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 SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor, JWR. Today, we look at investing in collectible Colt firearms. (See the Tangibles Investing section.)
Precious Metals:
Commerzbank: ETF Holdings Of Silver Up Sharply Since Start Of June
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Texas Takes Another Step to Facilitate the Use of Its Gold Bullion Depository
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What is Up With the Silver Market? Who Is the Whale? – Mike Maloney
Global Economy & Finance:
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And even worse news, regarding DB’s huge derivatives book: Bank Run: Deutsche Bank Clients Are Pulling $1 Billion A Day. JWR’s Comments: Mark my words, folks: The nascent crisis at DB could trigger a cascading global derivatives melt-down and even threaten the Forex value of the Euro. Get out of paper and into tangibles!
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At Wolf Street: The Fed’s Stealth Stimulus Has Arrived
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Socialism: A Man-Made Malthusian Trap
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Reader DSV spotted this piece by Mark Nestmann: Banks Will Soon Be Obsolete
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At Seeking Alpha: Free Falling RV Shipments Signal Recession
Commodities:
I warned you, folks: Markets Now: Corn Crop “Isn’t There.” How High Can Prices Go? It would be wise to buy a few 5-gallon buckets of cornmeal before retail prices jump.
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G.P. sent this at Zero Hedge: Peak Scarcity: Top Supply Shocks That Humanity Isn’t Prepared For
Forex & Cryptos:
The Mail & Guardian (of South Africa) reports: Why no one’s buying the new Zimbabwean dollar. JWR’s Comment: This is surely a collective case of “Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on me.”
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U.S. Dollar Index Futures (DX) have been creeping downward. I suspect this is over uncertainty about whether or not the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) will cut interest rates, as they’ve hinted. In case the exchange value of the U.S. Dollar turns saturnine, I suggest hedging into physical silver and into Swiss Francs. For the near future, avoid anything Euro-denominated, since the Deutsche Bank fiasco has not yet fully played out.
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Reader H.L. suggested this over at Zero Hedge: Exit Scam? Dublin-Based Exchange Bitsane Vanishes With Users’ Funds
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UK Royal Mint to Provide Custody for New Cryptocurrency
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Reader G.P. flagged this news: Japanese Crypto Exchange Suffers $32 Million Hack. JWR’s Comment: I’ve mention this before: Do not trust crypto exchange services! Keep your crypto coins in air-gapped hardware wallet devices. Only connect it briefly, to make transactions! FYI, I use Trezor wallets. I’ve found them to be very sturdy little devices, and have a keypad mapping feature, for extra security, to defeat keylogger attacks.
Tangibles Investing:
Today, in honor of Samuel Colt’s birthday, I’m giving particular attention to investing in some collectible Colt firearms of the 1950s and 1960s that not many people have heard of. These include:
- Colt Courier — an aluminum “D” frame revolver. It is similar to the Colt Cobra, which also had an alloy frame. The Courier was made with a 3-inch blued steel barrel and a blue finish with bright bluish-black anodizing on the alloy frame. They were chambered in .22 LR (shown), and in .32 Colt New Police (aka .32 S&W). The most scarce Couriers were the .32 caliber versions that were made with aluminum cylinders. In all, there were only 3,053 Colt Couriers made from 1953 to 1956. This makes them much more scarce than the .22 caliber Banker’s Specials.
- The Colteer 1-22 — a single-shot bolt action .22 LR carbine.
- The Colteer .22 WMR — an even more scarce .22 Magnum variant single-shot bolt action.
- The “other” Colteer — a semi-auto .22 LR carbine, made from 1964-1976.
- Colt Stagecoach — a semi-auto .22 LR carbine.
With any of these, finding them in minty condition, and preferably in their original boxes is quite important, to maximize appreciation in value.
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 closely watch specific markets. If you spot any news that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers, then please send it in. News from local news outlets that is missed by the news wire services is especially appreciated. And it need not be just about commodities and precious metals. Thanks!
Banks won’t be obsolete as Nations, Governments, and Conglomerates need them but they are, at least in the US, already, merely utilities. But for individuals, DBA’s, and small and mid companies banks are mostly just in the way. 50 percent, it is said, of the world is middle men, the profit is in being in the middle, or if you’re on either end, cutting the middle man out. We don’t need the banks. If you want paper exposure to the banks replacement I would recommend an FinTech ETF because, as is the case when whole new industries are born, many companies within that industry won’t be around in 10 years, but, and it’s very hard to tell which ones, some will. Like the Dot Com boom and bust FinTech will likely have a similar cycle. All new industries go through what some call, the S-curve of maturity which starts with go-go aspirations and then a major washout from which the survivors are born as the new giants still in infancy. Think Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Apple which all survived the Dot Com bust. The one I use is ARKF, but do your own research and as JWR says, it’s paper, so keep your exposure as a small and manageable percent of your total investment strategy. I maintain that this is a generational opportunity as was tech in the 90’s, or cars and electricity 100 years ago, and trains in the 1800’s.
As to Libra, the article at Lew Rockwell is good but they seem confused by the intent of bookface. That company has no intent to keep transactions private, but rather quiet the opposite. It’s design is to record every transaction by every person to the penny, all made available to governments, if not advertisers and other companies. We should all know this by now, right? But I suppose some can pretend to be surprised when the “news” comes out that Libra is merely a record of everything you do, which is what the greater bookface is, is it not? Sure put your address, pics of your children, and use Libra on bookface, if you’re not exactly bright.
The DB exit of equities is part of the ‘turn around’ strategy but that doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing as an investable opportunity.
(InYour)Facebook and their scheme to start their own crypto-currency won’t lead to the demise of Banks, it will lead to the demise of (InYour)Facebook, which could only be something good.
Re: Scarcity
Two opposing thoughts.
We have already seen some problems with helium where I work. Not drastic but it is a real issue making us reexamine how to do certain things.
Thomas Sowell in Basic Economics dispells resource shortages pretty effectively. Basically as a resource becomes more scarce it becomes more expensive. As it becomes more expensive it becomes more cost effective to find more of it or recycle it or process lower grades of it or replace it which then alleviates the Scarcity driving costs back down. He cites oil, copper and other resources as examples and his predictions seem pretty accurate.
In other words, people learn and adapt.
Economics, as with all science, is simply the observation of God’s creation and/or His creator order. It used to be that in economics one would study, through observation, exactly what you describe from the Sowell book that I too have read. Now Economics is the manipulation of markets to offload risk to the peasants and maximize profit to the controllers. They are without God so they know not the proper role of science and have instituted what the Holy Bible says is; Science falsely so called. And I offer as further evidence the Global Warming hoax.
That’s a great book, I strongly recommend it. The part about the NYC rent controlled market is the perfect illustration and worth the cost of admission to attain the entire book.
Corn prices are skyrocketing? Then let’s end the ethanol scam.
Re:RV’s and recession indicators,I have used another rv as a indicator, boats. The weather reports from Chicago all like to use a backdrop of the waterfront and Monroe harbor. I was frightened seeing that the harbor has a massive decrease in use, a couple years ago there was a waiting list but this year only half the moorings are in the water and many of them are empty. Sail boats are a high maintenance rv with a shorter season and very sensitive to economic conditions and this is a real swing in economic sentiment. In the articles comments was a storage owner who was profitable but that just underscores the utilization factor(if not being used it is parked. May soon be a buyers market to pick up a rolling BOL.