Phoenix Capital Research's blog

Once Gold was no longer pegged to world currencies there was only a single period in which stocks outperformed the precious metal. That period was from 1997-2000 during the height of the Tech Bubble (the single biggest stock market bubble in over 100 years).

Since the Financial Crisis erupted in 2007, the US Federal Reserve has engaged in dozens of interventions/ bailouts to try and prop up the financial system. Now, I realize that everyone knows the Fed is “printing money.” However, when you look at the list of bailouts/ money pumps it’s absolutely staggering how much money the Fed has thrown around.

However, the reality of higher inflation won’t show up in China’s inflation data (which clocks in at an absurdly low 3%). However, you can see clear signs of this in China’s civil unrest: you don’t get wage and labor strikes for nothing. 

The Fed’s economic models, and 99% of the economic models employed by Central Banks in general, believe that monetary easing can bring about an economic recovery. The primary argument for this crowd if QE has thus far failed to produce a recovery is that the QE efforts have not been big enough. And then there’s Japan...

The big news that has somehow shocked the media is that the BLS was caught fudging the jobs numbers going into the 2012 election. How on earth is this news? Anyone with a working frontal cortex is aware that CPI, the unemployment numbers, GDP and virtually everything else reported by the Federal Government is massaged to the point of being fraudulent.

It’s almost never openly admitted in public, but the reality is that few if any investors actually beat the market in the long-term. The reason for this is that most of the investment strategies employed by investors (professional or amateur) simply do not make money.

Economic data can be and is commonly used as a political tool. The EU is just the latest example of this. In the US we’ve seen this same game played out using GDP numbers.

How is inflation of 2% acceptable? Why is this base assumption never challenged? At this rate, in 10 years you’ve lost roughly 20% of your purchasing power. And during the average worker’s lifetime, they will see a 40-60% decrease in purchasing power.

Yellen is the head of the San Francisco Fed. There is a lot of misinformation about her on the web, but the fact of the matter is that she is a career academic with absolutely zero banking experience or business experience.

The last two years have seen a number of high profile Tech IPOs for businesses that are barely profitable or have never turned a profit. Indeed, of the tech firms that went public in 2013 so far, 73% have never turned a profit (compare that to just 27% of the tech IPOs that were unprofitable in 1999).

A total of 60 months have passed since the Fed announced QE 1. The Fed was not engaged in major monetary interventions in only six months out of these 60. Put another way, the Fed has been actively intervening to the tune of billions of dollars in 90% of ALL months since it began QE 1.

This is the single largest allocation of investor capital to stock based mutual funds since 2000: at the height of the Tech bubble. That year, investors put $324 billion into stocks. We might actually match that inflow this year as we still have two months left in 2013.

QE failed for Japan. It has failed for the UK. It ha failed for the US. Collectively, countries comprising over a third of the world’s GDP have proven QE doesn’t work.

The market has only been this expensive a handful of times in the last 100+ years. Every time we’ve been closer to a market top than a new bull market run.

European unemployment hits a new record high. China's see-saw taper no taper talk. And the beginning of US Housing Bust 2.0