Market-related predictions have become a quadrennial tradition, but that doesn't mean that they're worth the ink that's spilled on them. In terms of broader trends, politics in general - and elections in particular - have minimal predictive value with respect to subsequent market (and economic) activity. Nonetheless, we'll take some time to consider what both the historical - and the more recent data might be telling us about this year's election. Word count: 787

The S&P 500, Treasury Bonds, and the U.S. Dollar Index look like candidates for the Great Collapse while gold, silver, and their stocks look like candidates for the Grand Ascension. This article explains why that is the case with supporting charts.

A bubble is the state of a market before the crash. It is a situation in which assets trade at a price that is considerably higher than their intrinsic value and, in my view we're currently in a bubble. The current S&P 500 P/E is at 25.09 (when the historical average is 15.61). The question is, "When will the market crash?" and I see worrying signs that this could happen soon.

James Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, is urging investors to put their money in gold because he fears that the world will lose faith in central banks, or as he terms it “monetary management.”

Below is an infographic on Avenues to Retirement which focuses equally on gold IRAs, annuities and other non-gold related options. You will find it a valuable resource for preparing for retirement.

There are four stages of fiat money printing that have been used by central banks throughout their horrific history of usurping the market-based value of money and borrowing costs. It is a destructive path that began with going off the gold standard and historically ends in hyperinflation and economic chaos.

Investors globally have never faced risk of the magnitude that the we are now exposed to but, sadly, very few are aware of the unprecedented risks the world is facing. For the ones who understand risk and take the right decisions, it will “lead to fortune”. Only very few will choose that route, though. Instead most investors will continue to...

The unwinding of the "Central Bank Bubble" will be worse than either the Dot.Com Bubble or the Housing Bubble. It seems like most investors continue to show apathy even with the warnings by us and quite a few others of the "unintended consequences" of the central banks doing things that have never been done before. Those investors are in good company because it appears to us that the leaders of the major central banks of the world do not have any idea of the "unintended consequences" either.

American balance of trade deficits will start to hurt and haunt the U.S. as the world migrates to a series of arrangements for trade beyond the USD (although the USD will continue to function as the lead foreign exchange/reserve and trade currency for sometime yet) and the introduction of an IMF-SDR basket of currencies.

Governments will need and want and will engineer higher gold prices because it is their primary method of dealing with otherwise unserviceable debt. Higher gold prices will have the effect of debasing/devaluing their respective currencies which is the result they're looking for. Dramatically cheaper currencies mean that the debt can be serviced much more readily.