Economics & Investing

Here are the latest items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks to watch, investing opportunities, hedges, derivatives, and the precious metals markets. These are all from the quirky “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor, JWR ^[1]:

Precious Metals:

Richard Postma was recently a guest on the Korelin Economics Report radio show ^[2]. Doc says: “There are some moving averages that have turned against the metals and will take time to recover. Summer is typically a rough time for the metals but we could see a the turn by the end of the year.”

Commodities Economics:

The price of nickel ore has been fairly steady ^[3] for the past two weeks. For those readers who took a hedge position in U.S. Nickel coins ^[4], my advice is to continue to hold them. Regardless, time is on your side!

Derivatives

A conference was held in Toronto, Canada last month: Over-the-Counter Derivatives Reform ^[5]. It would have been fun to have been a “Fly on the wall” there. The global derivatives market is bigger than ever. Even Vietnam is getting into the game! ^[6] I stand by my prediction ^[7] that the derivatives market will someday implode, spectacularly.

Forex:

Joaquin Monfort, over at the Pound Sterling Live Forex web site predicts: Canadian Dollar’s April Showers Could Lead to May Flowers ^[8]. Every SurvivalBlog reader should hedge a bit into carefully selected foreign currencies.  However these markets must be watched very closely to time your trades on dips.

Contrarian Investing:

I spotted this over at Schaeffer: Indicator of the Week: 25 Stock Picks For Contrarian Traders. ^[9]But keep in mind that going Full Contrarian is a guaranteed losing proposition in a secular bull market. At present only a small part of your position should be Contrarian. Yes, hedge some, but don’t build sand castles against a rising tide.

Tech:

VC warns of frothy startup climate signs after short ‘return to normalcy’ ^[10]. (For the sake of full disclosure: I was a freelance writer for the Silicon Valley Business Journal many years ago.  However, I presently have no connection with them.)

Stocks:

Some interesting recommendations over at Motley Fool: Four Top Small-Cap Stocks to Buy This Spring. ^[11] Note: Keep in mind that the whole tech sector is now over-bought and poised for a fall that will probably be as large as the Dot.Bomb bust of the year 2000. Caveat emptor, pal!

Outside The Box  Investing:

The recent dip in “Black Rifle” prices has created some odd market disparities.  Presently you can buy a fully finished serialized (“stripped”) AR-15 receivers here in the States for as low as $35, if you are willing to fill out a Form 4473.  That is just one third the cost of most 80% receivers–which have not dropped in price, correspondingly.

If you do some searching at gun shows you can find brand new stripped AR receivers being sold second hand by private party sellers. Those sell for roughly $60 to $100.  (Who is that seller? Someone who was planning to do a build or was speculating on a Hillary victory. But now he just wants to dump them.) Unless you are a machinist with a full-up shop available or unless you own a $1,500 Ghost Gunner ^[12], then buying 100% lowers sans papiere is presently the best way to go.

Someday, if the dreaded Crusty Chelsea is ever elected President, then you will probably quadruple your investment whether you buy 80% or 100% lowers. But whatever  you choose to buy, buy smart.

Provisos:

SurvivalBlog and its Editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. So please see our Provisos ^[13] page for our detailed disclaimers.