Category: Insights

When we left off yesterday, we were talking about interest rates… and hoping it didn’t put everybody to sleep.

All the talk in the financial world (geopolitics aside) has been the Fed’s 50-point rate cut.

Does it signal that the easy money days are coming back again? Are small-cap stocks finally going to catch a bid? Are 3% mortgages coming back?

Before we project too far, I think it’s important to point out that the Fed can only influence short-term interest rates with its monetary policy decisions. It cannot magically “set rates” throughout the economy.

As evidence – both the 10-year and the 30-year Treasury bond rates went up after the Fed’s 50-point rate cut.

The 10-year Treasury rate was 3.62% on September 16^th – two days before Powell’s announcement. By September 23^rd, the 10-year rate had jumped to 3.75%. It increased 13 basis points.

The 30-year Treasury rate was 3.93% on September 16^th. It spiked to 4.13% in the days after the Fed’s rate cut. That’s a move of 20 basis points.

Meanwhile, shorter duration Treasuries have hardly moved since the Fed’s rate cut.

Source: Bloomberg

This shows us that the Fed’s rate cut was already priced into the market. Short term Treasury rates have not fallen much since the big announcement.

Yet, long-term rates have risen materially. In financial lingo, this is known as the “bear steepener”.

Continue reading “The Fed Cuts… Rates Go Up”

Let’s talk interest rates this week.

In a normal world, interest rates would be the least interesting subject one could possibly bring up. Who cares?

But we don’t live in a normal world… so the markets fixate upon interest rates.

On September 18^th, Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Jerome Powell announced that the Fed would cut the federal funds (fed funds) rate by 50 basis points (0.50%).

The federal funds rate is the Fed’s target interest rate benchmark. It is the rate at which banks lend money to each other overnight. 

Banks are required to maintain a certain amount of reserves, and sometimes they need to borrow money from other banks to meet their requirements. The federal funds rate is the rate they pay for those short-term loans.

For this reason, the fed funds rate serves as a benchmark for other short-term interest rates in the economy. This includes rates on commercial and consumer loans as well as savings and money market accounts.

According to Keynesian economic theory, cutting the fed funds rate should lead to lower interest rates throughout the economy—which in turn will encourage businesses and consumers to borrow money and engage in increased economic activity. 

In other words, the Keynesians believe rate cuts “stimulate” the economy. Will that be the case this time around?

I’ll share my thoughts on that with you later. But first I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed. 

Continue reading “What the Fed’s rate cut actually means…”

Dear friends,

Hello and happy Monday to you!

Joe Withrow here. It’s been quite a while since I’ve written you. Nearly six months, in fact.

A lot has happened over these past six months. It seems like everything in the world of money and markets is moving faster than ever before.

So with your permission, I would like to start writing to you weekly once again.

If that’s okay – stay tuned! But if you would prefer to opt out of these emails, you can simply unsubscribe using the button below. No worries…

I’m reaching out today because we’ve been having some robust discussions inside the Phoenician League investment membership. We’ve been plugged into what’s playing out on the macroeconomic front these past few months… and it occurred to me that I should share some of these thoughts more widely. Actually, it was Tom Woods who kicked me into gear, so to speak.

For those who know ol’ Woods, Tom hosts weekly calls as part of his entrepreneur mastermind program. He mentioned to us on a call last week that hardly anybody “in our circle” maintains a mailing list these days.

Tom mails his list daily. And he named two other people who do the same… and that’s about it.

Ironically, it used to be that mailing lists were the only way for people of like-mind to connect back before the internet.

That’s how guys like the late Dr. Gary North got their start—by sending physical newsletters to people in the mail. That was the only way to communicate “alternative” ideas about economics and politics back then.

Continue reading “The world’s moving fast – let’s catch up”

Today we’ll wrap up our discussion on building an all-weather portfolio.

Looking back over the past two weeks, we have covered:

• Bitcoin
• Gold
• World-Class Insurance Stocks
• Top-Tier Energy Stocks
• Gold Royalty Stocks
• Consumer Inflation Hedges

That leaves us with deepest and most diverse investment theme: high-technology stocks. They will be our topic for today.

And we have to start with one of my favorite quotes…

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This quote comes from the late technologist Arthur C. Clarke. It’s in his book Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible… which published in 1962. Talk about prescient.

Here’s the thing – we all use space-age technology every single day and think nothing of it.

Continue reading “The Magic of Technology”

Let’s continue our discussion on building an all-weather portfolio this week. As a reminder, the seven areas that I think are worth considering today are:

• Bitcoin
• Gold
• World-Class Insurance Stocks
• Top-Tier Energy Stocks
• Gold Royalty Stocks
• Consumer Inflation Hedges
• High-Technology Stocks

If we allocate a little capital to each of these areas every time we get paid, we’ll have an automated system for building wealth. Consistency is the name of the game.

You can find our coverage of Bitcoin, gold, world-class insurance, top-tier energy, and gold royalty stocks at the links above. Today let’s talk about consumer inflation hedges.

For the last two generations, the success plan was clear.

Go to school –> get good grades –> go to college –> get a good job. If one followed that plan and had a good work ethic, a successful middle-class life would come easy.

And for those more ambitious, there were very few roadblocks to starting a business. Opportunity was everywhere.

That was the American dream. It’s what inspired countless hard-working immigrants to create a new life in this country in the 19th and 20th centuries.

But that dream is fading.

Continue reading “How to Combat Inflation”

“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such… That is, the end point of mankind\’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” ­-Francis Fukuyama

I’d like to pause our discussion on building an all-weather portfolio today in favor of a big-picture idea.

It’s an idea that’s been rattling around in the back of my head… and I’ve made some investment decisions based on it. But I’ve never fleshed the idea out on paper before.

So please forgive me if the idea isn’t completely formed yet. Sometimes you just have to start writing with what you have and then the rest will come to you…

The quote from Mr. Fukuyama above comes from an essay he wrote in 1989. He titled it The End of History?.

Fukuyama’s essay suggested that the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the end of history. With the communists defeated, Fukuyama said that humanity’s ideological evolution was complete. Thus, the Western liberal democracy as it then existed would last forever.

At the time Fukuyama’s suggestion made a fair amount of sense. It had become clear for the world to see that market-based economies are superior to socialist ones.

After all, it was “morning in America”. The economy was humming. The labor market was strong. And household incomes were on the rise.

Meanwhile, technological developments were powering forward.

Continue reading “The End of History and Saving the Current Financial System – a Developing Thesis”

We’re talking about the investments that form an all-weather portfolio in the current macroeconomic climate this week. The idea is that we can allocate a little chunk of money to these investments every time we get paid to automate a system for building wealth.

As a reminder, the seven areas that I think are worth considering today are:

• Bitcoin
• Gold
• World-Class Insurance Stocks
• Top-Tier Energy Stocks
• Gold Royalty Stocks
• Consumer Inflation Hedges
• High-Technology Stocks

Please note that I’m omitting investment real estate and other income-producing assets here. That’s only because we can’t buy those assets in small increments. They require a larger commitment. And we should only consider them after we’ve built a strong financial base – which is what this consistent wealth strategy will do for us.

We discussed our first four investment themes in previous issues. You can access those by clicking the links above. As for today…

The legacy financial system is fracturing right before our eyes.

Continue reading “Generating Consistent Cash Flow From Gold”

We’re talking about investment themes for building consistent wealth this week.

We covered Bitcoin and gold last Thursday. And we discussed world-class insurance stocks yesterday. Today we have to talk about the master economic resource – energy.

Simply put, nothing happens without energy. Everything we see in our modern world today – and everything we use on a daily basis – is only possible because of energy.

It’s a simple thing. But if we truly ponder it, it changes our perspective.

My investment philosophy is this: I want to own energy in the most advantageous way I can. If we start there, all we need to do is figure out what form that energy should take.

Top-Tier Energy Stocks

The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement would have us believe that we should own energy in the form of solar and windmills.

They told us that we’re rapidly moving towards a “carbon-neutral”, “net-zero emission” world. And in that world, we would reduce our dependance on fossil fuels—namely oil, natural gas, and coal.

Countless “clean energy” exchange traded funds (ETFs) popped up support this theme. ESG investing became a hot trend. And Larry Fink, CEO of investment management giant BlackRock, paraded around in media appearances proclaiming the gospel of ESG.

But then reality set in.

Continue reading “The Master Economic Resource”

Last week we laid out a system for building consistent wealth. Then we outlined seven different investment themes through which one could implement such a system. They are:

• Bitcoin
• Gold
• World-Class Insurance Stocks
• Top-Tier Energy Stocks
• Gold Royalty Stocks
• Consumer Inflation Hedges
• High-Technology Stocks

We talked about the ‘why’ for Bitcoin and gold last Thursday. Today let’s cover world-class insurance.

World-Class Insurance Stocks

World-class insurance refers to property and casualty (P&C) insurance companies. Believe it or not, this is one of the best businesses in the world.

To understand why, we have to understand the P&C business model. It sounds boring… but there’s magic hidden within the nuances.

Continue reading “The Cornerstone of a Robust Investment Portfolio”

Yesterday we discussed a system for building consistent wealth.

The system is rather simple. If we invest a reasonable amount of money each and every time we earn income, we’ll automatically grow our wealth and create financial security.

The big question is – what should we invest in? And to that I proposed seven different investment themes. They are:

• Bitcoin
• Gold
• World-Class Insurance Stocks
• Top-Tier Energy Stocks
• Gold Royalty Stocks
• Consumer Inflation Hedges
• High-Technology Stocks

Let’s talk about the ‘why’ for each of these. We’ll hit each from a high level – starting with Bitcoin and gold today.

Continue reading “Diving into our investment themes…”