Capital & Conflict – brought to you by Fortune & Freedom VAUXHALL, LONDON – Well dear reader, we had a good run. But today marks the end of the line for Capital & Conflict. From here on out, this newsletter…

Capital & Conflict – brought to you by Fortune & Freedom Of course they won’t call it that. But the media and the protesters will. And it’ll feel like one. The countdown to our next lockdown has already begun. That’s…

Capital & Conflict – brought to you by Fortune & Freedom “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” explained Yogi Berra. But it’s been a good run for Fortune & Freedom so far. The bitcoin price boomed after…

Capital & Conflict – brought to you by Fortune & Freedom It may well be that lockdowns are a good idea, that nations should theoretically open up after reaching some vaccine threshold, that track and trace will prevent outbreaks according…

The first idea is simple. For a few weeks, markets have been worrying about whether the central banks will taper, meaning they will begin to withdraw their quantitative easing (QE – the creation of money to buy government bonds and other securities) and other forms of loose monetary policy.

CHEDDAR, SOMERSET – Over the past 25 years, investors have bought – on average – $115 million worth of stocks around the world every trading day. That comes to roughly $29 billion entering the stock market every year.

Now you might think that we are finally getting somewhere when it comes to this pandemic thing. Perhaps we’re even getting towards the end of it. But I’m not so sure that the vaccines will save us and unlock the global economy.

I’m getting worried the global economic recovery from the pandemic is about to go very sour. And with it, asset prices. In fact, a recession may well be on the horizon. The reason is simple. Economists might be able to count the amount of economic activity, but not whether it’s worth it.

It’s time to dig into the mailbag today. Your demands for a virtual conference on escaping financial repression have been heard, loud and clear, by the way.

And so, for today, let’s look into the damage done by financial repression in the form of low interest rates, what happened when one reader attempted to buy cryptocurrencies to escape financial repression, and more…

I’ve always known different nations’ news channels report the same news entirely differently. I follow the news from the UK, Germany, Australia and the United States each day. And they’ve offered completely different facts and “science” throughout the pandemic.

House prices around the world are booming in the midst of a pandemic, not to mention despite Brexit. But why? And will it last?

As you’re about to discover, I believe this goes beyond the usual housing bubble. But first, the data…

But consider this. Your definition of the word “risk” and the definition used by the financial industry serving you is completely different. And the gap is the source of rather a lot of anguish, if you ask me.

CHEDDAR, SOMERSET – We must end the week on a sombre note. For tomorrow is a grave day indeed…

It was in 1740 when the Royal Navy first formalised a daily rum ration for sailors aboard Her Majesty’s ships – what would become fondly known as “the tot”.

Capital & Conflict – brought to you by Fortune & Freedom Watch the live stream this Friday We’ll be streaming our latest episode of Southbank Live on Friday at 10am here on YouTube – my guest this week is our…

CHEDDAR, SOMERSET – “Whales” in capital markets – those individuals, funds and other players with enormous investment positions – are dangerous beasts.

They can move markets with their trades, and if you get in their way, they can crush your portfolio.

While I’m sure Her Majesty’s fine crew at the “Doughnut” in Cheltenham can trace my movements with ease, there’s something uniquely dystopian about willingly installing government surveillance tech on to one’s own electronics for “the greater good”, so I never installed the Test & Trace app.

I hope you’ve been getting some decent weather, wherever you happen to be reading this. Sure is toasty out here – but as Nickolai Hubble will tell you, the temperature is rising even further in inflation statistics…

“Freedom In Name Only”, or FRINO, was the topic of our latest Fortune & Freedom podcast with Nickolai Hubble and Nigel Farage – while you’re celebrating our state-sanctioned “freedom”, I encourage you to give it a listen.

GALLERY 48, DUNDEE – “History might be rhyming, but there are a lot of different songs being played at the same time” says Nickolai Hubble of the current investing environment. When looking forward into the 2020s, we wonder what market…

MARYFIELD, DUNDEE – Do you remember what happens after a housing bubble bursts? That’s what my good friend and colleague Nickolai Hubble would like to ask you in today’s letter – for it seems many have forgotten. But before we…

MARYFIELD, DUNDEE – A quick note before we begin today. I’ll be hosting an online event tomorrow with a very special guest. He’s an American CEO with quite the investment tale to tell, and if you’re interested in streamlining your…

Editor’s note: With the Nasdaq and S&P 500 hitting new highs this week, optimism is abounding in markets. But as you’ll see below, optimism has a danger to it where markets are concerned. With analysts forecasting the fastest economic growth…

The “Einstein of money” wasn’t much of a husband or father. His first divorce was in 1937, when divorce was still taboo. He left his wife for a young actress, and became an absentee father to his four stigmatised children….

VARNA, BULGARIA For a moment, think of Capital & Conflict (and the other Southbank Investment Research publications) as a kind of prism. If you look through that prism, you will see the world of investment a certain way. The world…

VARNA, BULGARIA Thursday 24 June was an important day for the many pension funds, insurance companies and other institutions that invest in foreign stock markets. It was the day that MSCI announced its annual Market Classification Review. MSCI is a…

HEILIGENSTADT, VIENNA Vienna as a whole is pretty flat. However, we do have a hill here in Heiligenstadt. To climb up it, from the Karl Marx-Hof at the bottom to the ZAMG – Austria’s Met Office – at the top,…

NEW TOWN, EDINBURGH ­– My good friend and colleague Nickolai Hubble is no stranger to controversy. Truth be told, he likes to stir it quite a bit. This note he penned for Fortune & Freedom (click here to subscribe) is…

“A lethal dose to anyone within ten yards. Get it while it’s hot!” – Edge of Darkness (1985) NEW TOWN, EDINBURGH – Do I count any nuclear bulls amongst the readership? Anyone stacking uranium rods at home, or stuffing them…

NEW TOWN, EDINBURGH – Edinburgh, like so many cities, looks its best in the sun. When the rays hit it just right, the sandstone skyline shines like gold. And shine it has over the past few days – we’ve had…

THE MEADOWS, EDINBURGH – My good friend and colleague Nickolai Hubble isn’t one for political correctness. As I like to say, he won’t screw a silencer on his speech. This might preclude him from various other professions and speaking opportunities,…

THE MEADOWS, EDINBURGH – There’s been a bit of drama here at Southbank Investment Research of late. It’s about our Beyond Oil Summit which goes live on Wednesday (get access here if you haven’t signed up yet). The subject of…

BROUGHTON, EDINBURGH – Our very first Beyond Oil Summit feels like a different epoch… but it was only last year. Our plans for the event, featuring first-class energy experts on the future of black gold, began at the very beginning…

BROUGHTON, EDINBURGH – Well, the results are in from Monday’s poll… And I must say, I’m a little surprised: A lot of oil bulls out there – nearly three quarters of respondents. And there I was thinking I had a…

BROUGHTON, EDINBURGH – They called them the Seven Sisters. Seven companies which ruled the world. It all began in August 1928, at a castle called Achnacarry. It’s in the Highlands, near Ben Nevis – about half an hour’s drive from…

STOCKBRIDGE, EDINBURGH – A short note from me this morning, I’m just off to interview a certain gold expert based in the microstate of Liechtenstein. This gold discussion will be the final instalment our 2021 Gold Summit – after the…

THE STANDING ORDER, EDINBURGH – It almost feels like things are getting back to normal here. Almost. The streets are thronging with folk. Not so many as pre-WuFlu, but it’s damn busy nonetheless. There are enough tourists on the Royal…

ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND – I was given a set of lockpicks for my birthday a few years ago. I’d always wanted a set when I was a kid after reading one too many adventure novels, and a relative of mine thought…

ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND – In yesterday’s note, I published a few responses I’ve received from the readership on the curious case of Tesla. Broadly speaking, most of the letters I received took a negative view on the company – or at…

Big oil’s going green. Sort of. The onset of the pandemic last year left oil companies to do some soul searching. That fossil fuels (at least at the scale they’re used right now) have a limited lifespan was already well-known….

ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND – 13 rounds in the magazine, plus one in the chamber. You could fire this thing 14 times without needing to reload. Only problem is, there’s a shortage of bullets due to a sudden surge in demand… A…

There is no such thing as “risk-free”. We often think about the risk of owning tech stocks, or not owning gold stocks. This year, we started to think about the risk of… seeing our friends, or doing the things we…

Ever wonder who founded our newsletter publishing company? Not Southbank Investment Research, but our friends in the US who preceded us. Well, it’s time to meet him. Bill Bonner and his wife, Elizabeth, have spent much of 2020 hunkered down…

For today’s installment, I’d like to share with you a podcast from my friend, Dan Denning. Dan is the co-editor of the Bonner-Denning letter in the US, and recently featured on a podcast series in the States. He very kindly…

“Where the bloody hell are you?” was the slogan in an Australian tourism campaign in 2006. It got banned in the UK… Today, the Aussie tourism industry doesn’t have to wonder any more. The country simply shut down one of…

Something a little different in today’s note. Today’s Capital & Conflict is a postcard of sorts, from our company’s founding father – Bill Bonner – living out on his ranch in Argentina. Many of you will be familiar with Bill’s…

Until the turn of the 20th century, being poor was seen as a moral failing in Britain. People living in poverty did so, it was believed, because they were inherently flawed, not because of any external factors. And, by that…

I’m of the opinion that the pandemic hasn’t brought about that many new economic trends. Rather, it’s sped up existing ones. One of these is the search for safe havens – “safe” assets, typically perceived as some of the lowest…

HALF WAY INN, STOCKHOLM – Almost December, huh? This year has flown by faster for me than any other I can remember. Perhaps it’s a good thing that 2020 is “getting itself over with” so we can crack on with…

SODERMALM, STOCKHOLM – As the week draws to a close, it’s time for some light relief. We’ve written often about the strange happenings taking place in the bond market in recent years – like countries being paid to borrow money,…

SODERMALM, STOCKHOLM – The last time the Nikkei was this high, I hadn’t been born yet. Source: Fuller Treacy Money We’re a way off that ‘89 all-time high… but if the market has taught us anything this year, it’s that…

THE OLD SMITHY, STAFFORDSHIRE – “Stuff it under your mattress and you’ll make more interest” bellows a voice from across the pub. The suggestion is addressed to a gentleman seated on the opposite side of the room who’s been trying…

THE HYDRO, DERBYSHIRE – Well the cat’s out of the bag now… If you haven’t seen yesterday’s announcement yet, I suggest you do so now.  That marks one of the largest events in the history of this company – certainly…

REDWILLOW BREWERY, DERBYSHIRE – “The value of money has been destroyed by around 98% since I’ve been living there” a colleague tells me over video chat. “Inflation has been kicking around 50% for the past five or six years. Which…

53 DEGREES NORTH, DERBYSHIRE – “I should tell you to leave Sir. But tonight, I’d like you to keep on drinking.” Sadly, this is not something I’ve been told by any barmen on my ongoing voyage through English pubs. It…

Buy low sell high, goes the old mantra. So why is all the focus on buying? There are always two parts to a trade or an investment, but most people spend the majority of their time focusing on the former….

I often come across pieces of editorial written by my colleagues that are so good that I feel compelled to share them only to remember that I cannot, for it wouldn’t be fair on their paying subscribers. I make exceptions…

For the last two days, I’ve been writing to you about a big risk in the financial markets. Volatility has been decreasing, but this doesn’t mean that risk has gone down. In fact, the opposite is true. Read those articles…

Yesterday I wrote to you about the nature of risk. Contrary to wider market sentiment, I see huge risk building up in the financial markets. Read yesterday’s piece to get up to speed. What is risk? In capitalism, a risk…

The Scottish Independence referendum feels like an incredibly long time ago. The political drama has increased by a factor of 11 since then, but oh boy did it feel intense at the time. In retrospect, it was probably a great…

Why are CEOs bailing out of their companies like there’s a financial crisis on? They must not have got Donald Trump’s memo that everything is fine in the US economy. Or read the latest issue of The Fleet Street Letter,…

Riddle me this: why have investors started paying to lend to the French government… as the yellow vest protests intensify? The yellow vest protests in France kicked off in full on 17 November. But since then, demand for French government…

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – We left the warm and friendly west coast of Central America on Friday. Now, we are on the south coast of Ireland. Still friendly, but less warm. We are here to check on Home Sweet Home… our…

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – We looked back yesterday. Today, we will look ahead. As we will see, the past casts its shadow over the future. Bloomberg is on the case: Key Fed Yield Gauge Points to Rate Cuts for First Time…

As publisher at Southbank Investment Research, I work with a lot of outstanding market analysts and fund managers. Charlie Morris might well be the finest investor I know. He’s a city legend, frankly. For 17 years, he managed HSBC’s absolute…

Before we get going, just a reminder that right now, there’s a way you can claim a free copy of Charlie Morris’s complete strategy for surviving the market downturn, “Surviving the Next Bear Market: a field guide for investors”. As…

Today’s letter is a free peak at an issue of The Price Report, my colleague and friend Tim Price’s investment advisory. The issue was jam-packed with links to additional information worth looking at. Enjoy! The future, in pictures: part I…

Today I bring you a piece from Akhil Patel, editor of Cycles Trends & Forecasts. Akhil thinks we’re in a lull of a colossal bull market that will rip on into the 2020s. Not a very popular view at the…

Hope you had a great weekend. I’m out of the office today, so no market commentary from me. Instead, I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Charlie Morris, with a snippet of his latest editorial for readers of The…

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Trading continued on Thursday… with stocks swinging lustily from tree to tree like drunken monkeys. When the closing bell finally sounded, the Dow was down just 79 points. The monkeys were greatly relieved. And on Friday, the…

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Today will be an interesting day. After falling the last two days, stocks should bounce. And the futures market says they will. But now, we will see what the speculators are really thinking. Will they want to…

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Mr. Market must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed on Monday. CNBC reports: The Dow fell 395 points to 25,017. The S&P 500 dropped 1.7 percent to 2,690 as the technology sector pulled…

PORTLAW, IRELAND – The Dow fell another 600 points on Wednesday. Look for a rebound. But here’s a helpful trading hint: Don’t buy the dip. Bloomberg tells us why the pros are getting out: Stocks in the S&P 500 have…

The “reach for yield” – where investors take on more risk to scrape ever smaller returns – continues, despite the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England raising rates. It’ll take many more rate hikes without something breaking before we…

Where the remote Bermudas ride In th’ ocean’s bosom unespy’d, From a small boat, that row’d along, The list’ning winds receiv’d this song. What should we do but sing his praise That led us through the wat’ry maze Unto an…

The fallout from the Nasdaq nuke on Wednesday persists across markets. Asian markets have had a bounce, but in the West, stocks are suffering. The FTSE, the S&P, and the EuroStoxx have continued to bleed. And importantly, government bonds in…

The men labelled by the Italian deputy prime minister as “the gentlemen of the spread” are roughing him up. Who are these “gentlemen of the spread”? In short, they’re investors selling Italian debt, and buying German debt instead. The buying…

The Lone Ranger has returned. Not in a reboot of the classic black and white western series, but in the US stockmarket. A master of disguise, he now goes by the handle “S&P 500”. In his guise as the US…

If you were a government looking to default on some debts and didn’t want to ruffle many feathers, who would you decide to default on? Which lender would be the most politically palatable victim? And which would damage your credit…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Kavanaugh… Kavanaugh… Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh in the morning. Kavanaugh in the evening. Kavanaugh at supper time. It’s Kavanaugh 24/7. And so the mud wrestling – wretched, tawdry, and disgraceful – continues. But today, we turn away… back to…

The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty swans. The nineteenth autumn has come upon me Since…

A short letter today. I’m just off to host a quarterly conference call with Tim Price for subscribers of The Price Report. With the tenth anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy just two days away, it’s a time for reflection. What’s…

CHERBOURG, FRANCE – Yesterday, on our way to the Cherbourg ferry, we stopped in at a local farm fair in Normandy. On display were the best cows in the region, along with a demonstration of old farming equipment. A batteuse…

PARIS – You’ll recall that Fed policy always consists of the same three mistakes… 1) Keeping interest rates too low for too long, resulting in too much debt; 2) Raising interest rates to try to gently deflate the debt bubble;…

PARIS – We’re having breakfast on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris… the first stop on a long trip. First, it will take us to Normandy, then via the ferry to Ireland… thence to Argentina, Germany, and Bermuda… before returning to…

POITOU, FRANCE – Yesterday’s headline news, from Reuters: U.S. economic growth was a bit stronger than initially thought in the second quarter, notching its best performance in nearly four years, as businesses boosted spending on software and imports declined. Gross…

Another week, another member of the elite rings the alarm on the growing risk in the financial system. Harald Malmgren was a senior economic adviser to presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. A consummate…

PARIS – We came up to Paris to say goodbye to a daughter… who is headed back to the U.S. She chose La Closerie des Lilas for dinner, the restaurant made famous as a Hemingway hangout. And there, in front…

POITOU, FRANCE – Whoa! What’s this? The Dow popped up nearly 400 points last Thursday. On Friday just 4% off its all-time high of 26,616, reached on January 26 of this year. And you know what that means. Markets are…

[Editor’s note: because Bill is usually writing from the US, we don’t publish his copy until the day after he’s written it. So if you’re a bit confused as to why he’s predicting events that have already happened, that’s why.]…

My attempt to move to London continues today. We’re currently thwarted by a disappearing visa agent and a steady stream of stabbings in the news. But the marriage certificate is making its way through the Japanese bureaucracy. My surname has…

POITOU, FRANCE – The delusional, rock ’em-sock ’em, baroque news just keeps coming. We laugh readily; but even we are having a hard time keeping up. American Grifters Forbes claims that our Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, may be “one…

POITOU, FRANCE – In a weekend tweet, the president of the United States of America made a stock market forecast. He said that prices will go up “dramatically” as he brings his Art of the Deal methods to international trade…

POITOU, FRANCE – We were taken aback on Friday by the ferocity of our dear readers’ comments. What were they so sore about? we wondered.

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – As a republic matures, it slides down-market… The rails are silently greased by the cronies and grifters who control policy measures for their own benefit… while the rabble rallies to campaign slogans and admires TV idols. The…

Have you heard of a “vanward” before? It’s a word that’s sadly fallen out of use in recent times, but it actually applies well to financial markets today. In fact, if you’re reading this, you may well be a vanward!…

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Last Thursday, as predicted by after-hours trading, Facebook lost $122 billion in market value, more than the GDP of 145 of the world’s economies. The Zuck alone lost nearly as much as Iceland’s annual GDP. USA Today…

[Editor’s note: because Bill is usually writing from the US, we don’t publish his copy until the day after he’s written it. So if you’re a bit confused as to why he’s predicting events that have already happened, that’s why….

Plenty has happened since we examined the bizarre trade war developments yesterday. Donald Trump’s meeting with the EU’s Jean-Claude Junker can be summarised with this Bloomberg quote: Trump said he hoped for a “very positive” outcome from meeting with Juncker…

Before we begin, there’s something urgent I need to alert you to. It’s regarding the incident that took place at our London Bridge office last week, and how it’s allowed us to offer a best ever deal on our most…

What perils lie in wait for financial markets? I attended a conference in Blackfriars last week centred on just this question. This “risk horizon” event was intended for fund managers and other investment professionals. We’re on the fringe of the…

POITOU, FRANCE – “Trade fears hit stocks,” began this morning’s typical Wall Street report. Yesterday, we promised not to mention trade again. But we had our fingers crossed! Besides, through no fault of our own, it popped back into the…

The rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and as a high wall in his own conceit. – Proverbs 18:11 POITOU, FRANCE – “Render unto Caesar” is how we began Friday’s note. Today, we dig deeper to answer a Dear…

You wouldn’t expect a government actuary report to be terrifying. But let me tell you, the “Government Actuary’s Quinquennial Review of the National Insurance Fund as at April 2015” report definitely is. First, notice its rather optimistic assumptions. It modelled…

POITOU, FRANCE – On Tuesday, when the Chinese woke up and heard The Donald threatening to impose an import tax on Chinese-made goods, they practically fell out of bed. There’s a 10% daily circuit-breaker limit in the Chinese stock market….

With so much political action in Italy, the White House, Germany and Brexit Britain, we’ve been neglecting the global financial markets. Against the dollar, the pound is down almost 8% from its peak in January after a 17% rally that…

POITOU, FRANCE – We wait for the world to fall apart. The Dow is still more than 1,000 points below its high; so we presume the primary trend is down. Treasury yields – on the 10-year note – are near…

Earthquakes are especially disconcerting when you’re sitting on the toilet. Perhaps that’s why they make them so comfortable here in Japan. Before I’d emerged from the bathroom, the various family members across the country had already checked in with each…

POITOU, FRANCE – Well, it looks like we were wrong about everything. Everything. The Fed. Donald J. Trump. The stock market. The economy. Even the weather. Yesterday, we looked at the sky and forecast rain. Instead, the sun came out….

PARIS – Last week, it was war with Europe. This week, it’s bombs over Toronto. Plans are being drawn up for two walls. One across the southern border to keep Mexicans out. And one across the 49th parallel to keep…

An extra edition for you today… Today we have a bonus article from whip-smart trader and $600 money manager Eoin Treacy. I asked Eoin to share with you his approach to overcoming nothing less than our embedded human failures. I…

It’s always fun to see the government fail the very people who stir it into action. Prohibitionists who fall victim to organised crime gangs. Warmongers who get called up in the draft. Rent control advocates who live in dilapidated buildings….

I think the greatest threat domestically to the country is this $21 trillion debt hanging over the cloud of America and future generations. – Outgoing Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz on CNBC POITOU, FRANCE – Uh oh. The “social welfare” systems…

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – What a beautiful time… to be in Ireland! In the evening, the sun lingers in the sky, lighting up the millions of snowflake-like willow fluff. Like cattails, they waft around on the breeze, so light that they…

You already know about our ranch in Argentina. As we explained last year, it is not very productive or practical. It is too far, too high, and too dry. It is marginal in almost every way. The cows are too…

I stepped out of the office into the bright afternoon, and paused for a moment. On the face of it, I was about to make a completely stupid move. In pursuit of something that nobody seems to value these days,…

“It’s impossible not to commit fraud in this job,” said a voice from across the table. I raised my eyebrows. Others around me did not – this was not surprising to them. Who would say such a thing? What profession…

My mum lives in front of the Wilder Kaiser. It’s a pretty mountain in Austria. The top half is a shiny face of bare rock which glows in the afternoon sun. You can climb up and over through the Ellmau…

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – On Monday, a small landmark was passed. A tweet yesterday morning: For the first time since the financial crisis, the 3-month Treasury yield has surpassed the yield on the S&P 500. Small investors look for big, risky…

Do you really own something if it’s controlled by the government? Property rights are a precondition for prosperity. The idea is that you own yourself, your property and the fruits of your labour. This basic concept is fairly new in…

Today, I’m going to share a secret with you. It’s a hidden recipe for a life-changing concoction. The Aztecs called it the “Divine Messenger”. The very first anthropologist said of those that consumed it, “it sustains them and gives them…

DUBLIN – Last week ended on a high note: “Stocks rally after jobless rate sinks to 3.9%,” said a headline at Bloomberg on Friday. “Jobless Rate at 17-Year Low,” added The Wall Street Journal front-page on Saturday. “Solid,” was how analysts described…

It’s called “good news or bad news”. I’m going to reveal news to you. And you have to guess whether it’s good or bad. The point being that you’re guessing. I don’t know the answer either. So don’t try too…

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from hell… Blue skies from pain – Pink Floyd, “Wish You Were Here” PORTLAW, IRELAND – We left off yesterday with the biggest question in philosophy hanging from our lips like a cold cigarette……

You must remember this. A kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is still a sigh. The fundamental things apply As time goes by. – Dooley Wilson, “As Time Goes By” PORTLAW, IRELAND – Poor Florence Newton. The young woman…

Capital & Conflict offers you a simple piece of advice: opt out of the blunder from Down Under. As the news furore over the immigration debacle reaches fever pitch in the UK, let’s take a look at the nation which…

If you know something is going to happen in the future, when do you react to it? More importantly for the purpose of making money in financial markets, when is everyone else going to react? Because that’s when prices move….

For months it’s been all about 3%. Investment analysts, traders, managers and commentators all agreed: if the ten-year US Treasury bond hits 3%, something is going to snap. Well, according to Bloomberg radio, yesterday was the big day. For the…

NORMANDY, FRANCE – Bitcoin is making itself useful. Bloomberg is on the case: “Bolívar to Bitcoin Market Hits Record $1 Million Per Day” The Venezuelan bolívar to bitcoin market reached a record on Tuesday, as the dollar-starved nation increasingly seeks…

Today we imagine a return to a normal world. Or at least try to. Because it wouldn’t last long. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein gave an interview on CNBC after his company announced its earnings for the first quarter of…

Do you remember when sub-prime mortgages were a small problem in an obscure part of the US mortgage market? Next thing, all hell broke loose. Well today we investigate a similar scenario. At first, it appears to be a small…

A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces An airline ticket to romantic places – Billie Holiday, “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)” BALTIMORE – South Beach… Last week, we were sitting in the hotel restaurant in Miami Beach having…

Blowing up some portion of Syria’s chemical weapons infrastructure changes everything. Or nothing, depending on who you ask. Don’t ask me. All I know is that we’re walking into whatever was planned for us. If Bashar al-Assad actually launched a…

It’s been an interesting week in financial markets. FTSE: flat. Gold: up. War stocks: up. As I write, cryptocurrencies are catching a bid again. If your portfolio is in the green today, you’re probably a cynic, or as the Americans…

MIAMI – Guggenheim investment fund’s global chief investment officer Scott Minerd predicts a 40% decline for the Dow… mostly in 2019. He says the U.S. economy is on a “collision course with disaster.” He’s right – at least about the…

Let’s delve deep into the future of the US dollar. That’s another way of saying we’re talking about everything at once. Because the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency, the currency of the biggest economy, the currency of international trade…

BUENOS AIRES – Our stay in Argentina was cut short. One of our two daughters had a baby. We hasten thither to see her, our fourth grandchild. In the meantime… Usual Errors What we were getting at last week was that there…

SALTA, ARGENTINA – Up. Down. Up. Down. We followed the action on Wall Street yesterday, wondering… where was it going? The headlines told us that investors were nervous about a trade war. Bloomberg was on the case early: Fears of…

SALTA, ARGENTINA – Up, down. Up, down. What to make of it? The stock market is in denial, struggling with the idea, not quite willing to give in… not quite willing to admit that the bull market of 2009–2018 is…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – “Uh oh… That poor girl has Down syndrome,” Elizabeth noticed. “How do you know?” “You can see it. It used to be called ‘mongoloidism’ because of the way it distorts the face.” Mountain Party We had been…

We hope you had a happy Easter. The US financial markets didn’t. They were open yesterday. And it wasn’t a pretty sight. The worst opening day for the second quarter since the Great Depression led the S&P 500 below its…

American markets were down again overnight. But only marginally so. The few stocks that led the market up are now taking it back down again. A series of scandals are behind their drops. But how can a select few companies…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Big Tech led the way up. It will probably be in the lead on the way down, too. Bloomberg: The market’s darlings just suffered the worst day in at least three years. The NYSE FANG+ index, tracking…

Stocks went back to their falling ways once more overnight. It seems the occasional respite is just a so-called “dead cat bounce”. The problem with a bear market now is that it begins with the FTSE index at the level…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – All hail the techs! The stock market bounced back with a big gain on Monday. The buy-the-dippers gained a couple of points. The future can wait; the big crash is still ahead.

“Stress level quite close.” So ended an email I received from Charlie Morris yesterday. I had asked him his thoughts on a recent spike in a metric that’s built in to more than £250 trillion of assets around the world….

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why the financial industry doesn’t learn from its mistakes, today’s Capital & Conflict is for you. Financial crises are bizarrely common given how painful they can be. Bankers seem to learn slower than toddlers…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – We’re getting into an agreeable and relaxed routine here at the ranch. We go for a hike up the little hill behind the house in the morning. A trail zig-zags up, with the stations of the cross…

What do you reckon this is? I thought it was from a real estate brochure. I was disappointed to find that you can’t live in there as this is the inside of a violin (I suppose the watermark is a…

It’s always difficult to predict the state of the economy. But at the moment, I don’t even know what state it’s currently in. Unemployment around the world is impressively low. Monetary policy is pushing extraordinary amounts of stimulus. Growth and…

And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days…

Reading a publication called The Interest Rate Observer might sound awfully boring. But right now, it’s interesting. And that’s not a good thing. Take for example this simple factoid. Telecom Italia’s bond, which expires in 2022 and carries low credit…

The UK’s property boom is sputtering and stuttering. You should be very worried about what happens next. House prices fell nationally in the last three months reported Halifax. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) house price index hit zero…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – We continue our exploration… …of why the stock market is a fraud… …why investors’ savings are not really funding U.S. business… … why instead, they are aiding and abetting a multitrillion-dollar rip-off… …and how the ripper-offers are…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Stormy Daniels has gone public… No big deal. Gary Cohn has left the White House… No big deal. The big deal is that the Fed is raising interest rates.

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – The big news last week was Trump’s hasty decision to impose tariffs on aluminum and steel. We were happy to see it. We were looking for an example – undeniable, indisputable, and in-your-face, jackass – to illustrate…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – This weekend, we drove down to the valley to check out the new farm. It’s about 500 acres along the river, abandoned for 50 years, but can be irrigated and put back into service. And it’s a…

SALTA, ARGENTINA – “Stocks Slide After Powell Testimony,” reads a headline at Bloomberg. The Dow dropped 380 points on Wednesday, leaving February as the worst month in two years. What did the new Fed chief say? Only that he thought…

It’s going to be a miserable ten years for US stocks. That’s what Michael Lebowitz CFA claims on realinvestmentadvice.com. And he’s got plenty of data and analysis to back him up. Of course, the world’s stockmarkets take their lead from…

The Currency Wars are over. Having tripled the monetary base as a per cent of GDP, the world’s major central banks are now winding up. No more quantitative easing. No more attempts to devalue the dollar, euro or yen. This…

Who knew? If you’re faced with a zombie apocalypse in coming years, the solution is simple. Just set up some interest rate trip wires around your home. Or nail a certified copy of your adjustable-rate mortgage balance to your door….

Last year, Capital & Conflict sent you an inflation alert. Yes, ten months is a bit of an early warning. But there’s some vindication playing out at last. Inflation has gone from being persistently low to persistently high in the…

One of life’s underrated joys is finding a pound note in a pocket that you’d completely forgotten about. Suddenly discovering you own something of value is almost like winning a competition. But turn that feeling on its head. How does…

Across the world in East Asia, the number 4 holds a grim meaning. Across the many different languages in the region, the pronunciation of the number is very similar to the pronunciation of the word for “death”. The number is…

The US stockmarket turned down again last night. That’s always a bad sign in the aftermath of a crash. Stocks are supposed to bounce back for the same reason they crashed – mean reversion. Of course, they did bounce back…

PARIS – It snowed all day yesterday. It is still snowing this morning. Paris is at its best in the snow. It is hushed and enchanting… like a beautiful woman who is about to tell a secret. 16 Million Dead…

Well, that escalated quickly. The biggest one-day drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, in terms of points not per cent, was all over the news this morning. The drop wiped out the impressive gains for 2018 so far. And…

CORK, IRELAND – “U.S. Stocks Drop as Treasury Sell-Off Gains Steam,” was headline news at Bloomberg last Thursday. Meanwhile, bitcoin tumbled toward $8,000, wiping about $100 billion off its market value in just 24 hours. And the price of the…

CORK, IRELAND – “Is the bull market in stocks finally over?” asks a Bloomberg headline. We don’t know the answer. No one knows the future. Still, people buy umbrellas even when it isn’t raining. If we were you… looking at…

Do you remember when a 1% drop in the stockmarket was nothing to get excited about? When 2.7% was a cheap interest rate for governments to borrow at? When a forecasted central bank interest rate below 2% would cause inflation?…

Two stockmarket crashes in ten years utterly crushed the hopes of British investors. It’s taken the FTSE 100 17 years to reach new highs since the tech wreck of 2000. Not since the Great Depression has the power of crashes…

WATERFORD, IRELAND – We are making Ireland the hub of our global publishing business. So we need a place to live here. The last couple of days have been spent prospecting. “We want something with character… a challenge… something we…

BALTIMORE – It is always brightest before they turn the lights out. You can quote us on that, Dear Reader. Just when you thought things couldn’t get better… guess what? They don’t. They go dark as a dungeon. Antidote to…

BALTIMORE – The titans of one era become the schmucks of the next. Marshal Michel Ney, one of France’s greatest soldiers, was executed by his own people… who later put up a statue of him in Paris. General Robert E….

BALTIMORE – Oh, Dear Reader, imagine our alarm! Feel our pain! We were like the boy who saw on the news that his school was on fire. When we left the office on Friday… the federal government was just hours…

BALTIMORE – What’s that in the distance? It looks like a cloud of dust barely visible on the horizon. It’s the relief column, sent from Ft. Fed! Hooray! Confidence of the Damned And yes, it is still a long way…

BALTIMORE – When we left you yesterday, we were describing why the situation is getting dangerous for investors, and how the lessons learned over the last 30 years may backfire in the next crisis. “Dow over 26,000… bitcoin under $10,000,”…

BALTIMORE – Like a “Closing Out Sale” that never seems to end, people are beginning to think that this “Stock Market Surge” may not be totally on the level. Unlike an honest bull market, it may never end… Classic Top?…

BALTIMORE – Our main man in Argentina, Pancho, came to Baltimore last week. Dapper and charming, Pancho has become more than just an administrator for the ranch. He has become a trusted advisor to the family. We began the conversation…

Last week it was China. This week it’s inflation. The US’ bond market is all over the place. Today we look at what’s got bond traders’ knickers in a twist. And if you’re a bond vigilante, how to take advantage…

How much of our lives are controlled by external forces without our knowledge? 20%? 50%? 90%? It controls how you feel, and subsequently what you think about. It can manipulate what you want, so it gets what it wants. It’s…

Well, yesterday’s Capital & Conflict proved timely. A bear market in bonds is the top story right across the financial media this morning. The Financial Times, Bloomberg and others all feature stories about wobbly bond markets and jittery yields. Yesterday…

BALTIMORE – Donald Trump has shown the way… He’s revealed the White House as the No. 1 showbiz gig. Now, others want to get in on the act. Oprah for President! The latest reports tell us that Oprah might run…

You’ve probably heard it a lot already this week, but as it’s my first time writing to you in 2018, happy New Year! I hope you all enjoyed the festive period, and spent it in good company. I used the…

Commodities are on the move. Ignore them at your regret. They’re the most promising way to make money over the next ten years. Today we look into what has me so convinced. It’s all down to the most important chart…

Back in grade school, a teacher once told us that “anybody can grow up to be president.” In 2017, Donald Trump proved it. In high school, we learned that “anything can be used as money.” In 2017, bitcoin proved it….

BALTIMORE – Our work here at the Diary is to connect the dots. And we begin connecting the dots of 2018 by looking over our shoulder at the brightest dots we connected last year. Three remarkable things happened in 2017… One for…

Editor’s Note: Happy New Year from Bill and all of us here at Bonner & Partners. We look forward to another great year at Bill’s Diary. Today, Bill kicks off 2018 with some timeless wisdom for securing long-term prosperity. Today, three basic…

Editor’s Note: The Bonner & Partners offices are closed for the holidays. Today, Bill examines what it means to live well, and why America’s boomers need perspective now more than ever. What should you do if you are running out…

It was 4 a.m. I had no doubt about that. The clock said as much. And who am I to argue with clocks? If ever we cannot trust them, the country is done for. But what were those voices? At…

BALTIMORE – After a year of defeat and disorder, it finally looks like Republicans have managed a legislative victory. The stock market celebrated Monday with the Dow hitting a new record high. “Buy the rumor; sell the news.” That’s what…

The Tech Wreck is a pretty cool name for a stockmarket wipeout. Sub-prime Crisis sounds snazzy too. But nothing beats the coming crisis. It’ll be known as the Recession of the Zombie Apocalypse. Now I don’t know much about zombies…

DELRAY BEACH, FLORIDA – What have we learned so far? Let’s spell it out as a series of axioms. Real money must be connected to the real economy of energy, time, and resources. Traditionally, gold makes the connection. (In the…

Today bitcoin and the financial sector combined their superpowers. Will it be for good or evil? The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) launched bitcoin futures overnight. The immediate result was a bitcoin futures price of $20,000 for February, far higher than…

RANCHO SANTANA, NICARAGUA – “This area is going to grow for a long time,” said a real estate agent yesterday. We’ve been looking at property for sale. We like it down here in Nicaragua. And we have a feeling the…

My name is James Allen, and I’m a new publisher here at Southbank Investment Research. In fact, this is my first week here so I’m very much the new boy. I’ve been brought in to look at all the exciting…

My friend Tim Price is out with a warning. He’s spotted what he calls “the Third Crossing”. Don’t worry, it’s nothing morbid or religious. Unless you’re praying for your retirement. The last two crossings triggered the most memorable stockmarket crashes…

BALTIMORE – On Friday, bitcoin took a dive. From an all-time high of $17,899… it tumbled to $14,336 – a 20% fall. What a wild ride! Our theme from last week includes a warning… a not-so-subtle memento mori for the financial world:…

BALTIMORE – How ‘bout that bitcoin! It went up another $2,000 yesterday. Does it go down, too? We think we know the answer. But let’s look at more familiar ESPs. This week, we’ve been focusing on Extremely Simple Patterns, or ESPs….

BALTIMORE – “Don’t be absurd…” The distaff part of the family has a contrary opinion. It concerns the drift of our Diary last week. In short, she thinks we are talking nonsense. New Aristocracy Long-term Diary sufferers know we often talk nonsense. Out motto…

BALTIMORE – Last Tuesday, we made $4,000 per hour when bitcoin rose. Then, on Wednesday, we lost $5,000 per hour when it fell. Whee! Look for an on-the-scene report from our in-house crypto expert below… In the meantime… Last-Ditch Effort…

Black hole sun Won’t you come And wash away the rain? Black hole sun Won’t you come? Won’t you come? – Black Hole Sun, Soundgarden (1994) Watching one of the longest bull markets in history march upwards, mounting political obstacles…

BALTIMORE – Yesterday, we saw the soul of America. We drove by a house so imposing… so monstrously ugly… so laughably pretentious that we almost drove off the road staring at it. On a suburban lot, it was as though…

BALTIMORE – Can you live well on Social Security alone? Yesterday, we told an old friend it was possible. But is it? It depends on what you mean by “living well.” Rich and Poor Today, we lift anchor and unfurl…

Editor’s Note: Today, we bring you one of Bill’s greatest essays… a beginner’s guide to understanding how the fake money system has left us all doomed. We are explaining our money system to our grandson, James, now 14 months old… His…

After harping on about the power of cash these last few days, your editor was caught short of any when it mattered most. Phone lines, internet and therefore payment systems are down across the Nullarbor Desert in South Australia. You…

NEW YORK – “I’M WITH THE PERV,” screams yesterday’s New York Post headline. The accompanying photos show Donald J. Trump and the accused child molester Roy Moore. There are those who despise the Alabama Senate candidate. And there are those who see…

NEW YORK – Salvator Mundi, said to be by Leonardo da Vinci, is the world’s most expensive painting. Last Wednesday, at auction, each square inch was valued at nearly $1 million – including the bummed-up, restored, and damaged parts. The painting…

BALTIMORE – How about those techs! As Chris Lowe reported in Wednesday’s Market Insight column, the eight most valuable tech companies in the world – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google parent Alphabet, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent – have added $1.7 trillion…

BALTIMORE – We were disappointed to see the pedestal… naked… forlorn… its statue gone… its purpose defunct. For more than a century, the bronze statue of Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney – gravely pondering the weighty issues of the…

DELRAY BEACH, FLORIDA – “What’s wrong with them?” In front of us was a group of young women, tying their surfboards on top of their Jeep. At first glance, nothing at all. They had come from a nearby surf camp…

RANCHO SANTANA, NICARAGUA – Last Thursday, Senate Republicans announced their proposed tax reform measures. Instead of eliminating the inheritance tax – like the House version does – the Senate proposal would increase the exemption by $5 million per person. And…

Your regular Friday editor Boaz Shoshan is busy finalising a series of reports. Word is, you’re going to need them to evade a coming government crackdown. Hence the rush. But that’s all he’s giving away. Today, we take a look…

RANCHO SANTANA, NICARAGUA – “I wanted to build a little vacation cottage.” We were getting a tour of concrete and rebar. A colleague is building a house on the ocean. It seems to have gotten away from him. “Well…” he…

The Paradise Papers have exposed a bundle of liars and cheats. Namely, the politicians who wrote the tax rules that make using offshore tax havens legal. And not just because their own pension fund makes use of those loopholes. The…

RANCHO SANTANA, NICARAGUA – We’re down in Nicaragua giving a little speech to a group of financial analysts and publishers. I’ll be sharing the full contents of the speech with members of our Inner Circle advisory soon. A view of the coastline…

POITOU, FRANCE – “The Age of Easy Money Is Nearly Over,” reads a headline at Bloomberg. Oh yeah? We suspect that it has hardly begun… stay tuned. Destroying Capital In the meantime, we are exploring the past to get hints…

POITOU, FRANCE – We have been in almost constant motion for the last 10 days or so. It’s nice to be back at home… if only for a few days. One of the pretensions of modern design is that things…

PORTO, PORTUGAL – “I wonder what the suicide rate is in this hotel?” We posed the question this morning, not expecting an answer. We had been wandering the dark, labyrinthine corridors in search of an elevator. It is a newish…

Well, I found out where all the £50 notes are. Hated by the elites in their war on cash, and ever rarer in day-to-day transactions, I finally found where all these elusive notes have run off to. Turns out, they’ve…

LISBON, PORTUGAL – Lisbon is a beautiful city. It was so poor and so remote, it missed out on the modernization that ruined many other cities in Europe. Wisely neutral during World War I and World War II, it wasn’t…

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – We spent the night at a hotel in the nearby village of Molinos and then drove back to see the new farm. We hoped that our spirits might have revived after a good night’s sleep… or maybe…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – “Damn!” Ramón had been so absorbed in laying out his plans for our new farm that he forgot to put the truck into 4-wheel drive. When he finally realized he needed it, it was too late. The…

Few bank scandals are surprising these days. Over the last few years we’ve discovered the banksters manipulated just about every financial asset price possible. Some even went to jail! A few years ago, a friend worked on the internal investigations…

LONDON – By the time you read this, we’ll have given a speech to an investment group in London. Investors will want to know what’s ahead. Will prices go up? Or down? “Yes,” we will answer. At best, we will…

The idea that all of economics comes down to land prices seems like an arcane one. Especially with the online world increasingly dominating the bricks and mortar of retail. But it isn’t. Land is special. It’s different to the other…

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing. – Jean-Baptiste Colbert, French finance minister (1665-1683) POITOU, FRANCE – On Wednesday, another losing…

Have you ever had a remarkable run of luck? How did it make you feel? Did you begin to doubt the upcoming series of gambles would go your way too? Or were you convinced of your new psychic powers? On…

POITOU, FRANCE – From comedy… to farce… to tragedy. We laugh. We guffaw. And then we wish we hadn’t bought a house in inner-city Baltimore. Already, in Charm City, police helicopters peer into our windows… sirens wail at 3 a.m.……

POITOU, FRANCE – It’s autumn already. A heavy fog covers the farm this morning, the first this year. September can be beautiful here. Not yet cold. But no longer hot. The grass is green, and the sky is clear. Then,…

ÎLE D’YEU, FRANCE – We are spending a couple of days with friends out on a tiny and charming island in the Atlantic, Île d’Yeu. We took the ferry from the Fromentine harbor, near the city of Nantes, on Sunday….

ILE D’YEU, FRANCE – Last week, the plot did not so much thicken as congeal. There’s no changing it now – the cameras are rolling… the costumes are on… and everyone knows his lines. President Trump went further in becoming…

PARIS – First, the news. Cryptocurrencies took a beating after Jamie Dimon – the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, a bank that makes billions from today’s fake-money system – called bitcoin a “fraud.” Bitcoin – the leading cryptocurrency by market value…

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. – Psalm 23:4 NORMANDY, FRANCE – Others are beginning to…

NORMANDY, FRANCE – And “The Donald” said: “Open the floodgates!” And the floodgates opened. Less than 48 hours after Congress approved his debt ceiling suspension, more than $300 billion had flooded in. That is the amount by which the U.S….

NORMANDY, FRANCE – We had gotten a bid of $4,000 to redo the old fireplace. The carved stones that held the wooden mantel beam had cracked and fallen down. Other stones along the side had broken off or worn down….

POITOU, FRANCE – On Tuesday, the Dow fell 234 points – or roughly 1%. No big deal. Commentators said investors were worried about disasters – both natural and man-made. Out at sea, another storm gathers force… threatening the sugar islands…

POITOU, FRANCE – Yesterday was Labor Day. Most of the world pays homage to its sweating, busing, trucking classes, its poor huddled masses… yearning for a cushier seat and a better deal… on May 1. President Grover Cleveland chose the…

Soaring house prices are creating a generational gap. Mortgage lender Halifax is the latest one out with data on the topic. “If you are under 35, it’s likely there is little chance of you ever owning your own home,” summarised…

POITOU, FRANCE – A new Diary dictum: A new administration can only do good by undoing the good things that previous administrations claimed to do. That is, it does not do good by adding programs of its own. It can only make…

 And the Lord said unto Noah, “Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and…

POITOU, FRANCE – Bannon is gone. And Priebus. And Spicer. And Scaramucci. And Donald J. Trump? Reckless, vain, juvenile, untutored, swinish – he was refreshingly blockheaded. And now, he may be gone, too… tamed by the “adults in the room.”…

POITOU, FRANCE – In professional wrestling, scriptwriters always include what they call a “Holy Sh*t!” moment. That’s when one of the stars takes a hit so brutal or so fantastic that the fans yell: “Holy sh*t!” Donald J. Trump, a…

POITOU, FRANCE – St. Augustine blamed the fall of Rome on the failure of its pagan gods. Historian Edward Gibbon took the opposite view: He thought the empire had been weakened by Augustine’s god. Here at the Diary, we take no…

What makes a nation go from being incredibly rich to incredibly poor? The London Investment Alert’s Tim Price is out with a warning for Britain. He’s predicting we’re in for a new national crisis. One that you need to be…

POITOU, FRANCE ­– Barely two weeks ago, 2,117 people took Chile’s medical licensing exam. What was noteworthy about this year’s test was that more than one-third of the people taking it were not Chilean. Nearly 800 of them were Venezuelans….

POITOU, FRANCE – This is getting monotonous. Another day, another record high for the Dow… now above the 22,000-point mark for the first time in history. And based on the CAPE ratio – a valuation measure that compares stock prices…

They went up, of course. Just like they always do. Some people have expressed wonder… and doubt… that the equity value of America’s businesses can increase so much even while national leadership is in so much disarray. Republicans can’t work…

[The] thing I have learned about these people in Washington is they have no money. So what happens when they have no f*****g money is they write about what seat they are in and what the title is. F*****g congressmen…

POITOU, FRANCE – This weekend, we celebrated the oldest win-win deal in human life: marriage. On Saturday afternoon, we drove 10 miles or so to Le Dorat. The medieval town sits on a hill in the green Limousin countryside, with…

POITOU, FRANCE The Senate failed again to pass even a “skinny” repeal of Obamacare (which left most of the program in place… and most people subject to its quack finance) after three senators defected. The new White House communications director,…

POITOU, FRANCE – This just in from the Bonner & Partners research department… A further update on the Doom Index: Building permits – a leading housing-market indicator – for the second quarter were down about 3%. That adds another Doom Point…

LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The Trump team welcomed its newest member over the weekend. Henceforth, communications will be controlled by Goldman Sachs alum Anthony Scaramucci, aka “The Mooch.” This brings to five the number of Deep Staters from Goldman Sachs dominating…

POITOU, FRANCE – “My father told me to plant trees,” said a neighbor last night. “It was right after I bought this place. Of course, I was young… I was busy… I didn’t have time to plant trees. “Now, I…

POITOU, FRANCE – Sound the alarm. Take your money off the table. Pack your socks and your passport. There’s going to be trouble. The Washington Post reports: “Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary, is hurtling toward his first fiasco.” Republicans have majorities in…

POITOU, FRANCE – “GOP reeling after healthcare collapse,” reads a headline on a political website. From The Hill: Republicans offered competing ideas for what to do next on healthcare Monday night, now that the current ObamaCare replacement effort has fallen apart….

POITOU, FRANCE – President Trump implies that America isn’t so great anymore. He was in Paris last week and dined with French President Emmanuel Macron in the Eiffel Tower. Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan Chase, is fresh from an overseas…

POITOU, FRANCE – Public figures and public events are almost always fraudulent in some way. France’s Bastille Day is no exception. It is hailed as a landmark of liberty. But the storming of the Bastille prison by revolutionaries, on this…

POITOU, FRANCE – What does our Doom Index  tell us now? Here’s a quick update from Joe Withrow in the Bonner & Partners research department: We are still waiting for second-quarter data to come in before we can update the index…

POITOU, FRANCE – “You can’t take that car into Paris.” Our gardener is our source of local news and universal wisdom. “You don’t have a green sticker,” he explained. The French are always finding ways to make life expensive, difficult,…

Editor’s Note: Bill is off today for the Fourth of July holiday. So today, we’re sharing an essay from Bill that explores the founding principles of America and considers if Americans have lived up to those ideals. Recently, I saw this…

PARIS – Global warming has yet to get a firm grip on Europe. This week, the weather in Ireland turned in the direction you might expect. It is midsummer, but in Baltimore, it could pass for a bad day in…

PORTLAW, IRELAND – Last night, we drove over to the harbor town of Dungarvan for dinner. The Irish countryside was idyllic – with rolling hills, forests, and hayfields. Then, arriving at Dungarvan, we saw the Atlantic shining in the distance….

Today… the most important thing you can do for your country all year. All it requires is a few clicks of your mouse. And it’s free. But it could make a massive difference to our way of life in Britain…

And perhaps you’re alive And perhaps you’re dead Hoo ha ha Hoo ha ha HOO HOO HOO KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK – “Fragment of an Agon,” T.S. Eliot PORTLAW, IRELAND – We’ve always wanted to quote…

DUBLIN – Oil fell below $43 on Tuesday. Brick-and-mortar retailers are being emptied. The auto industry – including $1.2 trillion in auto debt – is stalling. Meanwhile, restaurants are having trouble filling their tables. Consumers aren’t buying, perhaps because their…

 Mayor: Drebin, I don’t want any more trouble like you had last year on the South Side. Understand? That’s my policy. Drebin: Yes. Well, when I see five weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a guy in the middle of the…

DUBLIN – Poor David Bonderman. He said the wrong thing. He should be ashamed of himself. We’ll come back to him in a minute… Stroll Through the Park In the meantime, if you want to enjoy summertime as it should…

LONDON – Illinois is in trouble. It has $14.6 billion in unpaid bills… not including a pension liability of $130 billion. The state is running a $6 billion deficit, and its government is dysfunctional, operating without a budget for two…

LONDON – It was warm and sunny when we landed in London yesterday. Britain sometimes gets only a few weeks of summer. People rush out into the streets to celebrate, knowing that the very same rose that blooms today may…

BALTIMORE – We’re trying to avoid distractions. What is really going on, we wonder? What is really important, we ask? Donald J. Trump came to Washington, D.C., promising to “drain the swamp.” Instead, the swamp is draining him. The media…

You shouldn’t ignore genuine opportunities to make money. Did you see that Microsoft sold $17 billion worth of bonds on Monday? The US tech giant is one of just two US corporates with an AAA credit rating (the other is…

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Yesterday, we connected a couple of dots… “Think tanks” think about what they’re paid to think about. Who pays them? The people who have the resources to bend public policies in their direction. Who are those people?…

Back in 2007, stockbroker Peter Schiff was hounding the financial news channels with his apocalyptic predictions of a subprime crisis. He was ridiculed by his fellow interviewees at the time. “Peter Schiff was right” compilation videos on YouTube still make…

When I die, Hallelujah by and by, I’ll fly away. – Carl Sumpter WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – “Hey, Dad, the parking lot is already filling up.” People started arriving an hour before the funeral. A gentle mist fell on the…

Editor’s Note: Bill is spending time with family today. We expect him back tomorrow. Below, we share an essay from Thanksgiving 2015 where Bill recounts a special conversation with his mother. BALTIMORE – Markets have been calm over the Thanksgiving…

Editor’s Note: Bill is away with family and unable to pen his daily Diary. Below, we share an essay originally published in August of last year. In the French countryside, Bill tells his then-14-month-old grandson a bedtime story. But the…

A personal note. Many thanks to those who agreed to try our wine. We ran out quickly. Apologies to those who were unable to get any. Next year, we will have fewer bottles; a frost wiped out half our crop….

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Now comes a report from the Financial Times that tells us the nation’s No. 1 industry – homebuilding – has been backing up for a quarter of a century. According to the newspaper, U.S. homebuilders “started work on the…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – You already know about our ranch here in Argentina. No, it is not very productive or practical. It is too far, too high, and too dry. It is marginal in almost every way. The cows are too…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – “What business school did you go to?” We were joking, of course. But the two young men needed an alternative point of view. In the course of getting their MBAs in Chicago, they had picked up some…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Have you ever wondered what you would do if you had a health emergency in a remote location? We never thought about it… until last week. Then we found out. Place at the End Up at the…

Thinking like an economist can be terribly frustrating. Every day people insist that moving water to one side of a bathtub will raise the water level on that side. At least they argue the economic equivalent. Because economic understanding is…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Today, we look at what is going on in Venezuela. For amusement as well as for instruction. As long-term Diary readers know, we are connoisseurs of financial disaster. In Venezuela in 2017, we think we see an especially good…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – We rode out to one of the high valleys on Sunday. Leading the way were the ranch foreman, Gustavo, and his son, Agostín. Agostín is 10 years old. But he is already a gaucho – sure of…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – On Wednesday, stocks fell. And volatility shot up. Reports Bloomberg: The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 370 points, Treasuries rallied the most since July and volatility spiked higher as the turmoil surrounding the Trump administration…

Konnichi wa from Japan. I’m here looking into Japan’s demographic disaster. And trying to solve it by meeting the potential in-laws. Japan is 20 years ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to demographics. Which puts the…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – The Dow was flat on Tuesday. Investors must have been distracted by the latest tempest in the Washington teapot. Did President Trump say something he shouldn’t have? He told the Russians that terrorists were trying to make…

“I go and talk to these companies, and they know they need me and they’re keen to make sure they’re protected against cyber-attacks… “Then, I don’t hear back from them for months. I get in touch again. They say, ‘We…

We were supposed to run out of oil eventually. They called it peak oil. But it will never happen now. At least not how you expected. Can you imagine the early Stone Age humans worrying about running out of stones…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Pssst… Dear reader… Want to make some big money, fast? We’re not gamblers. We’re not speculators. And we’re no good at predicting the future. But we see what looks like an RSP, a Really Simple Pattern, that…

SALTA, ARGENTINA – Public life is always a hoot… People of sound mind and reasonable judgment in their personal lives take on characters full of unwarranted confidence and intolerant insistence in public. The couple whose son has a “drug problem”…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – As longtime Diary sufferers know, we don’t do real stock analysis. We just look for Really Simple Patterns (RSPs). The simplest we’ve discovered so far: If a market is cheap now, it will probably be less cheap before you…

Should you be worried? There are some odd things going on in financial markets… The amount of trading – volume – is at 23-year lows on the US stockmarket. It’s much the same for the world’s major foreign exchange currencies….

Unless you’re playing the game of “greater fool” – buying in the hope that someone out there is willing to pay a higher price – the only reason to buy a stock is for its earnings. As a shareholder, you…

SALTA, ARGENTINA – Yesterday, we visited the museum in the center of Salta. It is a museum of the history of the city and the province, set in the repurposed town hall in the main square. We had begun the…

CACHI, ARGENTINA – Here at the Diary we have fun ridiculing the pretensions, absurdities, and hypocrisies of the ruling classes. But there is a serious side to it, too. Mockery makes us laugh. And laughing helps us wiggle free from the kudzu…

How do rich families get rich, and stay rich? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself for the last few weeks. As part of it, I’ve conducted a pretty exhaustive study of pretty much every way a private investor like…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Poor DJT. It doesn’t seem to matter what he says; the press is all over him. A presidential tweet: “Our country needs a good ‘shutdown.’” The commentators couldn’t believe it. It was “unthinkable,” they said, for a…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Today, we leave the world of overpriced stocks and claptrap politics behind. Instead, we will just tell you what happened over the weekend here at the ranch. Monday was May Day in Argentina, as it was in…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – This week, we got a visit from an Austrian man who recently retired and is spending five years traveling the world. He has a specially outfitted four-wheel-drive Toyota with such marvels as heated water for a shower,…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Team Trump came forward yesterday and laid what it claimed was the “biggest tax cut in history” on the table. Before we go on, we should say “We love this guy.” If you’ve been reading the Diary for a…

It’s time to take stock of the stockmarket. It’s been a remarkable two decades. We’ve had three booms and two crashes. In the end the FTSE 100 index has gone nowhere, especially adjusted for inflation. Less than half the companies…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – The Dow was down 118 points yesterday. It should be down a lot more. Of course, markets know more than we do. And maybe this market knows something that makes sense of these high prices. What we…

CAFAYATE, ARGENTINA – The Dow fell about 100 points yesterday. It’s not hard to see why… Factory output dropped the most since last August, led by declining auto sales. Meanwhile, housing starts are at a four-month low. Bank loans are…

CAFAYATE, ARGENTINA – We drove down from the ranch yesterday to the tourism and wine town of Cafayate. With our own 4×4 truck, we could have easily made it through the pass where we got stuck two weeks ago. But…

Welcome to the second part of our interview with Akhil Patel, editor of Cycles, Trends and Forecasts. You can read part one here. Akhil recently made a controversial prediction. He believes the stockmarket could hit 15,000 here in Britain –…

Thank you to everyone who’s written to me after reading Akhil Patel and Dan Denning’s latest presentation. If you haven’t read or watched it yet, you can catch up here. The idea is simple. Akhil is an expert in understanding the deep…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Our annual roundup… or yerra… began yesterday. We go out on horseback early in the morning with our gauchos Gustavo, José, Samuel, and Natalio. Pedro has a bad back and no longer rides. The technique is simple: It…

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. So today I’m going to keep things short, stay quiet and let five charts do the talking. I think they prove that we’re at a vital, and profitable, point in the stock…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – By our calculation, it took just 76 days for President Trump to get on board with the Clinton-Bush-Obama agenda. Now there can be no doubt where he’s headed. He’s gone Full Empire. Not that it was unexpected….

We spend far more time discussing the “capital” element of our brief than we do the “conflict” part. That’s mostly by design: the markets keep us busy enough. And changes in the financial world are much more likely to have…

Day after day all the earth wearies, drooping unto death. — The Earthstepper GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – “Two of them called me Elizabeth,” said Elizabeth. She was referring to one of the cowboys’ wives and one of the local women. “And one…

Could this be it? The week we see another milestone in the move towards a more global legal marijuana market? It could well be. This week, Canadian president Justin Trudeau’s government is expected to push through legislation that would make…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – “Bill, you are living in a dream world,” our local lawyer began (not using these exact words). “You are a smart guy. But you’re not that smart. You bought a marginal ranch. It’s getting more and more…

Here’s a question for you. What’s going to have a bigger impact on your returns from the stockmarket: the deal Britain gets from the EU… or the fact we’re entering the second, most lucrative stage of the “Grand Cycle”? It’s…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA — We have not had any word from our attorney in the city of Salta, but we assume the case was dropped. Grand theft auto was the charge (catch up in full here). But the alleged wrongdoer, your editor,…

Enough politics. Even if politicians and central bankers are driving stockmarkets and property markets these days, it’s time to take a look at how the financial world is faring in its own right. The FTSE 100 is trading above its…

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – It took us 24 hours to get here… …during which time your editor drove 350 miles (mostly on dirt roads)… got stuck in the desert… took a long walk by starlight… and was wanted by the police……

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – We arrived at the family ranch in northern Argentina last night… This morning, we rub the sleep from our eyes and look out the window. Whoa… it’s greener than we expected. We were in the second year…

You will get about 450,000 results. Do the same with Donald Trump, and the number is closer to 396 million. That’s 87,900% more references. The world’s press is as fascinated by President Trump as it is indifferent to President Leuthard. What will…

 An object in motion tends to remain in motion… — Isaac Newton BUENOS AIRES – Day by day, the dots connect… the picture becomes clearer. And now we believe: The Fed will never voluntarily return to “normal” interest rates. Congress…

BUENOS AIRES – We got into Buenos Aires at about 10 p.m. We hadn’t had dinner. So we walked out of the hotel hoping to find a restaurant that was still serving. It was quiet in the Palermo Soho neighborhood….

SÃO PAULO – We arrived on Sunday morning. São Paulo can have terrible traffic. It is a sprawling place of 12 million people. But it was early when we pulled into town; the traffic moved swiftly. We decided to go…

Washington [is] a lot more broken than President Trump thought that it was. — White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – On Friday, the much-hyped Trump/GOP Obamacare reform sank into the swamp. If anything keeps us from…