GLD

Gold SPDR

The Fed

What to Do About Today's Fed Interest Rate Move

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Stocks are sitting at or near record highs, so, naturally, Jerome Powell's Federal Reserve is expected to do its part with another 25-basis-point rate cut this afternoon at 2 p.m.

After all, the stock market is up – the Fed's unofficial, unsanctioned signal to open the cheap-money taps a little wider.

If the Fed moves as markets are "expecting" (read: demanding), this'll be the third reduction in the Fed funds target rate since July, totaling 75 basis points in all, just as it did in 1995 and 1998.

The Fed would be cutting against a backdrop of sky-high stock valuations, decelerating economic growth and job gains, a deepening manufacturing recession, and a political situation that threatens to boil over into full-blown constitutional crisis at any minute.

So this is a really dicey time for investors, but there are some opportunities for savvy folks who understand how to play the Fed against Wall Street – and Wall Street against economic reality.

Let's talk about what to do… Full Story

Let's talk about what to do... Full Story

The Fed

How We Can "Front-Run" the Fed's New QE Policy and Bank Market-Beating Gains

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The printing presses have barely cooled from the Federal Reserve's post-crisis $4.5 trillion quantitative easing binge. 2014 seems like a long time ago, but $4.5 trillion is still a lot of money, and that debt is still actively wreaking havoc down in the bedrock of the economy.

Unbelievably, they're firing up the printing presses yet again down in the bowels of the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building.

This time, they're engaging in a $60 billion monthly bailout of the Treasury market, specifically in the short-duration (six months or less) T-bill space.

That's $60 billion a month, folks. Annualized, this money-printing adds up to another $720 billion in fiat money creation and nosebleed-level deficit financing.

This reeks of pure desperation – panic mode at the Fed. But for savvy investors, there are three unique, easy ways to cash in on the chaos.

Let me show you… Full Story

Let me show you...

Bonds

The Shocking Reason Governments and Corporations Are Begging People to Destroy Their Own Money

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"There is nothing new under the sun," Ecclesiastes wrote. For the most part, the pseudonymous biblical poet was right on the money.

The credit market, for instance, has existed in one form or another since 3,000 BCE or thereabouts – around 5,000 years.

At the dawn of human civilization, the Mesopotamian economy featured interest rates as high as 20%. And by the time Cyrus II of Persia ("Cyrus the Great" to his friends) conquered Babylon in the sixth century BCE, creditors could often reap a positively mouthwatering 40%.

Ah, the good old days…

Unfortunately (and with apologies to Ecclesiastes), there is something very new and very dangerous under the sun these days.

A frenzy of capital destruction – the end result is functionally no different than gathering up all your money, dousing it with gasoline, and setting it alight.

It's unprecedented; it has never happened before, in all of the five millennia that tribal chieftains, warlords, monarchies, principalities, Westphalian nation-states, and multinational corporations have been buying and selling debt.

I'm talking about negative yield.

If that sounds unnatural… perverse…. even insane… well, that's because it is. And not much good can come out of it.

As dangerous as this situation is, there is a way forward through it. We don't have to take what's coming lying down… Full Story

As dangerous as this situation is, there is a way forward through it. We don't have to take what's coming lying down... Full Story

Market Crash

How to Prepare for a Stock Market Crash in 2019

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With the stock market ending 2018 with the worst December since the Great Depression, it's not surprising that there are rising fears about the possibility of a stock market crash in 2019.

In December, the S&P 500 officially entered correction territory. The United States has been in the longest-running bull market in history, and this caught many investors by surprise.

While there are some stock market concerns in 2019, this doesn't necessarily mean that a crash is on the horizon.

Bitcoin

Open Letter to the SEC: It's Time to Approve a Bitcoin ETF

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It's been five years since Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss submitted the first proposal for a Bitcoin ETF to the SEC.

Since then, more than a dozen other Bitcoin ETF proposals have landed at the SEC.

And so far, all have been rejected or delayed.

But the world of cryptocurrency has matured substantially since the Winklevoss ETF was first proposed.

In this open letter to the SEC, Bitcoin expert Dave Zeiler explains why the time has come to approve a Bitcoin ETF...