Will The Bubble Pop Regardless if the Fed Never Raises Rates?

The current overall SPX pattern is a broadening top, which is usually a very reliable pattern. The market continues to look as though it wants to go even lower. The momentum shift, which I have been expecting, has been slow to start, however one should be prepared for this occurrence ahead of time. Nevertheless, the large divergences which I have been viewing, in my proprietary oscillators, are most real, and, once the selling starts, the momentum should quickly move to the downside.

The current market is being supported by a lack of sellers more so than aggressive buying. With investors still thinking that there is no other place to store their money, they appear to be content with leaving their money with risk on assets within a market that is pushing to all time highs. This type of mentality usually leads to large losses rather than big gains. There isn’t any real opportunity for growth in the SPX that I can see right now.

Dow Theory: Market Indexes Must Confirm Each Other

The Dow Theory was formulated from a series of Wall Street Journal editorials which were authored by Charles H. Dow from 1900 until the time of his death in 1902. These editorials reflected Dow’s beliefs regarding how the stock market behaved and how the market could be used to measure the health of the business environment.

Dow first used his theory to create the Dow Jones Industrial Index and the Dow Jones Rail Index (now Transportation Index), which were originally compiled by Dow for TheWall Street Journal. Dow created these indexes because he felt they were an accurate reflection of the business conditions within the economy, seeing as they covered two major economic segments: industrial and rail (transportation). While these indexes have changed, over the last 100 years, the theory still applies to current market indexes.

Market indexes must confirm one another. In other words, a major reversal from a bull or bear market cannot be signaled unless both indexes (generally the Dow Industrial and Transports Averages) are in agreement. Currently, They are DIVERGING, issuing MAJOR NON-CONFIRMATION HIGH the Dow Jones Industrial average. If one couples this with the volatility index, this is a warning sign and a recipe for disaster.

The FEDs’ monetary policy over the last eight years has led to unproductive and reckless corporate behavior. The chart below shows U.S. non financials’ year on year change in net debt versus operating cash flow as measured by earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITA).

The growth in operating cash flow peaked five years ago and has turned negative year over year. Net debt has continued to rise, which is not good for companies.

This has never before occurred in the post World War II period. In the cycle preceding the Great Recession, the peaks had been pretty much coincidental. Even during that cycle, they only diverged for two years, and by the time EBITA turned negative, year over year, as it has today, growth in net debt had been declining for over two years. Again, the current 5 year divergence is unprecedented in financial history. Today, most of that debt is used for financial engineering, as opposed to productive investments. In 2012, buybacks and M&A were $1.25 trillion, while all R&D and office equipment spending were $1.55 trillion. As valuations rose, since that time, R&D and office equipment grew by only $250 billion, but financial engineering grew by $750 billion, or three times this!

You can only live on your seed corn for so long. Despite there being no increase in their interest costs while growing their net borrowing by $1.7 trillion, the profit shares of the corporate sector peaked in 2012. The corporate sector, today, is stuck in a vicious cycle of earnings manipulation management, questionable allocation of capital, low productivity, declining margins and growing debt levels.

Conclusion:

In short, I continue to pound on the table to help keep you and fellow investors aware that something bad, financially, is going to take place – huge events like the tech bubble, the housing collapse a few years back, and now national financial instability. Experts saw all these events coming months and, in some cases, years in advance. Big things typically don’t happen fast, but once the momentum changes direction you better be ready for some life changing events and a change in the financial market place.

Follow my analysis in real time, swing trades, and even my long term investment positions so you can survive from the financial storm The Gold & Oil Guy.com

Chris Vermeulen

Don Kaufman shows us how to "Protect & Profit" in any Market

Today we want to introduce the newest member of our team, Don Kaufman. Don has made quite a mark in the last couple months with the introduction of his new TheoTrade program. Truth is, some of our readers have stated they are getting more from his free videos then some of the more expensive programs they have purchased.

Don will be bringing us a free webinar monthly to keep us on the cutting edge of these extremely volatile markets. Just take advantage of any one of his free items. Getting his free eBook or even just watching his most recent free video will guarantee that you will get notified of the free webinars.

So what's in the "How to Protect & Profit in Any Market" eBook?

This 50 page eBook [visit here for free download] will teach you what you need to know to start playing the markets instead of the markets playing you.

Your Portfolio Deserves More Than a 50/50 Chance 
It has been shown statistically, over the long run, that fundamental and technical analysis is right about 50% of the time. Flipping a coin will give you the same percentage. As the author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Malkiel states, “Technical and Fundamental analysis is a science giving astrology a good name.” Why flip a coin when you can use high probability options strategies?

Diversification is Dead
As a Wall Street saying goes, "When they raid the house they take everyone." Professionals consider diversification as a hedge for people who don’t know how to hedge. Think about it - would you protect the value of your own home against a potential fire by diversifying, that is, buying two houses so if one burns down, the appreciation in the other offsets your loss? Of course not! You insure your home so if it burns down, the insurance covers most of the loss. Welcome to one aspect of using options. Real professionals know how to use options to protect their portfolio from any shock to the markets.

Be The House 
Today, investing in the stock market is a big gamble, almost like going to Vegas and playing the slots. And we all know what happens with slot machines. The House always wins. It may take a loss occasionally, but the overall strategy assures that the House will always come out on top. Options let's you turn the tide and be the house. Find out how you can put the odds in your favor.

Get Don's FREE eBook "The Rebel's Guide to Trading Options"....Just Visit Here!

See you in the markets,
The Stock Market Club

About Don Kaufman 
Don is one of the industry's leading financial strategists and educational authorities with 18 years of financial industry experience. Prior to co-founding TheoTrade, Mr. Kaufman spent 6 years at TD Ameritrade as Director of the Trader Group. At TD Ameritrade Mr. Kaufman handled thinkorswim® content and client education which included the design, build, and execution of what has become the industry standard in financial education. He started his career at thinkorswim® in 2000 (acquired by TD Ameritrade in 2009), where he served as chief derivatives instructor, helping the firm progress into the industry leader in retail options trading and investor education services.

Tonight's Free Webinar - How to Safely Use Volatility to Make Extreme Gains

Did you catch John Carter’s webinar the other night? It was all about how to safely make extreme profits, even in volatile market conditions. If you didn’t make it, then you really missed out and here’s why. As promised, John revealed the setups he used recently to turn $3,300 into $119k in just 3 weeks on GOOGL and a million dollars in one day on TSLA.

No doubt those are astounding case studies. But this simple ‘bread and butter’ trade is what got everyone’s full attention. Right after John started his presentation he put on a live trade following one of his simple setups. As the webinar continued, John calmly managed the trade while he explained in detail how he’s been able to rack up more than 48% gains already this year.

Let’s just say that John proved that he’s cracked the code and is beating Wall Street institutions at their own game. He spelled out how he’s able to get on the right side of this volatility again and again. Everything was super easy to understand, and even newer traders should be able to take advantage of these simple setups.

Just before John wrapped up the webinar, he sold the last of his position with more than $500 in gains. Like he said, not every trade is a winner, but seeing him put real money on the line for thousands of attendees to see was pretty impressive. Listen, you’ve really got to see what John’s doing for yourself.

Most traders are getting wrecked right now with all this volatility, but John’s adapted the setups he’s refined over 25 years to take advantage of these crazy conditions. The good news is that you now have a second chance. By popular demand, next Tuesday March 8th John’s doing an encore webinar on how he is pin pointing these major reversals in advance for such massive gains.

Click Here to Register

You do not want to miss this!

From now on, you won’t fear volatility… It could become your best friend!

See you in the markets,
The Stock Market Club

P.S. If you’re a newer trader with a smaller account, John’s simple setups are especially powerful. Find out how it’s possible to pinpoint major market reversals in advance and safely rack up massive gains while strictly limiting risk.

Click Here to Register Now



Get John's latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

The Secret Behind the $1 Million Option Setup....Here’s Your Private Replay (expires soon)

If you missed John Carter’s special training Tuesday night then you are in luck. The limited replay is online now.

Watch the Private Replay Here [Expires soon] 

Get ready to take notes! Unfortunately, I have no idea how long this replay will be up, so watch it while you can. But I can tell you the feedback from those who attended live is beyond awesome. This was not just another ‘webinar’ featuring ‘hypothetical results’.

John detailed, step by step, how to be consistently profitable in these volatile conditions using just a handful of very simple options setups. There was ZERO hype and total transparency. He showed actual trading accounts with winning AND losing trades for all to see. You gotta see this for yourself.

Here’s just some of what John revealed....

•   Why extreme volatility is the new normal. If you don’t want to crash and burn, you MUST adapt

•   The setup John used to turn $3k into $119k in just 3 weeks (and how to spot these rare, explosive moves)

• The simple signal that allowed John to make $1 million in a single day on TSLA options

• How to pinpoint major reversals in advance by legally ‘spying’ on Wall Street Insiders

• The publically available intel that allowed John to catch the Nasdaq’s historic January collapse, AND then get long for the February rally

• The braindead simple option system that turns crazy market volatility into potentially giant gains (sometimes literally overnight , with strictly limited risk)

• How it’s possible to consistently pull in $100 to $1000 a day by trading from your smart phone (even if you have a job)

Like I said, you don’t want to miss this training. John’s refined these simple strategies over more than 25 years. He shows you what’s really working now and the account killing mistakes that you want to avoid like the plague.

Watch the Limited Replay Now

See you in the markets!
The Stock Market Club


Get John's latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

A Half Dozen 2016 Stock Market Poisons

By Tony Sagami

Most of the “adults” on Wall Street are on vacation this week, and trading volume shrivels up to a trickle. That low volume is exactly the environment that the momentum crowd uses to paint the tape green. I call it the financial version of Reindeer Games.

However, once the “adults” return, the stock market will need to pay attention to the actual economic fundamentals and deal with facts—like, 2015 being the first year since 2009 when S&P 500 profits declined for the year.

I expect that 2016 is going to be a very difficult year for the stock market. Why do I say that? For any number of reasons, such as:

Poison #1: The Strong US Dollar

The greenback has been red hot. The US dollar index is up 9% in 2015 after gaining 13% in 2014.
A strong dollar can have a dramatic (negative) impact on the earnings of companies that do a significant amount of business outside of the US—for example, Johnson & Johnson, Ford, Yum Brands, Tiffany’s, Procter & Gamble, and hundreds more.

Poison #2: Depressed Energy Prices

I don’t have to tell you that oil prices have fallen like a rock. That’s a blessing when you stop at a gas station, but the impact on the finances of petro dependent economies, including certain US states, has been devastating. Plunging energy prices are going to clobber everything from emerging markets to energy stocks, to states like North Dakota and Texas.

Poison #3: Junk Bond Implosion

You may not have noticed because the decline has been orderly, but the junk bond market is on the verge of a total meltdown.

Third Avenue Management unexpectedly halted redemption of its high-yield (junk) Focused Credit Fund. Investors who want their money… tough luck. The investors who placed $789 million in this junk bond fund are now “beneficiaries of the liquidating trust” without any idea of how much they will get back and or even when that money will be returned. Third Avenue admitted that it may take “up to a year” for investors to get their money back. Ouch!

The problem is that the bids of the junkiest part of the junk bond market have collapsed. For example, the bonds of iHeartCommunications and Claire’s Stores have dropped 54% and 55%, respectively, since June!
What the junk bond market is experiencing is a liquidity crunch, the financial equivalent of everybody trying to stampede through a fire exit at the same time. In fact, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that blocking redemptions could lead to an increase in redemption requests at similar funds.

Poison #4: Rising Interest Rates

As expected, the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates at its last meeting. The reaction (so far) hasn’t been too negative; however, we may have several more interest rate hikes coming our way.

Every single one of the 17 Federal Reserve members expects the fed funds rate to increase by at least 50 bps before the end of 2016, and 10 of the 17 expect rates to rise at least 100 bps higher in the next 12 months. I doubt our already struggling economy could handle those increases.

Poison #5: Government Interference

Sure, 2016 is an election year, which brings uncertainty and possibly turmoil. But the Obama administration could shove several changes down America’s throat via executive action—such as higher minimum wage, limits on drug pricing, gun control, trade sanctions including tariffs, immigration, climate change, and increased business regulation.

I don’t give the Republican led Congress a free pass either, as I have no faith that it will put the best interests of the US ahead of its desire to fight Obama.

Poison #6: China Contagion

We do indeed live in a small, interconnected world, and it’s quite possible that something outside of the US could send our stock market tumbling. Middle East challenges notwithstanding, the one external shock I worry the most about is one coming from China. The sudden devaluation of the yuan and the significant easing of monetary policy by the People’s Bank of China are signs that trouble is brewing.

However, I think the biggest danger is an explosion of non-performing loans in China. Debt levels in China, both public and private, have exploded, and I continue to hear anecdotal evidence that default and non-performing loans are on the rise.

Conclusion

To be truthful, I have no idea which of the above or maybe even something completely out of left field will poison the stock market in 2016, but I am convinced that trouble is coming. Call me a pessimist, a bear, or an idiot… but my personal portfolio and that of my Rational Bear subscribers are prepared to profit from falling stock prices.

Tony Sagami
30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: A Half Dozen 2016 Stock Market Poisons was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

Get out latest FREE eBooK "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here

Jared Dillian is Pulling Out All the Stops

By Jared Dillian

When I was a teenager, I had a different sort of part-time job. I was a church organist. Actually, it was the best job ever because I was something of a piano prodigy as a child. Around age 12, my parents and I had to make a conscious decision about whether I was going to pursue a career in music. I decided not to, which has greatly reduced the amount of Ramen noodles I have eaten over the years.At age  13, I decided I wanted to play the organ. I took lessons from the organist in the big Catholic church downtown. What an incredible instrument!

Playing the organ is a lot harder than it looks. In case you hadn’t noticed, there is a whole keyboard at your feet—yes, you play with both your hands and your feet. And since you can’t possibly learn all the hymns, you have to be really good at sight-reading three lines of music at once. It takes a great deal of coordination. Plus, you have two or more “manuals” (keyboards) and dozens of stops, which activate the different sounds in the organ. This is where the phrase “pulling out all the stops” comes from.

So I got a job as the organist at the Unitarian church down the street. For the first and only time of my life, I was a member of a union—the American Guild of Organists. I received my union-protected minimum wage of $50 per service, which is a great deal of money if you’re 16 years old in 1990. $50 a week definitely put gas in my car. And there was a girl in the congregation that I dated a couple of times.

I felt sorry for my poor schlep classmates who were bagging groceries for $4/hour. They had to work 12 hours to make what I made in one. I felt pretty smug.  The high point was when I transcribed the theme from “A Clockwork Orange” and played it as the prelude for one of the church services. You can see where the subversive streak comes from.

I Got Skills

So why did I make more than 12 times what my high school classmates made? Because my skills were worth 12 times as much. Bagging groceries is kind of the definition of unskilled labor. Literally anyone can bag groceries. The supply of labor that has those skills is limitless.

Church organists are in slightly higher demand. But not by much! I think a church organist these days—if you are hired by the church to play every week, plus run all the choir and music programs, probably pays about $35,000 to $50,000 a year, depending on the church. So not a lot!

It’s a decent living if you like playing the organ, but you also have to deal with church politics. The wages of an organist not only depend on the supply of labor but the demand for labor as well. And church construction has gone way down in recent years. Not to mention the fact that the latest fad in religious services is “contemporary music.”

However, the fact that church organists make more money than grocery baggers does reflect the level of skill the occupation requires. Before I became a church organist, I had been playing either the piano or organ for six years. Six years of practicing 30 minutes to an hour a day, every day.

Nobody practices bagging groceries for 30 minutes a day, every day.

I don’t particularly like manual labor (though I have done it on occasion). That’s why I do my best to acquire skills that are rare and marketable so I don’t have to do things like chip paint. In this country (and others), we have this unhealthy obsession with manual labor. Politicians talk about “working Americans” all the time. We say things like “putting in a hard day’s work.” The most popular car is the Ford F-150. Who wants to put in a hard day’s work? Not me! Instead, I will put in a hard day’s thinking.

Hate and Discontent

A lot of people spend too much time thinking about what other people make. It’s unproductive. Everyone thinks Wall Street guys are overpaid, for example. Okay, so let’s take your average ETF option trader at a bank. Say he makes $500,000 a year (which might even be generous these days). Let’s examine one trade of many that he is confronted with on a daily basis. A sales trader stands up and yells to him, “20,000 XLE Jan 75 calls, how?”

What’s happening here is that a client is asking for a two-sided market on the January 75 call options in XLE, which is the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF, 20,000 times, which means options on 2,000,000 shares, or about $140,000,000. It’s a big trade, definitely, but there are bigger ones. So let’s think of all the things the option trader needs to know. He needs to know what an option is, starting from scratch.

He needs to know what XLE is, that it’s an energy ETF, and he should have a good idea of what stocks are in the portfolio. He might have a cursory knowledge about factors affecting supply and demand for crude oil. In order to come up with a price for these options, he has to have an idea of what implied volatility should be and what realized volatility might be going forward.

This requires a knowledge of an option pricing model like Black-Scholes and many, many years of college mathematics, including probability theory and differential equations. He needs to know how he is going to hedge this option. Will he hedge the delta all in the stock? Will he hedge with other options? How will he dynamically hedge the trade until maturity? Will he lay off some of the risk in other strikes? Will he buy single stock options on some of the names in the index, like XOM, CVX, or COP, to effect a dispersion trade?

This means he has to know what a dispersion trade is. More math. He also needs to understand liquidity. What will be his execution impact by trying to sell 800,000 shares of XLE? This affects how wide he makes his market. And best of all, he needs to think about all of these things in a split-second, without hesitation. If he is off by even a penny—he loses money on the trade. I would characterize that as “skilled labor.” And we haven’t even talked about the emotional fortitude it takes to take that kind of risk. $500,000 a year seems low.

CEOs

People get the most upset about executive pay. Here you have some dillweed CEO who is the direct beneficiary of the agency problem. If company XYZ does well, he gets paid millions. If it does poorly, he gets fired and loses nothing, personally. We say that he has no skin in the game.

Well, do you have what it takes to run one of the 500 largest companies in the world?

Pretend we’re talking about McDonald’s. Many people think McDonald’s is doing a terrible job. There’s a lot of evidence that they are. They’re losing market share to Chipotle and lots of other “fast casual” restaurants.

But running a company is hard enough. You have 50,000 odd restaurants, you have to manage supply and distribution for this massive network, you have to do all the managerial science behind what is on the menu and how much it costs, you have to directly negotiate, and I mean meet with leaders of foreign governments, you need to go on CNBC from time to time and not be a mutant, and above all, you need to lead inspirationally.

Not many people can do all that. I can’t. Maybe I’m smart enough, but I don’t have the emotional maturity or even the desire for that kind of responsibility. Everyone wants to be the boss, but nobody really wants to be the boss. If you think you are underpaid—maybe you are. The labor market is not perfectly efficient. Anomalies can persist.

Take a look at people who you think are overpaid. What are they doing that you aren’t? Maybe you just aren’t willing to do those things (like kiss lots of ass). The responsibility is yours and yours alone. And that, my friends, is something nobody wants to hear.

Jared Dillian

If you enjoyed Jared's article, you can sign up for The 10th Man, a free weekly letter, at mauldineconomics.com. 

The article The 10th Man: Pulling Out All the Stops was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

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Mrs. Magoo, Deflation, and Commodity Woes

By Tony Sagami 

Did you read my September 22 issue? Or my July 14 column? If you did, you could have avoided the downdraft that has pulled down stocks all across the transportation sector or even made a bundle, like the 100% gain my Rational Bear subscribers made by buying put options on Seaspan Corporation, the largest container shipping company in the world.

Don’t worry, though. Transportation stocks still have a long ways to fall, so it’s not too late to sell any trucking, shipping, or railroad stock you may own—or profit from their continued fall through shorting, put options, or inverse ETFs. This chart of the Dow Jones Transportation Average validates my negative outlook on all things transportation and shows why we’ve been so successful betting against the “movers” of the US economy.

However, the bear market for transportation stocks is far from finished.

Federal Express Crashes and Burns

Federal Express, which is the single largest weighting of the Dow Jones Transportation Average at 11.6%, delivered a trifecta of misery:

1. Missed on revenues
    
2. Missed on earnings
    
3. Lowered 2016 guidance

I’m not talking about a small miss either. FedEx reported profits of $2.26 per share, well below the $2.46 Wall Street was expecting. Moreover, the company should benefit from having one extra day in the quarter, which makes the results even more disappointing.

What’s the problem?

“Weak industry demand,” according to FedEx. By the way, both Federal Express and United Parcel Service are good barometers of overall consumer spending/confidence, so that should tell you something about the (deteriorating) state of the US economy. Oh, and Federal Express announced that it will increase its rates by an average of 4.9% beginning in January 2015. Yeah, I bet that rate increase will really help with that already weak demand. The decline is even more troublesome when you consider that gasoline/diesel prices have fallen like a rock this year.

Speaking of Falling Commodity Prices

Oil, which dropped by 23% in the third quarter, isn’t the only commodity that’s falling like a rock.

• Copper prices plunged to a six-year low.
   
• Aluminum prices have also dropped to a six year low.

• Coal prices have fallen 40% since the start of 2014.
   
• Minerals aren’t the only commodities that are dropping. Sugar hit a 7-year low in August.

Commodities across the board are lower; the Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index of 19 commodities was down 15% for the quarter and 31% over the last 12 months. Since peaking in 2008, the CRB Index is down 60%.

That’s why anybody and anything associated with the commodity food chain has been a terrible place to invest your money. Just last week:

Connecting the Dots #1: Caterpillar announced that it was going to lay off 4,000 to 5,000 people this year. That number could reach 10,000 by the end of 2016, and the company may close more than 20 plants. Layoffs are nothing new at Caterpillar—the company has reduced its total workforce by 31,000 workers since 2012.

The problem is lousy sales. Caterpillar just told Wall Street to lower its revenues forecast for 2016 by $1 billion. $1 billion!

How bad does the future have to look for a company to suddenly decide that it is going to lose $1 billion in sales? “We are facing a convergence of challenging marketplace conditions in key regions and industry sectors, namely in mining and energy,” said Doug Oberhelman, Caterpillar chairman and CEO.

Like the layoffs, vanishing sales are nothing new. 2015 is the third year in a row of shrinking sales, and 2016 will be the fourth. Caterpillar, by the way, isn’t the only heavy-equipment company in deep trouble.

Connecting the Dots #2: Last week, UK construction machinery firm and Caterpillar competitor JCB announced that it will cut 400 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, because of a massive slowdown in business in Russia, China, and Brazil.

“In the first six months of the year, the market in Russia has dropped by 70%, Brazil by 36%, and China by 47%,”said JCB CEO Graeme Macdonald. Caterpillar, the world’s biggest maker of earthmoving equipment, cut its full-year 2015 forecast in part because of the slowdown in China and Brazil.

Connecting the Dots #3: BHP Billiton announced that it is chopping its capital expenditure budget again to $8.5 billion, a stunning $10 billion below its 2013 peak. Moreover, BHP Billiton currently only has four projects in the works, two of which are almost complete, compared to 18 developments it had going just two years ago.

Overall, the mining industry—according to SNL Metals and Mining—is going to spend $70 billion less in 2015 less than it did in 2012. And in case you think metals prices are going to rebound, consider that the previous bear market for mining lasted from 1997 to 2002, which suggests at least another two years of shrinking budgets and pain.

Repeat After Me!

I have said this many, many times before, but repeat after me.....ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) and QE are DEFLATIONARY!

The reason is that cheap (almost free) money encourages over-investment as well as keeping zombie companies alive that should have gone out of business. Both of those forces are highly deflationary, and unless you think that Mrs. Magoo (Janet Yellen) is going to aggressively start jacking up interest rates, you better adjust your portfolio for years and years and years of deflation.

While the rest of the investment world has been struggling, here at Rational Bear, we’ve been doing just fine.

Here are the results of six recent trades: 38% return from puts on an oil services fund, 16.6% return from an ETF that shorts industry sectors, 200% return from puts on an auction house, 50% return from puts on a jeweler, 50% return from puts on a social media giant and 100% return from puts on a container shipping company.

And we still have more irons in the fire. It’s time to be bearish, so I suggest you give Rational Bear a try—like it or your money back.

Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: Mrs. Magoo, Deflation, and Commodity Woes was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Jim Rogers on Timeless Investing Strategies You Can Use to Profit Today

By Nick Giambruno

Recently I spoke with Jim Rogers about the most important investment lessons he has learned over the years.
Jim is a legendary investor and true international man. He’s always ahead of the game. Jim made a bundle by investing in commodities in the 1990s when they were out of favor with Wall Street. He’s also made large profits investing in crisis markets.

Jim and I spoke about timeless strategies that are truly essential to being a successful investor.
You won’t want to miss this fascinating discussion, which you’ll find below.

---

Nick Giambruno: You’ve said that many times throughout history, conventional wisdom gets shattered. What are some widely held beliefs that will be shattered in the next 10 years?

Jim Rogers: That’s a very good question. Well, for one thing, I know bond markets are at all-time highs almost in every country in the world. Interest rates have never been so low. Everybody is convinced that bonds are a good thing to invest in. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be at all time highs.

I’m sure that 10 years from now, we are all going to look back and say, how could people have even been investing in bonds with negative yields? How could that possibly have been happening? But at the moment, everybody assumes it’s okay, and it’s the normal and natural thing to do. Ten years from now, we’re going to look back and say, gosh, how could we ever have done something so foolish?

So one of the things I do is I look to see - when everybody’s convinced that X is correct - I look to see, well maybe X isn’t correct. So when I find unanimity of a view, I look to see, maybe it’s not right. And it usually isn’t right, by the way. I have learned that from experiences and from lots of reading.

Nick: How does an investor deal with being accurate but early?

Jim: Oh, that’s the story of my life. I’ve always been accurate but early. If I’m convinced something is going to happen or if I should make an investment, I have learned that I should wait for awhile, because maybe it is too early. And it usually is too early.

I try to discipline myself to wait longer or to put in orders below the market and let the market come to me. But even then, sometimes I’m still too early.

Nick: How did studying history help you in investing?

Jim: Well, the main thing it taught me was that everything is always changing. If you go back and look at before the First World War, nobody could ever have conceived in 1910 that Germany and Britain would be slaughtering millions of people four years later. Yet it happened.

No matter what we think today, no matter what it is, it is not going to be true in 15 years. I assure you. You pick any year in history, and look at what everybody was convinced was correct and then look 15 years later, and you’d be shocked and astonished. Look at 1920, 15 years later. Look at 1930, 15 years later.

Any year you want to pick - 1900, 1990, 2000. Pick any year and I assure you, 15 years later everything is going to be different. I guess that’s the first thing I learned from the study of history.

Nick: What mistakes do empires always make?

Jim: They get overextended. They think they’re smarter than everybody else. They think they cannot make mistakes, and even if they are making mistakes they are so powerful they think that they can correct the mistakes. And then they become overextended. Usually they become overextended financially, militarily, geopolitically, in every way.

Nick: Is the US repeating those same mistakes?

Jim: Well, the US is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world now, and the debts are going higher and higher. The people in the US think it doesn’t matter that we’ve got all these debts and there’s no problem. People in the US don’t think that it’s a problem that we’ve got troops in over 100 countries around the world. I mean, when Rome got overextended militarily, it paid the price. Spain and many other countries have had this problem. Maybe it’s not a problem. Maybe America can have troops in 200 countries around the world and it won’t matter, but America has certainly gotten itself overextended in many ways.

Nick: Do you think wealth and power will continue to move East?

Jim: Wealth and power are moving East now, and that is going to continue. That’s because of historic reasons. There’s little doubt in my mind that China is going to be the next great country in the world. Most people are still skeptical of that. Most people know something is happening in China. They don’t really quite understand the full historic significance of what is happening in China including many Chinese.

Jim Rogers and Nick Giambruno

Nick: You mentioned in your most recent book, Street Smarts, about the lesson you learned when Nixon closed the gold window in 1971. At the time you were long Japan and short the US, and you just got killed. Can you tell us the lessons you learned from that experience?

Jim: That was a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Even if you have it right, or you think you have it right, something can always come along and change that, especially with politicians.

Politicians play by different rules from the rest of us. They just change the rules. Mr. Nixon just changed the rules because he was having a serious problem, and he thought America was having a serious problem. And when they changed the rules against all logic or against history, something is going to give. If you are on the wrong side, you are the one who is going to give, and I’ve learned that.

Nick: Any other investing lessons you’d like to mention?

Jim: Well, when you see on the front page of the newspaper that there’s a disaster - natural disaster, economic, any kind of a disaster - just pick up the newspaper and think, now wait a minute, everybody’s panicked right now. The blasting headlines are that the world is coming to an end. Stop and think, is the world really coming to an end? Is this industry going to survive? Is this country going to survive? Is this market going to survive? Because normally it is going to survive.

If you can just first stop and have that thought process, then you can think it through. Let’s say that these headlines are wrong. “What should I do?” You are probably going to be a successful investor. Be prepared for the fact that you are probably going to be early. If you can figure out how to spot the exact bottom and the exact turn, please call me.

Nick: This is exactly what Doug Casey and I do in our Crisis Speculator publication (click here for more details). Shifting gears now, you’ve also said that Harvard and other universities could go bankrupt. Why do you think that?

Jim: Well, first of all, some of the American universities have a very, very high cost structure. It’s astonishing.
Let’s pick on Ivy League. I went to an Ivy League school, so I can pick on them a little bit. They have a high cost structure. They think that what they know is correct and that people will always pay higher and higher prices.

To go to Princeton for four years now is probably going to cost you $300,000 in the end when you figure out the tuition, room and board, books, beer, travel, and everything else. It’s extraordinarily expensive to go to these places. Now what Princeton would tell you - and I didn’t go to Princeton but that’s why I’m picking on them - what Princeton would say is, yeah, but it’s better education. But I’m not sure it’s better education.

I know that many of the things that they teach in Ivy League schools these days are absurd and totally wrong. It’s conventional wisdom run amuck, so it’s not necessarily better what you learn at those places. If you go to the right universities, and you learn the wrong things, it’s going to cost you in the end.

Then they say, yes, but it’s a brand, it’s a label that’s good. Sure, it’s a label, it’s a very expensive label, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to make you successful. Just because your grandmother gives you a Cadillac, which is a good brand, it’s not going to make you successful at finding dates, or having a good job or anything else. You have to produce on your own.

Throughout history you've had many institutions that have been world famous and top of the line. They’ve disappeared. It doesn’t mean Harvard can’t too. I didn’t go to Harvard, so I shouldn’t pick on any of these places that I didn’t go to. So we’ll see. I’m skeptical of all of them.

Nick: Why do universities and governments embrace Keynesian economics? Why do they hate Austrian economics?

Jim: That’s a good question. Keynes himself, at the end, didn’t embrace what is now known as Keynesian economics. Keynes would probably be an Austrian now, because at the end of his life, he came to understand that some of the stuff was being misused.

The main reason people like Keynesian economics is because they think they can be powerful. They can change things. “I’m a smart guy. I went to an Ivy League school, therefore I know what’s best.

And if I say it’s best, let’s do it, and it will make things better.” That’s essentially what Keynesianism is now. The market is a lot smarter than all of us, and I wish we would all learn that. It always has been and it always will be.

Nick: Thanks for your time, Jim.

Jim: My pleasure.

Editor’s Note: Jim Rogers told us about the importance of looking past the news that frightens others away. It’s the key to finding deep value investment opportunities that can make you enormous profits. It’s one of the world’s greatest wealth creation secrets.

It’s been used by Warren Buffett, Doug Casey, John Templeton, Baron Rothschild, and many other successful investors. It’s a strategy that you can use too.

It’s exactly these kinds of opportunities we cover in Crisis Speculator. Click here for more details.

The article was originally published at internationalman.com.

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Hate Mail, Crumbling Factories, and Sinking Stocks

By Tony Sagami 

The bulls are mad at me. I’ve been heavily beating the bear market drum in this column since the spring. The S&P 500, by the way, peaked on May 21, and this column has been generating a rising stream of hate mail from the bulls as the stock market has dropped. My hate mail falls into two general categories: (1) you are wrong, and/or (2) you are stupid.

Well, I may not be the sharpest tool in the Wall Street shed, but I haven’t been wrong about where the stock market was headed. This column, however, isn’t about me. It’s about protecting and growing your wealth—and that’s why I have been so forceful about the rising dangers the stock market is facing.

Make sure you watch this weeks new video...."500K, Profit and Proof"

One of the themes I’ve repeatedly covered in this column is the rapidly deteriorating health of the two most basic economic building blocks of the American economy: the “makers” (see August 25 column) and the “takers” (see July 14 and August 4 columns).

There are thousands of economic and business statistics you can look at to gauge the health of the US economy, but at the economic roots of any developed country is the prosperity of its factories (makers) and transportation companies (takers) delivering those goods to stores.

This week, let’s look at the latest evidence confirming the piss poor health of American factories.

Factory Fact #1: The Institute for Supply Management released its latest survey results, which showed a drop to 51.1 in August, a decline from 52.7 in July, below the 52.5 Wall Street forecast, and the weakest reading since April 2009.

NOTE: The ISM survey shows that raw-materials prices dropped for 10 months in a row. If you own commodity stocks—such as copper, oil, aluminum, or gold—you should consider how falling raw materials prices will affect the profits of those companies.

Factory Fact #2: Despite all the crowing from Washington DC about the improving economy, US manufacturing output is still worse today than it was before the 2008-2009 Financial Crisis, according to the Federal Reserve.

Factory Fact #3: Business inventories increased at the fastest back to back quarterly rate on record. Inventories increased 0.8% in Q2, following a 0.3% increase in Q1, and now sit at $586 billion. That’s a 5.4% year over year increase!

Remember, there are two reasons why businesses accumulate inventory:

• Business owners are so optimistic about the future that they intentionally accumulate inventory to accommodate an upcoming avalanche of orders.

OR

• Business is so bad that inventory is starting to involuntarily pile up from the lack of sales.

Factory Fact #4: The Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI), a trade association for US manufacturers, is none too optimistic about the state of American manufacturing.
The reason for the pessimism is simple: US manufacturers are struggling.

• U.S. manufactured exports decreased by 2% to $298 billion in the second quarter, as compared with 2014.

• The US deficit in manufacturing rose by $21 billion, or 15%, compared with the second quarter of 2014.

“The US $48 billion deficit increase in the first half of the year equates to a loss of 300,000 trade related American manufacturing jobs, and the deficit is on track for a loss of 500,000 or more jobs for the calendar year,” said Ernest Preeg of MAPI.

So what does all this mean?

When I connect those dots, it tells me that American manufacturers are struggling. Really struggling.
Take a look at the Dow Jones US Industrials Index, which peaked in February and started to drop well ahead of the August market meltdown.

You know what’s really nuts? The P/E ratio for this struggling sector is almost 19 times earnings and 3.3 times book value!

Is there a way to profit from this slowdown of American factories? You bet there is.

Take a look at the ProShares UltraShort Industrials ETF (SIJ). This ETF is designed to deliver two times the inverse (-2x) of the daily performance of the Dow Jones US Industrials Index. To be fair, I should disclose that my Rational Bear subscribers have owned this ETF since June 16, 2015, and are sitting on close to a 15% gain.

Critics could say that I am “talking up my book,” but I instead see it as “eating my own cooking.” My advice in this column isn’t theoretical—we put real money behind my convictions. That doesn’t mean you should rush out and buy this ETF tomorrow morning. As always, timing is everything, so I suggest you wait for my buy signal.

But make no mistake, American “makers” are doing very poorly, and that’s a reliable warning sign of bigger economic problems.

Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: Hate Mail, Crumbling Factories, and Sinking Stocks was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

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The Wall Street Titanic and You

By Tony Sagami

“I would highlight that equity market valuations at this point generally are quite high.”

—Janet Yellen

Are you worried about the stock market? If you are, you’re in the minority of investors.
Greece… China… don’t worry about it!

At least that seems to be Wall Street’s reaction to what could have been a catastrophic fall of dominoes if the European and Chinese governments hadn’t come to the rescue with another massive monetary intervention.

If you think you’ve heard the last about Greece or a Chinese stock market meltdown, you’re in the majority. Investors are pretty darn confident about the stock market.

The John Hancock Investor Sentiment Index hit +29 in the second quarter, the highest reading since the inception of the index in January of 2011.

However, overconfidence is dangerous and often accompanies market tops.

If you listen to the hear no evil cheerleaders on Wall Street and CNBC, you might be inclined to think the bull market will last a couple more decades, but we haven’t had a major correction since 2011, and the Nasdaq hit an all time high last week.

Investors are so enthusiastic that the exuberance is spilling beyond stock certificates to the high brow world of collectible art.

Investment gamblers are shopping up art in record droves. In the last major art auction, prices for collectible art reached all time highs, and somebody with more money than brains paid $32.8 million for an Andy Warhol painting of a $1 bill.

Who says a dollar doesn’t buy what it used to?

I’m not saying that a new bear market will start tomorrow morning, but I’m suggesting that bear markets hurt more and last longer than most investors realize.

The reality is that bear markets historically occur about every four and a half to five years, which means we are overdue. And the average loss during a bear market is a whopping 38%. Ouch!

On average, a bear market lasts about two and a half years… but averages can be misleading.
In the 1973-74 bear market, investors had to wait seven and a half years to get back to even. In the 2000-02 bear market, investors didn’t break even until 2007.

Unless you, too, have drunk the Wall Street Kool Aid, you should have some type of emergency back up plan for the next bear market. There are three basic options:

Option #1: Do nothing, get clobbered, and wait between two and a half and 10 years to get your money back. Most people think they can ride out bear markets, but the reality is that most investors—professional and individual alike—panic and sell when the pain gets too severe.

Option #2: Have some sort of defensive selling strategy in place to avoid the big downturns. That could be some type of simple moving average selling discipline or a more complex technical analysis. At minimum, I highly recommend the use of stop losses.

Option #3: Buy some portfolio insurance with put options or inverse ETFs. That’s exactly what my Rational Bear subscribers are doing, and I expect those bear market bets to pay off in a big, big way.

Whether it is next week, next month, or next year—a bear market for US stocks is coming, and I hope you’ll have a strategy in place to protect yourself.

If you'd like to hear what worries me most about the stock market, here is a link to an interview I did last week with old friend and market watchdog Gary Halbert.

Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: The Wall Street Titanic and You was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

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The Stock Market Hot Potato: Volatility, the VIX, and You!

By Tony Sagami

“When did Noah build the Ark, Gladys? Before the rain, before the rain.”
Nathan Muir (Robert Redford), in Spygame

If you’ve ever walked a dog, you know about the zigzag path that dogs take down a sidewalk. After all, there are great odors to sniff on both sides of the sidewalk so your dog will veer far to the left, take a few deep sniffs before veering off to the right to see what olfactory surprises the other side holds.

About the only thing that’s certain is that once your dog reaches the far end of his leash, it will swing back to the middle of the sidewalk before taking off for another trip to the extreme ends of the leash. Human psychology, when it comes to investing, isn’t so different. Investor sentiment swings from extreme readings of euphoria and anxiety and extremes of fear and greed. Like our friendly dogs on a walk, we investors swing from the far left to the far right of the Wall Street sidewalk.

There is a way to profit from the human emotions: the VIX, or CBOE Volatility Index.

Some of you already know plenty—probably more than me—about the VIX, but for those that don’t, here is a quickie tutorial. The VIX, often referred to as the “fear index,” is calculated by the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and measures market expectations of short term volatility. The VIX is derived from prices investors are paying for options on the S&P 500 Index and measures the market’s expectation for stock market volatility over the next 30 day period.

NOTE: There are three volatility indices: the VIX, which tracks the S&P 500; the VXN, which tracks the Nasdaq 100; and the VXD, which tracks the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The VIX was created in 1993 and investors have been using it to hedge against severe market movements ever since; it’s one of the most closely watched indicators in the market.

The VIX has been very useful in helping spot major stock market turning points. As the above chart shows, the VIX has historically spiked after major investment calamities, such as the 2008 financial crisis and the dot com bubble.

Conversely, the VIX has plunged to extreme low readings (in the “teens” as measured by the VIX) at stock market tops. When the stock market is rocking and rolling, investors lose all their fear and dogpile into the stock market.

As the above chart shows, whenever the VIX falls into the teens, it’s one of the most dangerous times to be in the market and one of the most rewarding to invest in the VIX. Where is the VIX today? The VIX is well below the levels seen at the time of the 2008 crash, when the index jumped as high as 80, and is now in the 15 range. How can you invest in the VIX? There are three ways: futures, options, and specialty ETFs.

There are eight different ETFs that track the VIX, but the most liquid—and one that I use—is iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX). In fact, since starting my short-only service, Rational Bear, I have recommended VXX on five different occasions. And—knock on wood—it has been a profitable recommendation 100% of the time.

Above are the trade-by-trade results of my VXX recommendations. If you had invested $100,000 into those, all of my VXX trades, you would now be sitting on almost $135,000. Yup, a 35% gain in three months!

Of course, past results don’t guarantee future returns and more importantly, timing is everything when it comes to investing, so I suggest that you wait for my new VIX buy signal before jumping in. However, with the VIX index now in the teens, it’s in the sweet spot of producing the biggest rewards AND it’s an excellent way to protect your portfolio from the next bear market.


Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: The Stock Market Hot Potato: Volatility, the VIX, and You! was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

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Crude Oil, Divorce, and Bear Markets

By Tony Sagami

Everybody loves a parade. I sure did when I was a child, but I’m paying attention to a very different type of parade today. The parade that I’m talking about is the long, long parade of businesses in the oil industry that are cutting jobs, laying off staff, and digging deep into economic survival mode. The list of companies chopping staff is long, but two more major players in the oil industry joined the parade last week.

Pink Slip #1: Houston-based Dresser-Rand isn’t a household name, but it is a very important part of the energy food chain. Dresser-Rand makes diesel engines and gas turbines that are used to drill for oil.
Dresser-Rand announced that it's laying off 8% of its 8,100 global workers. Many Wall Street experts were quick to point the blame at German industrial giant Siemens, which is in the process of buying Dresser-Rand for $7.6 billion.

Fat chance! Dresser-Rand was crystal clear that the cutbacks are in response to oil market conditions and not because of the merger with Siemens. The reason Dresser-Rand cited for the workforce reduction was not only lower oil prices but also the strength of the US dollar.

If you’re a regular reader of this column, you know that I believe the strengthening US dollar is the most important economic (and profit-killing) trend of 2015.

Pink Slip #2: Oil exploration company Apache Corporation reported its Q4 results last week, and they were awful. Apache lost a whopping $4.8 billion in the last 90 days of 2014.

No matter how you cut it, losing $4.8 billion in just three months is a monumental feat.

Of course, the “dramatic and almost unprecedented” drop in oil prices was responsible for the gigantic loss, but what really matters is the outlook going forward.

CEO John Christmann, to his credit, is taking tough steps to stem the financial bleeding, and that means:

• Shutting down 70% of the company's drilling rigs.

• Slashing it's 2015 capital budget to between $3.6 and $5.0 billion, down from $8.5 billion in 2014.

Those aren’t the actions of an industry insider who expects things to get better anytime soon.

I don’t mean to bag on Dresser-Rand and Apache, because they’re far from alone. Schlumberger, Baker Hughes, Halliburton, Weatherford International, and ConocoPhillips have also announced major layoffs. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that the only people getting laid off are blue-collar roughnecks. These layoffs affect everyone from secretaries to roughnecks to IT professionals.

In fact, according to staffing expert Swift Worldwide Resources, the number of energy jobs lost this year has climbed to well above 100,000 around the world.

From Global to Local

Sometimes it helps to put a local, personal perspective to the big-picture national news.

In my home state of northwest Montana, a huge number of men moved to North Dakota to work in the Bakken gas fields. Montana is a big state; it takes about 14 hours to drive from my corner of northwest Montana to the North Dakota oil fields, so that means those gas workers don’t make it back to their western Montana homes for months.

Moreover, the work was six, sometimes seven days a week and 12 hours a day, so once there, they couldn’t drive back home even if they wanted to. This meant long absences… and a good friend of mine who is a marriage counselor told me that the local divorce rate was spiking because of them.

Now the northwest Montana workers are returning home because the once-lucrative oil/gas jobs are disappearing. That news won’t make the New York Times, but it’s as real as it gets on Main Street USA.

From Local to National

Of course, the oil industry's woes aren’t a carefully guarded Wall Street secret. However, I do think that Wall Street—and perhaps even you—are underestimating the impact that low oil prices are going to have on economic growth and GDP numbers going forward.

Let me explain.

Industrial production for the month of January, which measures the output of US manufacturers, miners, and utilities, came in at a “seasonally adjusted" 0.2%.

A 0.2% gain isn’t much to shout about, but the real key was the impact the mining component (which includes oil/gas producers) had on the industrial-production calculation.

The mining industry is the second-largest component of industrial production, and its output fell by 1.0% in January. It was the biggest drag on the overall index.

However, the Federal Reserve Bank said, “The decline [was] more than accounted for by a substantial drop in the index for oil and gas well drilling and related support activities.”

How much did it account for? The oil and gas component fell by 10.0% in January.

Yup, a double-digit drop in output in just one month. Moreover, it was the fourth monthly decline in a row.
Last week’s weak GDP caught Wall Street off guard, but there are a lot more GDP disappointments to come as the energy industry layoffs percolate through the economy. Here’s how my Rational Bear readers are getting ready for GDP and corporate-earnings disappointments that are sure to rattle the markets.
Can your portfolio, as currently composed, handle a slowing economy and falling corporate profits? For most investors, the answer is “no.” Click above to find out how to protect yourself.



Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: Oil, Divorce, and Bear Markets was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

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Wall Street Double Talk and Double Opportunity of Falling Oil Price

By Tony Sagami

The stock market has developed a new type of love-hate relationship with the price of oil. In the past, falling oil prices were treated as an economic positive because they freed up more money for Americans to spend on other things, such as dining out or clothing. However, the steep plunge in oil prices has triggered a reverse psychology reaction on Wall Street: falling oil prices are bad because they signal a slowing global economy.

An even bigger head scratcher is the convoluted reaction that rising oil prices are good for the economy. Go figure.

Wall Street’s collective reaction, silly or not, is important because oil prices are what is currently driving the ups and downs of the stock market. And if you can divine the future direction of oil prices… you’ll find yourself on the right side of the stock market roller coaster.

What do I see when I connect the dots? That oil prices will fall even further.

Connecting the Dots #1: Helmerich & Payne. Helmerich & Payne is the largest lessor of oil rig drilling platforms in the US and recently announced that it would lay off up to 2,000 workers and chop its rig construction pace from four to two new oil rigs a month.

Moreover, Helmerich & Payne said that its active rig count has slid from 297 at the end of Q3 2014 to less than 200 today. “The rig count reduction thus far has been more swift than many expected,” said CEO John Lindsay.

And the price that H&P is receiving on that smaller amount of working rigs is falling. The daily revenue per rig is expected to average $27,000 to $27,500 this quarter, well below the $29,457 it received last quarter.

Connecting the Dots #2: Oil Pros Take Flight. For the week ending January 27, noncommercial traders increased their bets for oil prices to fall even more by adding 22,771 short contracts.

NOTE: Investors who use futures as hedges are called “commercial traders” while those who trade for speculation are called “noncommercial traders.”

The professional traders in the commodities pits make mistakes like the rest of us… but they’re right enough to make a living at it, so it’s dangerous to bet against them.

Connecting the Dots #3: Baker Hughes. In the last week of January, U.S. oil producers shut down 94 drilling rigs, which is the largest one week shutdown in 28 years!

That leaves 1,233 active rigs in North America—a three-year low.

Connecting the Dots #4: Supply Glut. The US Department of Energy reported that crude-oil stockpiles reached 406.7 million barrels in January, the highest level since the government started keeping records in 1982.

Higher supplies wouldn’t be an issue if demand were keeping pace, but thanks to improved drilling technology (fracking), the US is now awash in oil.

Connecting the Dots #5: USW Strike. Adding to the oil-patch pain, the strike of 3,800 members of the United Steelworkers union from nine refineries and chemical plants that process roughly 10% of US gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and jet fuel.

There are many ways to profit from falling oil prices, such as airlines and trucking stocks, but the most profitable is by betting against the companies that supply oil drilling equipment.

The Philadelphia Oil Services Index (OSX) is a price-weighted index composed of 15 companies that provide oil drilling and production services, oil field equipment, and support services.

If you’re confident that oil prices are headed lower, you can buy put options on the OSX index. And if you’re right… you’ll make a bundle. For example, my Rational Bear subscribers made over 200% in a few short weeks.

I’m not suggesting that you rush out and make big bets on oil prices tomorrow morning. As always, timing is everything, so wait for my next signal; but I am very confident that the profits of oil services companies are headed for the toilet.


Tony Sagami

30-year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: Wall Street Double Talk and Double Opportunity of Falling Oil Price was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

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