Economics & Investing For Preppers

Here are the latest news 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 M1903 Springfield Rifles. (See the Tangibles Investing section.)

 

Precious Metals:

First up, over at Gold-Eagle: Gold’s Net Gain Of Nothing

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50% Equity Market Drop Won‘t Drive Gold Prices Higher – CrossBorder Capital

 

Economy & Finance:

Government debt at all levels, and personal debt is piling up at an insane rate. A breaking point is sure to come in the next few years. When it does, it won’t be pretty.

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Next, at Zero HedgeSweden Is On The Verge Of Going Completely Cashless: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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And another gem from Tyler Durden: Credit “Death Spiral” Begins As Loan ETF Sees Massive Outflows, Liquidates Quality Paper

 

Stocks & Bonds:

After last week’s rout, the NASDAQ, trading was up on Monday and then flat on Tuesday morning. By Tuesday afternoon, it was down 0.18%  At the same time, the DJIA was up 0.14%  to 24,685.  Meanwhile, the Shanghai Composite was digging deeper into the red–down to around 2650. The prospects do not look good in Asia!

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Cramer Remix: Most money managers haven’t seen a bear market like this one

 

Derivatives:

Brexit drama muddies water for FX options market

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A webinar titled CFTC’s Push to Enforce Insider Trading Rules in Commodities Markets will be held on December 13th, 2018.

 

Forex & Cryptos:

Ray Dalio: Losing ‘Reserve Status’ Would Lead To 30% Drop In The Dollar

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Pay Taxes With Bitcoin? Ohio Says Sure

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Many crypto investors were expecting a “Dead Cat Bounce” in the price of Bitcoin, on Monday. That bounce didn’t happen. By 3 PM, Pacific Time, the Dollar exchange value of Bitcoin was still drifting downward, to $3,683. That 8.45% drop in 24 hours followed four previous days of losses. And as of Tuesday morning, BTC was down a bit more to $3,655. Even the technical traders seems to be capitulating. The Dead Cat didn’t have the chance to bounce, before being eaten by Mr.  Bear.

 

Tangibles Investing (M1903 Springfield Rifles):

I know a couple of gun collectors who specialize in U.S. M1903 Springfield Rifles. These classic rifles use a Mauser patent design. The ’03 Springfield was in fact a patent infringement.  The German Mauser manufacturer, Ludwig Loewe/DWM sued and won a $3 million court judgment, plus ongoing payments of patent royalties, as M1903 Springfield production continued. One odd footnote to the history of World War I was that the U.S. government continued to pay patent royalties to DWM during the course of the war! (The payments were transferred through a Swiss bank.)

Unaltered M1903 Springfield variants now bring top dollar from collectors. Sadly, the vast majority of M1903s and M1903A3s were “sporterized” after World War II, which destroyed their collector’s value. The few that are still truly original–without even their stocks refinished–are quite scarce and valuable. That is the way to buy them: Look for nice sharp Inspector cartouches, indicating that a rifle’s stock has not been re-sanded since its original Ordnance Corps acceptance.

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File Under “I Told Your So”:  The Necco factory closed in July. Sealed cases of Necco wafer candies, which retailed for under $24 in June, are now being sold on the secondary market for $70 per case, plus $13 postage. (Did you put a bit of your money in Necco Futures, as I recommended, back in May?) The law of supply and demand is inescapable.

 

Provisos:

SurvivalBlog and its Editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. 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!




7 Comments

  1. Corporate debt is at an all time high as well, when measured by the number of public companies that won’t be able to service their debt come 2020. 14 percent are pretty much already insolvent. This is more than the dot com bubble and almost double the ’08 housing/debt bubble. Half of the Russel 2000 index companies don’t even make money.

    I’ve been debt free for years now but I’ve got this feeling that I’ll be stuck with the bill, again just like ’08, for the bad behavior of others. The ‘everybody gets a trophy’ mentality writ large has been highly destructive. Failure is a good thing.

  2. As an interesting side note (to me), yesterday I bought 1 oz silver rounds at spot ($14.25/oz). What was interesting was that the “handling” charge went up from $1.50/oz to $1.75/oz. (grumble grumble).

    1. You are exactly right, unless you can buy in quantity and not local you are at a disadvantage price wise. Then again buying local with cash it could be called the “price for anonymity”. I have noticed that if the spot has dropped from what the local dealer probably paid the dealer just raises the over spot to compensate. Take your chances!

  3. Sweden cashless ?- Sweden is a failed State, wonder if the no go areas with ” immigrants ” agree with no cash ? ooops but then they are collecting the govt coin……what else will go wrong ?

  4. While I agree that there are any number of scarce and currently valuable collectibles such as unaltered, high quality M1903 Springfields, I am reminded of what happened during the Great Depression and is well documented: many “valuables” became very cheap and were bought by the moneyed few for pennies on the dollar – or deutschmarks in Germany. The current state of our bankrupt nation and the likelihood of further increases in interest rates by the Fed clearly indicate that we are about to see serious devaluations in many collectibles. This is already noticeable in real estate and the stock market is a time bomb. These devaluations and the inevitability of major failures (they’re already grossly underfunded at many levels) of social security and other pension plans make investments in scarce and (currently) valuable Springfields, Lugers, Civil War collections, clocks and many, many other items poor investments in the current economic environment. And, again, it has happened before and was a warning we, as a nation, have forgotten. Only the very wealthy who can weather the worsening economic storm we are currently in will be able to buy these collectibles while those who are currently in debt or will be shafted by a currency reset or the failure of their pensions. And, to make matters worse, demographics and the current anti-gun attitude by many legislators are exacerbating the problem. As a retired antique militaria dealer, I have seen devaluation in modern and antique firearms and related items for several years and it continues as the factors I’ve listed continue to threaten or take their toll on value. My suggestion to those who have major investments in such items is that if you are planning to use them as a primary factor in your retirement unless you have major savings in more liquid form, you may be seriously distressed as the market continues to degrade. This is also true for consideration of investment of a new collectible.

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