The 60-40 Portfolio is On Its Last Legs
Jul 31, 2020 | Investing Strategies
The 60-40 portfolio has been a cornerstone of retirement strategy for decades. Around the United States and the world, hundreds of millions of retirees have had, or still have currently, some version of a 60-40 portfolio. For American retirees, though, a serious problem looms. The 60-40 portfolio is on its last legs. It is simply going to stop working as…
Why Silver is Taking Off Like a Rocket Ship — and Should Keep Going
Jul 24, 2020 | Investing Strategies
In TradeSmith Decoder, we nailed the 2020 silver move thus far. And it looks like there is much more to come. We took a super-sized position in a bellwether silver ETF on March 23, two days after the low. Then we added a second leg (again substantially sized) on July 9, noting the upside move could accelerate. In addition to…
The U.S. Stock Market is Starting to Look Like China’s
Jul 07, 2020 | Investing Strategies
U.S. capital markets are no longer free. If they were quasi-free markets before, they are more or less state-directed markets now. This assessment comes from Ray Dalio, one of the most connected hedge fund managers in the world. Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, in 1975. His personal net worth is in the…
The Rocket Fuel that Powered the Rally will Soon Run Out (If it Hasn’t Already Done So)
Jun 15, 2020 | Investing Strategies
We now have a basic understanding of what powered the 2020 rebound rally, which then morphed into a lockdown mania, and which now appears to be over. This is important because, with a sense of what happened — and the various components involved — we can better understand the probability distribution of what is likely to happen next. From the…
Signs That Market Sentiment Has Reached Dangerous Extremes (The Sequel)
Jun 10, 2020 | Investing Strategies
On Jan. 24 of this year, we noted “Three Signs Market Sentiment Has Reached Dangerous Extremes.” Within four weeks of that broadcast, the stock market peaked, and one of the swiftest bear market declines in history followed. Now market sentiment is looking extreme once again. If anything, the new levels of euphoria make the January action look sleepy. We are…
The Ex-President of the European Central Bank Reveals the Playbook
Jun 09, 2020 | Investing Strategies
It’s rough out there — not just for the United States, but the entire world. The global economy is expected to face its worst recession in 80 years, according to a new Global Economics Prospects report published by the World Bank. This means that, to find a comparably bad recession year for the global economy — all countries across the…
The Stock Market’s Bizarre Strength is Not About the Reopening, or the Recovery, At All
Jun 02, 2020 | Investing Strategies
The stock market was insanely strong last week. And we don’t mean strength within normal boundaries either — as in, “the market had a strong performance” or “the market looks strong.” This was strength well beyond the bounds of normal. It was strength so freakish, the standard explanations cannot account for it. Here is Mark Hulbert, a columnist for MarketWatch,…
In Deflationary Environments, Central Banks Make the Price of Gold Go Up
Jun 01, 2020 | Investing Strategies
After we explained why deflation is coming, some of you wrote in to ask: “What happens to gold if we get deflation?” The short answer is that, in deflationary environments, the value of gold tends to go up, possibly by a lot. We have empirical evidence of this from the 1930s, a decade where gold mining stocks saw stratospheric gains….
Gold Stocks are a Portfolio Inoculation Against Coronavirus and Central Banks
Feb 24, 2020 | Investing Strategies
As of late February 2020, the major U.S. indexes are down more than 3% — and gold stocks are up more than 3%. On a day when global equities were hit hard by coronavirus (COVID-19) fears, gold and gold stocks surged to brand-new, multi-year highs. That is not a coincidence. Gold miner profit margins are leveraged to the long-term gold…
The Zero-Cost Investing Model is Taking Over Wall Street
Feb 20, 2020 | Investing Strategies
The zero-cost investing model is taking over Wall Street. Everywhere you look, the cost of participation is being driven towards zero. Fees and commissions are shrinking, to the point they nearly vanish. And when it comes to investing and trading via brokerage firm applications, the “zero” in zero cost is literal. For buying and selling stocks through various brokers and…
