be the equivalent of ‘union scale’ for scions of US presidents. It’s about the same amount as Hunter Biden earned as a board member of a Ukrainian gas company. What did Biden know about the gas business? At least as much as Ms Clinton knew about journalism.

But that’s the nice thing about being one of the most elite of the elite. You don’t get gigs based on what you know...you get them based on who you are.

Fake disinformation

Last week, The New York Times finally connected some dots. It confirmed that the salacious story of Hunter Biden’s laptop — which it sat on throughout the 2020 election — was true. That is, it was not the ‘Russian disinformation’ that the elite press had claimed. Hunter really did leave the laptop in a repair shop. It really was retrieved by Rudy Giuliani, who gave it to the New York Post. It really did show that Hunter was deep into hanky-panky in Ukraine. And he really did say that the ‘big guy’ — his father — was getting money too.

Had not the Times and the rest of the elite media suppressed the story — unlike the phony ‘Russian election tampering’ of 2016 — Donald Trump might actually be serving his second term today. And the US government might be a lot less eager to get into a sanctions war to protect Ukraine.

But while Mr Biden, the younger, went from drugs to prostitutes — from weakness to weakness, in other words — Ms Clinton, the younger, went from strength to strength. She later got an even better gig — again without knowing anything about the subject matter.

The Hill reports:

‘Chelsea Clinton has reaped $9 million in compensation since 2011 for serving on the board of an internet investment company, according to Barron’s, the financial publication.

‘Barron’s reported Sunday that Clinton has profited handsomely as a board member for IAC/InterActiveCorp, a media and internet investment company that has an ownership stake in 150 well-known brands, such as Vimeo, Tinder, Angie’s List and Home Advisor.

‘Clinton, the only child of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has served on IAC’s board since 2011 and receives an annual $50,000 retainer and $250,000 worth of restricted IAC stock units, Barron’s reports.

‘She reported owning $8.95 million worth of IAC stock to the Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of December.’

Sex, drugs, and global governance

What a hoot it must be for the two of them. Attending board meetings of a company you know nothing about. Gas pipelines? Internet investments? Financial statements in Ukrainian, written backwards to fool the translators?

What do you do? You ask about the ‘diversity’ program. You query the honchos about their carbon footprint…and whether they have special bathrooms for trans people. And then, if any serious business should make its way into the conversation, you nod off…wondering what ‘negative equity’ could mean.

But what do you do when all your lilies are gilded…and the world lies at your feet like a dead Ukrainian soldier? You try to improve it, of course. Mr Biden tried to improve his world honestly — with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Ms Clinton had more ambitious plans, which she outlined in her 2014 dissertation from NYU: ‘The Global Fund: An Experiment in Global Governance’.

Uh-oh.

Stay tuned because we’ll soon discover where the experiment in global government actually leads.

Regards,

Bill Bonner,
For The Daily Reckoning Australia