Investing

The Dow has begun a major rally 13 times over the past 112 years which equates to an average of one rally every 8.6 years so, as it stands right now, the current Dow rally that began in March 2009 would be classified as well below average in both duration and magnitude.

We have NEVER been this overextended above this line at any point in the last 20 years. Indeed, if you compare where the S&P 500 is relative to this line, we're even MORE overbought that we were going into the 2007 peak at the top of the housing bubble.

The damage has already been done. Junior mining companies have already dropped 80%. Rather than wallow in the injustice of the apparent gold market manipulation, I believe it is better to apply the wisdom, "if you can't beat them, join them."

Although not perfect (nothing is), gold has a tendency to go up in the face of external shocks...[and] tends to have a low and sometimes negative correlation to US equities. As such, with stocks up, gold being down is not a terrible outcome for the investor using gold as a diversifier. Let me explain further below.

Are stocks in a bubble? While leverage has returned to the stock market driving up stock prices and aggregate demand in the process, margin debt is still shy of its all-time high as a percentage of GDP, so there is certainly some headroom for further rises. A look at the following 5 charts illustrate that contention quite clearly.

The warrant investor needs to be aware that owning the stock outright is the conservative approach. When using the warrant, the basic common stock MUST appreciate to a certain level BEFORE the warrant’s risk/reward basis becomes better than an outright stock purchase...

Unsustainable trends can survive much longer than most people anticipate, but they do end when their “time is up” – at the culmination of their time cycles...In an effort to bring clarity in how and when these trends could change direction we analyzed more than 20 different cycles. They almost unanimously point to tectonic shifts in the months and years ahead … starting now. We have been warned. At this point, we have enough confirmation to accept that the gold and silver crash – starting in April of 2013 – was the first shot across the board of what is to come. Read on!

Copper is one of the most important and popular industrial metals in the world. With 3% per year production growth since 1900, approximately 16 million tons of the metal was produced in 2011, according to the International Copper Study Group. Below, we outline some of the largest and most important copper-producing nations across the world:

What do 1929, 2000 and 2007 all have in common? Those were all years in which we saw a dramatic spike in margin debt. In all three instances, investors became highly leveraged in order to "take advantage" of a soaring stock market but, of course, we all know what happened each time. The spike in margin debt was rapidly followed by a horrifying stock market crash. Well guess what? It is happening again.

The most dangerous, wealth-destroying investment in the world is leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs). On the surface, these ETFs promise to double or triple the movements of the underlying markets they track...but they'll do anything but. You see, double- and triple-leveraged ETFs (whether long or short) pack a nasty surprise. It's almost unbelievable, actually, and particularly in this volatile market, theses ETFs are hardwired for losses. Here's what I mean.