Here's everything you need to know what's happening in the single most underestimated, misunderstood, and perpetually disrespected country on earth - China.

We understand the appeal of passive investing. It offers lower fees and simplicity and many investors are skeptical about the ability of active managers to consistently beat a benchmark...yet there’s also a lot of evidence supporting the benefits of an active approach. Today, we see many risks that are hard to avoid by hugging a benchmark—and opportunities that simply cannot be captured by going passive. While not every point is relevant to every investor, in every market, we can think of ten good reasons to stay active in equities today.

Aluminum (or aluminium) is the world’s most common metal by crustal abundance and, behind iron, is now the second most used metal in the world found in everything - planes, cars, buildings, machinery, consumer durables, packaging, and electrical uses. This infographic illustrates all you need to know about aluminium - its source, uses, consumption, average price, highest producing countries, top producing companies, and more.

The notion that gold is the premium SAFE HAVEN during times of financial crisis doesn’t hold true if we go by the actual data. When the world stood at the brink of a total economic and financial meltdown in 2008, investors overwhelmingly choose silver over gold, which means, when the next much more dire financial crisis appears, physical silver demand will more than likely totally overrun supply. Got Silver?

There appears to be a precise inverse relationship between gold and the stock market during stock market crashes such as those in September 2001, September/October 2008, and July/August 2011 . Gold not only rallied, but it rose significantly. This could be very useful information if, as I expect, we see another stock market crash, possibly again in the September/October time period.

Gold’s relatively methodical advance since the turn of the millennium has had to do with the persistent desire to allocate a small portion of global wealth away from traditional financial assets and the fiat currencies in which they are priced. For these reasons, and the many more outlined in this article, we believe gold’s most dramatic advances remain ahead of us.

No one can predict exactly what will rise up after the collapse of the current monetary system, but here is my take on how you can do your best to prepare yourself no matter what happens.

For a host of disparate reasons – ranging from geopolitical tensions and currency wars to gargantuan unpayable debt and other macro-economic fundamentals – we believe the entire interconnected global economic, financial and monetary systems to be extremely fragile. Check out this time-honored function of protecting wealth.

The current credit-bubble boom in stocks and bonds is getting long in tooth after 34 years of relentless expansion, and the rise of securities to 400% of GDP is reaching extremes that are increasingly difficult to support, much less push higher. As such, a reversion to generational lows is inevitable, and a valuation level around 50% of GDP for stocks is a fair target. This implies a 75% decline in both stocks and bonds within the next decade, if not sooner.

Before placing trades, it’s good practice to review market-moving indicators such as jobless claims, housing starts and sales, consumer confidence, and inflation as they can help you make smarter investments and grow your wealth. Here's a look at each of the above mentioned indicators that you may want to become familiar with.