Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, was recently asked if Bitcoin could be compared to the Tulip Mania of the 1600s.
During that time, people were willing to sell their houses for just 10 tulip bulbs.
Here's what the crypto expert had to say...
by David Zeiler
A surge of people are looking for ways to buy Bitcoin with a credit card following a leap in the price, from $6,000 to more than $11,000, last month.
It's actually not that hard to buy Bitcoin with a credit card now. Several of the top Bitcoin exchanges offer it as an option. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
Before you buy Bitcoin with a credit card, read this...
by Jack Delaney
Can Americans buy Canadian marijuana stocks?
Canada plans to legalize all cannabis use in July 2018, and it could create a $22.6 billion market.
We've talked at length about "The Great Unwind" and "The Downfall of the 'Easy Money' Market" over the past couple of months.
And through all of that time, I've told you that there was one date you needed to keep your eye on – Sept. 20.
Well, that day has finally come, and it only took me a few minutes on the web to prove just how ahead of the curve we were on this one…
You can't turn on the TV or open a newspaper today without hearing about this massive sea change.
The Wall Street Journal's front-page headline trumpets "The Fed Braces for the Great Unwinding."
And the top WSJ online story is "The Fed Is Braced for the Unwinding of Easy Money."
It's like they were reading our emails from July and August…
Or, as a good friend and savvy investor told me this morning: "You don't follow Wall Street's lead… but they do follow yours."
Not only does the media finally agree that this is a big deal, the market thinks so too. But it is signaling it in very subtle ways.
From the beginning, I've told you that I was going to guide you so that you're prepared for all the challenges and opportunities coming our way.
by Lee Adler
The LAMPP (Liquidity and Monetary Policy Profits) indicator is little changed this week. It's barely on yellow, perched precariously on the razor's edge of turning red.
But there is more than one storm headed our way that will knock our LAMPP into a bright, flashing crimson.
Not only do we have an excellent idea of how the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Treasury plan to impact the economy, but the hurricanes that are tearing through the country will have tremendous repercussions as well.
In fact, they could change everything.
Here's what you need to know to protect your portfolio from the coming storms...
Traders and investors love when things play out according to plan – when everything moves along in a "normal" way.
Well, that's a no-brainer, but what's often less clear to folks is: What exactly does "normal" look like?
Look at the four major U.S. indexes… The 30 blue chips of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the big, broad S&P 500, the tech-centric Nasdaq Composite, and the dynamic small caps of the Russell 2000.
I want to start today off with a story. When I was about 12, our Boy Scout troop launched a fundraiser in which each of us was given a sales quota for candy bars.
I needed to sell 25 candy bars, so I figured I'd knock on 25 doors, sell a candy bar at each and every stop, and be done with the project.
The first few sales were easy. These were next-door neighbors who knew me already.
As I got farther away from home, sales got tougher. I tried everything I could to get folks to buy. I sold a few candy bars, but mostly felt rejected. After a few days of stewing and feeling down on myself, my problem-solving instinct kicked in and I realized I was looking at this all wrong.
Instead of focusing on the rejections, I needed to focus on the numbers.
For every five doors I knocked on, four would answer. Of the four, one would buy a candy bar. From then on, that's how I worked.
With 15 candy bars left to sell – and a 1-in-5 knock-to-sale ratio – I knew that I needed to knock on 75 doors to get the job done.
My next candy sale outing was an emotional epiphany. Each "no" got me one closer to a "yes."
I knew my numbers and trusted my approach – my "system." This was no longer a chore. Freed from the mental obligation to win every time – to sell every single household – I found I was having fun.
Pretty soon, I hit my quota. Then I exceeded it. In fact, I ended up with one of the top sales records that fall.
I'm telling you this story because a results-oriented mindset can be just as detrimental when it comes to investing.
Let's take a look…
Many investors believe that rising rates are bad for real estate and, by implication, for Real Estate Investment Trusts, or "REITs" for short. So they're starving themselves of badly needed income by lightening up their allocations or abandoning them entirely.
That's a huge mistake – if you understand how to pick the right REITs.
Contrary to what a lot of investors believe, REITs have historically done well when the cost of money is increasing. Between 1994 and 2017, for example, there were nine time periods when interest rates rose by more than 1% (or 100 basis points in trader speak) as measured by the 10-year U.S. Treasury note.
Six out of nine of those times, REITs provided positive returns despite the fact that those rate changes were roughly four times larger than the measly 0.25% hike Yellen just made and the three additional hikes she says she's going to make in 2017.
What most people miss is deceptively simple.
Namely that there's a big difference between a sharp rate spike in the mold of Chairman Paul Volker's 1970s "torpedo" and the slowest interest rate normalization in history that's now Yellen's legacy until, apparently, the end of time.
The former is a mechanism designed to shut down inflation and rein in speculation, while the latter is intended to maintain all the things policy makers believe free money makes possible – an improving labor market, consumer spending, and overall demand.
To paraphrase legendary executive and former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, "lemme show ya a chart"…
by Tom Gentile
In 10 days, the final round of the French presidential election will take place between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
Now, the markets are clearly betting on a Macron win. But no matter the outcome, this election could be huge for your portfolio…
If you play it right.
And here are two ways to do just that...
During an April 13 event, the Trudeau government said all will be in place for full marijuana legalization by July 1, 2018.
But there is much more work to do than was hinted by the government when it leaked preliminary legalization details back on March 27.
And out come the hand-wringers – fretting that legalization will be delayed or… maybe… never even happen.
Don't join these worrywarts.
Nothing here shatters the lucrative reality that double-, triple, or even quadruple-digit gains are on the way…
In fact, there are four reasons why you don't need to lose sleep. Here they are...
