Stock Market News and Thoughts

Topics: Gold and Gold Stocks

Although I have been investing in the stock market since the 1990’s, starting in 2002 I have been an investor in gold bullion and a trader in gold stocks. At the beginning of 2002 I came to the conclusion that gold and commodities were about to begin a new secular bull market that would last well over ten years. Since that moment I have bought and recommended many gold, silver, and energy stocks and my subscribers and I have benefited from the bull market in commodities.

The simplest and safest way to invest in gold is to simply by gold bullion from a reputable precious metals dealer like Regal Assets. Whether you buy coins or bars is up to you. Most people like a mix of both. I consider my bullion holdings as the safest part of my overall investment portfolio - I consider it my real Fort Knox.

You see I consider my investments outside of gold bullion to be more speculative in a nature. Stocks as a whole tend to be more volatile than gold bullion and can individually be impacted in both positive and negative ways to specific company news. It is not unusual to see gold prices go up and then shares of an individual gold company go down, because it had to announce bad news, may it be a negative earnings release or a need to do a secondary offering to raise money by selling more stock, thereby diluting current shareholders.

However, the right gold stocks will rise exponentially as the gold bull market continue. Higher risks means the potential for higher rewards.

Investing in Gold Companies

One good and bad thing about buying gold stocks and exchange traded funds that invest in gold is that you have instant liquidity - if you want to take your investment out all you have to do is call your stock broker and get out at the quoted market price. If you trade online you don't even have to do that - you can just turn on your computer, connect to the Internet and type!

With gold bullion and coins you have to find a gold dealer or another individual who is willing to purchase your gold. It's an extra step. If you decide to sell your gold then you have to package your physical gold up and mail it to a dealer or else get in your car and take it to someone.

This can actually be a good thing. Most people who try to trade in and out of gold actually make mistakes. If things go up for a few months they get tempted to sell and then end up left behind when the market goes up without them or else they worry during little corrections and sell on bottoms. So having a nice core Fort Knox position in gold bullion that isn't as easy to sell as pressing a button is good, because it means you'll be less likely to make the mistake of selling out too soon. You'll learn not to worry about it and to just enjoy holding on to it. Most people who own stocks look at the trading quotes all of the time, get stressed out over little gyrations, and make mistakes.

That said though the right gold stocks have the potential to go up even more than the price of gold does over the next few years. You see the profits that mining companies generate during a gold bull market are tremendous, because when the price of gold moves up their profits explode exponentially. For example if the price of gold rises from $280 to $308 an ounce that represents a 10% increase. To show you what this means if it costs a gold company on average $180 to get an ounce of gold out of the ground then a 10% move in the price of gold from $280 to $308 translates into a 28% increase in profits for the gold company.

This gives a gold investor tremendous leverage for his investment dollars and gold stocks tend to rise by a much larger percentage than the price of gold itself during a gold bull market. In fact the gains can be astronomical and it is that fact that first brought my interest to the gold market. That should be no surprise because when the profits of a company increase rapidly stocks almost always follow.
Mining stocks then are essentially leveraged investments in gold. That is why they can go up more than gold does at times and can also crash to nothing too. After the last secular bull market in gold came to an end in 1980 most gold stocks actually went to zero - the companies went bankrupt! After that a few dozen of the biggest companies came to dominate the industry for the next few decades.

The Gold Industry

Now back in 2002 when I realized that the opportunities to profit in the gold bull market were going to become a once in a lifetime opportunity that I had to take advantage I didn't know anything about gold! I knew a lot about stocks and financial markets, but gold was a whole world on to itself.

So I realized that I needed to make contacts with gold analysts, newsletter writers, and management teams. I wanted to know what makes the gold community tick so that I could build off of their advice and get access to the private market place. I was determined to make money in gold and decided that I needed to meet and befriend some real gold experts that could bring me up to speed.

So I started to travel to mining industry shows across the United State and Canada. Most of them were organized in the same fashion. They rented out a conference center and divided it up in two sections. In the first section there are speaker panels and smaller workshops where you can get one on one attention and in the second section there is almost always an exhibition hall with booths.

These booths were made up of brokers, companies making trading software, and small cap companies trying to attract investor interest. Despite the dozen or so major gold conferences a year, in reality the gold community is small.

When I first started attending these conferences, very little money was actually flowing into gold companies, even though the stocks were going higher. The simple fact of the matter is that gold and the gold stocks are only a small segment of the financial world. At the start of 2001 the combined market cap for all publicly traded gold stocks was less than the market cap of Disney. As I write this Wall Street is still shunning them. Mainstream investors and CNBC talking heads have not accepted the fact that gold is in a bull market. They still think that the gold rally will fail and are afraid to commit money to it. This is why the small gold companies still use private investors for financing and depend on newsletters and investment conferences for exposure.

On one hand this is a good thing. You can make contacts with the leaders of the gold industry yourself and most gold companies are very compliant with individual investors. This is a virtual impossibility right now in sectors such as technology. You would have a difficult time trying to meet Bill Gates or Larry Ellison at an investment conference, but you can meet Robert McEwen, who helped to build GoldCorp into a company with a market cap of over $29 billion at a gold conference.

On the other hand, many tiny gold companies are nothing but pieces of paper and their reliance on small newsletter writers for exposure is a sign of their lack of investment merit. In fact many of them border on being outright frauds. When I started to go to investment conferences that featured gold companies, I made it a point to have private conversations with the gold CEO's to get a better feel for the industry. I spent one night with one of them on a $3 1/2 million dollar yacht watching football and drinking beer. Loose lips are more revealing.

I have never had a position in this man's company and don't now. I took a liking to this guy and he seemed straight to me. Of course he believed that gold will go up, but warned me that 80% of the small cap exploration companies are “fake.” He has a 25-year background in the industry and knows most of the key players. The analysts don't follow the stocks so all you have are newsletter writers. I asked him who can the small investors rely on? He laughed and said that most of them are bought off with stock. He told me of one or two that were good, but then added, "you need to understand that they need to make a living."

He went on to tell me that when it comes to exploration companies it is all about promotion. His words made comments that I heard from another CEO of a small exploration company earlier that day bounce in my head. During that conversation with this dude he made a side remark to the effect that gold exploration companies are the best companies to run, because the balance sheet doesn't matter. Earnings don't matter. He said that people don't know how to value your properties and it is all about its unknown potential and the ”psychology” of gold.
The last time I heard CEO's say that their earnings didn't matter was during the Internet mania. Those stocks flew and crashed to nothing. When the gold bull is over most of the small cap gold stocks will go back to nothing too. However, before then you will eventually see bunches of new companies appear out of nowhere and have their moment in the sun.

I got the impression from both men that stock promotion is central to the junior mining and gold exploration stocks. The man on the yacht point blank told me that it is not the shares of companies with good resources that go up the most, but the ones with the heaviest promotion that does. The way he put it if you have good properties and no promotion the stock will lag, but if you have crap properties and heavy promotion it will fly as gold goes higher. And if you have both then you have a rocket.

The easiest way for people to promote a gold stock is to get newsletter writers involved, especially those that specialize in the gold market. They are the people who can directly reach potential investors. Promoters get them involved by allowing them to buy stock at steep discounts on the private market, paying them money, or by simply giving them shares.
One of the most popular ways to promote a stock is to send out mass mail flyers to investors. These fliers almost always will feature a newsletter writer, who supposedly has earned his subscribers unbelievable profits, and a write up for the company that it should go up 1000% or even more. That write up is the real purpose of the mailing. The newsletter writer is just there to give it credibility.

The problem is that more often than not the investor who buys on these mailings is buying in near a top. The promoter, the newsletter writer, and everyone else involved in pumping the stock already got in way before the flier is sent out. After the last sucker gets in the stock almost always goes back down. You see with no earnings or real prospects they have nowhere else to go. It's like the movie Boiler Room.

For the record I do not engage in any of these promotional activities. I am not paid to promote stocks. In the gold industry, it is rare to find a newsletter writer who isn’t involved in this sort of activity. I’ve even heard of one writer calling the gold companies himself and asking them how much they will pay him to write up their stock! Luckily there are ways that you can determine whether or not a newsletter writer is doing real analysis or is just giving you a sales pitch. And there are indeed a few top-notch analysts out there.
There is a simple way to separate the wheat from the chaff. Anyone who recommends a stock must put a disclosure with their recommendation if they already own shares or were given stock or paid cash by the company or a third-party. Read the writer’s disclaimer very carefully to see this disclosure. If they simply own shares that they bought that is one thing, but if they are being compensated to promote the stock be very wary of what you are reading, because it is not an unbiased piece of research.

As time goes on I expect these conflicts of interest to become a big issue. Investor awareness will increase. I just hope that it won’t take a scandal for it to start. For now you must carefully choose which newsletters that you follow and make sure they are being written by real independent analysts and aren’t just tout sheets.

I learned from talking to these CEO’s that I needed to be careful in what I invest in. I needed to learn for myself what is the best way to evaluate a gold company. I put lots of my own money into work in the market and I want to buy the best stocks, not just ones that are going up because everything else is, or because they are being promoted. If you are going to buy into a basket of gold stocks you should just buy the best ones.

Types of Gold Stocks

The trick is how to determine which gold stocks have real potential. The safest gold stocks are the large producing gold companies. Every collection of gold stocks should revolve around a core holding in a few of the largest producers. These companies include Anglogold, Barrick Gold, and Newmont Mining among others. They are the stocks that are the institutional favorites of mutual fund managers. In fact if the gold bull market continues the way that I expect it will then Newmont will become a must own stock, much like Cisco Systems was in the 1990’s.

Generally speaking the higher the potential gain the higher the risk that an investor takes in a stock. Higher returns are available to gold investors from mid-tier producing gold companies that mine anywhere from 100,000 to 1,000,000 ounces of gold a year. These stocks have smaller share floats so it takes less money flowing into the stock to make it go up in value. The companies have at least one producing mine and often own several mines, some of which may have higher production costs and were closed during the last gold bear market. As the price of gold advances these mines reopen, to provide a boost to the company’s profits. A lot of these companies end up getting bought out. Bema Gold, Wheaton River, and Cambior were all mid-tier producers who got bought out at huge prices.

Mid-tier mining companies can become takeover targets and often engage in gold exploration activities. Often they join smaller exploration companies in developing potential mines. Mid-tier mining companies are very dependent on the price of gold and often take on debt to develop mining properties. As a result if the gold price drops they often have to scramble to raise more capital, which means diluting shareholders or floating more debt, and some of them often become insolvent during gold bear markets.

Below the large and mid-tier producers are exploration and junior mining companies, which make up most of the gold companies on the exchanges. Exploration companies consist of only a couple of employees, most of whom are geologists, who search for new gold deposits in hopes of finding the next big discovery. They raise money to purchase claims on properties. Their shares are penny stocks and are akin to lottery tickets. Only one in a thousand pay off in the end. Of course the reward when one of these companies hits pay dirt is enormous, but for every one of these stocks that become big winners hundreds become zeros.

Junior mining companies try to transform exploration properties into producing mines. Some junior mining companies have mines in production, but most of them are only a step above exploration companies. Those that do have mines usually have ones of a lower quality and need to open new ones to replace them when they run out of ore. However, when a new mine comes on line earnings for these companies go through the roof. Both the exploration and junior mining sectors are riddled with stock promoters and are high-risk speculations. There is a reason why penny stocks are worth only pennies. The difference between investing in a bar of bullion and investing in a penny stock is miles apart. There are no penny stocks in Fort Knox.

Choosing Gold Companies as Investments

When it comes to gold stocks I invest in a core position of large producers through a gold mining stock ETF, such as GDX or GDXJ, which owns a swath of gold producers. Then I usually build the rest of my gold stock portfolio around a basket of individual stocks in large and mid-tier producers or emerging producers. I believe they give me a good risk to reward ratio for each dollar I spend, as many of the shares of mid-tier companies double during rallies in the gold bull market. Most of them also trade over 1,000,000 shares a day. That is enough volume to allow me to build substantial positions and prevent any liquidity problems.

I look for mid-tier companies whose gold production is slated to increase over the next few years, enabling their earnings to grow exponentially even if the price of gold does not rise. They may be planning on reopening mines that have been out of production or have purchased mines from junior gold companies.

In special cases I do invest in junior and exploration companies, but only after a full study of their projects. Most of these companies eventually either get bought out or go out of business. When you become one of their stockholders you become a shareholder and partner in their venture. You are making a bet not only that management can succeed, but that they are on your side and are interested in enhancing shareholder value by building a successful operation and aren’t just trying to pad their pockets through stock jobbing. You need to know who the people are behind the company and understand their business model. Do they have properties worth exploring and developing and will they have the resources to execute?

There are simple questions that you can ask. Whose money is already in the company? How much of the company’s financing came from insiders and the management team and how much of it came from brokerage houses and individual investors? Is the management team paying itself in large salaries or do they expect to make money from gains in the share price along with their investors? If they are making stock transactions are they buying or selling shares?

What is the background of the management team? Have they built successful companies before? If they made mistakes in the past were they fooled themselves or did they fool their stockholders? Have the geologists involved in the company made successful discoveries in the past? What type of experience does the chief engineer have?

If you ask these simple questions then you’ll invest your money with the top people in the industry. The other thing you need to know is how exploration and junior mining companies develop. This will help you evaluate whether or not an exploration company has a viable property or not and if a junior mining company is going to be able to develop a mine.

How Mining Companies Are Developed

Exploration is the first stage of development. Many exploration companies go to hot areas of the market where gold has already been discovered and mined. At some point in a gold bull market area plays develop and exploration companies appear out of nowhere to play off someone else’s success. You need to be wary of a company whose only selling point is the area that it is in.

An exploration team will have its engineers survey its properties. Once they determine that there is likely a solid gold deposit, they will need to raise money in order to prove it. The company then drills holes on the property far apart from each other to get an idea of where the gold may be concentrated.

If the first drill results are successful, the company will carry out another drill test, called an “infill drilling” test. This test consists of drilling new holes in between the first ones in order to get a rough idea of the deposit size and ore grade. The drill results are then taken and the gold deposit is classified. You need to understand the classification system so that you can understand how viable the project is.

A deposit classified as a geological resource is the lowest grade deposit. Gold or silver has been found and a rough estimate has been made to its size and grade based on limited evidence. Further evaluation is needed. This classification is also called inferred, estimated, or drill-indicated. This level of resources has the lowest chance of ever being mined and it is best to stay away from exploration companies that tout such properties.

Most deposits are classified as a possible, probable, or proven reserve. Proven reserves have the highest confidence level and were measured with 50 feet drilling spacing. Probable reserves often used 100 feet drill spacing, while possible reserves uses even wider drill spacing.

The SEC does not allow companies to include possible reserves when they total their ore reserves. Canada accepts them and allows mining companies to include them with their proven and possible reserves in press releases and shareholder reports. In reality they are very low-grade properties and should not be counted as strong assets on a company’s balance sheet. Be wary of Canadian mining companies whose portfolio is made up of possible reserves.

If the exploration company’s survey of a property is promising then it will go the next step, which is a feasibility study. This study further examines and defines the ore reserve and its size, identifies mining methods, estimates capital costs, and projects profitability and return on investment. A feasibility study can take up to three years to complete and once it is finished costs are calculated within a 15% margin. The process of going from exploration to a feasibility survey is what turns exploration companies into junior mining companies.

The next stage of development is the construction of the mine. This can cost a hundred million dollars, which is way more money than junior exploration companies have. If they can’t finance the operation themselves then they will try to attract a larger partner to assist in the project or buy them out. If gold is in a bear trend than the project will sit idle until a new bull market in gold begins, a fact that causes many idle projects to sit in waiting.

The costs and time it takes to get the mine in operation can vary widely. A lot depends on the location of the property and the country that it is in. Stringent environmental laws and bureaucracy can drag out the process and raise costs. Once construction begins and the mine is operation more knowledge about the size and grade of the ore is obtained.

Even though a company that goes from exploration to production can be a bonanza for shareholders, it won’t necessarily last. All mines run out of ore eventually and the company will have to one-day find new gold reserves, if not at the current mine then at another property. If it doesn’t then it will likely go bankrupt.

In the end exploration and junior resource stocks can make profitable speculations, but they are almost all poor long-term investments. That's why in the long-run gold bullion acts as a better core investment position than a pile of penny stocks. Gold bullion is your Fort Knox.

I will Help You

When I started to talk with you about gold I had one objective in mind - to help you as much as possible benefit from this gold bull market. I hope you will make purchases in gold bullion and consider that the core Fort Knox position of your portfolio - that part of your portfolio that serves as a ballast of protection and profit in this financial environment.

Outside of gold bullion I also have a stock brokerage account where I invest in and trade individual funds and individual stocks. If you don't have a broker and are wondering which is a good one to use than you might want to check out Etrade or Scottrade. Scottrade has physical offices spread out all over the United States and often holds small investment seminars to help people if you feel more comfortable dealing with someone in person than strictly only over the Internet. If you are in Canada you might want to try out TD Waterhouse. I've had people tell me good things about them too.

Now going forward I will help you by showing you what I own and when I buy and sell positions.

I cannot think of any better to help you than that. You can see what I own right now by going to my trading blog at WallStreetWindow.com and then clicking on the top nav bar on that site where it says Open Portfolio. You'll find a spreadsheet file right there with my current positions.

No one on CNBC will show you anything like that. I'm doing this because now is the time and I figure that the more I actually help people the more goodwill I'll get back too. You see the more you help people the more your reputation will spread. If you like what you get from me you'll tell others about it and spread the word too. Then I'll benefit when people buy a membership to this site. Gold is not going up because the media is telling people to buy it, it is going because of word of mouth. The gold community is a true group of believers that helps one another. When new people join we all win.

If you want to start to invest in gold bullion by buying a few buys then contact Regal Assets. Just fill out the form below. Request your free gold kit and give them your mailing address and phone number so they can call and verify it. Now is the time to get into gold.

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Topics: Gold and Gold Stocks

I want to talk to you about using gold to build real wealth. Very few people end up rich and wealthy when they retire. That's because most people make two really big blunders that they never recover from. For you that means if you want to build real wealth you have to what most people don't do. You gotta be a bit of a contrarian and go against the masses.

The first thing people do is nothing. They don't even make an action plan to build real wealth. They seem to think that things will just take care of themselves. Or else they think that they can just put off planning for later. Actually a plan isn't what you want - you want action!

The typical person starts out in their twenties thinking that to end up rich what they need to do is go to school, get a job that will get them a good income, start a family, get approved for a mortgage that will get them a house that they will eventually pay off and own, and then they will start to save to retire. They think all they have to do is these things in this order and they will live the American dream. But it's not a real plan. It's just a way of saying I will one day have some wealth once I pay my debts off and then I will try to save.

What happens is that most people just pile on more and more debt. They don't save. They might increase their income over time thanks to job advancement, but any increase in income they get splurge. So they don't use it to build wealth. They just pay off their debts, and most actually go even deeper into debt with credit cards and a second mortgage on a vacation property.

They convince themselves that they are doing the right thing, because they are doing what everyone else they know is doing. They were trained to think they needed to go to college and get a degree so that they could get the approval of corporate America to be worthy of a white-collar job.

But they don't end up with wealth. They end up working for their debt masters and their corporate pay masters for much longer than they want to. Statistics show that in the United States only 15% of Americans make contributions to an IRA plan and the average American who does succeed in retiring do so with an IRA has that $148,000 in their retirement account. That's pathetic.

The big mistakes most people make are mental. They aren't ones of resources - they are ones of thinking. The people who really become wealthy and rich do so by working towards that goal their whole life. They don't put it off till after they get a job and pay their mortgages and so forth. They start right from the beginning. When they start working they put some of their income to use to build wealth. They begin to build some wealth before they take a step into a bank and go in debt with a mortgage.

Success is messy. You become wealthy by doing a lot of stuff at once. Take some of the income you make and put it to use building wealth. It is never too late to start.

The second mental wealth building road block that prevents people from becoming wealthy is a simple misunderstanding of what wealth really is. They are right in thinking that once you have a lot of wealth you can have the freedom to do just about anything you want to do and live with a lot fewer worries than most people have, but they are wrong in thinking what wealth really is.

People think wealth is money. They think having a lot of cash or a lot of money deposited in the bank makes you wealthy. But that isn't real wealth. Having real wealth consists of owning assets that can go up in value and generate even more wealth for you as time goes on.

Over time all currencies actually lose value. A U.S. dollar bill in 1950 is now worth $9.53. That means inflation has eaten away 852.7% of the value of the US dollar since 1950 and with the Fed money printing operations today the value of the dollar is likely to fall even faster in the years to come.

Someone retired today who thought building wealth meant simply putting money under their mattress would have had a hard time even keeping up with inflation during their working years. As they built their cash stash their cash would have lost value. Twenty-years ago parents used to teach their kids to put pennies, dimes, and quarters, into a piggy bank. Now these coins add up to so little that it isn't even worth the trouble. As a result kids are no longer taught to save their change while most toy stores no longer even sell piggy banks anymore.

The point is that paper money IS NOT wealth. People with little money dream of one day being a millionaire. But having a million dollars isn't real wealth. That's why most people who hit the lottery end up broke a few years later. Instead of using their winnings to buy real assets they just blow it.

People think more money is the solution to their problems, but having more money in itself does nothing for most people, because as people's incomes grow they usually just go deeper into debt.

To build wealth you have to take cash you get and transform that money into wealth building assets. You see money is not wealth. Having wealth consists of owning assets that will either increase in value for you overtime or generate extra money for you that you can use however you want to - even to build even more wealth.

A wealthy person is someone who owns a portfolio of wealth building assets. Anyone can get to that point. All you need to do is make purchases in the right assets. Even if they are small purchases if they are the right assets you can still end up wealthy if those assets go up in value enough for you. It's not the income you have that matters or even the money you have, but that you use what extra cash resources you can get your hands on and how you use it that matters. You don't need to be a genius to do smart stuff.

I'm wealthy because over the past twenty-years I have used income and capital gains to purchase all sorts of different assets. I have bought a house, land, lots of stocks, different investment funds, and even helped finance various business ventures that I own an ownership interest in and get an income from. But out of everything I have bought the best single investment I made in terms of percentage return was in a bar of gold in 2002 for around $300 an ounce. At this moment it has gone up over 500% and I expect it to go up even more in the years to come. My house that I bought around the same time is barely worth much more than what I paid for it. There is a reason that gold has always been the instrument of kings.

Let's think about real wealth for a second. Wealth consists of assets. There are two mains types of assets - you have hard assets and soft assets. The latter are paper assets like stocks, bonds, loans, CD's, and yes pure cash, which is at the bottom of the barrel. Ideally what you want to have is a mix of assets in your overall wealth portfolio that consists of various paper and hard assets.

Ok if you are thinking hard assets are physical things than you right. Hard assets include real estate, land, and things that come out of the ground like oil, gold, and silver. Buying precious metals, like gold coins and gold bullion, is the simplest way to own hard assets.

The neat thing about hard assets is that they tend to rise in value in times of inflation and financial turmoil when stocks don't do so well. During the 1970's while the economy went through stagnation and the stock market went nowhere oil prices rose in value and the price of gold skyrocketed. In the past ten years commodities as a whole have once again risen in value while the stock market has gone through a debt stagnation mess. This trend is about to enter a quickening phase.

That's one reason why right now owning some hard assets such as gold bullion should be a critical component of any serious wealth builder's portfolio. I consider my hard assets my own personal fortress. It's why even though I have made a career out of the stock market I have been telling people to just forget about investing in the US stock market right now and focus on gold by buying physical gold bullion and if they want to speculate more some commodity stocks. The people getting involved in the precious metals bull market right now and protecting themselves from the inflation trend will prove to be the smartest wealth builders in the years to come.

You see diversification is a key to wealth building. When some assets do bad other assets tend to do well. Someone invested only in the US stock market in 2008 got annihilated during the 2008 financial collapse, but during that year gold went up and has risen over 80% since then with more gains to come.

To build wealth properly requires diversification and knowing the right time to concentrate on one asset class instead of another. Stocks were great in the 1980's and 1990's and now gold is king. In my book Strategic Stock Trading available at Amazon.com I explain the techniques I have used to find stocks and know when to buy them over the years. I show people what I'm doing in the stock market world at my site wallstreetwindow.com.

One key component of successful investment decision making is to be willing to go against the crowd. You want to buy stocks when they have dropped so much that they have gotten cheap. At such times though the masses have often sold out in disgust over the fact that stocks have dropped! They tend to buy high and sell low.

The vast majority of people will never build real wealth so you have to do what they won't do. When it comes to gold right now very few people are getting into the gold market. Most people don't do anything to build real wealth and out of all of those that do only the elite of them even get involved in precious metals. It's rare that a broker or investment adviser will tell a client about them, because they have nothing to gain from doing so - in fact if the client sells out of a stock account to buy physical gold their investment advisers will lose out on fees! So wall street types tend to try to scare people when it comes to gold.

However, there are plenty of firms and people that can help you when it comes to investing in gold. Personally I like Regal Assets. I get hit up by all kinds of precious metals dealers and looked into a lot of them. Regal is the best one in my opinion so I built a relationship with them.

I suggest you check them out. Your stock broker or investment adviser is unlikely to be much help to you when it comes to this stuff. With Regal you can actually talk with someone on the phone who can guide you in precious metals investing and get answers to any questions you may have about gold and other precious metals investing.

You might want to start by getting Regal's gold investment kit mailed to you. Just fill out this form and put in your phone number so they can call you and confirm your mailing address:

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Topics: Gold and Gold Stocks

I know one thing is certain. Some big things are starting to happen in the financial world right now and the end result is going to be that a few people are going to make fortunes while many miss out. In fact I am worried that if the time of troubles that everyone feels is coming hits then not only may you miss out, but you may end up losing your nest egg too. For those positioned correctly though the crisis may prove to be bring their greatest opportunity. You see in every big financial event there are always a few with the foresight to make an absolute killing.

Over the next few years I believe inflation is going to pick up and drive gold prices higher to the substantial benefit of gold investors.

Now I do not think the US stock market is on the verge of crashing just yet. But I do think that eventually in a few years we are going to see interest rates jump to the detriment of US stock market investors in a response to inflationary pressures.

Look the US government is running trillion dollar deficits and the Fed is being forced to print money out of thin air to help finance them. Ten years ago China financed most of the deficit, but the deficit is so big now that they just don't have the money to finance it anymore and neither does anyone else. So Bernanke is printing money out of thin air to bridge the gap. He calls it quantitative easing, but that's just a fancy term to sugar coat the fact that it is nothing but a Federal government debt money printing operation and once too much money chases too few goods you get inflation.

We are already seeing inflation in our daily lives at the gas pump and the grocery store. The government uses statistical games to hide what we know is real in their so called consumer price inflation numbers, but eventually the inflation will show up in there too - people will buy gold to protect themselves. Eventually the Federal debt is going to get so big that foreign investors will begin to see risks in it ever getting paid. They will then demand higher interest rate payments in return for buying US Treasury bonds. Once that happens bond prices will drop, interest rates will spike, the economy will slow again, and the stock market will crash. People will buy gold in panic.

Now we aren't at that point yet. I don't want to scare you, because you don't need to be scared. I think the time of troubles is still a few years off. And if you are in gold you won't need to worry, because you will only benefit if the shit hits the fan. A few people on Wall Street made fortunes by betting against mortgage securities in 2008. They did complicated stuff to do this. But to make money in this next crisis you just have to know how to invest in gold - and do so the right way.

Gold is also more than simply a way to make money. Gold is a fortress that can protect you in times of financial crisis. Gold is real money. Every single currency in the history of man has suffered from inflationary pressures. If you paid a dollar for something in 1950 it would cost you $9.54 today. That's inflation. I own a house, a bunch of land, foreign stocks, and exchange traded funds, but I consider my gold bullion position my personal Fort Knox, because no one can take it away from me and inflation only makes it go up in value. I cannot adequately describe to you the peace of mind that comes from just owning a little bit of gold. You need to experience it for yourself.

Ok, now there is a big reason why despite having made tons of money in the US stock market over the years I am now telling people to forget about US stocks and look at gold. It's important for you to understand this so you will know why now is the time for gold. It has to do with repeating long-term cycles in financial markets that are going to have a huge impact on gold and the stock market over the next few years.

In financial markets you see important market trends. In bull markets a market goes up year after year and in bear markets it drops. These are bull and bear market trends.

Now you also have long-term bull and bear trends that last ten years or longer. They are called secular trends. Inside of those secular trends you get smaller bull and bear market trends that can last 1-5 years. These are called cyclical trends.

This is important because during the 1970's the US stock market was in a secular bear market. It was the time of Jimmy Carter, oil price shocks, and inflation. When that bear market ended it the DOW went straight up for 20 years with a few short cyclical bear market pause periods during that time. It's now in a secular bear market once again.

Now the stock market has gone up for the past few years, but that's a cyclical bull market that started in 2009 within a secular bear market that started in 2000. The US market averages as a whole have not gone up in any meaningful way above the highs they set in 2000. The US stock market has in fact had two devastating bear markets since then and will likely have at least one more before this secular bear market trend is over.

Gold on the other hand made a major secular bear market bottom in 2001. Since that bottom it has gone up year after to new highs with three short-term one year plus pauses that started in 2006, 2008 and in 2011. After each pause gold took off like a rocket.

The moment to buy gold is now, because gold is in a cyclical bear market pausing time right now. Once this pausing time comes to an end, and I think it will within a few months, gold prices will begin to rocket up again to new highs and make another huge leg up in its secular bull market. That means that gold prices can easily double or even triple from current levels once this new bull leg starts. That's why this moment in time as you are reading this is so critical. It's why you are smart to know to be reading this now and why I'm spending a lot of time talking to you about gold right now.

Secular bear markets end by causing stocks to get so cheap on a fundamental basis that they get in a position to go up for years. Now what is important for you to realize when it comes to gold is that secular bull markets end in a mania. At a top you can see things get so expensive that people literally will pay any price to be a part of the market. This is what happened to Internet stocks in 1999.

Now if you are old enough to remember the 1970's than you'll know that gold also had a manic period back then that coincided with the end of its last secular bull market.

During the 1970's secular bull market in gold, gold prices went from $35 an ounce to $850 an ounce in ten years. In 1979 gold was $350 and more than doubled in six months. Straight up moves like that happen at the end of a secular bull market.

We have yet to see such a straight up move happen in this secular bull market for gold, but it will. In fact I think this next cyclical bull market once it starts has a good chance of ending in such a giant climatic rally in a few years. This next move could be the start of the big one.

Now can you see why I'm telling people to forget about the US stock market right now? It's not so much that I think the stock market is going to crash overnight, but I just don't think there is a big potential to profit in it when you compare it to the potential investing in gold can give you. Imagine what it would have been like to have made money in the Internet stock mania. Gold provides us with the same opportunity right now.

I want to thank you for having enough interest in gold and faith in me to follow my website. This is not just a one shot deal for me. I promise to you that over the coming months and into the future I will send you updates to alert you to important developments in the gold market - and moves I make. This is just the start. This gold boom is going to go on for the next few years and we are going to be in it together.

If you want to start to build your own position in gold by taking some gold bullion positions than you should send for the Regal Assets free gold investment kit. To get your kit just fill out this form:

We will call to confirm your address.
*Your information will never be shared.

Topics: Gold and Gold Stocks

Thank you for coming to my website WallStreetWindow and signing up for my free newsletter. If you don't know who I am my name is Mike Swanson. I have been a trader and investor in the financial markets now for over a decade. During that time I have ran this popular website and even managed a successful hedge fund for a few years.

I first made money trading Internet stocks in the 1990's and then bet against the stock market in 2000 and made money in that bear market. I did the same thing in the summer of 2008 before the stock market crash. But in 2002 I began to invest in gold and gold stocks too. You see I could tell that they were starting a brand new secular bull market.

It is still going on and I expect it to end in a total explosion to the upside in gold prices that will enrich those gold investors positioned correctly.

Now investing in gold can be tricky. I am going to send you a series of reports to help you get up to speed on how to invest in the gold market over the next few days and will explain to you why I believe now is the time for gold. I also will be sending you an email about once a week to keep you updated on what is happening in the gold market and the financial world. Don't worry I won't share your email with anyone or send you a bunch of ads. I want to build a good relationship with you by sending you good information.

Now if you want to make speculative plays in the stock market I'm going to show you how to buy gold mining stocks.

If you want to invest in gold safely though the best way to do it is by purchasing gold bullion. But to do that you need to build a solid and dependable relationship with a bullion dealer.

There are literally hundreds of them out there and you only need to use the best one. I decided that I wanted to do more than use one to buy bullion for myself, but to find one that I could build a real business relationship with too. I wanted one that I could do more than just put in an order online with, but talk on the phone and get real one on one help with. I also wanted one that I could recommend for you to use too. I wanted to be able to send you to someone that you can talk with live and get help and get gold delivered fast to you. Regal Assets is the best one.

You see I get asked by dealers to advertise on this site all of the time and I just tell them no. I don't want people paying me like that who I don't know.

Instead I made a deal with my favorite dealer - Regal Assets - to get a little cut from them when I refer someone and they buy some gold. This is the best way to help everyone at the same time.

If you are interested in buying gold bullion I recommend that you contact Regal Assets and give them your mailing address. They'll send you a full blown gold investment kit in the postal mail. To get the kit though you'll need to give them your phone number. That way they can call you and confirm your mailing address. You see they can't simply just send out these kits to every mailing address that is sent to them over the Internet. They have to make sure its a real address and that the person they are sending it to really wants it. This also gives you a chance to get your gold investing questions answered live on the phone.

I will be sending you more gold reports shortly. Look out for them in your email inbox.

To get your physical gold kit from Regal Assets mailed to you just fill out this form:

We will call to confirm your address.
*Your information will never be shared.

Topics: Stock Trading StrategiesHow to Spot Market Turning Points - The Trend is Your Friend - Mike Swanson

The trend is your friend. Invest with the trend until it ends. Control your losses so if the trend changes when you don't expect it then it won't bite you and then ride the trend as long as you can when it is going the right way.

Do all that and you will get rich.

It's that simple.

And yet very few people actually do this.

If you have trouble viewing the video you can also listen to this audio mp3 verison:

Jump start your trading by buying a copy of my book Strategic Stock Trading. Just go here.

Topics: Stock Trading StrategiesHow to Properly Use Protective Sell Stop Orders Without Getting Shaken Out of Your Positions

Look for our next video in which we'll present a simple method to spot changes in price trends that anyone can learn in just a few minutes.

Jump start your trading by ordering my book Strategic Stock Trading. Just click here.

Topics: Stock Trading StrategiesDownload The Twofold Formula

I explain the Two Fold Formula in the two videos below and also in a 30+ page PDF report below them. The formula combines both the fundamental valuation metrics and technical chart patterns that I have found come together to create the best possible stock trades.

Warning: It is a common experience with people whether they are stock market beginners or more advanced investors when they first discover powerful strategies that have the possibility of making them money in the stock market to be cautious and concerned with the possible uses and muses of the techniques or to do the opposite and take unwarranted risks.

I fully recognize the great power of the information presented in this report and insist that you exercise caution as you learn and apply these techniques for your own protection. If you are a new investor you may want to consult an investment advisor or broker about this information, because past results are not guarantees of future success. I also insist that you use these strategies only for good and to do no harm to your fellow man.

Video One - Fundamental Factors

Video Two - The Technical Factors

Because the pdf report is over 30 pages long you should print it out and then read it instead of just reading it online.

To download the Two Fold Formula pdf click here.

Please note the above link is for a PDF file. If you cannot open it then you will need the newest version of the Adobe Acrobat reader. You can get it for free by going here.

Jump start your trading by ordering my book Strategic Stock Trading by clicking here.

Topics: Stock Trading Strategies

If you are like me you get flyers like this all of the time in the mail recommending some penny stock. Most of them are scams. They are fake companies and the people recommending the stocks are being paid to do so.

If you would like to jump start your trading just get my book Strategic Stock Trading. To start click here.

Topics: Stock Trading Strategies

You can’t really tell from this video, but when I made it I was thinking about some guy that has been attacking me in posts on some message board. He never subscribed my list or bought a product, but listed me in with a bunch of other financial guys saying basically, “why should anyone subscribe to a financial newsletter or website. If these guys are so smart then why are they charging people for their work? If their advice was worth anything then they would already be millionaires and don’t need the money. They must be scammers.”

Well I can’t speak for the other people, but I can speak for myself. The reason why I initially started the site was in fact due to financial reasons.

I visited a good friend of mine in Los Angeles a few months ago. He runs a financial website in which he interviews people, has an investment advisory business, has run hedge funds, and has great success over the years. I enjoy sharing ideas with him on the phone about the market. He has a big account and still charges people for his site and has customers he advises and manages. I believe he lives off that income and not from the capital gains he makes.

He told me that he most of the people he knew who got in the market and made a lot of money ended up blowing up, because they didn’t save the money or build off of their gains. They got a big score and expanded their lifestyle and then needed to make more big scores to maintain it. Those pressures ended up wiping them out in the market.

When I started the website I was already making money in the stock market. But I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to live off of the stock market, pay taxes, and survive and grow my account at the same time with those resources that I had. My account wasn’t big enough for that at the time .

I also knew that I wasn’t going to be able to work a regular nine to five job and spend the five or six hours a day necessary to study the market and find opportunities to profit. So I decided to start this site to create an income stream and to provide people value. They don’t have to spend the time I do looking at the market, because I do it for them. It was rewarding to know that you are helping people. Making money isn’t the only thing rewarding.

I’ve made mistakes along the way, but now both the site and the money I have in the stock market have grown. By leaps and bounds I could only have imagined when I started, but I have tried to only rarely take money out of my account and then it has been mainly been used to pay my taxes or to invest in another businesses. My goal for my investments right now is to build wealth. Maybe one day in the future that may change, but I think it will be a long-time from now.

As for the website not only does it help me sustain my living – and I’m a fairly frugal person – but it also has helped my own trading by disciplining me to write and think about the market – and has brought me into contact with lots of other traders and people. Who would want to do nothing but sit in a room by themselves all of the time? I share an office with Andy, have made many friends as a result of the website, and have people I communicate with all over the world through my writings. You can’t beat that.

It’s fun to be able to talk to the world and share your thoughts. It’s fun.

There are people on the site making big money.

But anyway, I don’t need to justify myself. This is enough of a rant. People who see the video on youtube can’t tell what spurred me on to make it and what I say in it is spot on. It might actually help someone out there who just made a big lick in the market and might now make a mistake.

Topics: Stock Trading Strategies

One of the most interesting stock sectors right now are shipping stocks. They crashed in 2011 and spent 2012 forming a long stage-one base. Towards the end of last year they rallied up to the resistance area of that base and have been pausing there for the past few weeks.

Check out the shipping stock ETF SEA for example:

SEA has been consolidating for the past few weeks with resistance at around $17.50 and support at $16.60. If looks like it is getting ready to break resistance - once it does it will clear its stage one base and enter a new bull run.

The shipping stocks caught my eye the other week and I bought VLCCF. It has resistance at about $7.20 and pays a 10.50% dividend. That's a juicy income for just holding a stock. If it breaks out though I think it can double from here over a year.

Another one I'm watching is NM:

NM appears to be breaking out right now. It is paying a 6.30% dividend.

Oh and I also bought good old ESEA - Euroseas is a $45 million market cap Greek shipping company that pays a 6.00% dividend. For every share it has 74 cents in cash and has a book value over $4.00.

Shipping stocks tend to move with global markets and commodities. They crashed when both went into bear markets in 2011 and should do well the rest of this year. Its hard to beat owning a stock that pays a big dividend and rises in a bull market.

Topics: The War State

After Senator Paul Rand's filibuster yesterday the Obama administration backed down on the use of drone attacks on American citizens inside of the United States.

This was the situation yesterday. It was completely crazy:

Today Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Rand Paul that reads:

" Dear Senator Paul:

It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" The answer to that question is no.

Sincerely,

Eric Holder"

It took a filibuster for hours on end that created national press coverage to get the President of the United States and his Attorney General to answer a simple question that has been asked of them for weeks.

Topics: Stock Trading Strategies

An epic debate about the creation and preservation of wealth featuring Rick Rule, Peter Schiff, John Mauldin and Grant Williams. The highlight is a classic faceoff between Peter Schiff and John Mauldin that takes place around 7:30 in and goes on for several minutes and really heats up at 9:30.

The debate took place February 24, 2013 at Cambridge House's California Resource Investment Conference in Palm Springs.

Topics: American Society and Culture

Is Facebook getting boring? Statistics suggest that users are getting bored with Facebook and the company is one again going to try to make some changes to make its site more engaging and to make more more money off of its users.

Since its stock has gone public last year its shares have gone nowhere. People who bought Facebook stock on IPO day are still losing money almost a year later while the DOW and everything else just about has gone up.

At the same time statistics suggest that users are simply getting bored with the site.

According the the New York Times, "earlier this year came worrying news that 61 percent of users had taken a sabbatical from the social network, sometimes for months at a time; boredom was one of the reasons cited in the survey by the Pew Research Center. Even worse, 20 percent had deactivated their account entirely."

Personally I use Facebook less and less and sometimes think about just deleting my account. If it weren't for my WallStreetWindow "fan page" I would. But there are people who use it to know when I post something on my website.

I'm getting bored with Facebook though.

There are two problems. Facebook is a media. It's a media that we all can post on and contribute to. Unlike TV we don't just sit and passively consume the content. The problem is most people do just that. It seems that most people are simply too timid to post their opinions on Facebook or say anything that is really important. They are probably afraid that someone won't like what they have to say - and Americans as a whole are most sheepish and timid people on the planet. As a result most people use Facebook by remaining silent, terrified that someone will disagree with them. Americans are the most passive and obedient people in the world, so that's how they behave on Facebook.

However, as a way of communicating with people it isn't that easy to do either. Facebook doesn't give you much space to say anything. I can't type a long passage like I can on my own website. All you have is a few lines of space to use in a Facebook post. Maybe a paragraph or two. That simply isn't enough room to say much of anything meaningful. I'd like to communicate with people more on Facebook, but Facebook makes it hard to do.

When you are reduced to just a few lines then if you want to make a statement about something you are pretty much reduced to the equivalent of shouting a slogan.

And that's what people do on Facebook. It's like grunting. So it's boring.

Another thing that is boring about Facebook is all of the ads that are now flying across it when you load up your Facebook account. There has been a big increase in them since the IPO, because the company needs to grow earnings to appease stock investors.

Facebook now asks me to pay to promote my WallStreetWindow "fan" page so people will see more of the posts. I'm not going to do that. As a business person there is nothing exciting about that. I'll gladly pay Facebook if it wants to help me grow my business or website, but just asking for money for nothing is a boring idea.

And I'm not the only one getting bored. In Facebook's last quarterly earnings report it stated that "we believe that some of our users have reduced their engagement with Facebook in favor of increased engagement with other products and services such as Instagram." The company said last month in the "risk factors" of its annual 10-K filing. "In the event that our users increasingly engage with other products and services, we may experience a decline in user engagement and our business could be harmed."

For the youth Instagram, where they post a photo and grunt is now the cool thing. People are going to pineinterest and twitter. Here is what Facebook stock has done:

The company is now struggling to find new ways to generate revenue. It has filed a patent to allow users to pay to turn off ads.

“The user may select one or more social networking objects to replace advertisements or other elements that are normally displayed to visitors of the user’s profile page that are otherwise controlled by the social networking system," the patent states. "In particular embodiments, the user may edit elements on their profile page that are otherwise automatically generated and controlled in design and content by the social networking system. In particular embodiments, the user is billed on a recurring basis for profile personalization.”

Today Facebook is holding a press conference in which it will reveal planned changes to its "news feed" to try to engage users. They will include bigger photos, more videos, and ads more closely linked to user interests. Does that excite you? Sounds like another boring Facebook idea.

When Facebook went public it was hyped up for a week on CNBC and I made several posts telling people to stay away from its stock. I still wouldn't invest in this thing. It's just a fad.

Topics: Gold and Gold Stocks

Today after weeks of falling gold stocks finally rallied strongly as the HUI gold stock index went up 3.95%.

Ironically last week marked the biggest one week outflow of money out of gold and commodity funds ever recorded.

According to Bloomberg, "Money managers removed a record $4.23 billion from commodity funds in the week ended Feb. 27, including $4.03 billion from gold and precious-metals funds, said Cameron Brandt, the director of research for Cambridge, Massachusetts-based researcher EPFR Global, which tracks money flows. That's the highest of data going back to 2000."

In the futures market hedge funds liquidated their long positions by 16% that week too.

This represents a huge liquidation of funds out of gold on the part of money managers.

If you are bullish on gold you should be encouraged by this news!

You see this move reminds me of what happened last summer in European markets. The problem is that hedge funds and fast money professionals chase performance and they have to give out monthly and quarterly reports to their investors. This makes them want to be in things going up and scared to be in markets that have moved down for a period of time.

If a market falls for too long then they simply feel they can no longer be seen owning it. They know that if they send a report to their investors showing they own something that has been falling they might get yelled at - or worse their investors might take their money and give it to someone that is riding the hot market.

When markets decline the pro's panic.

Panic comes at market bottoms. Look if the hedge funds sell all they can sell then a market has nowhere to go but up. Remember last year when I was buying GREK and it didn't even have $10 million in it!

This is an interesting chart today:

Finally! A BIG up day! I am very curious to see what this does next.

Topics: Stock Trading Strategies

Yesterday the S&P 500 and the DOW made a new high for the year. This surprised me a bit as I thought going into this week we might see the market correction continue. I still think we'll see more of a correction in the markets at some point in the coming weeks - but I have never doubted that this cyclical bull market was over or that any of the others around the world that started towards the end of last year had ended either.

One thing you can take from this is that the budget cuts don't matter to the market. The news means nothing.

Another thing you can take from this though is that you should never sell everything and try to perfectly time the market and buy back in at a lower level when you are in a bull market.

I know when the market pulls back for a week - or even a few days - it can be tempting to smack yourself in the head and think I should have sold. I could have got out at the top and be buying now or buy at a lower price.

The second you try to do that the market goes up without you and that can lead to compounding mistakes.

It is simply too tough to time the short-term gyrations in the market. In bull markets you need to hold some core positions and then work around them. How big that position should be and how many positions it should be invested in is really an individual decision. What makes one person feel comfortable may not be right for someone else.

The real secret in the long run to making money in the market is finding the way to manage your money that works best for you. Too many people want to jump all in and all out of the market an end up making a mess. Anyone successful in the stock market game knows all of the mistakes from experience and has learned and adjusted. You are always learning.

My plan is still the same - hold a core position and then looked to add on - probably in mining and commodity stocks at some point this year. I'm about 83% invested.

This week's Investors Intelligence survey showed another drop in the bulls for the past week. They are now down to 44.2% from 46.3% and off of their high of 54.50% set just four weeks ago on February 5.

This is really interesting action, because its a pretty quick drop without the market actually dropping. It seems to suggest that people are actually now skeptical of the market with the market going up. From a contrarian standpoint that is a positive for the stock market.

Topics: Projects & Productivity

You might be wondering what is going on with this site if you look at the last few posts I just put up. These were posts I made on another site I started a few months ago - www.writermichaelswanson.com. I set this other site up with the intention of posting things not related to the stock market on it, but decided that it probably will end up being confusing to be posting on two sites and to phase out this writing site and just post what I have to say on this wallstreetwindow.com website. If that sounds confusing that is because it was - lol.

Simplify! Simplify!

So going forward you will see occasionally see posts from me having more to do with history, culture, and philosophical ideas than just trading - but in the end markets and this stuff are all linked together. I feel we live in interesting times and are in all of this together, and we have to think together about what is happening in the markets and the world at large. It's all connected.

I also am working on a new theme/look for the site that might be done shortly too. It will rearrange a few things and change the color scheme, but we are going to also have an option for you to be able to keep things the way they are for yourself if you choose to. So it will be up to you whether you want to engage in this new look one we have it going or just stay with the way things are.

Next upcoming posts will have more to do with the markets, I just wanted to move over some posts from the other site to this one. So that's what's been happening if you were curious. Once the theme is finished I plan on making more frequent posts on the site.

Topics: Thought Fragments

This fragment comes from the Roman historian Tacitus and his book of Annals of Roman History. In this book he describes how the second emperor of Rome, Tiberius, ascended into power after the death of Augustus Caesar:

The first crime of the new reign was the murder of Postumus Agrippa. Though he was surprised and unarmed, a centurion of the firmest resolution despatched him with difficulty. Tiberius gave no explanation of the matter to the Senate; he pretended that there were directions from his father ordering the tribune in charge of the prisoner not to delay the slaughter of Agrippa, whenever he should himself have breathed his last. Beyond a doubt, Augustus had often complained of the young man's character, and had thus succeeded in obtaining the sanction of a decree of the Senate for his banishment. But he never was hard-hearted enough to destroy any of his kinsfolk, nor was it credible that death was to be the sentence of the grandson in order that the stepson might feel secure. It was more probable that Tiberius and Livia, the one from fear, the other from a stepmother's enmity, hurried on the destruction of a youth whom they suspected and hated. When the centurion reported, according to military custom, that he had executed the command, Tiberius replied that he had not given the command, and that the act must be justified to the Senate.

As soon as Sallustius Crispus who shared the secret (he had, in fact, sent the written order to the tribune) knew this, fearing that the charge would be shifted on himself, and that his peril would be the same whether he uttered fiction or truth, he advised Livia not to divulge the secrets of her house or the counsels of friends, or any services performed by the soldiers, nor to let Tiberius weaken the strength of imperial power by referring everything to the Senate, for "the condition," he said, "of holding empire is that an account cannot be balanced unless it be rendered to one person."

Meanwhile at Rome people plunged into slavery- consuls, senators, knights. The higher a man's rank, the more eager his hypocrisy, and his looks the more carefully studied, so as neither to betray joy at the decease of one emperor nor sorrow at the rise of another, while he mingled delight and lamentations with his flattery. Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Apuleius, the consuls, were the first to swear allegiance to Tiberius Caesar, and in their presence the oath was taken by Seius Strabo and Caius Turranius, respectively the commander of the praetorian cohorts and the superintendent of the corn supplies. Then the Senate, the soldiers and the people did the same. For Tiberius would inaugurate everything with the consuls, as though the ancient constitution remained, and he hesitated about being emperor. Even the proclamation by which he summoned the senators to their chamber, he issued merely with the title of Tribune, which he had received under Augustus. The wording of the proclamation was brief, and in a very modest tone. "He would," it said, "provide for the honours due to his father, and not leave the lifeless body, and this was the only public duty he now claimed."

In the original Latin Tacitus uses the phrase "Arcana imperii" to explain what is happening in these passages. Renaissance political philosophers were captivated by it. In English it means empire/power as a hidden thing.

Professor Evan Horn writes, "the arcana tradition elaborates the crucial point of secrecy: its potential, but also its profound ambivalence. Secrecy opens up a discretionary space of action exempt from the rule of law, and, according to Carl Schmitt, ignores the law so as to allow it to become effective. Secrecy serves to protect and stabilize the state, but at the same time it opens a space of exception from the rule of law that breeds violence, corruption and oppression. Instead of seeing secrecy as the opposite of a political culture of transparency, it is more productive to regard secrecy as transparency's complement – a counterpart, however, that is marked by the profound paradox of being both a consolidation of and a threat to democracy."

Topics: Thought Fragments

This is an interview with professor James Scott about his book The Art of Not Being Governed. Scott studied the hundred million or so people who live on the planet today outside of any government jurisdiction. They are not taxed, not involved in wars, and live in peace.

By the end of this century these people will disappear if governments seize their land and destroy their cultures and societies. Through their life though they deny the very philosophical basis of state power. As one Amazon reviewer put it "far from people moving from a state of nature to the Leviathan state, many people want to flee the state to return to nature."

Almost everyone - including me and you - take state power for granted. We think its right and natural to live in a state and depend on it. People identify with their government - no matter where they live. We all think states are necessary to maintain order and to live. But these 100 million non-state people prove that's not true and these feelings we have of dependence and worship of the state are just functions of our life experience as being born as a member of a state.

Now I don't want to live in the woods, but maybe if I was born where these people were I would think like them.

Topics: Understand the Past

Robert Kennedy Jr. told a crowd in Dallas this weekend, that his father had doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and that RFK Sr. considered the Warren Commission's report on the shooting to be "a shoddy piece of craftsmanship.”

According to an AP wire story today:

Robert Kennedy Jr. said that his father "publicly supported the Warren Commission report but privately he was dismissive of it."

He said his father had investigators do research into the assassination and found that phone records of Oswald and nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who killed Oswald two days after the president's assassination, "were like an inventory" of mafia leaders the government had been investigating.

He said his father, later elected U.S. senator in New York, was "fairly convinced" that others were involved.

The Dallas Morning News reports:

The president’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, spent much of the five years after his 1963 assassination outside the United States because she was shocked at the level of violence here.

The attorney general read books extensively during that period, his children said.

“He read the Greeks,” Robert Kennedy Jr. said. “He read the Catholic scholars, and he read the poets, Emerson and Keats, trying to figure out why a just God would allow injustice of this magnitude.”

ABC news has this report on this story:

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Amusingly the CBS report makes the claim that no historians believe in a conspiracy and then shows a talking head historian saying this as proof. The claim is false. Many historians think it was a conspiracy and so do many people in government at the time and people close to the Kennedy family. As usual on this subject the TV news media makes errors and spouts propaganda with distorted reporting of its own. One can go buy and listen to a copy of Lyndon Johnson's taped phone conversations after the assassination and hear him talk about a possible conspiracy with the director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover.

For example, here is a taped conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Richard Russell a member of the Warren Commission in which he agrees with Senator Richard Russell that the Warren Commission theory about a single "magic bullet" couldn't have happened. Without the single bullet theory there would have had to have been two shooters in the assassination, hence the need for the theory.

Two days after the assassination law professor Eugene Rostow called LBJ aid Bill Moyers and made the recommendation to form a commission to reassure the American people about the assassination because people "weren't believing anything." He was the first person to come up with the idea. His brother Walter served in the national security council and was one of the main architects of the Vietnam war. He got promoted to the position of National Security Advisor to LBJ after Bill Moyers suggested to Johnson that he promote him because he would be "as loyal as a dog" to him. After Johnson left the White House he got Walter Rostow a position at the University of Texas in Austin, because he had become so reviled by the Vietnam war that no one else would hire him at the time.

Here is a taped conversation in the days after the assassination in which Hoover and Johnson talk about the formation of the Warren Commission as a way to block the Congress from initiating their own investigation that they would not be able to control.

LBJ then started to recruit people for the Warren Commission. Senator Richard Russell didn't want to be on it, but LBJ used arm twisting, threats, and hints of corruption, to get him to do it as you can hear in this tape. He told Russell that as a Warren Commission member he wouldn't have to do anything but put his name on it - "all your going to do is evaluate a Hoover report that he's already made". This tape also gives you a hint of why people went along with covering up the assassination and thought it was best for the country. LBJ told Russell that "there is a good many more ramifications than are on the surface" and we need to "prevent a war that can kill 38 million Americans in an hour."

In the morning after the assassination Hoover called Lyndon Johnson and gave him information that demonstrated that there was a conspiracy involving Oswald. He told him that a man impersonating Oswald before the assassination went to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City and pretended to be him. He demanded to see a KGB agent there that the CIA knew was involved in terror and assassination plots. Whoever was pretending to be Oswald was trying to paint him as being part of a Soviet plot.

This taped conversation has been conveniently erased, but the government has released partial transcripts of them. You can read them here or order a set of the recordings and transcripts here.

They are expensive, but I have a set of them. I can listen to the track of this conversation and listen to an archivist explain that this tape has been erased, as you can hear for yourself here:

I have a copy of the volume of transcripts and can open it up to read J. Edgar Hoover tell Lyndon Johnson on the morning of the day after the assassination this:

"We have up here the tape and the photograph of the main who was at the Soviet Embassy using Oswald's name. That picture and tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet Embassy down there." He then says, "the case as it stands now isn't strong enough to be able to get a conviction. Then there is [unclear] angle. I think we have a very, very close plan. Now if we can identify this man who is at the Mexican Embassy - at.. the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, the embassy in Mexico City. This man Oswald denied everything. He doesn't know anything about anything. But the gun thing, is a definite trend."

The police found a gun in the Texas School Book Depository and the FBI linked its ownership to Oswald. Hoover stopped any investigation into leads of conspiracy and put all of his resources into proving that Oswald and only Oswald was involved in the assassination despite evidence he himself had to the otherwise.

Here is an interview of a researcher who looked into the erasure of this conversation and shows how difficult it is to get any information on the assassination out into the mainstream media.

Perhaps Robert Dallek in the CBS interview listened to the tape and didn't read the transcript and that's why he doesn't know that the director of the FBI told LBJ 24 hours after the assassination that someone had impersonated Oswald. Not being fully informed or being willing to say anything to be on TV makes him the perfect talking head historian for the "History Channel" and TV news programs to affirm the Warren Commission.

A few years ago a prize winning book on the Cuban Missile Crisis using records from both the Soviet Union and the United States titled "One Hell of a Gamble" documented in its final chapter that RFK engaged in a personal investigation into the assassination and then sent a friend of the Kennedy family to the Soviet Union to tell them that he knew they had nothing to do with it and told them of the forces he suspected were actually behind the assassination. The KGB had information within hours of the assassination that made them conclude that Oswald was part of a large plot. They had immediate suspicions because of the "Oswald" who contacted the Soviet Embassy requesting to see a KGB agent.

The fact that someone went to this embassy weeks before the assassination and pretended to be Oswald is evidence of a conspiracy in the assassination. The Soviets immediately feared that someone was trying to falsely link them to the assassination.

This isn't news. It is information that has been around for decades. In fact in the 1970's the CIA released this photograph of the man who impersonated Oswald. CIA agents had cameras across the street from the embassy taking pictures of the people going in and out of it.

We do not know who this man is and many of the CIA files remained declassified and some destroyed. The government has never tried to figure out who he was. The mainstream media has never run a story about it.

Now the information about RFK's man's trip to Russia and what he told the Soviets on behalf of RFK is sitting in the Kennedy library archives. These specific files are closed to the general public for reasons of national security, but a few scholars have been granted access to them and some of the info is recounted in the "One Hell of a Gamble" book. Much about the assassination remains hidden and kept secret from the American people.

I listened to the Jackie Kennedy tapes that came out last year and in one short segment of it you get the impression that RFK received letters from his emissary about this trip and what he said and gave them to her and the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. as a way of telling them what he thought or found out about the assassination.

The "One Hell of a Gamble" book is the best book to come out about the Cuban Missile Crisis in the past twenty years and any scholar of the Kennedy administration or Cold War worth his salt knows about it. Its been reviewed in the American Historical Review and even the Council for Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs. So the idea that historians don't know of any evidence of a conspiracy or should be surprised by the comments this weekend is nonsense. And that's just one work on the subject - not written by "theorists" but serious historians.

What is news is that members of the Kennedy family have voiced public their belief in a conspiracy. They have tended to remain silent about the event so that is news.

According to a Dallas reporter, When asked at this event who he thought was involved in the assassination RFK. JR said "rogue CIA." The reporter writes:

Kennedy said the media basically accepted the Warren Report, because they were ready to move on. And even the Church Commission’s review of CIA and mob ties in the 1970s, and its criticism of the Warren report, didn’t re-ignite wide interest.

In recent years, as documents have been declassified, new information dribbling out has “fortified” doubts about the Warren report. But, Kennedy said, it has come out only incrementally and hasn’t focused public attention. Speaking of assassination researchers who have delved more deeply into new information, Kennedy said, “The knee-jerk reaction by the news media has been to marginalize or dismiss those people.”

Then came a 2008 book by pacifist and Catholic theologian James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable.

“What Douglass has done is distill all that stuff, put it in a very well-documented book, and come to his own conclusions,” Kennedy said. “I don’t know if it’s right or not, but a lot of the evidence, at this point, anyway, is very convincing, there was not a lone gunman.”

Another reporter writes that RFK Jr. told the audience that ""We're becoming a national security state!"

November 22, 2013 will be the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination and there will be many tall tales and lies told by both some of the conspiracy theorists and the mainstream media about it this year.

I understand why a mainstream historian or someone in academia would be very reluctant to study the Kennedy assassination, write about it, or even hint that they think there could be a conspiracy involved - to do so risks being labeled a cook by the media, having publishers drop you, and risk losing grant money. It is also a difficult subject to talk write about anyway as it is a bit of a sinkhole. I can sympathize with them, but to say there is no evidence of one or that no one that is a historian thinks there could be one as Dallek did for the TV news opens one up to well deserved attack.

The AP story has more details on the RFK children's comments:

Rory Kennedy, a documentary filmmaker whose recent film "Ethel" looks at the life of her mother, also focused on the happier memories. She said she and her siblings grew up in a culture where it was important to give back.

"In all of the tragedy and challenge, when you try to make sense of it and understand it, it's very difficult to fully make sense of it," she said. "But I do feel that in everything that I've experienced that has been difficult and that has been hard and that has been loss, that I've gained something in it."

"We were kind of lucky because we lost our members of our family when they were involved in a great endeavor," her brother added. "And that endeavor is to make this country live up to her ideals."

Topics: American Society and Culture

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