Precious Metals

Gold is poised to rebound dramatically this year, mean reverting out of its recent deep secular lows. The drivers of gold’s weakness have soared to such extremes that they have to reverse hard. The resulting heavy buying from dominant groups of traders will fuel gold’s 2016 upleg.

The deeper we dig into the story of Dubai's vaporized gold, the more skeletons just tumble out of the closet on what may be the world's biggest gold smuggling ring ever, one involving not just Turkey and Iran, but the mother of all gold smuggling: China itself...

By that, I mean the normal supply and demand forces no longer make sense.

Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.

Once upon a time, we had strong, vigorously enforced laws that made a bank the safest place to store paper assets. That is no longer. Now banks are where your wealth is most likely to be stolen – and by the bank itself. Thanks to the bail-in, the term “bank robbery” now has an entirely different meaning.

Once upon a time, we had strong, vigorously enforced laws that made a bank the safest place to store paper assets.

Freedom is one of the most precious and hard-won of all conditions in life. A government applies the removal of freedoms in a ratchet effect; once a freedom has been taken away from a population, it’s rarely returned. Therefore, freedom tends to deteriorate over time in any nation, no matter how idealistically-founded it may have been. None of us can fully escape the more predatory tendencies of governments. We can, however, question their every move and adjust our lives so that the State’s impact on us is minimised.

The last trading week of 2015 begins on a historic precipice for stocks: as reported over the weekend, the U.S. stock market has not been lower for any year ending in a “5? since 1875. That streak is now in jeopardy, because following Thursday's shortened holiday session which ended with an abrupt selloff, the overnight session has seen continued weakness across global assets in everything from Chinese stocks which tumbled the most since November 27, to commodities (WTI  is down 2.5%) to European stocks (Stoxx 600 -0.4%), to US equity futures down 0.4% on what appears to be an overdue dose of Santa Rally buyers' remorse.

Following the yellow brick road leads us deep, very deep inside the rabbit hole...

Amid ongoing efforts by Indian authorities to monetize (read confiscate) the citizenry's precious metals (which we most recently detailed as an utter failure here and here), it appears the current suppressed low prices for gold have reignited demand and thus smuggling. Following the biggest seizure of smuggled gold earlier this year, The Guardian reports a 42-year-old-man, claiming to be a government official, was caught smuggling$15,000 of gold bars (hidden in his rectum) after police noted him "walking suspiciously."

The silver market has experienced serious changes which precious metal investors need to be aware.

2015 has witnessed several events that had, and will have, negative repercussions on individual freedom. Orwellian totalitarianism is increasingly creeping into our everyday lives. How much more intrusive will the violations of our liberties become and for how long will the establishment get away with this? With regards to the financial system, no real solution was found to issues such as those in the euro zone. Furthermore, the financial system as a whole once again got deeper into debt. For how much longer can central banks and governments continue kicking the can down the road without any real reform?

I would imagine any ancient Roman wise enough to make this same prediction back before the Empire collapsed as the great city fell from a population of one million down to 12,000, would have sounded like a real KOOK.

“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious, but the stupid have an answer for everything.” ~Edward Abbey