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 on ultra low production number cars. (See the Tangibles section, near the end of this column.)
Precious Metals:
Clint Siegner at Activist Post: Preparing to Barter and Trade With Precious Metals Is NOT a Loony Idea
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High Anxiety In Marketplace Propels Gold To Seven Week High
Commodities:
Natural Gas Prices Poised To Rise As Exports Boom
Forex:
Most experts agree: USD/CHF Forecast Poll
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Rand Selling Extends as ‘Zuma Effect’ Continues to Drive ZAR Markets
Economy and Finance:
Fannie & Freddie Might Need $100 Billion in New Crisis, FHFA Says
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Television interview: ‘Dr. Doom’ Marc Faber: There’s no all-clear signal in the markets
Derivatives:
Esma adviser says position limits to be published in November
Troubling Trends:
Over at MarketWatch: Americans now have the highest credit-card debt in U.S. history. And overall consumer debt now totals an astronomical $12 trillion. About $9 trillion of that is in house mortgages.
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And at DollarCollapse.com: Really Bad Ideas, Part 3: Government Debt Isn’t Actually Debt
Tangibles Investing (Low production number cars):
I have a consulting client, who works in a high income profession. For privacy reasons he shall remain nameless. He has chosen a very unusual tangible investing strategy. He loves sports cars. And he has some extra space in the new oversize shop building at his retreat/ranch where he lives year-round. Last year he did some measuring, and found that he has room for 17 sports cars.
Rather than buying classic cars that have already gone up in value, he is focusing on recent or current-year production big block “sport” variants (SS, GT, et cetera.) of Detroit production cars. He will buy, for example, the largest-engine variant of a sport model that is already a fairly scarce car. His goal is to obtain rare variants of which less than 1,000 were made, and each with less than 500 miles on the odometer.
Ultra-Rarity
If you include paint colors variations, he will probably end up with cars for which there were less than 500 produced. For example, he owns an example of one of the cars mentioned in this article: Eight of the Rarest New Cars on the Road. And, given the unusual factory paint color of his example, it makes it one of less that 150 produced. That is considered an “ultra low number” car.
Once he buys each car, he follows his own particular spin on standard storage procedures. He simply idles it with a hefty dose of Sta-Bil mixed into NON-ethanol blend premium gas in the fuel tank, parks it in his shop, chocks the wheels, releases the parking brake, disconnects and removes the battery. Then he drapes the car with a car cover. He told me that he only buys hard top models because convertible tops tend to deteriorate in storage. In our talk he emphasized that outgassing batteries will induce rust inside the engine compartment. Therefore they are stored in a separate room. These are individually labelled, and all trickle charged.
The Strategem
His budgeted goal is to buy 3 or 4 such cars per year, for the next five years. Then he plans to leave them garaged for at least 10 years. He tells me that even if only one quarter of these cars become truly collectible or a “future classic”, his overall investment will far outpace the Dow Stocks (At least considering their current unsustainable trajectory.)
By the way, his “daily driver” is a low-production number continental European sports car from the early 2000s. But it never developed much of a collector following here in the States. He describes it as his “favorite investing mistake”, since he now enjoys racking up the miles on it. (The other cars in his collection get idled once in a while, but get almost zero miles added to their odometers.)
If you want to pursue the same strategy, you will have to do some meticulous research. If you are successful, then your grandchildren will inherit some truly rare birds.
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!
Hope it works. But then there is this to consider:
http://www.foxnews.com/auto/2017/08/10/fire-at-classic-car-lot-destroys-around-150-historic-vehicles.html
When I was a youngster in the early seventies you could buy as many VW bugs as you wanted for 300-600 bucks. I thought at the time that if I had the money and storage space I would buy them and store them away. The same with the camper vans that were a little higher. Today old used bugs in good shape go for ten times what I would have paid for them in the seventies. A small car that might show similar appreciation in decades to come is the Miata.
Natural gas exports: It makes no sense to export natural gas except to the few who will become billionaires doing it. Our current over supply of NG thanks to fracking will end and when it does we will go back to importing it and charging a lot more for it. The resource belongs to the country and the citizens and should be used to their benefit. That would mean producing it slowly consistent with the domestic demand thus making it last longer. This would continue the improvement in our economy as energy prices are a major factor in production of domestic goods. I suspect that donations to politicians and under the table transfers of money is driving this stupid export of critical resources.
What do you think the sanctions against Russia and Iran and, to a lesser degree Qatar are about. Europe needs natural gas. Russia and Iran have massive quantities of natural gas. The US needs a market for the natural gas we produce. Hence, sanctions imposed on Russia and Iran to force Europe to buy gas from us.
American corporatism (the American System) at its finest. God bless the USA.