Tackling the crisis head on Test the water before you go all in Firebombs in Paris
By Selva Freigedo in Albert Park Say what you want about Coca Cola — in fact, I’m not a big fan of the fizzy drink myself — but the company can sure come up with great feel-good ads. One of the most recent ones didn’t disappoint in that respect. The thing is, it’s very likely that you have missed the ad I’m talking about. Why? Because the main target was Argentineans. You see, Argentina is once again in the middle of a crisis. And, to be honest, it’s very hard to be cheerful in times like this. Nonetheless, Coca cola tackled the crisis head on. The ad’s title is ‘te toco nacer aca’ which loosely translates to something along the lines of ‘it was your fate to be born here’ in Spanish. The first scene shows a mother giving birth. As dad holds the baby for the first time, he goes on to explain that he has come into the world at a complicated time. And, of all the countries in the world, he had to be born in Argentina. But, as we hear him tell the newborn, there is a silver lining: the fact that he will never be alone there. Argentina is a place where 20 people will come to greet you at the airport, or where you will get an ovation whether you cook a bbq or land a plane. As he continues: ‘Because Argentina has something no one else has. We always find a way to make it work[…]no matter how hard things get. So, stay calm. You were born in a place where you will always have someone next to you. Together we will find a way.’ It is sure to leave many — like me — teary eyed. But the ad shows you how hard the economic crisis is hitting the country. ..............................Advertisement.............................. | **AUSTRALIA’S SECRET WEAPON** Why is China so scared of this Aussie company? Click here to find out | .......................................................................... |
It is a challenging time for Argentineans. While countries around the world are having trouble sparking inflation, Argentina is having the opposite problem. To stave off inflation, the central bank has increased interest rates to a high 63% to keep investors interested in the Argentinean peso. Let me repeat that, 63%! Compare that to the low 1.50% the Reserve Bank of Australia has been keeping our interest rates on. Can you even imagine how people with high debt cope? Or even how companies that want to invest in growth take on some debt? In the last year, the Argentinean peso has been devalued by about 50%. With the US dollar strengthening, the government is spending their foreign reserves to keep the peso afloat. But this isn’t the first time Argentina has gone through an economic crisis. You see, Argentina is a bit of a paradox. It is a large country with vast resources. You can find every climate in its territory. It has rich agriculture, mining and industry. In fact, at one point it was considered the breadbasket of the world. Yet the country can’t seem to shake off frequent economic crises. In fact, talking about the economy is one of the common conversations on the streets. Over the years it has gone through hyperinflation, defaults, you name it. When you suffer crisis after crisis, it is challenging to build wealth or plan for the long term. In a way you could say that Argentina is quite the opposite of Australia when it comes to this. Australia hasn’t suffered a recession in almost three decades. That’s a very long time. In fact, while talking about a crisis in Argentina is very common, I haven’t heard much about it here in Australia. A crisis is sometimes referred to here as something that happens in theory, out of a textbook. Because the truth is that younger generations of Australians have never even gone through one. Not going through frequent crisis can allow you to build some wealth and plan for the future. The problem is, it can also leave you unprepared for when the next crisis hits, because of the tendency to think that the past will repeat into the future. But trust me, a crisis will hit at some point. If a recession were to hit right now, it could catch many underprepared. It helps to be prepared, to take some basic precautions. What are some of the things you can do? Pay down debt. Keep some cash in a secure place with easy access. Diversify. Keep some gold. Not having gone through a crisis in 28 years makes it easy to think that things will stay the same… …but, you should always be prepared for change. Best, Selva Freigedo, Editor, Markets & Money PS: You may be unaware that Markets & Money, is part of the Agora network, one of the largest newsletter financial publishers in the world. Agora has offices all over the world, in the US, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, France, Germany, the UK, India, China, Australia and more. This gives us access to a wealth of information from our international experts. These are economic experts, investment specialists, best-selling and award-winning authors. They may be working with different issues, but their insight and advice on global markets is just a phone call away. And right now, there is a clear warning coming from our international network. To read more about it, click here. ..............................Advertisement.............................. | Old Vlad HATES this stuff… See these black flakes? One tiny Aussie upstart has developed a way to make them charge any battery-powered car near instantly. And then power that same car for thousands of kilometres in a single hit. | | Source: Proactive Investors Australia | This breakthrough could eventually bring Vladimir Putin’s Russian oil empire to its knees. And make you up to 12 times your money along the way. How? |
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Test the Water Before You Go All In By Terence Duffy in Albert Park To get good at anything in life, you have to go through a period of learning, study and practice. If you want to play the piano well for example, you’re not going to play a Beethoven Sonata from day one. It takes time, and long hours of study and practice. Getting good at trading markets is no different. You have to do the work and study to get results. The market must be studied and learned, and not just in some casual way. So many enter the stock market, thinking it’s an easy way to make money. But the lazy, ‘get rich quick’ punter will die poor in markets. And even when you do all the study, trading the stock market can still be challenging for many reasons. It’s not all about the technical aspects. It’s really comes down to what you bring to the market. Your frame of mind, or your own psychology. This reminds me to mention paper trading. Paper trading is recommended by many as a good way to learn. Yes, it is a way to test your theory, or practice your trading strategy. And paper trading is OK, up to a point. But it’s not really trading. It’s only when you purchase a stock that the emotions start to kick in. It’s only when there’s money blowing in the breeze, that you can really test your judgement and emotions. Emotional control is the most important factor for trading success. It’s what makes successful share market trading possible. Your mindset, your emotional control, are aspects to trading that often get overlooked in all the trading books. When you start off trading, you try to learn everything you can about markets. What you may come to find though, is you learn a whole lot more about yourself along the way. Get your psychology right. What you bring to the market is ultimately the most important thing. Far more important than the technical aspects. That’s why I suggest you’ve got to be doing the work on yourself, not just the charts. Keep in mind, the market is always giving you useful feedback. Let me give you an example. If your trading is stressful, you’re getting useful feedback that you need to tweak things. To fine tune your trading approach. Trading the stock market shouldn’t be stressful. We all have enough stress in our lives, why make the market another source of stress? What’s more, if you’re stressed out all the time about your positions in the market, you won’t be able to keep that up over the long haul. To take the stress out of entering a trade, there are a couple of things you can do. One, get your position size right. It’s so important to get that right. It’s a subject that I believe doesn’t get enough coverage. If you worry about your stop loss being taken, buy less stock. Get your position sizing right and you’ll mitigate a lot of the stress of the market. The other thing you can do, is scale into a position in stages. This is something that the great traders like Jesse Livermore and WD Gann were known to do. So there could be something to it. You don’t need to load up and buy all the stock from the beginning. Test the water before establishing your full position. After an initial entry, do not make a second entry until your first entry shows you a profit. When those positions show a profit, then you can start to go ahead and take out your full position. Take it in stages. The beauty of this approach is that you’re not heavily positioned if the trade runs against you from the beginning. It allows you to test the water, so to speak. If the stock acts right from the get go, you can then start to add to your position when the share price breaks key levels of support or resistance. If the market moves against you from the start, you only lose a small amount of capital. It’s perhaps a less stressful approach. You shouldn’t be losing sleep over your positions in the market. If you’d like to know more about trading approaches and the key thing that all traders overlook, then go here. Regards, Terence Duffy, Chartist, Phil Anderson’s Time Trader ..............................Advertisement.............................. | A uranium renaissance in the Aussie outback? Discover why Crisis & Opportunity editor, Greg Canavan believes this breakout energy experiment in the South Australian desert could hand you a massive four-figure stock gain by December 2019. Click here for everything you need to know. | .......................................................................... |
Firebombs in Paris By Bill Bonner in Gualfin, Argentina You think you’ve got problems? First, a report from a friend in Paris: We were out for a Saturday stroll and rounded the corner to a police van that was getting smashed by…um…freedom fighters, or protestors, or idiots with nothing better to do (not sure which)… I went closer to get a picture, and just then, the police came flying down the street behind me and the crowd scattered, but not before someone hit the smashed-up police van with what must have been a Molotov cocktail. Ostensibly, les gilets jaunes (the yellow vests) were protesting a government tax on fuel. But as our friend reports, ‘Nobody knows what the heck they’re protesting anymore.’ 50% inflation Meanwhile, here in Argentina, MercoPress reports: ‘Argentine inflation in February, 3.8% and 51% in twelve months ‘Inflation rose 3.8% in February, the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) said, as President Mauricio Macri struggles to bring down prices ahead of key national elections this year. ‘The rise marked the second straight month where inflation has accelerated, underscoring the challenge facing Argentina’s leadership who are battling to stem a slide in the peso, rein in inflation and dig the country out of a recession […] The February inflation increase, the sharpest since October, took 2019 year-to-date inflation to 6.8%, and rolling 12-month inflation in the month was 51.3%, INDEC said. ‘Fueled by a weak peso, consumer prices in Argentina rose 47.6% in 2018, which analysts said was the highest annual rate in nearly three decades, hitting the country’s spenders as wage growth failed to keep apace. ‘Earlier this month economists raised their forecast for 2019 inflation to 31.9% from a previous estimate of 29.0%.’ ‘Thank God we don’t live in Paris or Argentina,’ you might say to yourself. But that’s just the point; you may soon. Herewith, one observation and one prediction. Smashing and looting First, it’s not so bad. Most Parisians had barely any idea there was smashing and looting going on downtown. And here in Salta Province, Argentina, even with 50% inflation, life goes on. Our steak was juicy good last night. (A dinner for six…two bottles of wine, included, was only $120.) Our hotel room is clean. The traffic still flows. Fifty percent inflation is not the end of the world. It’s a challenge; but it creates opportunities, as well as disasters. Second, we suggest a visit to both locales. In Paris, you can learn how to dodge angry, violent mobs. And in Argentina, you can learn how to dodge rising prices. Our prediction is that both skills may one day prove as useful on the banks of the Hudson or the Mississippi, as they are now on the Quai du Louvre or in Puerto Madera. The reasons for the violence in Paris are obscure and largely unfathomable – even to Parisians. So, let’s turn to Argentina. How did Argentina come to have 50% inflation? Its central bankers and politicians are no dumber than their American counterparts. Its politicians know how to get votes. And the insiders here know as well as elites everywhere how to get into the first-class seats. What went wrong? Basic mission Government, as you’ve seen us remark on more than one occasion, is many things to many different people. It is a source of power for some. It’s a source of protection for many. It claims to keep planes from colliding and make sure a quart is actually a quart and not a liter. It is thought, by some, to boost innovation…and to guide the economy by others. But almost all those things are simply collateral to its basic mission: providing a way for the few to rip off the many. Taxes, tariffs, regulations — they’re all ways to transfer wealth and power from the common man to the elite who control the government. But there is an inevitable tendency (driven partly by competition among the insiders themselves) to overdo it. Rather than satisfy themselves with what they can squeeze out of the turnips in honest taxation, the feds borrow from the future. And then, they bend the financial system — by suppressing interest rates, for example…to make it easier to finance their deficits. Soon, everyone is deeply in debt. And then, the system arrives at ‘peak debt’, when the economy no longer produces enough revenue to pay the interest. All debts must be repaid, sooner or later, one way or another, either by the debtor, the creditor… or someone else. No exceptions. In the case of government debt, there is no question of the debtor paying. The feds have no money. They talk about ‘stimulus’ and ‘growing our way out of debt’. But when debt is increasing twice as fast as GDP, as it has for the last 30 years, ‘growing your way out’ is not an option. Also, as the debt burden increases (along with the phony-baloney price signals that created it and the jackass financial shenanigans that accompany it) GDP growth goes down, not up. Current real growth is only about half what it was 30 years ago…and may actually be zero. And, no, the Trump tax cut didn’t really change much. The latest numbers tell us that trends of the Obama era continue as they were before…but worse. The trade deficit, for example, was $531 billion in the last Obama year. Now it is almost $900 billion. Manufacturing is still below its level 12 years ago. Sales got a little bump from the tax cut, but now they’re falling back to trend, too. Single-family-home sales have fallen since DJT took office and are now back to a level set in 1991…with the lowest household/home sales ratio ever recorded. Hiring collapsed in February (possibly a fluke). And GDP growth for this quarter appears to be flatlining. Which is to say…there is no chance the feds will pay the debt with increased tax revenues. So, who will? Welcome to Argentina. Stay tuned. Regards, Bill Bonner ..............................Advertisement.............................. | Bitcoinist.com says ‘investing in crypto now is [...] as good as an investment in the internet 10 years ago.’ To get the ultimate guide to investing in cryptocurrencies today, I urge you to get a hold of Sam Volkering’s ground-breaking book: CRYPTO REVOLUTION Click here now and have a hard-copy sent to your door ASAP — just $7.95 upfront. | .......................................................................... |
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