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Rumors have it that President Donald Trump is asking “Where are my tariffs?” Tariffs are taxes. We are told by the RNC that all taxes are bad. Tariffs are somehow different… only in name. Frederick Bastiat wrote the candlemaker petition. It was published in 1845. Since that time no one has said,
“Frederick Bastiat you are wrong because of this”.
It was a satirical piece.  The candlemakers and tallow producers write a letter to lobby the Chamber of Deputies of the French July Monarchy. The candlemakers and tallow producers have an unfair foreign competitor. The government must help the candlemakers and tallow producers. The government must save jobs. The foreign competitor is….. the sun!!!! The government must create laws for everyone to block out their windows with curtains and use candles.
That will make you think. It will make you reflect. Something isn’t correct with this “Tariffs are good” idea. Of course a tariff on steel will help the steel makers in the USA.
The questions is: At the expense of whom?
Answer: Everyone else.

Below is a long term snap shot of HUI gold mining index.

This sector is pretty much hated by everyone. Since 2011 it has been battered and bruised. Even the hardcore gold bugs have thrown in the towel and abandoned  this poor sector. This catches my interest. I like to be where everyone is not. With an all in sustaining cost to produce an ounce of gold at about 850$ per ounce and a gold price at 1300$ per ounce this makes for some pretty hefty profit margins. Mining shares seem to come roaring out of the gate in the beginning of each year. Which is why we opened a few positions in the red headed step child of the financial sector.
Looking closely, we see the HUI is where it was at in 2008. That’s when everyone thought the world was coming to an end. Don’t worry about them crashing. They have already done that.

 

Check out the performance tab.

There is no denying that Bitcoin has gained popularity with libertarian minded people. This has caused self proclaimed libertarian’s to spread the word about Bitcoin. When this fiasco ends in tears do you think this will advance the libertarian agenda?
Libertarian philosophy has gained a lot of ground since 2008. One reason for this is that Austrian/libertarian economist were pounding on the table about the housing  bubble until it burst in 2008. Some of us actually called it in real time. The internet has given us a platform to say “We were right”. This has given us credibility. We stand to lose philosophical ground because libertarians have not read this or this.

The holiday pop occurs just after a holiday break. Its the sign of a mania. The  sheep go back to the family/friends and tell them how easy it is to get rich. The family and friends all bright eyed, buy it hook, line, and sinker. They buy. Than you see a jump in prices as the last fool attempts to buy at the top. Bitcoin had a holiday pop after thanksgiving. I suspect we will have another holiday pop after Christmas and New years.
I had some one at my family gathering talking about bitcoin.
“Just buy bitcoin and relax. It’s going to $150,000. Didn’t you read the latest article?”
This is despite the fact the author of the article is unknown with no track record.
“No, this guy is an expert with cryptocurrency. I listened to him and bought 6 weeks ago and have already doubled my money”
You have not doubled your money. You have a profit on an open position. Until you sell that’s all you have. But why would he sell? He thinks its going to $150,000. You also know what I think about “experts“.
I showed him the market watch website:

I told him this was a danger sign. This is the sign of a top. This is a sign that you are not buying low and selling high. The fact that we are all here talking about bitcoin is another danger sign.
Watch for the holiday pop. If it does not take out the old highs it is a top. I believe we have seen the top. I said so here. This price action looks like an exhaustion of buyers.

There was an essay written by Leonard Read called “I, Pencil”. He makes a fantastic claim. No one in the whole world knows how to make a pencil. At first glance, this seems absurd. After all, millions are produced each year. How could this be. To understand how no one in the world knows how to make a pencil but yet there are millions produced each year read this.
There are some individuals who consider themselves experts. These people think they know something. At this site you will never see me proclaim I am an expert at investing nor anything else. Whenever some one claims they know something or makes the assertion that they are an expert, you know they have never read I, pencil.
From I,pencil:

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background.
My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!
The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.
Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill’s power!
Don’t overlook the ancestors present and distant who have ahand in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.
Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved from this “wood-clinched” sandwich.
My “lead” itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon [Sri Lanka]. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.
The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder—cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.
My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are.
Observe the labeling. That’s a film formed by applying heat to carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black? Why, even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!
My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain.
Then there’s my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as “the plug,” the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient called “factice” is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rapeseed oil from the Dutch East Indies [Indonesia] with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives “the plug” its color is cadmium sulfide.

Novice investors trying to get rich quick on bitcoin are going to learn one of many hard lessons. A very important lesson is this:
It is easy to get into a market. It can be difficult to get out.
Consider as bitcoin was crashing from its 17K+ high. Coin base displayed the following message to users:

When the bids go away a vacuum will form under the bitcoin price.  There will be no more buyers any where close to the current prices.
Consider this. Do you know anything in the history of mankind that has went from 6K to 20K in a few weeks? Do you truly believe these price appreciations are sustainable?
The price of bitcoin can not get any more vertical than this…

This is a top.

New Recommendations can be found in the performance tab.

I read my share of worthless articles per day. Here is an example of one. The title is:
“Got $1 million to retire? Here’s how long it will last, by U.S. state”
Now consider how many Americans actually have a million plus.