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. 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 timberland. (See the Commodities section.)
Precious Metals:
Spot rhodium is maintaining its strength longer than I had anticipated. Congrats to anyone who heeded my “buy” advice, three years ago. It has been an amazing run. But it is definitely time to take your profits on about half of your holdings.
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Gary Tanashian: The Gold Stock Correction And What Lay Ahead
Economy & Finance:
At Zero Hedge: 55 Ways To ‘Starve The Beast’
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Video: They Must Go to INFINITE QE or The System BREAKS — Jim Willie. (The discussion of interest rates starts at around the 19:50 mark.)
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Yep, it is looking like QE (by any other name) infinity, indefinitely. The Wall Street Journal reports: Fed to Increase Temporary Liquidity Available To Markets
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Negative Rates Are Killing The World
Commodities & Tangibles:
A few notes on timber land: Take a look at the 5-year and 10-rate charts here. JWR’s Comments: It will not be until after the global credit market gets straightened out and after the real estate market corrects and then goes back into a primary bull cycle that we will see the price of lumber recover. By the way: Congratulations to any of you who sold their excess standing timber back in early 2018. We probably won’t see market prices at those levels again for another decade. If you have any yearning to buy timberland, then my advice is: Either hold off completely for now, or buy only logged-over land with trees less than 10 years old. Why? Because it will probably be 10 to 15 years –on the far side of the global finance “reset”–that those trees will sell at a good price. Wait for the crash and then buy at the bottom, for pennies on the dollar.
One unintended consequence of the recent timberland spike–and now price doldrums, is that second/third growth land is selling at deeply discounted prices, compared to 2018. This is good news for anyone who wants to buy a rural retreat in timber country. Talk to outfits like Tungsten Holdings, to find land in that category being sold directly by the timber companies. And don’t hesitate to put in “low ball” bids, since it is presently a Buyer’s Market.
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OilPrice News had this interesting historical perspective: The Cheapest Oil Ever Sold.
Forex & Cryptos:
Pound Sterling Forecast To Sink As Brexit Delayed Again. JWR’s Comment: What we are witnessing now are roadblocks and stalling tactics. Brexit is almost inevitable, even if it has to be “the hard way.” So I haven’t lost faith in the British Pound. Don’t worry. They’ll find their way out of Burger King someday. The Pound will be strong again.
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Swiss Franc: The USD/CHF pair has gone strongly Net Long.
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Naomi Brockwell: Crypto Taxes: the new IRS “guidance”
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With 18 Million Bitcoins Mined, How Hard Is That 21 Million Limit?
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Gold vs Bitcoin: Bitcoin Will Be Hacked By Supercomputers And Banned By Governments
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 only about commodities and precious metals. Thanks!
What’s coming: We are on the cusp of Great Things, Terrible…but Great.
It wasn’t called the So-So Depression after all.
Crypto: I truly don’t know what people are thinking regarding cryptos for the long term. There are just so many existential threats to their viability. Power outages, hackers, wallet theft, host country server seizure, global internet connection issues, quantum computing decryption destruction not to mention governments simply making them illegal.
Seems like an awfully good way to kiss some of your hard earned money goodbye. Also, I just don’t trust a system that operates on a global scale based on electrons. OOPS! POOF! GOODBYE! SO SAD! BYE-BYE!
What’s that sound?
Could it be the music slowing? Better find your chair and hold on tight. It’s almost scramble time again.
Re. Starving the Beast
In 1985 President Reagan recognized that Russia and China etc. had their own beast. But I doubt that he could foresee the extent that all including the U.S. were being groomed by globalists. Now 34 years later their strategy is coming to fruition. It is still a tough pill to swallow but all three countries are in the globalist fold.
Daisy Luther’s awesome list will not take down the Beast. But it will help us ‘Survive the Merging of the Beasts’.
Anyone living in the big city needs to get a plan ASAP. You know who you are! What is Jim Willie trying to say? Although in reality it is not possible to pin point an event, for myself as a layman and causal observer, the D Bank ‘crisis’ is the starting point of what is now unfolding, and is rapidly gaining speed. One can put aside the details discussed as essentially what is occurring can be characterized as a crisis of confidence in the system. Yes, the technical part of all this is important, yet at the end of the day, confidence in a system drove the mechanisms in the first place, interest rates etc. It’s like watching the ice on a lake melting away. Spots of thin ice appear here and there, and then more holes in the ice appear, then whole lake breaks up. We are at the point where large parts of the lake no longer have ice on it.
“Starving the Beast” is a great idea if everyone would help.The article referred to, however, lists some crazy ideas as well as some counter-productive ones such as getting rid of your TV and replacing it with Netflix. As most of you know, Netflix signed a $60 million deal to buy content produced by the Obamas. That would be FEEDING the beast. Another point suggests reducing electricity use by using candles. I do have a large supply of candles for emergency use, but replacing the LED bulbs that I use with candles would save an infinitesimal amount of money, if any. And some of these points are excellent, but only if you do them in moderation.
Still love the burger king skit! In all the seriousness of what we face its good to have a laugh.
Rob Kirby on Reluctant Preppers
Been following a large stable of ‘experts’ for more than a decade, but Rob Kirby was in the early derivatives business that gives him a perceptive few can have. He is currently in the ‘gold by the ton’ business. As broker at this level, he has exposure and understands the sentiment of the class of investors who move markets. How this group feels and what they believe is going on shouldn’t be ignored. Jim Sinclair and Bill Holter are also in this class. This is time well spent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjpp-zXgBIk
JRH, Looks to me like the best advice you have given, financially, is to stock up on tools and items with which you can be productive. I have read “How to Survive TEO…” two and a half times. Lets you ride inflation. Of course, properly purchased property does it better but it is a real challenge to properly purchase in this market. Also, you are left tied to banks if you cannot pay cash. They have agreements that would seem benign enough as in “Don’t Pay, We Take the Property” to which most say “Fair enough.” The big BUT is when they sell those rights to foreclose off to predators. So you owe $80k on $160,000 in equipment that you courteously drove over to the bank. Should be square, right. Oh no! The predator that buys the rights adds $300,000 in legal fees to the debt, gets a judgement in Federal Court and then proceeds to pick up things like your wife’s car that you own free and clear. THAT is the sort of thing that will happen after a big crash. We talk about going back to the 1890’s. Well they had charlatan lawyers back then too.