Investing

Bitcoin is the first peer-to-peer (P2P) digital currency and payment system to gain significant interest. This month its marketcap surpassed $1 billion. [Below is a description of what Bitcoin is, and isn't, and why it has caught on to the extent it has.]

To believe that governments...[won't confiscate your] gold to help support their national finances... would be naïve, especially in light of past and recent events. That's why it is now incumbent on all investors to look at the meaning of ownership in investing and investors' vulnerability to government confiscation as well as vulnerability to exchange and capital controls. We do this below.

Use a portion of your portfolio in the form of credit spreads to protect and drive income over the next nine months. It's an extremely simple strategy to learn and arguably the most powerful strategy in the professional options traders' tool belt

Both Gold Futures and Gold Stocks (HUI) remain on their respective steep rising 10-year support lines. The question now is whether or not support and oversold sentiment conditions keep Gold and the HUI from falling any further. [Let's hope not!]

The funds you have placed on deposit and the property you thought was secured in your safe deposit box may not be safe under certain circumstances. They may, in fact, all end up belonging to the bank and not to you.

While gold remains a smart move, there’s much to be said for silver. Why? Because, unlike gold, silver has an inherent value that goes well beyond scarcity. Without silver the world as we know it would literally stop. The computer screen on which you are reading these words, has silver in it. The TV you watch, has silver in it…and the list goes on and on.

The best way to think of gold is as a non-yielding currency with a special trait: The only way to "print" it is to pull it out of the earth at great cost. As a currency with no yield and limited practical use...gold's investment case largely rests on its ability to insure against currency depreciation. Few people expect to make money by taking out insurance policies. I don't recommend allocating any more than 10% of a portfolio to gold. Words: 610

In volatile markets you must be able to go to cash when markets become dangerous. That is exactly what the momentum selection model does well. It protects your capital on the downside and enables it to grow on the upside! If you insist on staying in the stock market at all times, even perfect foresight cannot protect you. The ability and willingness to periodically run away beats the macho strategy of holding on.

Assume that we are at a point corresponding to the beginning of 2007. How would our investing/trading techniques weather the same conditions represented by this most recent market adjustment? Would we be able to mitigate the losses (or even avoid them)? A traditional buy & hold, diversified investing strategy will be evaluated here.

My answer to the issue of staying in or getting out of markets is to stay in. This answer is independent of whether a correction is imminent or a few years down the road because we cannot possibly know that information....There will be a time to completely flee markets. It is just not now or at least I don’t believe so.