“The future ain’t what it used to be”, words once uttered by baseball legend Yogi Berra. And that’s especially true for the baseball mecca ninety miles off the coast of Miami, the controversial …
Blowing Up: How Nassim Taleb turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy (by Malcolm Gladwell)
One day in 1996, a Wall Street trader named Nassim Nicholas Taleb went to see Victor Niederhoffer. Victor Niederhoffer was one of the most successful money managers in the country. He lived and worked …
The Real Reason Behind the U.S. Trade Deficit (and Why Trump’s Trade War Is Insane)
Trump is on a collision course with its trading partners: the U.S. trade deficit apparently proves that the U.S. is being fooled by its foreign trading partners. Its trading partners sell more to the …
An Attempt to Value Gold (and A Price Forecast for 2018)
This week a preliminary attempt to value gold with a different method. I have shown earlier how we can value the stock market: we can compare the replacement value of the underlying company assets …
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Some Remarks on the Extremely Overvalued US Stock Market
I have written on multiple occasions about the US stock market overvaluation. Stock prices are high, too high, according to my analysis. The fact that the US stock market is overvalued is not a thing …
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This Is How the Fed Will Reduce Its Balance Sheet
The Federal Reserve ended its QE3 large-scale asset purchase program already in 2014, which consisted of monthly purchases of billions of US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities (MBS). But the …
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The Accounting Cycle and Financial Bubbles: On the Current Indifference on Accounting Methods
In 2007, value investor David Einhorn wrote a fascinating book titled “Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long, Short Story”, which is about how companies over the course of the business …
Avoid (Physical) Gold ETFs! The Hidden Secret of ETFs
Exchange traded funds (ETFs) are hot. Everybody is buying. The mantra of passive investing has created a billion-dollar industry for these “trackers.” And gold is not staying behind. One of the …
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Will Bitcoin Displace Gold?
Will gold and silver be ousted by Bitcoin? These types of stories are to be expected, especially now the price of Bitcoin keeps rising even surpassing the $4000/BTC barrier. The supply of Bitcoin in …
Long-Term Returns Are a Matter of Days
I write a lot about central banks, commercial banks, the economic cycle (the likelihood of a recession), valuations of other financial assets (particularly stock prices) and interest rates. All this, …
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The Hidden Secret of the US Banking System
Despite disappointing US economic growth in the first quarter of 2017, the Federal Reserve has, generally speaking, been quite positive about the economic recovery and that opinion is as a general …
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How OPEC Became Irrelevant: Traditional Oil Producing Countries Still Fail to Face the New Reality
The large traditional oil-producing countries — both OPEC and non-OPEC — are still catching up with the new reality. After deciding to extend the production cuts — agreed upon half a year ago — for …
What Sets the Gold Price? Critical Thoughts on Paper and Physical Gold
On various occasions I have written on how the gold price is determined. Some people, however, still insist that there exists a disconnect between “paper gold” and “physical gold.” This myth is a …
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This Is How Trump’s Protectionism Will Push the U.S. Economy of the Cliff
President Donald Trump is not wasting any time: the trade deficit is public enemy number one. Not only did Trump show that he means business by declaring war on the Mexicans, as he threatened to …
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Deutsche Bank Manipulates Gold Price
After manipulating the silver price for years, it recently came to light that Deutsche Bank also manipulated the gold price. At least, this is what happened if we were to believe a majority of gold …
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The Trap of the New Normal
In many situations, we human beings make estimates by beginning at a start value. Psychologists call this phenomenon anchoring, or the reference-point-effect. I personally prefer the “new normal” …
The Insanity of Draghi and His Asset Purchase Program
What is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That according to this definition the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario …
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Exuberance Precedes the Crash: Our Beloved Amazon
During a stock market boom some entrepreneurs seem to be pure geniuses. Look at Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, for instance, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, or Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix. In times …
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