Showing posts with label income. Show all posts
Showing posts with label income. Show all posts

Monday, October 2, 2017

Engineering Regular Income and Profits from Your Trading

Today's article is from my trading partner, Brian McAboy of Inside Out Trading.  Brian is a retired engineer and has a rather unconventional yet very effective approach to helping people become successful traders.  He's been helping traders for over 11 years, so he's been around long enough to know what works and what doesn't.

Take just a minute for this.  You'll be glad you did.


There are two very specific success traits that pertain to you and your trading. The first one is absolutely necessary for you to give yourself a reasonable chance of making it. And the second one is to keep you from wasting tons of time, money and psychological capital

Now as you know, trading is not a "get rich quick" kind of activity. This is NOT a place where anyone off the street can stroll in, grab a system, start throwing money at the markets and live happily ever after. Just doesn't work like that

Trading IS a true profession, a skill based occupation, and not a place for the squeamish or weak of heart. So for a person to expect to be "living the lifestyle" overnight is just not realistic. But the question then becomes, "How long should it realistically take?"

Too many traders let things go way too long in a less than satisfactory state

They simply let time to continue to pass, doing things generally the same way they have been for months on end, with the same disappointing results, well beyond what is really a reasonable time to allow

You see, there are generally two aspects of patience when it comes to trading:
  1. You have to be patient enough for things happen, for your trading to develop and mature.
  2. The other side of patience is knowing when you've reached a point where it's pretty obvious that your current approach just isn't working and it's time to stop, reassess, and change course.
"How long should it take?" is a common question, and the real answer is that you can get to the point of real, business like, reliable consistent profits in 3 to 6 months, a year at the outside

If it's taking YEARS, then something is wrong and you're really just spinning your wheels, wasting time and money and cheating yourself out of the success that you should be enjoying. There is also a huge personal cost to letting things take longer than they should

One trader expressed this very well,
"I've been trading futures for about 9 years now with inconsistent results.  I've made the usual mistakes, buying too many courses, focusing on the results not the process and being too impatient to trade to wait for valid setups. 

After listening to your video this weekend where you make the distinction between being patient in the beginning and giving yourself time, and beyond a certain point (3 - 6months) considering that it may be time to be impatient about your progress, this made me realize I've been allowing myself to coast for far too long, and that's impacted my confidence and the belief that I can turn trading into a business with a consistent return." 
Complacency, NOT being impatient when it's time to, is one of the biggest cost centers many traders have

There's the financial cost of missed profits and unnecessary losses, plus the opportunity costs of not enjoying the fruits of your time being spent on other matters of course, but she noted the personal, psychological cost as well

The thing is, you chose trading so that you could have freedom, financial and time freedom, not a J-O-B. You wanted trading to be a truly enjoyable activity that generates income and wealth and provides security and peace of mind

If you've been trading for more than a year, and your trading is not where you want it to be, nor is it really even close, and looking at the trajectory that you're now on, it doesn't look like you're going to get there anytime soon, then perhaps it's time to consider a different approach. That's why I suggest that you check out the training masterclass I created for you

Here are the details on the masterclass,

 "Rewrite Your Trading Story"

How to become a confident, consistent and profitable trader in 60 days or less even if you've never had a profitable month.

Here's what you will discover....
  • The "Little 3" and the "Big 3" and Why the Wrong Focus Will Have You Chasing Profits Forever
  • "The Gap" and How It Keeps Traders Jumping From One System to the Next, Without Ever Realizing The 'Easy Consistent Profits' Promised by the System Sellers
  • One Specific 'Hidden' Lie Traders Tell Themselves That Continually Drains Your Time, Capital and Confidence
  • Why Self Sabotage Goes On For YEARS For Most Traders, And How To Permanently Eliminate It From Your Trading
  • The Four Stage Process To Make YOUR Trading Profitable And Predictable
Click Here to Register and Move the Needle in Your Trading

See you in the markets!
Brian McAboy
Trading Business Coach



Tuesday, June 27, 2017

The Best Way to Protect Yourself From Out of Control Governments

By Nick Giambruno, editor, Crisis Investing

You probably know it’s a bad idea to put all of your asset eggs in one investment basket. The same goes for holding all of your assets in one country. But how much thought have you put into political diversification? With proper planning, you can greatly reduce the risk your home government presents to your financial and personal well being.

International diversification frees you from absolute dependence on any one country. Achieve that freedom, and it becomes very difficult for any group of bureaucrats to control you. The results can be life changing. Everyone in the world should aim for political diversification. Though it’s especially critical for those who live under a government sinking hopelessly deeper into financial trouble.

That means most Western governments. The US in particular. To get started, there are four core areas to consider: your savings, your citizenship, your income, and your digital presence.

Diversify Your Savings
It’s crucial to place some of your assets beyond the easy reach of your home government. It keeps that government from trapping your money if and when it implements capital controls or outright asset seizures. Any government can do either without warning.

You can diversify your savings in several ways:
  • Foreign bank accounts
  • Precious metals held abroad
  • Foreign real estate
Foreign real estate is especially helpful. I call it a diversification “grand slam” because it accomplishes a number of key goals at once. Owning real estate in a foreign country moves a good chunk of your savings into a hard asset. One that’s outside of your home government’s immediate reach. Ideally, it’s located somewhere you’d enjoy living.

Unlike digital financial assets, it's probably impossible for your home country to seize your foreign real estate. Owning foreign real estate is one of the very few ways you can legally maintain some privacy for your wealth. In that sense, foreign real estate is the new Swiss bank account.

Foreign real estate often opens up other diversification options. In many cases, owning property in a foreign country makes it easier to open a bank account in that country.

It can also put you on the road to obtaining residency in a foreign country. It can even put you on a shortened path to citizenship in some cases. Lastly, owning foreign real estate gives you a second home, vacation hideaway, or place to retire. It’s an emergency “bolt hole” should you need to escape trouble back home.


Diversify Your Citizenship
One way to diversify your citizenship is with a second passport. Unfortunately, there is no route to a second passport that is simultaneously easy, fast, cheap, and legitimate. But that does not decrease the benefits of having one. Among other things, having a second passport allows you to invest, bank, travel, live, and do business in places you wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

There’s another important reason to get a second passport. No matter where you live, your home government can revoke your passport at any moment under any pretext it finds convenient. Your passport doesn’t actually belong to you. It belongs to the government. Having a second passport means that you can always escape your home country without having to live like a refugee.


Diversify Your Income
Income diversification means structuring your cash flows so you’re less dependent on any one country for your income. The goal is to create multiple sources of revenue from international investment opportunities and trends. Bonus diversification points if you do all this through your own offshore company domiciled in a favorable jurisdiction.


Diversify Your Digital Presence
Moving your digital presence to ideal foreign jurisdictions also adds significant political diversification benefits. This commonly includes your IP address (which often pinpoints you to a precise physical address), email account, online file storage, and the components of personal and business websites.


Plan for Bigger Government
Somehow, someway, your home government will keep squeezing your pocketbook harder and keep subjecting you to escalating, arbitrary, and burdensome regulations and restrictions. Expect more government and less freedom all around. The window to protect yourself closes a bit more with each passing week. The good news is you can start to diversify internationally without leaving your home country, or even your living room.

Still, it’s essential to take the necessary steps before the government slams your window of opportunity shut. If history is any guide, it won’t be open forever. It's much better to have developed and implemented your game plan a year early than a minute late.

International diversification is a time tested strategy to protect you from desperate and out of control governments. Wealthy people around the world have used it for centuries to effectively protect their money and their families. Now, thanks to modern technology, anyone can implement similar strategies.

Regards,
Nick Giambruno
Editor, Crisis Investing


P.S. Taking the simple steps above is now more important than ever. As you'll see, widespread economic chaos is coming… America is about to enter a crisis far more severe than what we saw in 2008–2009. 

Most investors aren’t prepared for what's coming. But Doug Casey and I know how to turn these types of situations into huge profits. And in this video, we share need to know information about the coming global economic meltdown.

Click Here to Watch it Now.



Stock & ETF Trading Signals

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

The Options Market Has Changed and Here's Why

As you know, bigger changes in the market bring potential for bigger profits. This isn’t a new concept. However, I bring it up because our trading partner Doc Severson just released a new video tutorial detailing a major change making its way through the options.

Check This Out

In fact, Doc, a world renowned Options trader, traveled to Chicago to get a first hand account of what’s happening. And here’s why his trip is important to you:

He discovered that the big institutional investors aren’t gaining an advantage this time. Instead, the change underway is bringing a unique advantage to retail traders like you and me. About time, right? But unfortunately, too many traders are using strategies that don’t match today’s market conditions.

That’s why you must watch Doc’s presentation right away. He’s showing you how to adapt, so you can make a consistent weekly income as a trader and prepare for today’s “new normal” market. Doc gives you the full scoop in this tutorial.

Click here to watch....and of course it's free.

See you in the markets,
Ray @ The Crude Oil Trader

P.S. What we’ve seen lately with how the global economy has affected U.S. markets is only part of the story....Get the full story here.

Thursday, October 8, 2015

How the Chinese Will Establish a New Financial Order

By Porter Stansberry

For many years now, it’s been clear that China would soon be pull­ing the strings in the U.S. financial system. In 2015, the American people owe the Chinese government nearly $1.5 trillion.

I know big numbers don’t mean much to most people, but keep in mind… this tab is now hundreds of billions of dollars more than what the U.S. government collects in ALL income taxes (both cor­porate and individual) each year. It’s basically a sum we can never, ever hope to repay – at least, not by normal means.
Of course, the Chinese aren’t stupid. They realize we are both trapped.

We are stuck with an enormous debt we can never realistically repay… And the Chinese are trapped with an outstanding loan they can neither get rid of, nor hope to collect. So the Chinese govern­ment is now taking a secret and somewhat radical approach.

China has recently put into place a covert plan to get back as much of its money as possible – by extracting colossal sums from both the United States government and ordinary citizens, like you and me.

The Chinese “State Administration of Foreign Exchange” (SAFE) is now engaged in a full fledged currency war with the United States. The ultimate goal – as the Chinese have publicly stated – is to cre­ate a new dominant world currency, dislodge the U.S. dollar from its current reserve role, and recover as much of the $1.5 trillion the U.S. government has borrowed as possible.

Lucky for us, we know what’s going to happen. And we even have a pretty good idea of how it will all unfold. How do we know so much? Well, this isn’t the first time the U.S. has tried to stiff its foreign creditors.

Most Americans probably don’t remember this, but our last big currency war took place in the 1960s. Back then, French President Charles de Gaulle denounced the U.S. government’s policy of print­ing overvalued U.S. dollars to pay for its trade deficits… which allowed U.S. companies to buy European assets with dollars that were artificially held up in value by a gold peg that was nothing more than an accounting fiction.

So de Gaulle took action...…

In 1965, he took $150 million of his country’s dollar reserves and redeemed the paper currency for U.S. gold from Ft. Knox. De Gaulle even offered to send the French Navy to escort the gold back to France.

Today, this gold is worth about $12 billion.

Keep in mind… this occurred during a time when foreign govern­ments could legally redeem their paper dollars for gold, but U.S. citizens could not. And France was not the only nation to do this, Spain soon re­deemed $60 million of U.S. dollar reserves for gold, and many other nations followed suit. By March 1968, gold was flowing out of the United States at an alarming rate.

By 1950, U.S. depositories held more gold than had ever been assembled in one place in world history (roughly 702 million ounces). But to manipulate our currency, the U.S. government was willing to give away more than half of the country’s gold. It’s estimated that during the 1950s and early 1970s, we essentially gave away about two thirds of our nation’s gold reserves, around 400 million ounces, all because the U.S. government was trying to defend the U.S. dollar at a fixed rate of $35 per ounce of gold.

In short, we gave away 400 million ounces of gold and got $14 billion in exchange. Today, that same gold would be worth $620 billion, a 4,330% difference. Incredibly stupid, wouldn’t you agree? This blunder cost the U.S. much of its gold hoard. When the history books are finally written, this chapter will go down as one of our nation’s most incompetent political blunders. Of course, as is typical with politicians, they managed to make a bad situation even worse.

The root cause of the weakness in the U.S. dollar was easy to understand. Americans were consuming far more than they were producing. You could see this by looking at our government’s annual deficits, which were larger than ever and growing… thanks to the gigantic new welfare programs and the Vietnam “police ac­tion.” You could also see this by looking at our trade deficit, which continued to get bigger and bigger, forecasting a dramatic drop (eventually) in the value of the U.S. dollar.

Of course, economic realities are never foremost on the minds of politicians – especially not Richard Nixon’s. On August 15, 1971, he went on live television before the most popular show in Ameri­ca (Bonanza) and announced a new plan. The U.S. gold window would close effective immediately – and no nation or individual anywhere in the world would be allowed to exchange U.S. dollars for gold. The president announced a 10% surtax on ALL imports!

Such tariffs never accomplish much in terms of actually altering the balance of trade, as our trading partners simply put matching charges on our exports. So what actually happens is just less trade overall, which slows the whole global economy, making the impact of inflation worse. Of course, Nixon pitched these moves as patriotic, saying: “I am determined that the American dollar must never again be a hos­tage in the hands of international speculators.”

The “sheeple” cheered, as they always do whenever something is done to “stop the speculators.” But the joke was on them. Within two years, America was in its worst recession since WWII… with an oil crisis, skyrocketing unemployment, a 30% drop in the stock market, and soaring inflation. Instead of becoming richer, millions of Americans got a lot poorer, practically overnight.

And that brings us to today…..
Roughly 40 years later, the United States is in the middle of anoth­er currency war. But this time, our main adversary is not Europe. It’s China. And this time, the situation is far more serious. Our nation and our economy are already in an extremely fragile state. In the 1960s, the American economy was growing rapidly, with decades of expansion still to come. That’s not the case today.

This new currency war with China will wreak absolute havoc on the lives of millions of ordinary Americans, much sooner than most people think. It’s critical over the next few years for you to understand exactly what the Chinese are doing, why they are doing it, and the near certain outcome.
Regards,
Porter Stansberry

(This is an adaptation of an article that was originally published in Porter's Investment Advisory.)
Editor’s Note: Because this risk and others have made our financial system a house of cards, we’ve published a groundbreaking step by step manual on how to survive, and even prosper, during the next financial crisis.

In this book, New York Times best selling author Doug Casey and his team describe the three ESSENTIAL steps every American should take right now to protect themselves and their family.
These steps are easy and straightforward to implement.

You can do all of these from home, with very little effort. Normally, this book retails for $99. But I believe this book is so important, especially right now, that I’ve arranged a way for US residents to get a free copy. Click here to secure your copy.


The article was originally published at internationalman.com.


Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Thursday, August 13, 2015

The Next Financial Disaster Starts Here

By Dan Steinhart

Individual investors take note….

Some of the world’s best money managers are betting on the biggest financial disaster since 2008. You won’t hear about this from the mainstream media. Networks like NBC or CBS don’t have a clue… just like they didn’t have a clue the US housing market would collapse in 2007.

Carl Icahn, a super successful investor who’s the 31st richest person in the world, said this investment is in a bubble. He said that it’s “extremely overheated”… and that “there’s going to be a great run to the exits.” And this investment isn’t some complex derivative that only Wall Street and hedge funds can buy. Millions of investors hold it in their brokerage accounts.

The dangerous investment is junk bonds.

Junk bonds are usually issued by companies with shaky finances. They pay high interest rates to compensate investors for their high risk. Low interest rates have pushed investors into these risky bonds. Junk bonds are one of few places where investors have been able to get a decent income stream.

In 2008, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near zero to fight the financial crisis. It has held rates near zero ever since. Right now, a 10 year US government bond pays just 2.3%. That’s half its historical average, and near its all time low.

Investors looking for income have turned to junk bonds. This chart shows the growth in junk bonds since 2002. As you can see, junk bonds didn’t grow much from 2002 to 2008. But when the Fed cut rates to zero in 2008, junk bond issuance took off:



JPMorgan reports that the number of junk bond issues soared 483% between 2008 and 2014. You might be thinking that you don’t own junk bonds… so why should you care? It’s true that many investors don’t own junk bonds directly. But many do own them through junk bond ETFs.

The Financial Times recently explained why junk bond ETFs are dangerous.… junk bond ETFs give the illusion of liquidity. Not all that long ago, bankers and asset managers promised to turn subprime mortgages into gold plated, triple A rated bonds.

Today, the apparently miraculous transformation is of deeply illiquid credit instruments, such as junk bonds and leveraged loans, into hyper-liquid exchange traded funds. Junk bonds are not “liquid.” That means there aren’t many investors buying and selling them every day. The Wall Street Journal reported that each of the top 10 bonds in the largest junk bond ETF traded just 13 times a day on average.

That’s not a typo. Investors only buy and sell these junk bonds 13 times per day on average. For comparison, investors buy and sell 47 million shares of Apple (AAPL) on average every day. Junk bond ETFs are extra dangerous because they make junk bonds appear liquid. HYG, the largest junk bond ETF, trades more than 6.8 million shares per today on average. That’s more than McDonald’s stock.

But as Howard Marks, hedge fund manager and one of the most respected investors in the world recently explained:


No investment vehicle should promise greater liquidity than is afforded by its underlying assets. If one were to do so, what would be the source of the increase in liquidity? Because there is no such source, the incremental liquidity is usually illusory, fleeting, and unreliable, and it works (like a Ponzi scheme) until markets freeze up and the promise of liquidity is tested in tough times.

Because junk bond ETFs create the illusion of liquidity, most investors don’t see the danger. They think they can sell their junk bonds ETFs just as easily as they could sell shares of Apple. They’re wrong. If too many people sell junk bonds at once, it could overwhelm the market and cause prices to crash.

Now, none of this has been a problem yet because junk bonds have been in a bull market. According to Bank of America, junk bonds have gained 149% since 2009. But as Howard Marks added, ”Nothing is learned in the investment world in good times.” … “Most of these vehicles haven’t been tested in tough times.”

All bull markets eventually end. When this one ends, junk bonds could cause huge losses to investors who don’t know about these risks. Junk bonds could easily drop 15% or more in one month.

And here’s the craziest part….Some of the world’s smartest and most successful investors are are betting on this exact outcome. They’re betting that the junk bond market will crash.

They’re calling it “The Next Big Short.”

You probably heard about the few hedge fund managers who made a killing when US housing collapsed in 2007. Dallas-based hedge fund manager Kyle Bass made $500 million by betting against housing. John Paulson made $4.9 billion by betting against mortgages. Today, one of the largest private equity firms in the world is raising money to bet against junk bonds... just like Bass and Paulson bet against housing in 2007.

The Wall Street Journal reports:


Apollo [one of the world’s largest private equity firms] has been raising money from wealthy investors for a hedge fund that snaps up insurance-like contracts called credit-default swaps that benefit if the junk bonds fall. In marketing materials reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Apollo predicted: ETFs and similar vehicles increase ease of access to the high yield [junk] market, leading to the potential for a quick ‘hot money’ exit.”

Other hedge funds like Reef Road Capital and Howard Marks’ Oaktree Capital are also raising money to bet on a junk bond crash.

As you can see from the chart of HYG’s (the largest junk bond ETF) price, junk bonds are down since June:



There’s no way to know if this is the beginning of the end of the junk bond bull market. But if it is, huge losses could come very soon. If you’ve made money investing in junk bonds, it’s time to cash in. Don’t bet against some of the best investors in the world who expect junk bonds to crash. We recommend selling junk bonds now.

P.S. Because this risk and others have made our financial system a house of cards, we’ve published a groundbreaking step by step manual on how to survive, and even prosper, during the next financial crisis. In this book, New York Times best selling author Doug Casey and his team describe the three ESSENTIAL steps every American should take right now to protect themselves and their family.

These steps are easy and straightforward to implement. You can do all of these from home, with very little effort. Normally, this book retails for $99. But I believe this book is so important, especially right now, that I’ve arranged a way for US residents to get a free copy. Click here to secure your copy.

The article The Next Financial Disaster Starts Here was originally published at caseyresearch.com.



Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!


Thursday, June 11, 2015

What exactly was behind John's "Big Trade"

I still believe this is when everything changed for the average trader. It was only weeks later that the talking heads on CNBC were offering up their own versions and books about trading options in this way. That's right, I honestly believe that our good friend and trading partner John Carter of Simpler Options wrote the book on options trading. Literally.

And the actual sea change came when John placed this public [that's right live for all to see on screen] trade in Tesla [ticker TSLA] last year. And in the process made one million dollars. And John continues using and refining those simple methods and sharing them with our readers.

He is back again this week with a new video and as always is absolutely free!

Watch John's new video "What's Behind the BIG Trade" > Here

In this short and powerful video, John will show you.....

  *  How he made that famous million dollar trade

  *  The number one goal of every trader so you can consistently make money trading

  *  The difference between trading for income and trading for account growth

  *  Why you don't want to put it all on one big trade because you can have consistent account growth

  *  The best vehicle you can use to grow an account fast

  *  Examples of trades made this year that you could have used to grow your account

      Watch the video HERE

      See you in the markets,
      Ray C. Parrish
      aka the Crude Oil Trader


Get John's latest version of his FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Monday, June 8, 2015

Cleaning Out the Attic

By John Mauldin


Three weeks ago I co-authored an op-ed for the Investor’s Business Daily with Stephen Moore, founder of the Club for Growth and former Wall Street Journal editorial board member, currently working with the Heritage Foundation. Our goal was to present a simple outline of the policies we need to pursue as a country in order to get us back to 3–4% annual GDP growth. As we note in the op-ed, Stephen and I have been engaging with a number of presidential candidates and with other economists around the topic of growth.

We spent a great deal of time going back and forth on a variety of topics, trying to get down to a few ideas that we think make the most sense. I should note that few people will read the piece below without being upset by at least one of our suggestions. The goal was to not just list the standard Republican “fixes” but to actually come up with a plan that might garner support across the political spectrum on ways to address the critical problem of how to get the country back to acceptable growth.

Part of the challenge was reducing what could have been a book to just 800 words. Today’s letter will start with the actual op-ed, and then I will expand on some of the points. Readers and friends have been pressing me to offer some ideas as to what policies I think we should pursue, so here they are. I hope the op-ed will create some thoughtful response. It would be nice if we could get a few candidates to embrace some or all of what we are suggesting, even (or maybe especially) some of the more radical parts.
(I have made a few very minor edits to the op-ed.)

A Six Point Plan to Restore Economic Growth and Prosperity

By John Mauldin and Stephen Moore
The dismal news of 0.2% GDP growth for the first quarter only confirmed that the US is in the midst of its slowest recovery in half a century from an economic crisis. Could it be that at least some of the rage we've seen in the streets of Baltimore is a result of a paltry recovery that hasn't benefited low-income inner-city areas? We are at least $1.5 trillion a year behind where we would be with even an average post-World War II recovery.

While many blame a lack of sufficient demand and even insufficient government spending, our view is that the primary factors behind the growth slowdown are an increasingly intrusive regulatory environment, a confusing and punitive tax scheme, and lack of certainty over healthcare costs.

Each of these factors has contributed to a climate where growth is slow and incomes are stagnant. These are problems that cannot be solved by monetary and fiscal policy alone. To get real growth and increased productivity, we need to deal with the real source of economic progress: the incentive structure. The coming presidential race offers an opportunity for candidates to put forth concrete and comprehensive ideas about what can be done to create higher economic growth – as opposed to platitudes and piecemeal ideas that don't address the entire problem. The two of us have met with several candidates and discussed tax reform and other economic growth issues.

We offer here some solutions of our own for them to consider.

1. Streamline the federal bureaucracy. 
Government has become much like the neighbor who has hoarded every magazine and odd knick knack for 50 years. The attic and every room are stuffed with items no one would miss. The size of the US code has multiplied by over 18 times in 65 years. There are more than 1 million restrictive regulations. Enough already. It's time to clean out the attic. The president, with some flexibility, should require each agency to reduce the number of regulations under its purview by 20%, at the rate of 5% a year. And then Congress should pass a sunset law for the remaining regulations, requiring them to be reviewed at some point in order to be maintained. Further, if new rules are needed, then remove some old ones. Stop the growth of the federal regulatory code. We have enough rules today; let's just make sure they're the right ones.

2. Simplify and flatten the income tax. 
Make the individual income rate 20% (at most) for all income over $50,000, with no deductions for anything. Reduce the corporate tax to 15%, again eliminating all deductions other than what is allowed by standard accounting practice. No perks, no special benefits. Further, tax foreign corporate income at 5%–10%, and let companies bring it back home to invest here. This strategy will actually increase tax revenues.

3. Replace the payroll tax with a business transfer tax of 15% 
which will give lower income workers a big raise. Companies would pay tax on their gross receipts, minus allowable expenses in the conduct of producing goods and services. Nearly every economist agrees that consumption taxes are better than income taxes. Further, this tax can be rebated at the border, so it should encourage domestic production and be popular with union workers since it makes US products more competitive internationally.

To continue reading this article from Thoughts from the Frontline – a free weekly publication by John Mauldin, renowned financial expert, best selling author, and Chairman of Mauldin Economics – please click here.



Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

John Carter's Latest Free eBook "How to Make Money in the Stock Market"

You probably recognize our trading partner John Carter from seeing offers to watch his wildly popular free options trading webinars. John has used these webinars and videos to teach traders some of the most advanced options trading methods imaginable.

Now John has decided to create this new eBook that will help the average home gamer learn how to trade the markets using easy to understand trading techniques that any of us can use starting right away.

In this free stock trading eBook you will learn....

 * What are the stock market life cycles that help you predict where the market is headed tomorrow

 * Find out who you are trading against and prepare to make the right moves

 * How sector rotation can be used to create steady winning trades for your trading account

 * How to avoid being impacted by high frequency traders that are manipulating other markets

 * How to properly manage your portfolio to generate consistent income within your own personal risk profile


Download the eBook and meet us in the markets putting these methods to work!

See you in the markets!
Ray C. Parrish
aka the CRude Oil Trader



Get John's latest FREE eBooK "How to Make Money in the Stock Market"....Just Click Here


Monday, April 20, 2015

This Weeks Free Webinar...Trading Options the Same Way as the Institutional Traders

Our trading partner Guy Cohen of OVI Flag Traders is finally free from his contract obligations with his large institutional clients and he is back with us for another free training webinar this Thursday April 23rd.

Guy's latest indicator and methods will give us all a unique and valuable insight to what the insiders are up to. The truth is, no one can predict 100% where the markets are going at any given time, but he has developed something that can give us a better clue, especially during certain market setups.

And frankly, that's all we need to become consistently great traders and investors. You can stick with just one inspired method like this and you'll not only be profitable but you will do it safely.

On This Webinar You Will Discover.....

  *  How one of Guy's students made huge profits in just three short months trading this one specific strategy

  *  Learn how to master Options regardless of which direction the market is moving

  *  Learn Guy's simple strategies to consistent income

  *  How to grow a small account with powerful and safe options strategies to use the right
      leverage at the right time

  *  How to recognize and capitalize on the best patterns right now in the market.

And so much more!

Watch this weeks free video to get even more details about what we will cover in this free webinar....
Just Click Here to Watch the Free Video

In an attempt to make sure everybody gets a seat Guy will be doing two complete live presentations on Thursday at 2 p.m. est and 8 p.m. est.

These two webinars will fill to capacity quickly as Click Here to get Your Reserved Seat asap

See you on Thursday!
Ray C. Parrish
aka the Crude Oil Trader

P.S.  While you are waiting for this weeks webinar take a minute to download Guy's free eBook and start learning some of his methods traders have been using for years.....Get Free eBook Here


Thursday, January 29, 2015

Income Inequality? American Savers Treated Like Dogs

By Tony Sagami

One of the hot political topics these days is income inequality, but one of the groups of Americans that’s the most mistreated by Washington DC is the millions of Americans who have responsibly saved for their retirement.


When I entered the investment business as a stock broker at Merrill Lynch in the 1980s, savers could routinely get 7-9% on their money with riskless CDs and short term Treasury bonds.


In fact, I sold multimillions of dollars’ worth of 16 year zero coupon Treasury bonds at the time. Zero coupon bonds are debt instruments that don’t pay interest (a coupon) but are instead traded at a deep discount, rendering profit at maturity when the bond is redeemed for its full face value.

At the time, long term interest rates were at 8%, so the zero coupon Treasury bonds that I sold cost $250 each but matured at $1,000 in 16 years. A government-guaranteed quadruple!

Ah, those were the good old days for savers, largely thanks to the inflation fighting tenacity of Paul Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan from August 1979 to August 1987.


Monetary policies couldn’t be more different under Alan “Mr. Magoo” Greenspan, “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke, and Janet Yellen. This trio of hear see speak no evil bureaucrats have never met an interest rate cut that they didn’t like and have pushed interest rates to zero.

The yield on the 30 year Treasury bond hit an all time record low last week at 2.45%. Yup, an all time low that our country hasn’t seen in more than 300 years!


These low yields have made it increasingly difficult to earn a decent level of income from traditional fixed-income vehicles like money markets, CDs, and bonds.


Unless you’re content with near-zero return on your savings, you’ve got to adapt to the new era of ZIRP (zero interest rate policy). However, you cannot just dive into the income arena and buy the highest paying investments you can find. Most are fraught with hidden risks and dangers.

So to fully understand how to truly and dramatically boost your investment income, you absolutely must look at your investments in a new light, fully understanding the new risks as well as the new opportunities. There are really two challenges that all of us will face as we transition from employment to retirement: longer life expectancies; and lower investment yields.

Risk #1: Improved health care and nutrition have dramatically boosted life expectancies for both men and women. We will all enjoy a longer, healthier life, which means more time to enjoy retirement and spend with friends/family, but it also means that whatever money we’ve accumulated will have to work harder as well as longer.


Today, a 65 year-old man can expect to live until age 82, almost four years longer than 25 years ago; the life expectancy for a 65 year old woman is also up—from 82 years in the early 1980s to 85 today.

The steady increase in life expectancy is definitely something to celebrate, but it also means we’ll need even bigger nest eggs.

Risk #2: Don’t forget about inflation. Prices for daily necessities are higher than they were just a few years ago and constantly erode the purchasing power of your savings.


The way I see it, your comfort in retirement has never been more threatened than it is today, and it doesn’t matter if you’re 20 or 70.

The rules are different, and you only have two choices:

#1. spend your retirement as a Walmart greeter (if you’re lucky enough to get a job!); or

#2. adapt to the new rules of income investing.

Today, the new rules of successful income investing consist of putting together a collection of income focused assets, such as dividend paying stocks, bonds, ETFs, and real estate, that generate the highest possible annual income at the lowest possible risk.

Even in an environment of near zero interest rates and global uncertainty, there are many ways an investor can generate a healthy income while remaining in control. Income stocks should form the core of your income portfolio.

Income stocks are usually found in solid industries with established companies that generate reliable cash flow. Such companies have little need to reinvest their profits to help grow the business or fund research and development of new products, and are therefore able to pay sizeable dividends back to their investors.
What do I look for when evaluating income stocks?

Macro picture. While it’s a subjective call, we want to invest in companies that have the big-picture macroeconomic wind at their backs and have long-term sustainable business models that can thrive in the current economic environment.

Competitive advantage. Does the company have a competitive advantage within its own industry? Investing in industry leaders is generally more productive than investing in the laggards.

Management. The company’s management should have a track record of returning value to shareholders.

Growth strategy. What’s the company’s growth strategy? Is it a viable growth strategy given our forward view of the economy and markets?

A dividend payout ratio of 80% or less, with the rest going back into the company’s business for future growth. If a business pays out too much of its profit, it can hurt the firm’s competitive position.

A dividend yield of at least 3%. That means if a company has a $10 stock price, it pays annual cash dividends of at least $0.30 a year per share.

• The company should have generated positive cash flow in at least the last year. Income investing is about protecting your money, not hitting the ball out of the park with risky stock picks.

A high return on equity, or ROE. A company that earns high returns on equity is usually a better-than-average business, which means that the dividend checks will keep flowing into our mailboxes.

This doesn’t mean that you should rush out and buy a bunch of dividend-paying stocks tomorrow morning. As always, timing is everything, and many—if not most—dividend stocks are vulnerably overpriced.

But make no mistake; interest rates aren’t rising anytime soon, and the solid, all weather income stocks (like the ones in my Yield Shark service) will help you build and enjoy a prosperous retirement. In fact, you can click here to see the details on one of the strongest income stocks I’ve profiled in Yield Shark in months.

Tony Sagami
Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.



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Monday, January 26, 2015

How Global Interest Rates Deceive Markets

By John Mauldin

 “You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
– Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

“In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.

“There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

“Yet this difference is tremendous; for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.”

– From an 1850 essay by Frédéric Bastiat, “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen”

All right class, it’s time for an open book test. I’m going to give you a list of yields on various 10 year bonds, and I want to you to tell me what it means.

United States: 1.80%
Germany: 0.36%
France: 0.54%
Italy: 1.56%
UK: 1.48%
Canada: 1.365%
Australia: 2.63%
Japan: 0.22%

I see that hand up in the back. Yes, the list does appear to tell us what interest rates the market is willing to take in order to hold money in a particular country’s currency for 10 years. It may or may not tell us about the creditworthiness of the country, but it does tell us something about the expectations that investors have about potential returns on other possible investments. The more astute among you will notice that French bonds have dropped from 2.38% exactly one year ago to today’s rather astonishing low of 0.54%.

Likewise, Germany has seen its 10-year Bund rates drop from 1.66% to a shockingly low 0.36%. What does it mean that European interest rates simply fell out of bed this week? Has the opportunity set in Europe diminished? Are the French really that much better a credit risk than the United States is? If not, what is that number, 0.54%, telling us? What in the wide, wide world of fixed-income investing is going on?

Quick segue – but hopefully a little fun. One of the pleasures of having children is that you get to watch the classic movie The Princess Bride over and over. (If you haven’t appreciated it, go borrow a few kids for the weekend and watch it.) There is a classic line in the movie that is indelibly imprinted on my mind.
In the middle of the film, a villainous but supposedly genius Sicilian named Vizzini keeps using the word “inconceivable” to describe certain events. A mysterious ship is following the group at sea? “Inconceivable!”

The ship’s captain starts climbing the bad guys’ rope up the Cliffs of Insanity and even starts to gain on them? “Inconceivable!” The villain doesn’t fall from said cliff after Vizzini cuts the rope that all of them were climbing? “Inconceivable!” Finally, master swordsman – and my favorite character in the movie – Inigo, famous for this and other awesome catchphrases, comments on Vizzini’s use of this word inconceivable:

“You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

(You can see all the uses of Vizzini’s use of the word inconceivable and hear Inigo’s classic retort here.)
When it comes to interpreting what current interest rates are telling us about the markets in various countries, I have to say that I do not think they mean what the market seems to think they mean. In fact, buried in that list of bond yields is “false information” – information so distorted and yet so readily misunderstood that it leads to wrong conclusions and decisions – and to bad investments. In today’s letter we are going to look at what interest rates actually mean in the modern-day context of currency wars and interest-rate manipulation by central banks. I think you will come to agree with me that an interest rate may not mean what the market thinks it means.

Let me begin by briefly summarizing what I want to demonstrate in this letter. First, I think Japanese interest rates not only contain no information but also that markets are misreading this non-information as meaningful because they are interpreting the data as if it were normal market information in a familiar market environment, when the truth is that we sailed beyond the boundaries of the known economic world some time ago. The old maps are no longer reliable. Secondly, Europe is making the decision to go down the same path as the Japanese have done; and contrary to the expectations of European central bankers, the potential to end up with the same results as Japan is rather high.

The false information paradox is highlighted by the recent Swiss National Bank decision. Couple that with the surprise decisions by Canada and Denmark to cut rates, the complete retracement of the euro against the yen over the past few weeks, and Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda’s telling the World Economic Forum in Davos that he is prepared to do more (shades of “whatever it takes”) to create inflation, and you have the opening salvos of the next skirmish in the ongoing currency wars I predicted a few years ago in Code Red. All of this means that capital is going to be misallocated and that the current efforts to create jobs and growth and inflation are insufficient. Indeed, I think those efforts might very well produce a net negative effect.

But before we go any farther, a quick note. We will start taking registrations for the 12th annual Strategic Investment Conference next week. There will be an early bird rate for those of you who go ahead to register quickly. The conference will run from April 29 through May 2 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego.

For those of you familiar with the conference, there will be the “usual” lineup of brilliant speakers and thought leaders trying to help us understand investing in a world of divergence. For those not familiar, this conference is unlike the vast majority of other investment conferences, in that speakers representing various sponsors do not pay to address the audience. Instead, we bring in only “A list” speakers from around the world, people you really want to meet and talk with. This year we’re going to have a particularly large and diverse group of presenters, and we structure the conference so that attendees can mingle with the speakers and with each other.

I am often told by attendees that this is the best economic and investment conference they attend in any given year. I think it is a measure of the quality of the conference that many of the speakers seek us out. Not only do they want to speak, they want to attend the conference to hear and interact with the other speakers and conference guests. This conference is full of speakers that other speakers (especially including myself) want to hear. And you will, too. Save the date and look for registration and other information shortly in your mail.
Now let’s consider what today’s interest rates do and do not mean as we navigate uncharted waters.

Are We All Turning Japanese?

Japan is an interesting case study. It’s a highly developed nation with a very sophisticated culture, increasingly productive in dollar terms (although in yen terms nominal GDP has not moved all that much), and carrying an unbelievable 250% debt to GDP burden, but with a 10 year bond rate of 0.22%, which in theory could eventually mean that the total interest expenses of Japan would be less than those of the US on 5 - 6 times the amount of debt. Japan has an aging population and a savings rate that has plunged in recent years.

The country has been saddled with either low inflation or deflation for most of the past 25 years. At the same time, it is an export power, with some of the world’s most competitive companies in automobiles, electronics, robotics, automation, machine tools, etc. The Japanese have a large national balance sheet from decades of running trade surpluses. If nothing else, they have given the world sushi, for which I will always hold them in high regard.

We talk about Japan’s “lost decades” during which growth has been muted at best. They are just coming out of a triple dip recession after a disastrous downturn during the Great Recession. And through it all, for decades, there is been a widening government deficit. The chart below shows the yawning gap between Japanese government expenditures and revenues.



This next chart, from a Societe Generale report, seems to show that the Japanese are financing 40% of their budget. I say “seems” because there is a quirk in the way the Japanese do their fiscal accounting. Pay attention, class. This is important to understand. If you do not grasp this, you will not understand Japanese budgets and how they deal with their debt.

To continue reading this article from Thoughts from the Frontline – a free weekly publication by John Mauldin, renowned financial expert, best selling author, and Chairman of Mauldin Economics – please click here.



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Tuesday, July 1, 2014

5 Simple Rules to Evolve Past the Hot Stock List

By Andrey Dashkov

If you’re a typical small time investor, chances are you prefer to let a team of analysts fuss about such irksome things as correlation and beta. Maybe you’ve bought a stock because your brother in law gave you a hot tip, maybe you heard something about it on a financial news show, or maybe you just loved the company’s product.


Friends often ask me for “hot stock tips”—which is like walking up to someone at the craps table and asking what number to bet on. An accomplished craps player will have position limits, stop losses, income targets, and an overall strategy that does not hinge on one roll of the dice. You need an overall strategy long before you put money down.

So, what do I tell those friends asking for hot stock tips? Well, that they can retire rich with a 50-20-30 portfolio:
  • Stocks. 50% in solid, diversified stocks providing healthy dividends and appreciation.
  • High Yield. 20% in high yield, dividend paying investments coupled with appropriate safety measures. These holdings are bought for yield; any appreciation is a nice bonus.
  • Stable Income. 30% in conservative, stable income vehicles.
Unless you’re starting entirely from scratch, you should review your current portfolio allocations, identify where you’re over or underallocated, and then look for investments to fill those holes. In our portfolio here at Miller's Money Forever, we separate our recommendations into StocksHigh Yield, and Stable Income to help you do just that.

The Art of the Pick

 

By the time an investment lands in our portfolio, we’ve already run it through our Five Point Balancing Test. When your boasting brother in law tempts you with a “can’t-miss opportunity” or some pundit touts a hot tech company on television, you can come back to these five points, again and again.
  1. Is it a solid company or investment vehicle? Investing your retirement money safely is a must. How do you know if a company is solid? Take the time to validate essential company information, particularly when the recommendation comes from a source with questionable motivation.
  2. Does it provide good income? A good stock combines a robust dividend and appreciation potential.
  3. Is there a good chance for appreciation? There are two types of appreciating stocks: those that rise because of general market conditions and those that rise further because of the way management runs the business. We want both.
  4. Does it protect against inflation? High inflation is one of the biggest enemies of a retirement portfolio.
  5. Is it easily reversible? Ask yourself, “Can I quickly and easily reverse this investment if something unexpected occurs?” The ability to liquidate inexpensively is critical to correcting errors.

Marking the Bull’s Eye So You Can Hit It

 

It’s worthwhile to write down your goal—including an income target and the price at which you’ll sell if things head south—with every investment. After all, if you can’t see the bull’s eye, how will you know if you’ve hit it? Buying any investment because a trusted adviser, newsletter, or pundit recommended it is not a good enough reason. Buying because your portfolio has a hole, you understand the company, the investment vehicle, the risks, and the potential is.

Remember, retiring rich means having enough money to enjoy your lifestyle without money worries. Do your homework on every investment and you’ll make that pleasant thought your life’s reality. Every week, the Miller’s Money team provides no nonsense, practical advice about the best ways to invest for your retirement in  Miller’s Money Weekly Sign up here to receive it every Thursday.

The article 5 Simple Rules to Evolve Past the Hot-Stock List was originally published at Millers Money


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Thursday, June 12, 2014

Too Good to Be True? Legally Avoid Paying Income Tax

By Louis James, Chief Metals & Mining Investment Strategist

When you hear about strategies that claim to legally allow U.S. citizens to avoid having to pay income tax, the first thing that probably comes to mind is that it’s some sort of cockamamie scheme.The U.S. government is no slouch when it comes to shaking down its citizens for every penny. It would be foolish in the extreme to think you could slip one past them.

There really was no sure way to legally escape the suffocating grip of the U.S. government besides death and renouncing your U.S. citizenship…...until recently. A new option has emerged that allows Americans to significantly reduce or eliminate income tax altogether. At first it sounds impossible, but as Casey Research’s Chief Metals and Mining Strategist Louis James has found out for himself, this is 100% real and legitimate.

And for many Americans, including individuals operating on a modest scale, it could really be game changing. The video below is a recent presentation Louis gave on this jaw dropping opportunity. If you are at all interested in keeping more money in your pocket, you won’t want to miss it.




Puerto Rico’s Stunning New Tax Advantages is the authoritative guide on the Puerto Rico option. It’s been reviewed by dozens of professional sources in Puerto Rico and the mainland U.S., including top law firms and accountants. It’s an A-Z guide with information you won’t find anywhere else. If you’re considering taking advantage of these incentives, get started with this guide. It will save you a lot of time and money in the process. Click Here to Learn More.



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Wednesday, May 21, 2014

How to Grow a Small Trading Account into a BIG One

He's back! Our friend and trading partner John Carter of Simpler Options is back to answer the number one question he gets at the Simpler Options phone bank...."how can I trade using a small trading account"?

As you have probably already learned [like all of us] trading fees quickly erode our trading accounts even when we have some success when using a small account. Today John shows us how to put that all behind us.

Growth is on our minds, and I'm sure it's on yours.....so watch this free video from the industries leading educator and start growing and protecting your account today.

How to Grow a Small Account into a BIG One

Here's what you'll learn from John......

   *   The difference between trading for income vs. growth and what no one else will tell you about this

   *   The # 1 job of every trader has to accomplish or look for a new job

   *   Why you don’t want to focus on being right in trading and yes this is counter intuitive

   *   Examples of my favorite trades for growing a small account

   *   Position sizing appropriately for a small account and the types of stocks and ETFs to trade

John shows us all of his trades in his real 5K account that he'll be growing right before our eyes. And John explains in detail every method he uses to make it all happen.

Watch the video here...and thank me later

See you in the markets,
Ray @ The Crude Oil Trader

P.S.  please feel free to leave a comment after watching the video, we want to hear your take on what John is doing.




Friday, April 25, 2014

Not All Debt Is Created Equal

By Dennis Miller

Optimal diversification: We all want it. Diversification is, after all, the holy grail of portfolio management. Our senior research analyst Andrey Dashkov has said that many times before, and he echoes that refrain in his editorial guest spot below.

A brief note before I hand over the reins to Andrey. The last time the market tanked, many of my friends suffered huge losses. They all thought their portfolios were well diversified. Many held several mutual funds and thought their plans were foolproof. Sad to say, those funds dropped in tandem with the rapidly falling market. Our readers need not suffer a similar fate.

Enter Andrey, who’s here to explain what optimal diversification is and to share concrete tools for implementing it in your own portfolio.

Take it away, Andrey…


Floating-Rate Funds Bolster Diversification

By Andrey Dashkov
Floating rate funds as an investment class are a good diversifier for a portfolio that includes stocks, bonds, and other types of investments. Here’s a bit of data to back that claim.

The chart below shows the correlation of floating rate benchmark to various subsets of the debt universe.
As a reminder, correlation is a measure of how two assets move in relation to each other. This relationship is usually measured by a correlation coefficient that ranges from -1 to +1. A coefficient of +1 says the two securities or asset types move in lockstep. A coefficient of -1 means they move in opposite directions. When one goes up, the other goes down. A correlation coefficient of 0 means they aren’t related at all and move independently.

Why Correlation Matters

 

Correlation matters because it helps to diversify your portfolio. If all securities in a portfolio are perfectly correlated and move in the same direction, we are, strictly speaking, screwed or elated. They’ll all move up or down together. When they win, they win big; and when they fall, they fall spectacularly. The risk is enormous.

Our goal is to create a portfolio where securities are not totally correlated. If one goes up or down, the others won’t do the same thing. This helps keep the whole portfolio afloat.

As Dennis mentioned, diversification is the holy grail of portfolio management. We based our Bulletproof strategy on it precisely because it provides safety under any economic scenario. If inflation hits, some stocks will go up, while others will go down or not react at all.

You want to hold stocks that behave differently. Our mantra is to avoid catastrophic losses in any investment under any scenario, and the Bulletproof strategy optimizes our odds of doing just that.

When “Weak” is Preferable

 

Now, a correlation coefficient may be calculated between stocks or whole investment classes. Stocks, various types of bonds, commodities—they all move in some relationship to one another. The relationship may be positive, negative, strong, weak, or nonexistent. To diversify successfully and make our portfolio robust, we need weak relationships. They make it more likely that if one group of investments moves, the others won’t, thereby keeping our whole portfolio afloat.

Now, back to our chart. It shows the correlation between investment types in relation to floating-rate funds of the sort we introduced into the Money Forever portfolio in January. For corporate high yield debt, for example, the correlation is +0.74. This means that in the past there was a strong likelihood that when the corporate high yield sector moved up or down, the floating rate sector moved in the same direction. You have to remember that correlation describes past events and can change over time. However, it’s a useful tool to look at how closely related investment types are.


I want to make three points with this chart:
  • Floating-rate loans are closely connected to high-yield bonds. The debt itself is similar in nature: credit ratings of the companies issuing high-yield notes or borrowing at floating rates are close; both are risky (although floating-rate debt is less so, and recoveries in case of a default are higher).

    Floating-rate funds as an investment class are not as good a diversifier for a high-yield portfolio. They can, on the other hand, provide protection against rising interest rates. When they go up, the price of floating-rate instruments remains the same, while traditional debt instruments lose value to make up for the increase in yield.
  • Notice that the correlation to the stock market is +0.44. If history is a guide, a falling market will have less effect on our floating-rate investment fund.
  • The chart shows that floating-rate funds serve as an excellent diversifier for a portfolio that’s reasonably mixed and represents the overall US aggregate bond market. The correlation is close to zero: -0.03. This means that movements of the overall US bond market do not coincide with the movements of the floating rate universe.

    Imagine two people walking down a street, when one (the overall debt market) turns left, the other (floating rate funds) would stop, grab a quick pizza, get a message from his friend, catch a cab, and drive away. No relationship at all… at least, not in the observed time period. This is the diversification we’re looking for.
Floating rate funds provide a terrific diversification opportunity for our portfolio. This gives us safety, and that is the key takeaway.

Our Bulletproof income portfolio offers a number of options for diversification above and beyond what’s mentioned here. You can learn all about our Bulletproof Income – and the other reasons it’s such an important one for seniors and savers – here.

The article Not All Debt Is Created Equal was originally published at Millers Money


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Thursday, April 10, 2014

It's Risk On.....Regardless

By John Mauldin


When Gary Shilling was with us here last fall, he and I were feeling considerably more sanguine about the near-term propects for the US and global economies. In fact, I said about Gary that “that old confirmed bear is waxing positively bullish about the future prospects of the US. In doing so he mirrors my own views.”

In today’s excerpt from Gary’s quarterly INSIGHT letter, he tackles head-on the shift in sentiment and economic performance that has ensued since then. He steps us through the ebullient headlines and forecasts that dominated at year-end, and then remarks,

It’s as if an iron curtain came down between the last trading day of 2013 and January 2014. A headline in the Feb. 5, 2014 Wall Street Journal screamed, “Turnabout on Global Outlook Darkens Mood.”

Don’t get me (and Gary) wrong: many of the positive factors that he and I identified last fall are still in play; but they are longer-term, secular factors such as technological transformation and a tectonic shift in the energy landscape rather than the cyclical factors that will dominate for most of the rest of this decade.

In today’s OTB, Gary does an excellent job of summarizing and analyzing those cyclical factors. In this extended excerpt from INSIGHT, you’ll be treated to sections on investor and consumer behavior, deleveraging, housing, income polarization, unemployment, Obamacare and medical costs, the prospects for inflation, the Fed, emerging markets, and much more.

Be sure to see the close of the letter for Gary’s special offer to OTB readers.

I find myself in the lovely tropical city of Durban, South Africa. The hotel where I’m staying, The Oyster Box, is a lovely old throwback properly set on the Indian Ocean, where you can see the continual shipping traffic queuing up to get into the port, which is the largest in Africa. The hotel reminds me of the Raffles in Singapore, with a better view and somewhat more Old World charm. Or at least what I romanticize as Old World charm from movies I saw as a kid (though some of my younger readers are probably sure I lived in that era!).

I sleep now, then get up in less than five hours to catch a plane to Johannesburg, where I will spend the next three days doing more of the speeches and interviews that I’ve been doing for the last two, for my host Glacier by Sanlam. Anton Raath, the CEO, has that quintessential ability to make everyone feel welcome and keep them on goal. I am continually impressed with the quality of South African management, whether here or among the South African diaspora. If the government here could ever figure out how to get out of their way… I wrote a Thoughts from the Frontline almost exactly seven years ago that I called “Out Of Africa.” It was a very bullish take on a country that I could see had wonderful prospects. And indeed investing in South Africa would have been a good move at the time – a solid double in seven years.



But this trip I’ve seen things and talked to people that don’t give me the same feeling. We’ll talk about it this weekend, after I have more meetings with both stakeholders and analysts of the local economy. South Africa seems to me to face many of the same problems that have beset Brazil, Turkey, and others in the Fragile Six. Why is this? Why should a country with this many resources, both physical and human, be falling behind? I think some of you can guess the answer, but I will wait to tell the rest of you in this week’s letter.

Once again, for the fourth time in my life, my hot air balloon trip was canceled! Sigh. I am not sure what the travel gods are trying to tell me, but I will not give up, and one day I expect to soar above the earth on something other than my own hot air.

Have a great week,

Your wanting to come back to this hotel and pretend to be genteel for a few days analyst,
John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Stay Ahead of the Latest Tech News and Investing Trends...
Each day, you get the three tech news stories with the biggest potential impact.

 

Risk On, Regardless

(Excerpted from the March 2014 edition of A. Gary Shilling's INSIGHT)

U.S. stocks leaped 30% last year, continuing the rally that commenced in March 2009 and elevated the S&P 500 index 173% from its recessionary low (Chart 1). By late 2013, many investors were in a state of euphoria, even irrationally exuberant about prospects for more of the same this year and seized on any data that suggested that robust economic growth here and abroad would underpin more of the same equity performance.


 

Optimistic Forecasts

 

Many forecasts from credible sources accommodated them. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in January said the leading indicators for its 34 members rose to 109.9 in November from 100.7 in October, foretelling faster economic growth in the first half of 2014 for the U.S., U.K., Japan and the eurozone.

The International Monetary Fund in mid-January raised its global growth forecast for 2014 real GDP from its October estimate by 0.1 percentage points to 3.7%, with the U.S. (up 0.2 points to 2.2%), Japan (up 0.4 to 1.7%), the U.K. (up 0.6 to 2.4%), the eurozone (up 0.1 to 1.0%) and China (up 0.3 to 7.5%) leading the way.

Outgoing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on January 3 said that the fiscal drag from federal and state fiscal policies that restrained growth in recent years was likely to ease in 2014 and 2015. Other deterrents such as the European debt crisis, tighter bank lending standards and U.S. household debt reductions were easing, he said. “The combination of financial healing, greater balance in the housing market, less fiscal restraint and, of course, continued monetary policy accommodation bodes well for U.S. economic growth in coming quarters.”

A Wall Street Journal poll of economists found an average forecast of 2.7% growth in 2014, up from 1.9% in 2013 and the official forecast of the perennially-optimistic Fed, made before Christmas, called for 2.8% to 3.2% real GDP growth this year. Also, chronically-optimistic Barron’s, in its Feb. 17, 2014 edition, headlined its cover story, “Good News. The U.S. Economy Could Grow This Year At A Surprisingly Robust 4%. Forget The Snow. Consumers And Businesses Are Ready To Spend.” Many investors also believed that the U.S. economy was about to break out of the 2% real GDP rises that have ruled since 2010.

Sentiment Shift

 

It’s interesting that Barron’s ran this headline after investor sentiment shifted dramatically. It’s as if an iron curtain came down between the last trading day of 2013 and January 2014. A headline in the Feb. 5, 2014 Wall Street Journal screamed, “Turnabout on Global Outlook Darkens Mood.” As stocks flattened and then fell, people started to realize that economic growth last year was weak, rising only 1.9% from 2012 as measured by real GDP.

The fourth quarter annual rate was chopped from the 3.2% “advance estimate” by the Commerce Department to 2.4%, and one percentage point of the 2.4% was due to the jump in net exports as imports fell due to domestic shale oil and natural gas replacing imported energy. Nevertheless, exports remain vulnerable to ongoing weakness in American trading partners. Also in the third quarter of 2013, 1.7 percentage points of the 4.1% growth was due to inventories. Given the disappointing Christmas sales, these were probably undesired additions to stocks and will retard growth this year as they are liquidated.
Even the stated GDP numbers show this to be the slowest recovery in post-World War II history (Chart 2). And real median income has atypically dropped in this recovery, largely due to the slashing of labor costs by American business.



Pending home sales, which are contracts signed for future closings, peaked last May and had dropped considerably before cold weather set in this past winter while housing starts fell for a third straight month in February.

Wary Investors

 

While stocks soared in 2013, investors didn’t dig too deeply into corporate earnings reports, but now they are. As we’ve discussed in many past Insights, with limited sales volume increases in this recovery and virtually no pricing power, businesses have promoted profits by cutting costs, resulting in all time highs for profit margins. Many investors are now joining us in believing that the leap in profit margins, which has stalled for eight quarters, may be vulnerable.

They’re also paying more attention to the outlook for future profits and cash generation as foretold by acquisitions and spending on R&D. Shareholders favor those companies that invest while penalizing companies that fall short. Per-share profits gains due to share buybacks are no longer viewed favorably. Furthermore, investors are aware that two-thirds of the 30% rise in the S&P 500 index last year was due to the rising P/E, with only a third resulting from earnings improvement.

In mid-February, the S&P 500 stocks were trading at 14.6 times the next 12 months earnings, higher than the 10-year average of 13.9. As Insight readers may recall, we take a dim view of this measure since it amounts to a double discount of both future stock performance and analysts’ perennially-optimistic estimates of earnings. In December, Wall Street seers, on average, forecast a 10% rise in stocks for 2014, the average of the last 10 years. But the average forecasting error over the past decade was 12% with a 50% overestimate in 2008. That 12% error was larger than the average gain of 10%.

Besides cost-cutting, the leap in profit margins has been supported by declining borrowing costs spawned by record-low interest rates. Low rates have also made equities attractive relative to plenty of liquidity supplied by the Fed and Chinese banks and shadow banks.

Last May and June, stocks, bonds and other securities were shaken by the Fed’s talk of tapering its then-$85 billion per month worth of security purchases, in part because many assumed that also meant hikes in the central bank’s federal funds rate. But then the Fed then went on an aggressive offensive to convince investors that raising rates would be much later than tapering, and investors have largely shrugged off the credit authorities’ decision in December to cut its monthly purchases from $85 billion to $75 billion in January and by another $10 billion in February.

The Fed’s decision in January came despite the recent signs of weak U.S. economic activity, weather-related or not, and indications of trouble abroad. Furthermore, although the Fed is still adding fuel to the fire under equities, it is adding less and less, and is on schedule to end its quantitative easing later this year.

The Age of Deleveraging

 

So the zeal for equities persists but we remain cautious about the spread between that enthusiasm and the sluggish growth of economies around the globe. As in every year of this recovery, the early-in-the-year hope for economic acceleration that would justify soaring equities may again be disappointed, and real GDP is likely to continue to rise at about a 2% annual rate.

Deleveraging after a major bout of borrowing and the inevitable crisis that follows normally takes a decade. The process of working down excess debt and retrenching, especially by U.S. consumers and financial institutions globally, is six years old, so history suggests another four years of deleveraging and slow growth. And, as we’ve noted many times in the past, the immense power of deleveraging is shown by the reality that slow growth persists despite the massive fiscal and monetary stimulus of recent years. Furthermore, although the Fed hasn’t started to sell off its immense holdings of securities, as it will need to in order to eliminate excess bank reserves, it is reducing the additions to that pile by tapering its new purchases.

Consumers Retrench

 

In the U.S., some have made a big deal over the uptick in domestic borrowing in the fourth quarter of 2013. Auto loans have risen, the result of strong replacement sales of aged vehicles, but sales are now falling. Student debt and delinquencies continue to leap (Chart 3). The decline in credit borrowing may be leveling, but what’s gotten the most attention was the rise in mortgage debt.



Since housing activity is falling, the mortgage borrowing uptick is due to fewer foreclosures and mortgage writeoffs as well as easier lending standards by some banks. They are under continuing regulatory pressure to increase their capital and slash their exposure to highly-profitable activities like derivatives origination and trading, off-balance sheet vehicles and proprietary trading, so banks are eager for other loans. Furthermore, the jump in mortgage rates touched off by the Fed’s taper talk has slaughtered the profitable business of refinancing mortgages as applications collapsed.

Household debt remains elevated even though, as a percentage of disposable personal income, it has fallen from a peak of 130% in 2007 to 104% in the third quarter, the latest data (Chart 4). It still is well above the 65% earlier norm, and we’re strong believers in reversion to well-established norms. Even more so considering the memories many households still have of the horrors of excess debt and the losses they suffered in recent years.



Furthermore, given the lack of real wage gains and real total income growth, the only way that consumers can increase the inflation-adjusted purchases of goods and services is to reduce their still-low saving rate or increase their still-high debts. Furthermore, consumer confidence has stabilized after its recessionary nosedive but remains well below the pre-recession peak.

So, in rational fashion, consumers are retrenching, with retail sales declines in December and January and slightly up in February. That’s much to the dismay of retailers who appear to be stuck with excess merchandise, as reflected in their rising inventory-sales ratio. And recall that retailers slashed prices on Christmas goods right before the holidays to avoid being burdened with unwanted inventories. Of course, there’s the usual argument that cold winter weather kept shoppers at home. But that's where they could order online, yet non-store retail sales—largely online purchases—actually fell 0.6% in January in contrast to the early double-digit year-over-year gains.

We’re not forecasting a recession this year but rather a continuation of slow growth of about 2% at annual rates. But with slow growth, it doesn’t take much of a hiccup to drive the economy into negative territory. And indicators of future activity are ominous. The index of leading indicators is still rising, but a more consistent forecaster—the ratio of coincident to lagging indicators—is falling after an initial post-recession revival.

Housing

 

Housing activity is retrenching, with pending sales, housing starts and mortgage applications for refinancing all declining. Also, as we’ve discussed repeatedly in past Insights, the housing recovery has never been the on the solid backs of new homeowners who buy the starter houses that allow their sellers to move up to the next rung on the housing ladder, etc. Mortgage applications for house purchases, principally by new homeowners, never recovered from their recessionary collapse. Multi-family housing starts, mostly rental apartments), recovered to the 300,000 annual rate of the last decade but single-family starts, now about 600,000, remain about half the pre-collapse 1.1 million average.

Many potential homeowners, especially young people, don’t have the 20% required downpayments, are unemployed or worry about their job security, don’t have high enough credit scores to qualify for mortgages, and realize that for the first time since the 1930s, house prices nationwide have fallen—and might again. Prices have recovered some of their earlier losses (Chart 5), but in part because lenders have cleaned up inventories of foreclosed and other distressed houses they sold at low prices. In any event, prices weakened slightly late last year.



Some realtors complain that existing home sales are being depressed by the lack of for-sale inventory. Nevertheless, inventories of existing houses rose from December to January by 2.2%. Fannie Mae reported that its inventories of foreclosed properties rose for the second time in the last three months of 2013 as sales fell and prices dropped for the first time in three years. Also, with the percentage of underwater home mortgage loans dropping—to 11.4% in October from 19% at the start of 2013—potential sellers may emerge now that their houses are worth more than their mortgages.

Income Polarization

 

Rising equity prices persist not only in the face of a weak economic recovery, including a faltering housing sector, but also a recovery that has been benefiting relatively few. The winners are found in the financial sector and those with brains and skills to succeed in today’s globalized economy that put the low-skilled in direct competition with lower-paid workers in developing lands. The ongoing polarization of incomes illustrates this reality eloquently.

Chart 6 shows that the only share of income that continues to increase is the top quintile. All of the four lower quintiles continue to lose shares. Income polarization is very real in the minds of many. It probably doesn’t bother people too much as long as their real incomes are rising. Sure, their shares of the total may be falling but their purchasing power is going up. But now both the shares and real incomes of most people are falling.



Resentment is being augmented by huge pay packages of the CEOs of big banks that were bailed out by the federal government. The number of billionaires in the world, most of them in the U.S., rose from 1,426 in 2012 to 1,645 last year, far surpassing the 1,125 in 2008.

The leaders of financial institutions and other businesses appear to be setting themselves up as easy targets for President Obama, who is fanning the flames of income inequality with some rather pointed rhetoric. Last year, he said, “Ordinary folks can’t write massive campaign checks or hire high priced lobbyists and lawyers to secure policies that tilt the playing field in their favor at everyone else’s expense. And so people get the bad taste that the system is rigged, and that increases cynicism and polarization, and it decreases the political participation that is a requisite part of our system of self government.”

Minimum Wages

 

Nevertheless, pressure to reduce income inequality remains strong and the Administration’s attempts to raise minimum wages are an obvious manipulation of its efforts in this area. The President issued an executive order raising minimum wages on new federal contracts and in his State of the Union address called for an increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10 in 2016.

The effects of the minimum wage have been hotly debated for years, no doubt since it was first introduced in 1938, and during each of the nearly 30 times it’s been raised since then, the latest in 2009. Liberals argue that it increases incomes and purchasing power and lifts people out of poverty. Conservatives believe that higher labor costs reduce labor demand, encourage automation, the hiring of fewer high skilled people and result in more jobs being exported to cheaper areas abroad. A new study by the bipartisan Congressional Budget office found that both arguments are true.

The report predicts that 16.5 million workers would benefit from the President’s proposal and lift 900,000 out of poverty from the 45 million projected to be in it in 2016. Earnings of low paid workers would rise $31 billion. Since low income people tend to spend most of their paychecks, higher consumer outlays would result.

But the CBO also predicts that the proposed rise in minimum wages would eliminate 500,000 jobs and because of their income losses, the overall effect on wages would be an increase of only $2 billion, not $31 billion. Also, 30% of the higher pay would go to families that earn three times the poverty level since many minimum wage workers are second earners and teenagers in middle and upper income households. And higher labor costs would retard profits and result in price increases, muting the effects of more spending power by higher minimum wage recipients.

In any event, it appears that the proposed jump in the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 would cause a lot of distortions and no doubt unintended consequences for a net gain in low-wage earnings of just $2 billion. That’s less than a rounding error in the $17 trillion economy and would do almost nothing to narrow income inequality. Regardless of the merits, the evidence suggests that higher federal minimum wages are probably in the cards.

Unemployment

 

By his promotion of an increase in the minimum wage, the President reveals his preference for higher pay for those with jobs over the creation of additional employment. This seems strange politically in an era when unemployment remains very high, especially when corrected for the fall in the labor participation rate (Chart 7).



As also noted earlier, the cutting of costs, especially labor costs, has been the route to the leap in profit margins to record levels and the related strength in corporate earnings in an era when slow economic growth has curtailed sales volume gains, the absence of inflation has virtually eliminated pricing power and the strengthening dollar is creating currency translation losses for foreign and export revenues.

Obamacare

 

One reason for the Administration’s emphasis on income inequality and raising the minimum wage may be to divert attention from the troubled rollout of Obamacare. True, big new government programs always have bugs but the Administration’s overconfidence in initiating Obamacare and the lack of testing of its website is notable. Also, Obama promised that "if you like your plan, you can keep it," but many, in effect, are being forced into high-cost but more comprehensive policies. To reduce the flack it is receiving, the Administration plans for a second time to allow insurers to sell policies that don't comply with the new federal law for at least 12 more months.

Another problem for the Administration is that Obamacare will reduce working hours by the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs by 2024, according to the CBO. People will work less in order to have low enough incomes to qualify for Obamacare health insurance subsidies. Also, older workers who previously planned to keep their jobs until they could qualify for Medicare will cut back their hours or leave the workforce entirely in order to qualify for Medicare, the federal-state programs for low-income folks that are being expanded under Obamacare.

Hospitals may benefit from Obamacare. Under a 1970s-era law, they must shoulder the emergency room costs of the uninsured, but those risks are being shifted to insurers and taxpayers. Taxpayers will also pay more since 25 states have refused to expand Medicaid, leaving the federal government to set up and run the enhanced programs.

More Medical Costs

 

Not only is Obamacare proving unaffordable for many but also promises huge additional costs for the government. Healthcare outlays have been leaping and were already scheduled to continue skyrocketing under previous laws as the postwar babies retire and draw Medicare benefits while Medicare costs leap.

The original projected jump in insured people under Obamacare was not projected by the Administration to increase the government’s health care costs appreciably from what they otherwise would have been. You might recall, however, that when Obamacare was enacted, we noted in Insight that after Medicare was introduced in 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee forecast its cost at $12 billion in 1990. It turned out to be $110 billion—nine times as much. Obamacare is no doubt destined for the same cost overruns.

Acting in what they perceive to be their best economic interest, elderly people and those in poor health—but not healthy folks—have persevered through the government website labyrinth to sign up for healthcare exchanges. They're taking advantage of the law's ban on discrimination based on health conditions and age-related premiums. Many healthy people, on the other hand, don’t want to pay higher premiums than on their existing policies, and many of those who are uninsured want to remain so.

So, to make insurance plans economically viable, in the absence of younger, healthy participants to pay for the ill ones, insurers will need to be subsidized by the government or premiums will need to be much higher and therefore much less attractive to all but the chronically ill. This self-reinforcing upward spiral in health care insurance premiums would no doubt also require substantial government subsidies. Aetna expects to lose money this year on its health care exchanges due to enrollment that is skewed more than expected to older people.

Many of the young, healthy people needed to make Obamacare function as a valid insurance fund would rather pay the penalty, which begins at $95 for this year, and continue to use the emergency room instead for medical treatment. Even the escalation of the penalty from $150 in 2014 for a single person earning $25,000 to $325 in 2015 and $695 in 2016 may not spur sign-ups. In total, there are 11.6 million people ages 18 to 34 who are uninsured, a big share of the 32 million Obamacare is intending to insure.

Some employers, especially smaller outfits, plan to encourage employees to sign up for exchanges and drop company plans. The government could push up the now-low penalties for not signing up to force participation, but we doubt that the Administration would risk the ire of an already-unhappy public in pursuing this approach. On balance, the taxpayer cost of Obamacare seems destined to exceed vastly the $2 billion originally projected gap.

The Fed

 

The Fed is on course to continue reducing its monthly purchases of securities and at the current rate, would cut them from $65 billion at present to zero late this year. The minutes of the Fed’s January policy meeting indicate that it would take a distinct weakening of the economy to curtail another $10 billion cut in security purchases in March.

The tapering of the Fed’s monthly security purchases only reduced the ongoing additions to the staggering pile of $2.5 trillion in excess reserves. That’s the difference between the total reserves of member banks at the Fed, created when the central bank buys securities, and the reserves required by the bank’s deposit base. Normally, banks lend and re-lend those reserves and each dollar of them turns into $70 of M2 money.

But with banks reluctant to lend and regulators urging them to be cautious while creditworthy borrowers are swimming in cash, each dollar of reserves has only generated $1.4 in M2 since the Fed’s big asset purchase commenced in August 2008.

At present, those excess reserves amount to no more than entries on the banks’ and the Fed’s balance sheets. But when the Age of Deleveraging ends in another four years or so and real GDP growth almost doubles from the current 2% annual rate, those excess reserves will be lent, the money supply will leap and the economy could be driven by excess credit through full employment and into serious inflation. So as the Fed is well aware, its challenge is, first, to end additions to those excess reserves through quantitative easing and then eliminate them by selling off its huge securities portfolio. This will be Yellen’s major job, assuming she's still chairwoman in coming years.

Raise Rates?

 

Last spring, when the Fed began to talk of tapering its monthly security purchases, investors assumed that to mean simultaneous increases in interest rates, so Treasury notes and bonds sold off as interest rates jumped. In the course of 2013, however, the Fed’s concerted jawboning campaign convinced markets that the two were separate policy decisions and that rate-raising was distant. Still, as in almost every year since the great rally in Treasury bonds began in 1981 (Chart 8), the chorus of forecasters at the end of 2013 predicted higher yields in 2014.



“Treasury Yields Set To Resume Climb,” read a January 2 Wall Street Journal headline. It cited a number of bond dealers and investors who expected the yield on 10-year Treasury notes to rise from 3% at the end of 2013 to 3.5% a year later or even 3.75%. They cited a strengthening economy, Fed tapering and higher inflation. Many investors rushed into the Treasury’s brand new floating rate 2-year notes when they were issued in January in anticipation of higher rates. About $300 billion in floating-rate securities already existed, issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as the U.K. and Italian governments.

Nevertheless, Treasurys have rallied so far this year as the 10-year note yield dropped to 2.6% on March 3 from 3.0% at the end of 2013. U.S. economic statistics so far this year are predominantly weak, as noted earlier. Emerging markets are in turmoil. China’s growth is slowing.

Inflation

 

Besides concerns over the sluggish economic recovery and chronic employment problems, the Fed worries about too-low inflation, which remains well below its 2% target, and over the threat of deflation.

As discussed in our January 2014 Insight, there are many ongoing deflationary forces in the world, including falling commodity prices, aging and declining populations globally, economic output well below potential, globalization of production and the resulting excess supply, developing-country emphasis on exports and saving to the detriment of consumption, growing worldwide protectionism including competitive devaluation in Japan, declining real incomes, income polarization, declining union memberships, high unemployment and downward pressure on federal and state and local government spending.

Very low inflation is found throughout developed countries (Chart 9). It ran 0.8% in the eurozone in January year over year, well below the target of just under 2%. In Germany, where employment is high, inflation was 1.2% but lower in the southern weak countries with 0.6% in Italy, 0.3% in Spain and a deflationary minus-1.4% in Greece in January from a year earlier. In the U.K., inflation in January at 1.9% was just below the Bank of England’s 2% target.


 

Chronic Deflation Delayed

 

We’ve noted in past Insights that aggressive monetary and fiscal stimuli probably have delayed but not prevented chronic deflation in producer and consumer prices (see “What’s Preventing Deflation?,” Feb. 2013 Insight). Still, this year may see the onset of chronic global deflation. And it will probably be a combination of the good deflation of new technology- and globalization-driven excess supply with the bad deflation of deficient demand.

Why do the Fed and other central banks clearly fear deflation and fight so hard to stave it off? There are a number of reasons. Steadily declining prices can induce buyers to wait for still-lower prices. So, excess capacity and inventories result and force prices lower. That confirms suspicions and encourages buyers to wait even further. Those deflationary expectations are partly responsible for the slow economic growth in Japan for two decades.

Central banks also worry that with deflation, it can’t create negative interest rates that encourage borrowers to borrow since, then, in real terms, they’re being paid to take the filthy lucre away. Since central bank target rates can’t go below zero, real rates are always positive when price indices are falling. This has been a problem in Japan many times in the last two decades (Chart 10). Furthermore, credit authorities fret that if chronic deflation sets in, it can’t very well raise interest rates. That means it would have no room to cut them as it would prefer when the next bout of economic weakness threatens.



Central banks also are concerned that deflation raises the real value of debts and could produce considerable financial strains in today’s debt-laden economies. In deflation, debt remains unchanged nominally, but as prices fall, it rises in real terms. Since the incomes and cash flows of debtors no doubt fall in nominal terms, their ability to service their debts is questionable. This makes banks reluctant to lend.

Governments also worry about the rising real cost of their debts in deflation, especially when slow growth makes it difficult to reduce even nominal debts in relation to GDP. This is the dilemma among the Club Med eurozone countries. Deflationary cuts in wages and prices make them more competitive but raises real debt burdens.

Emerging Markets: Sheep and Goats

 

As noted earlier, the agonizing reappraisal of emerging economies by investors commenced with the Fed’s taper talk last May and June. Investors have been forced to separate well-managed emerging economies, the good guys, or the Sheep that, in the Bible, Christ separated from the bad guys, the Goats with poorly-run economies.

Our list of Sheep—South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines—have current account surpluses, which measure the excess of domestic saving over domestic investment. So they are exporting that difference, which gives them the wherewithal to fund any outflows of hot money. The Sheep also have stable currencies against the U.S. dollar, moderate inflation and fairly flat stock markets over the last decade. Also, with their current account surpluses, the Sheep haven’t been forced to raise interest rates in order to retain hot money.

In contrast, the Goats have negative and growing current account deficits. These countries include the “fragile five”—Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey—with basket case Argentina thrown in for good measure. They also have weak currencies, serious inflation and falling stock markets on balance. These Goats rely on foreign money inflows to fill their current account deficits, so when it leaves, they’re in deep trouble with no good choices. They’ve raised interest rates to try to retain and attract foreign funds. Higher rates may curb inflation and support their currencies but they depress already-weak economies while any strength in currencies is negative for exports.

The alternative is exchange controls, utilized by Argentina as well as Venezuela. That’s why Argentina hasn’t bothered to increase its central bank rate. But these policies devastate already-screwed up economies. In Argentina, artificially-low interest rates and soaring inflation encourage Argentinians to spend, not save. Inflation is probably rising at about a 40% annual rate this year, up from 28% in 2013 but officially 11%. Purchasers are frustrated because retailers don’t want to sell their goods, knowing they’ll have to replace inventories at higher prices—if they can obtain them.

Who Gives? Who Gets?

 

In some ways, even the Goats among emerging economies are better off than they were in the late 1990s. Back then, many had fixed exchange rates and borrowed in dollars and other hard foreign currencies. So they didn’t want to devalue because that would increase the local currency cost of their foreign debts. Consequently, they all were vulnerable and fell like dominoes when Thailand ran out of foreign currency reserves in 1997. That touched off the 1997-1998 Asian crisis that ultimately spread to Russia, Brazil and Argentina.

Today, less foreign borrowing, more debts in local currencies and flexible exchange rates make adjustments easier. Still, as discussed earlier, the sharp currency drops that are seen promote inflation, but raising interest rates to protect currencies depresses economic growth. Either way, it's no-win in Goatland.

Furthermore, as our friends at GaveKal research point out, current account balances globally are a zero sum game, so if the Goats’ current account deficits decline, other countries’ balances must weaken. This is difficult in an era of slow growth in global trade. Which countries will volunteer to help out the Goats? Not likely the Sheep. Not the U.S. As noted earlier, the Fed has said clearly that the emerging countries are on their own. China isn’t likely as overall growth slows and both import and export order indices in China's Purchasing Managers Index have dropped below 50, indicating contraction. Furthermore, China maintains her mercantilist bias and isn’t overjoyed with her much diminished recent current account and trade balances.
A collapse in oil prices would transfer export earnings from OPEC to energy-importing Goats but oil shocks as a result of a Middle East crisis or an economic collapse and revolution in Venezuela seem more likely. Japan is going the other way, with the Abe government’s trashing of the yen designed to spike exports, reverse the negative trade balance and the soon-to-go-negative current account. The eurozone is also unlikely to help the Goats due to its slow growth and attempts by the Club Med South, mentioned earlier, to become more competitive and improve their trade balances.

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The article Outside the Box: Risk On, Regardless was originally published at Mauldin Economics


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