The Tech Juggernauts Face Rising Political and Regulatory Risk
Oct 08, 2020 | Educational
The stock market has benefited handsomely from the performance of technology juggernauts. For 2020 year to date, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have helped the NYSE FANG+ index generate a better than 122% return from the March 18 lows through the Oct. 7 close. But valuation multiples don’t grow to the sky, and 2021 may not be as kind to…
The U.S. Government’s BitMEX Crackdown Shows Bitcoin’s Resilience
Oct 06, 2020 | Educational
Last week saw so many head-spinning developments, it felt like the space-time continuum might implode as the speed and density of the political news cycle collapsed into a black hole. So it’s understandable a major crypto-world development got lost in the shuffle. The U.S. government came down like a ton of bricks on BitMEX, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchange….
Markets are Increasingly Anticipating a “Biden Sweep”
Oct 05, 2020 | EducationalNews
When news of the president’s COVID-19 diagnosis hit, in the wee hours of Friday morning, overnight markets reacted with shock and fear. By the end of the day on Friday, though, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 had mostly recovered, with small caps (via the Russell 2000 index) even turning positive on the day. In Monday’s premarket session,…
Indoor Drones and Clouds Beneath the Ocean: Welcome to the Information Age
Oct 01, 2020 | Educational
As if 2020 didn’t have enough going on, there is a fourth age of human civilization rushing toward us. The prior three ages were the Stone Age, the Agrarian Age, and the Industrial Age. In the Stone Age, humans discovered language, fire, and the use of sophisticated stone tools. This enabled group cooperation and the birth of art and culture….
In Both Investing and Poker, sometimes a Weak Hand Beats a Strong One
Sep 28, 2020 | Educational
Say you have an investment choice between two gold mining companies. They are similar except for a single variable, the average production cost per ounce. One miner produces gold at an average production cost of $900 per ounce; the other does so at $1,800 per ounce. Which miner is the better investment, in terms of 12-month price appreciation? It’s actually…
Echoing the Roman Financial Crisis of 33 A.D.
Sep 24, 2020 | Educational
The markets of today are the same as markets not just hundreds of years ago, but thousands of years ago. This is possible because human nature has not changed. The technology is different, but human nature is the same. The basic mechanisms of financial markets — regarding things like credit and lending, speculation, government intervention, and even quantitative easing —…
The U.S. and China are Falling into the Thucydides Trap
Sep 21, 2020 | Educational
In 2015, Harvard professor Graham T. Allison argued that the United States and China could be at war within a decade. Five years later — and with five years left to go — Allison’s prediction is slowly coming true. We aren’t there yet, but the story is unfolding in a warlike direction. Military conflict between the United States and China…
Bitcoin’s Future is Not Outside the Banking System
Sep 11, 2020 | Educational
Imagine losing $16 million to hackers because you installed the wrong program on your computer. This actually happened to someone, according to a recent post on GitHub, a popular software development platform and message board. The poster reportedly had 1,400 Bitcoin — worth more than $16 million at the time — stolen from their Electrum crypto wallet after installing a…
Germany’s Expanding Debt Footprint is Bullish for Europe (and Bearish for the Dollar)
Sep 10, 2020 | Educational
Germany is taking a historic step toward issuing more debt. This is long-term bullish for Europe, and the euro, and long-term bearish for the U.S. dollar. That, in turn, makes it a bullish development for precious metals, and base metals in general, to the extent commodities will benefit from a multi-year dollar decline. Why would Germany’s debt issuance be bullish…
How Weimar Germany Got Hyperinflation — and How America Could, Too
Sep 08, 2020 | Educational
The Weimar Germany period is a recurring historical topic. It seems to pop up every few years. But when historians and columnists refer to Weimar Germany, they are usually focused on the years of 1930-33, when Germany experienced crushing deflation (as did most of the world, after the Crash of 1929, the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs, and the Great Depression) and the…
