Here are the latest items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. And it bears mention that most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of JWR. (SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor.) Today’s focus is on investing in common caliber ammunition, primarily for barter. (See the Tangibles Investing section, below.)
Gold and Silver Market Morning: June 5 2017 – Gold consolidating with a positive bias
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The South Africa Chamber of Mines has released their annual statistics for the preceding year. Despite their cheery verbiage, the cold hard fact is that South African gold production is less than half of what it was in 2001. Most of this decline has been caused by labor issues rather than lack of gold reserves or mining technical problems.
Stocks:
Where The Booming Stock Market Goes From Here
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Over at Seeking Alpha, Bradley Lamensdorf offered this: Watch Out, Indicators Point To A Break In The Stock Market
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Tech stocks send another bearish warning of bigger market sell-off, even with Apple at highs. (This web page has auto-start video.)
Forex:
Analyst: “Trump Wants to Make the Dollar Weak Again”
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Euro Begins to Trend Higher Against Australian and Canadian Dollars
Economy and Finance:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Shock rise in China’s shadow banking enrages Xi Jinping
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Banks May Need $50 Billion New Capital After Brexit
Troubling Trends:
WSJ: U.S. Auto Makers Report Steep Sales Declines in July
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Brexit-wary Bank of England leaves rates on hold, cuts growth forecast
Tangibles Investing (Common Caliber Ammunition):
Ever since I started SurvivalBlog in 2005, I’ve emphasized investing common caliber ammunition. As long as it is stored in waterproof containers, it has a shelf life of at least 75 years. In many ways, having a good stock of common caliber ammunition is better than money in a bank savings account. There may come a day when the U.S. Dollar becomes almost worthless. But ammunition always seems to hold its value.
Rather than re-hash the content of the many SurvivalBlog letters and articles on this subject, in this column I will suffice with just a few links:
- Letter Re: How Much Ammunition to Store?
- Ammunition Versus Silver for Barter
- Letter Re: Ammunition Prices in the Future?
Provisos:
SurvivalBlog and its Editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. So please see our Provisos page for our detailed disclaimers.
News Tips:
Please send your economics and investing news tips to JWR. (Either via e-mail of via our Contact form.) These are often especially relevant, because they come from folks who particularly watch individual markets. And due to their diligence and focus, we benefit from fresh “on target” investing news. We often “get the scoop” on economic and investing news that is probably ignored (or reported late) by mainstream American news outlets. Thanks!
I’m not seeking to complain here, just offering useful suggestions of how to improve the blog. I wonder if, when there are multiple links listed, as above, if there would be a way to make the text bigger, so when I click on it on my mobile device, I have more room to for sure click the correct link.
@Rose,
SurvivalBlog has enabled the zoom function on the website. You should be able to “pinch zoom” and enlarge the link on your phone to see it better and hit the link more reliably.
I was one of the poor unfortunates that was caught off guard when the ammo shortage hit a few years back. I always kept a couple of bricks of 22 LR handy for plinking and hunting, but when I ran low and went to purchase more I could not find it any longer. I started looking around and found that no one had any on their shelves as well as being very low on other common ammo like 9mm or 223. When I did finally get a brick of 22LR it cost me more than $70 and it killed me to pay that price. Boy was I out of touch with reality. I didn’t want to shoot my ammo for fear of not being able to replace it. So every chance I had to buy ammo, especially at lower than average prices, I did just that. I was buying everything in bulk from 100 rounds to 1,000 rounds. My purchases were normally around $500.00 at a time. When I bought flats of shotgun shells they had to roll them to my truck with a hand truck. The kid helping me load them asked if I ran a shooting range and I just smiled and said yes you can say that. I was ordering items online too. I had actually found an ammo watch site that pulled from multiple dealers across the country and listed their ammo price cost per round. Now I have more than I can shoot and I still purchase ammo for stockpiling, but to me it is just as indicated here in being great barter items when needed. So now I have plenty to shoot and practice with while having little fear of running short. I also have plenty to trade with if need be. Storage may be a bit of an issue with all the ammo cans stacked up, but the fix is in the works for that too.
I find it amazing anyone would listen to anyone who claims any expertise in predicting the future of the markets when everyone got it wrong last time. Did anyone’s broker suggest they sale right before the last crash? Silver has been “going to hit $200 an ounce” for years now. Today it was $16.35.
Silver is being manipulated . More states are accepting gold and silver as forms of currency . When the dollar crashes …and it will its a fiat currency that’s backed by promises of debt ..its only a matter of time. History tells us every 10years we have a financial crisis . 2008 was 9 years ago.