A summary of my long term investment positions

Here is a list of the trends that I expect in the coming year :



1. Real Estate is going down relatively speaking in the medium to long term. The long term trend is very clear. Prices will follow volumes, especially in the local markets where the statistics do not show a fall yet. In the markets where the fall has already happened, it might become exaggerated.

2. Inflation will come, but not necessarily right away. The forces of deflation have not played out yet. There will be a second round of forced foreclosure and this is when the fall of real estate will become real in countries like France, that have been spared so far. This second round of deflation will ultimately force an even bigger round of bailouts, stimulus plans and quantitative easing (QE). This is only then that Inflation will appear in force

3. All the rest is a question of timing. In the short run, I might be inclined to think that the rise of the stock market could continue until the Spring, if only for reasons of seasonality. But a second semester of rising stock prices would invalidate the secular bear market, and this is not the scenario I envisage. Therefore I favour a fall of stock prices in the short term, maybe followed by a further rise. Basically, we might move inside a channel during the whole year, with wild swings in between.

A general rise of all asset prices will come only later., when inflation manifest itself.

But I admit it is a close call. This is probably why I don’t feel very confortable with my losing position shorting the stock market right now.

As far as the Hui/S&P500 ratio is concerned, it has bounced on a support and it should continue its rise.

There are other ratios to study :
1. Gold/oil ratio : it shows signs of consolidation before a new rise. Basically it measures the probability of a real crisis environment (depression and or hyperinflation) versus the probability of classic recession/disinflationary environment.
2. Agricultural commodities vs oil : this ratio is still very low but seems to be bottoming and starting a new ascent. It would mark a new era if agriculture prices outpace oil prices (not a good omen)
3. S&P500/gold : a new leg down is likely. The 15+ cycle is not over
4. S&P500/oil : this ratio is already very low by historical standards but should still go lower.


How to analyse these facts in regard to the inflation/deflation debate.

It seems to me that Gold performs better than Oil in times of real crisis, and relatively worse in periods of accelerating inflation.

Right now the Gold Oil ratio is at a turning point, sitting on a support.
Depending on its behaviour, we will have our answer on this debate and the best way to invest in the medium term.

I’m inclined to bet on deflation in the medium term, and gold outperforming oil.

We are in a period of stabilizing real estate prices and talks of a rebouind ar prevalent, but it is only a counter-cyclical rally.
There will be a new wave of asset depreciation shortly.
It will come in May at the latest, but probably sooner.


But, REGARDLESS of this debate, we are still in a long term phase where stocks underperform the commodities, and where economic activity has peaked in the developed world.
It is also a phase where peak oil is fast approaching with huge repercussions for the world economy.

For the developing world, I am not so sure, but I suspect that only the resources-rich countries will prosper.
Not the whole BRIC, but rather BRIC without the I and the C.
I would rather bet on the Brazil and Russia but also Canada, Australia, and maybe Argentina and Africa, depending on the socio-political situation there.



And then, there is the main problem : the amounts of debt and the huge economic imbalances in the world economy.


The Developed countries will have to get rid of their debt, without breaking the world economy (by letting inflation develop) and the geopolitical balance (by blatantly letting their currencies slide).

The Developing countries (and China first) will have to continue their growth and avoid the mounting protectionism and dollar devaluation.

But the tensions will mount and a global decrease in the real GDP growth is predictable.
New bubbles will form and then explode, in an accelerated fashion.

Last warning ?

SO ALAN GREENSPAN - former chairman of the Federal Reserve - thinks this equals the Great Crash, if not out-bads it.

"It's getting increasingly evident that this is a once-in-a-century type of phenomenon," he told the ever-fragrant Maria Bartiromo in an interview with CNBC this week, "not the standard type of liquidity crisis that we have seen in the past."

"It's verging on the issue of solvency."

To gauge the true scale of this crisis, Greenspan went on, just consider the fact that it took sovereign credit to stabilize first the UK and then US financial systems. When Northern Rock went belly-up last Sept. and then Bear Stearns blew up this spring, Treasury bonds had to be lent out like adjustable-rate home loans circa 2006, covering short-term black holes with government debt.

Without these loans of government bonds, the banks simply wouldn't lend to each other. They needed securitized tax payments to gain the credibility needed for raising new funds in the market. Short of offering government debt to put up as collateral, they found the cost of borrowing money - when they found any money to borrow - simply too high to bear.

"It's still very evident from [inter-bank lending] spreads that we have not gotten closure yet," Dr.Greenspan continued, pointing to the ongoing premium charged for loans backed by anything other than sovereign credit. So to fix the problem - or at least tease it out for months if not years - clearly the world needs more government bonds for the big banks to borrow and put up against cash loans in the market.

"It's essentially, fundamentally the price of homes in the United States which are determining...the ultimate collateral of mortgage-backed bonds, pretty much around the world."

Looking ahead, he concluded that "we're still nowhere near the bottom of the home-price thing" - the word "thing" standing in for "crash...collapse...crisis...deflation" and all the other phenomena Greenspan must still believe can never apply to real-estate prices.

As key contractor, if not the architect, of today's pan-global banking crisis, he chose to keep US interest rates way below the rate of inflation - making debt pay and savings a suck of real value - for three years straight starting in August 2002.

That period marked the first run of sub-zero returns paid-to-cash since the inflationary '70s, back when loose money worldwide led to a bubble in prices that needed 20% interest rates to revive the world's faith in the Dollar.

The start of this decade also saw the Gold Price - dormant-to-dead ever since the US took that strong medicine at the start of the '80s - double inside five years.

"First warning," as Marc Faber wrote in his Gloom, Boom & Doom Report of Sept. '07, of trouble ahead.

"Ultra-expansionary US monetary policies with artificially low interest rates led to bubbles all over the world and in every imaginable asset class. The price of Gold more than doubled in nominal terms and against the Dow Jones Industrial Average."

So why didn't gold take a dive when Greenspan's successor - Ben Bernanke - tip-toed his way back to 4% real rates of interest in late 2006...? Because early gold buyers never believed the Fed would succeed in keeping rates there. With housing now a political issue - and home ownership a god-given right for even the flakiest debtors - the first sign of trouble would cause a collapse in real rates, destroying the value of money in the hope of achieving "Reflation Part II".

Hey, it worked after the Tech Stock bubble blew up. Why not again? And faced with a much greater crisis, or so Ben Bernanke believes, he's managed to out-Greenspan the Maestro...pushing real US interest rates way down to minus 3% and worse.

Take Gold as a marker of stress, and the true extent of today's crisis becomes clearer still. Bear Stearns' fire-sale to J.P.Morgan in mid-March - which required an open-ended loan of $29 billion from the Federal Reserve - saw Gold jump to $1,032 per ounce. We think it's signal that Alan Greenspan ignores it.

"Central banks, of necessity, determine what the money supply is," as he told Congress in a 1999 hearing. "If you are on a gold standard or other mechanism in which the central banks do not have discretion, then the system works automatically.

"The reason there is [now] very little support for the gold standard is the consequences of those types of market adju`stments are not considered to be appropriate in the 20th and 21st century. I am one of the rare people who have still some nostalgic view about the old gold standard, as you know, but I must tell you, I am in a very small minority among my colleagues on that issue."

Today, almost a decade later, the Federal Reserve and its peers across the world are trying to prevent the money supply from shrinking again. That was the fear amid the "Deflation Scare" of 2002, which caused the Fed to ordain sub-zero rates, creating not only the bubble in housing but also the collapse of true money values against oil, food and pretty much all raw materials.

The world's nostalgia for gold, in response, has seen it treble in price vs. the Dollar and more than double against the Euro, Yen and British Pound. But the cheerleader for cheap money when running the Fed, Alan Greenspan points instead to government bonds when gauging the size of today's crisis. A true policy wonk, Greenspan thinks only of political bail-outs to protect the system, rather than considering how private investors might choose to protect themselves and their wealth.

Heaven knows they won't get any help from Bernanke's repeat of the Maestro's "reflationary" error.

Inflation, inflation, inflation !

It has taken some time, but now talks of inflation are all the rage.
A few days ago, it was about it was about food prices in developing countries, but now it's in the statistics of developed countries.

And most of all it has found its way in many mainstream publications.

I even read an article in Le Monde that explained how it was not so bad, because it encourages spending.

There are also new plans to encourage people to borrow and buy houses.

It looks a little bit like desperation.

The greatest fear is the economic slowdown and a recession.

Do they feel that a recession now would be particularly disastrous ?

But postponing it is not going to change anything.
It only makes the whole affair more unfair : bailing out Wall Street and irresponsible consumers and borrowers. That's not a very moral proposition.

December update

This blog is turning into a monthly publication.
It was not my intent and I am going to try at least to make it a weekly event.

At the same time it is a way to reflect on a longer period and to avoid being caught up in the daily action that tends to confuse us.

So what's going on ?

Fed cut 25 bps on both fed rates and the discount window on dec 11th.
But Market was disappointed and plunged on that same day
Let's assume that it is because some hoped for 50 at least for the discount window (but you never know the exact cause. 2 weeks before 25bps was supposed to be a good news, but it was co anticipated, and a "surprise" 50 bps was so hoped for that here's a correction.

But next day, Fed announces new injection of liquidity along with the ECB and other Central Banks, to help avoid a Credit Crunch that tends to become a recurrent news, and the market "kind of" rallies.

Of course the Fed says his action had nothing to do with the market's reaction of the day before. Right ?

Gold followed the stock market during these two days. Fell on the 11th, rallied on the 12th.

But Gold is still a small footnote in all these events.

Sentiment in the stock market (and the economy at large) is all that counts in the US right now.
The establishment is doing all it can to avoid a panic that would have disastrous effects (think Wall Street 1929 or Japan 1988).

Of course inflation is much less severe in their mind, but they won't say so.
They continue to say that inflation is a continuing worry.

But you cannot fight both inflation and recession at the same time.
And when you choose not to choose you put the economy in an intractable situation.
It's called Stagflation. I remember that from my History classes.

For Gold it is going to be perfect until they decide to really raise interest rates in the face of a weak economy.

But we are very far from there now.

Heading for a fall, by fiat?

Today, I am publishing some articles from The Economist, because I noticed that they are temporarily free online and make a very interesting reading.

The first one below is an old Economics focus that seems to predict a rise of Gold (which is rare in the Economist newspaper). The others tend to exhibit the usual bias against Gold, and lastly I copied a whole special survey about Investment Banking that contains everything you need to know about modern exotic products such ad CDO, CDS, and more.

Of course they don't recognize the whole extent of the risks that exist in this system

--------------------

Economics focus

Heading for a fall, by fiat?
Feb 26th 2004
From The Economist print edition

The trouble with paper money

IS THE problem with the dollar only that it is falling? It has certainly been doing that. This month, it fell to $1.29 against the euro. This is its lowest-ever rate against the euro, and represents a decline of 19% since the beginning of 2003. In trade-weighted terms, the dollar has fallen less over the same period (15%), but mainly because Asian central banks have been intervening heavily to stem their currencies' rise against it. Of late, it has been wobbling around unconvincingly: America needs a weaker dollar to correct its current-account deficit. But given the dollar's role as a currency of last resort, some wonder if its decline heralds not just an economic adjustment by the United States, but a crisis of sorts in the value of paper money itself.

Money in its present form is a relatively new invention. For most of human history money meant either gold or silver, either directly, or indirectly by means of the “gold standard” which meant, at least in theory, that all paper money was backed by gold. Enthusiasm for the gold standard evaporated in the 1930s, when it made dreadful conditions worse. But it was adopted in a watered-down version after the second world war, when only the dollar was backed by gold. This arrangement made some sense, since America held three-quarters of the world's gold stock. But it came to an end in 1971, when inflationary pressures in America caused the country's manufacturers to become uncompetitive and forced the country off the gold standard. Since then the world has relied on “fiat money”, so-called because it is created by government fiat and is backed only by the promises of central bankers to protect the value of their currencies. It is the value of those promises that some are now questioning.

Promises, promises
Certainly, those promises have only been worth much in recent years. In the early years of fiat money, inflation took off, especially in America, in part because of the two oil shocks of the 1970s. This debased the value of the dollar, and the price of gold climbed from $35 an ounce to $850.

It was only in 1979, in his famous “Saturday night special”, that Paul Volcker, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, raised interest rates sharply to clamp down on inflation. The gold price subsequently fell sharply and in its place came a bull market in government bonds that has, with a few sharp interruptions, continued to this day. Although central banks around the world still hold about 30,000 tonnes of gold in their reserves, many have been offloading their stocks over the years. They can earn only a nugatory rate of interest on these stocks (by lending them out) compared with what they can earn on government bonds. For most people, gold has been relegated to the status, in the words of Keynes, of a “barbrous relic”; its price has risen only feebly when investors have fretted about inflation.

Those who doubt the continued worth of paper money as a store of value point to two things. The first is that the price of gold has been rising even though official inflation is low. From $253 an ounce in the late 1990s, gold now fetches just over $400 an ounce, and it rose as high as $430 an ounce earlier this year. It is not just the price of gold that has been rising: so, too, have the prices of precious and base metals. There may, of course, be many other reasons for these rises. China's rapidly expanding economy is gobbling up metals and other commodities for its factories. Moreover, the rise in the price of commodities also reflects the weakness in the dollar: these rises look much less impressive when quoted in euros or yen. But the rise in the price of gold in particular has raised questions.

The biggest of these—and the second main reason for concern—is the amount of debt that rich-country governments have been running up. America's official budget deficit has surged in the three years since George Bush became president, to around $520 billion and climbing. But this is just the shortfall this year. The government's total future liabilities are much larger. In fact, according to a forthcoming book by Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist, the present value of the American government's future obligations, taking into account promised pensions and health-care benefits, is a staggering $45 trillion. European governments are only slightly better at managing their budgets—witness the breaching of the single currency's growth and stability pact. Japan's attempts to coax its economy back to life have left it with a gross national debt of some 160% of GDP, the highest of any big country. No country has tried harder to debase its currency.

In theory, such debts would not be tolerated for long by investors, since the easy way out for central banks is to “monetise” them with inflation. Bond prices would fall (and thus yields rise) as investors worried that they would be paid back in a debased currency. But capital markets currently seem oblivious to spiralling debts. At some 4%, yields on ten-year American Treasury bonds are close to their lowest in two generations, although this is partly explained by huge purchases by Asian central banks. Yields elsewhere are also very low, nowhere more so than in Japan, where ten-year government-bond yields are now 1.3%.

The problem may be that bond investors, far from being far-sighted, are in fact myopic, and are perhaps being fooled by the temporary disinflationary effects of excess capacity and debts built up over the bubble years in both Japan and America. Perhaps, too, investors have been lulled into a false sense of security by the performance of central banks in recent years, and the independence that has been granted to many of them by governments. But this very aura of inviolability may be storing up problems, since it means that governments can borrow still more at cheap rates. And if governments then find themselves crushed by debt, you can rest assured that this independence will be taken away. And then, once again, the paper in your pocket will only be as good as a politician's promise.

All that glisters

Buttonwood

All that glisters
Nov 30th 2004
From Economist.com

Is the rise in the price of gold merely the flipside of the dollar’s fall? Or does it point more broadly to a loss of faith in central bankers’ promises?


ALAS, the nearest that Buttonwood gets to visiting jewellery shops these days is a trip to Claire’s Accessories, a chain of fabulously tacky shops beloved of his daughters. To be fair, Claire’s (“Where getting ready is half the fun”) does not pretend to be anything other than cheap and cheerful. Nothing seems to cost more than £2.99. The jewellers in Bond Street, just round the corner from The Economist’s offices, are about as different from Claire’s Accessories as it is possible to get. The stuff in them costs rather more than £2.99. And their already steep prices have been going up because the prices of precious metals have been rising, gold’s not least. In the past week, gold has topped $450 an ounce, its highest level in 16 years—and up from a low of $253 in the late 1990s. What, if anything, does this tell us about investors’ faith in paper currencies.

The financial world, it sometimes seems, is broadly divided into those who believe in gold as the ultimate currency and those who don’t. In the latter camp are most economists, the most famous of whom, John Maynard Keynes, described gold as a “barbarous relic”. But even as late as the 1960s, Charles de Gaulle, then president of France, claimed that gold was the “unalterable fiduciary value par excellence”.

Gold or silver were money for most of human history, either directly or indirectly. Once paper currency was introduced, it was, in theory at least, backed by either of the two metals. Silver was gradually edged out as a monetary metal in the 19th century, from which time the “gold standard” reigned supreme. This arrangement, in its purest form, collapsed in the 1930s, but it continued in a bastardised form after the second world war, when America, which by then held three-quarters of the world’s gold reserves, again tied the dollar to gold, and the rest of the world’s currencies tied themselves to the dollar. In 1971, the dollar was forced off the gold standard because of mounting inflationary pressures. Since then the world has had so-called fiat currencies, which are backed by nothing more than the promises of central bankers and politicians that they will uphold the value of those currencies. Fans of gold—known as gold bugs—wonder whether those promises are worth the paper they aren’t written on.

They certainly weren’t in the early years. Inflation ate away at the value of anything with a fixed monetary value, and during the 1970s the price of gold rose from $35 to $850. But in 1979, Paul Volcker, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, stomped on inflation and the price of gold fell sharply. In its place came a bull market in the price of government bonds.

The dollar, it must be said, fared less well. It may have become the world’s reserve currency, even without the backing of gold, but it has been anything but a splendid investment, especially in recent years. While its internal value has not fallen as much as it once did, thanks to lower inflation, its external value—ie, in relation to other currencies—has been in remorseless decline, albeit punctuated by some longish rallies. In recent weeks, encouraged by malign neglect from American politicians and central bankers, the fall has shown signs of becoming a rout. As the dollar has fallen, so the dollar price of gold has risen.

It used to be that gold bugs touted the yellow metal’s credentials as a hedge against inflation. But the link was anyway pretty feeble, except for currencies with hyperinflation. And though consumer prices have risen a bit this year, it would be hard to make the case that inflation is about to roar anywhere in the developed world. Why, then, is gold prospering at a time when inflation is low? Perhaps it reflects nothing more than the fall in the dollar: gold transactions are denominated in dollars, and in euros the rise in the gold price has been anaemic.

However, there is no law that says a falling dollar must translate into a rising gold price. Apart from a rise in demand for jewellery, the rise in the price of gold may, at the margin, reflect demand for real, hard assets, as opposed to the paper sort. And the reasons are not hard to find, for across the developed world, debts have escalated alarmingly in recent years—and in America not least, hence the vast and growing current-account deficit. While central bankers are generally trusted not to “monetise” these debts by rolling the printing presses, history would suggest that this displays a touching naivety. As James Grant, publisher of an eponymous financial newsletter, and the most erudite of the gold bugs, says: “[Alan] Greenspan, the figurehead of the dollar, was trading at three times book in the late 1990s; I think he may return to book value.” Or lower.

Gold’s virtue, says Mr Grant, is that it is a monetary metal, because of its scarcity and, of course, its history. Actually, Buttonwood can’t help feeling, gold’s history counts against it. Of all the metals, the market for gold is probably the most rigged. It is because of history that central banks hold in their reserves almost a quarter of all the gold that has ever been mined. They would like to sell at least some of it, but the vast amount that they hold means doing so would drive the price down. In 1999, central banks therefore came to an agreement to restrict gold sales. The agreement—or cartel, if you will—was extended in September. But it would presumably be torn up if the gold price rose sharply: the Bank of France said this month that it wants to offload some 500 tonnes over the next five years.

And that would presumably limit gold’s upside. Perhaps a better argument can be made for other scarce metals: platinum, say, or silver. Silver, after all, not only spent centuries vying with gold as a form of money, but also has many industrial uses and is not held by central banks; annual demand is much higher than annual production. Along with many other metals, the price of silver fell sharply in April, but unlike gold it has not even regained the ground it lost. Also in its favour is that it is not exactly sold in industrial quantities at Claire’s Accessories.

The little yellow god

Dec 1st 2005
From The Economist print edition

Even at $500, it's still a barbarous relic

NOTHING swells the breast so much as the thought that you have been proved right at last. After riding high at the start of the 1980s, gold bugs had a miserable couple of decades. The price declined relentlessly, mocking their credo that the security of the financial system ultimately depends upon the yellow metal. Lately, though, the faithful have enjoyed their reward. In the past five years the price of gold has doubled. This week in Asian trading it briefly surpassed $500 a troy ounce—a level last breached in 1987. You can almost feel the bugs' excitement as the message sinks in: gold is back.

This being gold, the resurgence has brought forth all manner of alarming prophecies. The price is an omen of rampant inflation; bonds are doomed; the dollar is about to fall prey to the United States' reckless deficits; the euro will shortly be revealed as a worthless creation of bureaucrats.

The world is an unpredictable place. But, with the possible exception of a fall in the dollar, not much of the above catalogue of doom looks likely; and none of it has much to do with gold's good run. The dull truth is much less bullish for gold. Investors have put money into a wide range of metals, and precious metals' prices, including gold's, have risen with the base. Meanwhile, gold remains fundamentally unattractive. It yields nothing and central banks are sitting on vaultfuls of the stuff that they want eventually to sell. Gold bugs hope that $500 is the threshold at which mainstream investors will start once again to take an interest in the metal. Caveat emptor.

The fascination of gold lies in its being not only a commodity but also a store of value and means of exchange. The glamour and the mystique lie in the latter, monetary part. This is what draws gold bugs, but their story doesn't quite add up. The unbalanced world economy still faces risks. But the most recent rises in the gold price have come against a strong dollar, which is normally a sign of weaker gold and continues to confound warnings of a collapse in the greenback. Oil prices are plainly far higher than they were, but they have come off their peaks. Moreover, there have been few signs so far that oil prices are feeding through to a 1970s-style stagflation. Nothing in either bond or stockmarkets suggests that investors see much danger of such a thing happening.

Bear on bullion
Gold's renewed shine is best explained by thinking of the metal not as money but as a commodity dug out of the ground. In the past few years the price has climbed because mining companies stopped locking in prices by selling gold in advance—in effect, withdrawing a huge source of supply. Even then, gold has captured only 40% of the gains of other metals in The Economist's metals index, which has almost doubled since the start of 2003 thanks partly to fundamental demand from emerging markets and partly to investors in search of better returns than those from other assets. Gold would have done better had Chinese demand risen as fast as some expected; in fact, figures from GFMS, a consultancy, suggest it has been flat, even falling, over the past 20 years. Chinese investors now have other places to put their money.

Gold is still cheap compared with its peak of $850 in 1980. Today, adjusting for changes in American consumer prices, it is worth only a quarter as much. Gold bugs might see that as a chance to buy; others as a reminder of gold's enduring capacity to disappoint.