Thursday, 11 November 2021 — Wollongong, Australia

By Greg Canavan Editor, The Rum Rebellion

[6 min read]

Dear Reader,

In addition to bringing you The Rum Rebellion each and every Thursday, I also write a few subscriber-only publications.

One is called Greg Canavan’s Investment Advisory, a stock-picking service, and the other is The Insider, where I write market commentary for ALL subscribers (it comes free with any subscription) twice a week.

For what you get, I humbly submit the service is as cheap as chips.

I say this because in Monday’s Insider, I alerted readers to the imminent opportunity brewing in the gold market:

‘One sector that seems particularly well-placed here is gold. The gold price responded very well to the Fed last week. It looks to be on the verge of breaking out of its near 18-month consolidation period.

‘As you can see in the chart below, gold has spent the past few weeks trading above the downward sloping trend line. It looks like it is building pressure for a potential strong move higher.’

The chart shows the gold futures market had closed at US$1,816 an ounce on Friday.

Overnight, the price surged as high as US$1,867, before settling lower to around US$1,850 at the time of writing.

It’s increasingly likely the breakout has occurred. Over the next 6–12 months, in my humble opinion, you’re likely to see gold prices trade at new all-time highs.

I followed that up on Tuesday with a note to my Advisory subscribers, telling them:

‘The most important money-making opportunity brewing in markets right now is in the gold sector.’

The thing is, in contrast to just about every other sector in the market, gold stocks have been trending down for the past 12–18 months.

The market is pricing in LOWER, not HIGHER gold prices.

At least it was. But that is starting to change.

As you can see in the chart below, the ASX Gold Index dropped sharply below support in September. But it quickly reversed that sell-off (a bullish sign) and is now moving higher. The index is now at its highest level since August.

In my view, I think gold stocks are at the start of a new upward trend. It’s early days. But that’s how it looks to me.

So what’s behind this gold price breakout?

Negative REAL interest rates. Real interest rates refer to the nominal rate minus inflation. As inflation picks up, and nominal rates don’t move meaningfully higher, real rates decline.

And that is bullish for gold.

The weird thing is, real rates have been bullish for gold for some time. It’s just that the market thought this ‘recovery’ would see a move higher in real rates. That happened to a certain extent. But for most of the year, longer-term real yields have been on the decline.

For example, check out the chart below. It shows real yields on the 30-year US treasury bond falling to ALL-TIME LOWS!

That is, they are now more deeply negative than they were when gold peaked back in August 2020.

So the fundamentals are set for gold. Now it’s just a matter of the ‘emotion’ of the market getting behind the yellow metal.

The other thing to think about here is the longer-term impact of the rise in short-term interest rates.

With inflationary pressures picking up around the world, central banks are now planning on removing the extraordinary stimulus they provided post-pandemic.

The result has been an increase in shorter-term interest rates. By that I mean rising yields across the two-to-five-year bonds.

However, the market is saying that this tightening will cause the economy to slow. That makes sense in a world saturated with debt.

The chart below shows the long-term Treasury yield curve. It’s the five-year yield minus the 30-year yield. The decline reflects rising five-year yields and flat or falling 30-year yields:

In other words, shorter-term bonds are very concerned about rising inflation, while longer-term bond holders see the global economy in a debt trap, and are not concerned about inflation long term.

Whatever the outcome of inflation, whether it’s ‘transitory’ or sustainable, you can bet that governments and central banks will work together to hold rates below the rate of inflation.

We are entering a long period of financial repression.

Gold will be the ultimate winner…

Regards,

Greg Canavan,
Editor, The Rum Rebellion

By Bill Bonner Editor, The Rum Rebellion

Dear Reader,

Inflation is afoot. Breitbart is on the story:

‘Prices rose 8.6 percent from a year ago in October, the second consecutive month of the fastest annual pace of inflation in records going back 10 years.

‘The Department of Labor said the Producer Price Index accelerated to show a monthly gain of 0.6 percent, up one-tenth of a percentage point from the September gain. That was in line with analyst expectations.’

And the Daily Mail reports that ‘meatflation’ is getting serious:

‘…the cost of bone-in ribeye beef has nearly doubled from $8.71 per pound in November 2020 to an astounding $16.99 per pound this week, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s Retail Price Report that was released on Friday — an increase of over 95 percent.’

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will have a price misinformation update later today. Here, we pause to reflect on what inflation actually is…and where higher rates of it are taking us.

Noxious tax

Democracy is best described as ‘two wolves and one lamb voting on what to have for dinner’. But after they’ve fully digested the lamb, the wolves are still hungry. What do they do?

First, they borrow. And when that source is exhausted (excess borrowing raises interest rates, which depresses the whole economy…and lowers tax receipts)…they print.

Inflation is just another way to squeeze blood out of a population of turnips. It is a tax levied on consumers. It’s a particularly noxious tax, in that it distorts and damages the entire economy.

And when a country relies too heavily on it, it soon becomes a god-awful mess.

Infectious socialism

Take our favourite basket case, Argentina, for example.

Runaway debt? Out-of-control inflation? Pandering to the masses? Buying votes? Corruption…incompetence…absurdity — the Argentines have been there and done that for the last 70 years.

Now, The Wall Street Journal is on the story, ‘Argentina’s Welfare State Warning to America’:

‘Socialist ideologues know that the welfare state is addictive. New entitlements create dependencies that, once born, demand to be fed and to grow no matter the party in power.

‘Argentina proves the rule.’

Yes, ‘Peronism is Argentina’s most successful export,’ jokes a friend in Salta.

Juan Perón took a little from Mussolini…a little from Hitler…a little from Stalin. And then he added a tango beat and chimichurri sauce.

The result was a pampa variant of the socialist infection. And it has proved remarkably durable.

Patient zero

By 28 April 1945, Mussolini was hanging from a lamppost by his feet. Two days later, Hitler was in cinders. Stalin’s Soviet Union limped along until 1991, when President Gorbachev resigned and began doing luggage commercials for Louis Vuitton.

And Peronism?

General Juan Perón, who ruled Argentina from 1946 through 1955, and again briefly in 1973–74, was patient zero. He came back from Italy in 1941, bringing the dreaded disease with him.

It has run rampant through Buenos Aires’ popular neighbourhoods ever since.

Survival tool

What makes Peronism so ‘sticky’ is that once groups acquire a taste for money that isn’t their own, they are very reluctant to give it up.

Then, politicians need to keep the money coming or they can’t win an election.

And since they can never tax or borrow enough to make good on all their promises (especially since they are simultaneously strangling the productive economy), they resort to the inflation tax…and blame it on greedy businessmen.

Corruption runs wild. In the courts, in the bureaucracy, in the schools, in the medical system, and in private industry too. Nothing is on the level. Nothing works as you think it should.

At first, you attribute it to ‘incompetence’. But the Argentines are as competent as anyone else. They just react to different incentives.

And in a corrupt system, corruption — petty and great — not only pays, it is a survival tool.

Life goes on

That’s the endearing and enlightening thing about the Argentine system. It has a kind of illicit flexibility that keeps life tolerable…even agreeable…in the midst of perpetual crisis.

Coups d’état…military governments…mass murders…widespread terrorism and kidnapping…hyperinflation…humiliating defeats and depression — Peronism has survived them all.

Even today, the inflation rate is around 50%…where it has been for several years. The US dollar trades on ‘white’, ‘black’, and ‘blue’ exchanges — at very different rates.

Businesses routinely keep at least two different sets of books — one for the government and one for themselves. They trade invoices with each other to manage their tax burdens. And rich people flee to Uruguay or Florida.

Still, life goes on…tolerably well, for many people.

But a deeper crisis is coming. The Argentine government is broke. No one will lend it money. And if it keeps printing more money, it risks a Venezuela-style catastrophe.

Broken status quo

Meanwhile, an important election is coming on Thursday. The Peronists are facing a big challenge. But not necessarily a big change.

As The Wall Street Journal puts it, the opposition is ‘not much more than a milder version of the status quo’.

Alas, the status quo — now becoming familiar north of the Rio Grande, as it has been south of the Rio de la Plata for many years — is in a shambles.

How easy it would be, in theory, to fix it. No more free lunches. No more deficits. No more bribes. No more money printing.

But how impossible it is, in practice, to do it…

Regards,

Bill Bonner,
For The Rum Rebellion