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 ancient coins. The accompanying photo shows how many ancient coin hoards look, when first excavated. (See the Tangibles Investing section, near the end of this column.)
Precious Metals:
First up, at FX Empire: Silver Price Forecast October 18, 2017, Technical Analysis
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Despite some recent attempts at import controls, the wedding gift demand in India is a key determiner of the price of gold: Diwali sales have been up 15-20%: ORRA
Stocks:
Next, we read: Less than 18 pct of global stocks owned by index investors – BlackRock
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At The Motley Fool: Most Investors Expect a Stock Market Correction Later This Year — but They Also Aren’t Worried About It. JWR’s Comment: Given the current P/E ratios, the weakness in the underlying economy, and the realization that the stock bubble has been driven by artificially low interest rates, I expect a far more drastic correction.
Commodities:
On to this, from the Resilience folks: Peak Oil Review 2: October 2017
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Visualizing US shale oil & gas production. JWR’s Comment: There is a two month lag in some of this data, but it is enlightening.
Forex:
Moving on to this at A to Z Forex: USDCAD Fundamental Outlook
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Dollar Pushes Higher as Earnings Boost U.S. Stocks
Derivatives:
Markit and CDS IndexCo launch synthetic ABS index JWR’s Comment: I fail to see how adding a layer of abstraction on a derivative will increase transparency. If anything, it is safe to assume that it increases opacity. (At least for the eventual buyer of the debt “package.”) The painful lessons of 2008-2009 seem to have already been forgotten.
Troubling Trends:
Next, several readers sent this: US immigration population hits record 60 million, 1-of-5 in nation. JWR’s Comment: This demographic trend is not nearly so pronounced in the American Redoubt, where the vast majority of residents are native-born.
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Congressman Trey Gowdy punctuates the point that the U.S. Government is essentially bankrupt because of its long term obligations. In testimony, these liabilities were admitted to be essentially “infinitely large” in the absence of some miraculous demographic shift.
Tangibles Investing (Ancient Coins):
I recently had another consulting client ask me about investing in ancient coins. In this case, he was interested in ancient Roman and Byzantine bronze and silver alloy coins available on eBay. My advice: “Forget about it!” European ancient coins are perhaps the worst coin investment presently offered. The problem is that since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the change of governments in their satellite communist states, entrepreneurial diggers have gone to work, in earnest. Using modern metal detectors, huge caches of ancient coins are now being found. So many copper and silver coins have been found that they now sell for not much more than their scrap metal value. And even some ancient gold coins now no longer sell for much more than scrap unless that are exceptionally uncommon and/or in fantastic condition. The number of new hoards found each year has dropped in the past decade and hence prices have started to recover a bit, but there are still too many coins out there to match the level of collector interest. There as also now a problem of hand-struck fake ancient coins hitting the market. There are some exceptions, but my general advice is to avoid investing in ancient coins. Oh, and ditto for European battlefiled relics. The quantity of relics hitting the markets will exceed the corresponding collector interest for the foreseeable future. Just as with ancient coins, the combination of new-found freedom and affordable metal detectors are conspiring to flood the market.
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!
For those interested,
Silver, will hold its value over Gold, in a SHTF scenario. Gold is an indivisible currency, that is of questionable value, especially once the SHTF.
Common calibre bullets are your best source of trade in the coming years.