Real Estate: Prices Will Have To Go Down

Housing unit prices are gonna have to implode, prices are so high people can't afford them even with these ridiculously low interest rates. But in a higher interest rate environment where you know mortgage money is 8 to 10 percent, which was the average for many, many decades and you know that people had to put down payments, to I mean if we go back to the days where you need a 20 percent down payment, I mean imagine how low prices would have to fall for the average American to be able to come up with 20% down payments. (SPDR S&P Homebuilders (ETF) (XHB), KB Home (NYSE:KBH), Lennar Corporation (LEN), D.R. Horton (DHI))

Markets: Federal Reserve, Crude Oil

You look at the Fed minutes and it doesn't sound like a Fed that is getting ready to raise rates even though they're gonna do it. I mean they're talking about how much they're concerned and worried about the fact that inflation isn't high enough even though oil prices on Friday went above fifty nine dollars a barrel again, trading at almost a two-and-a-half year high.

Stock Market: The Trump Rally

Where Trump is is getting into trouble is by claiming that the stock market going up is no longer a bubble that now this is just a real bull market that reflects the improvement of the fundamentals since he's been elected.

That's not the case. This is simply more air into the same bubble and this bubble is going to burst and I think unfortunately now that Trump has branded it you know just like it was one of his buildings he's put the big Trump marker on it, when this thing pops it's he's gonna have to take the blame. (SPDR S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY), Nasdaq 100 Index ETF (QQQ), SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA), iShares Russell 2000 Index ETF (IWM))

Oil Prices Are Moving Higher

Oil prices got above $58 a barrel for the first time in over two years, a very strong oil market and if you look at the chart if we get above 60 dollars, I mean that's kind of a long -term moving average on a monthly chart, 60 to 75 was a key high from about two and a half years ago, if we take that out we can have a quick move up .

Remember the move down, oil fell from a hundred down to under 30 in about six months and then it's been recovering slowly ever since but if we can break through decisively that sixty to seventy-five we're gonna move up.

Gold Is Trying To Breakout

Gold (SPDR Gold Trust ETF (GLD)) still looks like it wants to break out somebody is obviously trying to stop that from happening or somebody's don't really know who these sellers are but I do think eventually whatever their agenda is the markets are going to overwhelm it.

There Is No Way Out, A Crisis Is Coming

There is no way off of this monetary policy. Once you take this much drugs you can never get off, not without massive withdrawal and so nobody politically wants to deal with that because if the Federal Reserve were to actually not come to the rescue next time the stock market wouldn't just go down 50 percent like it didn't in 2008-2009, it might go down 80 or 90 percent.

Banks would actually fail I mean the government would actually have to default on its debt but I don't think that is gonna happen because nobody in power wants to let that happen and so the US dollar is gonna be sacrificed. But ultimately in sacrificing the US dollar the damage that's going to be done to the economy and to the standard of living of the average American is going to be much greater than had we just bitten the bullet and dealt with the financial crisis.

How Much Debt Can The US Withstand?

We got 20 trillion in national debt, why can't we go to 35 trillion? Why can't we go to 40 trillion? 

Why can't we just continue to increase the national debt? 

It reminds me of the old adage about how many straws can you put on a on a camel's back? You don't know until you put that final straw that's one too many and then you break its back. 

So, can we go to 25 trillion? Maybe. But can we go to 30 trillion? We're not going to know. At some point we're gonna break the back of the camel with all this debt and then we're gonna find out how much debt we can pile on and it's not going to be pretty because then we're gonna have a crisis.

Dollar Crisis, Sovereign Debt Crisis

This is the third gigantic bubble that the Federal Reserve has inflated and when this one pops it's not going to be the third time's the charm. It's gonna be three strikes you're out because I think that this bubble is too big to pop. It's the mother of all bubbles and when it bursts there is not a bigger one that the Federal Reserve is going to be able to inflate to mask these problems meaning that we can't kick the can down the road anymore we're gone we're going to have to deal with these problems.

I think the problem that we're going to be confronted with is going to be much worse than a financial crisis, it is going to be a dollar crisis and it is going to be a sovereign debt crisis where the bonds that people are worried about are not some subprime mortgage that some guy borrowed money to buy a house that can't afford. It's going to be the US government that people are worried about and the the the solvency of the government and the Treasury bonds.

The Appeal of International Stocks

People who are in the US stock market are overlooking much better returns from much better valuation levels that are happening overseas. So, I think people should take advantage of the overpriced US stock market plus the overpriced US dollar and sell and move money abroad get into the international markets. (SPDR S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY), Nasdaq 100 Index ETF (QQQ), iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index ETF (EEM))

Stock Market: The Valuations Here Are Extreme

The valuations here really are extreme, the complacency is also extreme. I mean investors are willing to pay very high prices and have very little worry that the stock market is going to go down.

People have very short memories, I mean we've had two major 50% declines in the stock market this century. Since 2000 we've had the market cut in half twice and it could easily happen again yet nobody seems concerned. 

Related trading instruments: SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA), SPDR S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY), Nasdaq 100 Index ETF (QQQ), iShares Russell 2000 Index ETF (IWM)

Thoughts On Powell As The New Fed Chairman

It's just more of the same but you know Powell embodies everything that candidate Trump criticized when he ran for office!

Instead of taking the opportunity to change the Fed he is simply reappointed or nominated somebody who is going to continue the very policies that he criticized when he was running for President and Powell is going to be just as political as Yellen except now the beneficiary is going to be Trump instead of Obama.

Video: "Trump Names Powell Fed Chairman"

RT Video: "Trump names Powell Fed Chairman"

Trump, Stock Market & Consumer Confidence

So we have the stock market at all time highs, we have consumer confidence high yet Donald Trump's popularity has never been lower! (SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA), SPDR S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY), Nasdaq 100 Index ETF (QQQ), iShares Russell 2000 Index ETF (IWM))

The Swiss National Bank Is A Big Investor In US Tech Stocks

The Swiss National Bank now has 88 billion dollars in US stocks alone. Their number one holding is Apple but if you look at their portfolio their top five holdings are Apple (AAPL) then Alphabet (which is Google), Microsoft (MSFT), Facebook (FB) and Amazon (AMZN). Those are the top five holdings of the Swiss National Bank and it also makes sense that those are some of the highest flying stocks in the US market because the Swiss National Bank just so you know they print Swiss francs for nothing, they create them out of thin air and then they go and they buy up US tech stocks.

There's only about seven and a half million people living in Switzerland including little babies. So they basically have more than ten thousand dollars of US stocks for every man, woman and child living in Switzerland. That means a family of four has got $40,000 worth of US stocks!

US Stock Market: Complacency, Overvaluation

I think if you look at the amount of complacency relative to the overvaluation stocks have really never been this expensive and people have never been this sure that they're not going to go down.

Related trading instruments: SPDR S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY), iShares Russell 2000 Index ETF (IWM), SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA), Nasdaq 100 Index ETF (QQQ)

Bull Markets: Foreign Stocks, Commodities

I think that we're early on in the bull markets in some of these foreign stock markets and again as I said, commodities in my opinion are just beginning a new bull market. (iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index ETF (EEM), United States Oil Fund LP ETF (USO))

Gold Will Rise In US Dollar Terms

Gold will rise in US Dollar terms rather substantially as the dollar loses purchasing power, you will need more and more dollars to buy an ounce of gold among other things.

I think people that own gold will be able to preserve their purchasing power and of course gold is not the only asset that people can own but it's certainly one of the most reliable. I also I think today gold does not really reflect all the potential for inflation, the potential for dollar debasement. Investors are too complacent, they're too optimistic about the future and you can see that in the stock market but you can also see it in the price of gold because as stocks are going up, gold prices are not.

What Will Happen When The Stock Market Bubble Pops?

The Fed has inflated three gigantic stock market bubbles this century. The first one popped in 2001, the second one popped in 2008. Who knows when this one is gonna pop, but this is the biggest one yet and in the prior the market was cut in half. 

The only way the government was able to bail out investors was because the Fededral Reserve inflated a bigger bubble to replace the one that just popped. Well, I think this bubble is too big to replace. When it pops, that's it, the Fededral Reserve is out of tricks, there's not going to be a fourth one that they can inflate because in order to do that they will have to use so much stimulus that they will actually kill the dollar. They will end up overdosing on stimulus and we will have a dollar crash and that's gonna hurt investors but it's gonna hurt the economy even more.

Federal Reserve: Trump Will Announce His Pick

On Thursday, President Trump is supposedly going to announce his pick to replace Janet Yellen as the new Fed Chairman.