2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

[davidstvz]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

I agree, but as I said, I have no assets in need of managing. I stumbled onto EJs writing via the chapter he wrote in "America's Bubble Economy" and his writing was light years ahead of the rest of the book. I read his 2010 book and I've been subscribing since then because I just like reading what EJ writes. He's not really writing any more, so I have little reason to subscribe. Maybe when I find myself with assets in need of investing some day... but for the near term I think the obvious thing for me to do is pay down debt.

[verdo]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

I agree, but as I said, I have no assets in need of managing. I stumbled onto EJs writing via the chapter he wrote in "America's Bubble Economy" and his writing was light years ahead of the rest of the book. I read his 2010 book and I've been subscribing since then because I just like reading what EJ writes. He's not really writing any more, so I have little reason to subscribe. Maybe when I find myself with assets in need of investing some day... but for the near term I think the obvious thing for me to do is pay down debt.

Well fair enough man. I don't know what your personal financial situation is but I will say this: As a guy who just graduated college, you can imagine that i don't have much in terms of assets myself, plus I've got my own debts as well (student debt sadly)...but the reason why i'm still here is that i want to put the little that i do have saved up to good use. The thing is david, the times we're living in are basically those once in a life time moments where due to huge market manipulations by government, individuals who are positioned properly will have the opportunity to make the most money imaginable in the shortest amount of time possible...and this is all thanks to governments and central bankers who time and time again think they are smarter than the free market. When the markets do get ahead of them (which they always do in the end), you'll see events happening in the markets that will have the world completely stunned, and you and I are incredibly fortunate (or unfortunate depending on ones point of view) to be alive while history is being made. I say all this in the hopes that even if you choose not to re-subscribe (which i perfectly understand based on what you've said), that you'll at least stick around on the forums and follow whats going on...since quite a bit of the good information is free on here anyways. Hope to see more from you in the future!

[vt]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

EJ,

What about the price of oil? Could it recover from the $25 area to say as high as $50 this year? I remember you saying that banks don't understand that these new wells deplete faster than lenders plan. With accelerated depletion and the significant decline in prices it seems that supply could contract from drilling reductions enough to push prices up some.

If oil prices do increase as above does that mean stock prices also increase? I could see this if economic demand increases, but I don't see that.

Thank you

[davidstvz]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

verdo: I'm sure I will subscribe again, but with EJ posting so infrequently, it'll probably be just for a month a year or so. I don't know. The best thing I could do for myself financially in the short term is blow less money and perhaps better develop my career and get a new, higher paying job. I'm really underachieving in my career as an IT manager.

I didn't want to write what I wrote... I was planning to just silently slip away, but then I thought better of it. I thought I should speak up in case anyone else was doing what I was doing... just reading for the pure knowledge of it. I really like to know true things, and EJ is someone who goes to great lengths to speak the truth. I greatly respect that. So while I said I felt like a fool... mostly I don't. I'm glad to have played a small part in financing such a great seeker of truth. I just can't justify the yearly rate at the moment.

[DSpencer]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

I paid for a two year subscription a year and a half ago and I don't feel like I've gotten much out of it. I feel like a bit of a fool actually as I probably shouldn't be here. I have only a limited understanding of finance and have no assets to protect (I own a house and a mortgage and have retirement funds locked up in the Teacher's Retirement System of Louisiana). I'm mainly here to read the interesting things EJ says and the discussions it starts. I guess I shouldn't renew in June.

If someone subscribed on Feb 1, 2014 for two years they will have their subscription expire without a single new "frontpage" article posted. That's assuming one is not posted in the next week which sounds like a sure thing now. There was definitely value aside from "actionable information" in the discussion, but I agree that has mostly faded as well. I look at the comments on this page and feel like I've wandered into a different part of the internet.

ESF is in the house. Everything under control, Look away!

A monetary conspiracy that "has been directly involved in virtually every major US fraud/scandal since its creation in 1934: the London gold pool, the Kennedy assassinations, Iran-Contra, CIA drug trafficking, HIV, and worse..."

I think I'll spare myself the insanity of watching those videos.

DUDE... In a life time you only need to be correct a few times with your wealth. One great call in 5 years or 10 years is all you need. It takes years to learn how the markets are played. Itulp.com is a must have! EJ rocks !

What happens when you win the local lottery, and you have a need to know how to handle your wealth! ha!

I honestly don't know if this is serious or not.

Take a look at this. Below, I've posted a presentation made by an investor named Grant Williams a few years ago which i believe is quite well done. He basically outlines how one could have turned $35 dollars into $220 000 dollars by simply making 4 decisions over the last 40 years. Literally. No tricks, no schemes. It's done simply by buying an asset class while its undervalued, then selling it when it becomes over-valued, then taking those profits and buying the next undervalued asset. Investing isn't that complicated.

So all you have to do is know the future and you can make 6,000 times your money in 40 years. Buy low, sell high. Simple.

The only real complex part is figuring out exactly when the best time is to short markets, or pivot in and out of asset classes. But this is what itulip.com is for.

See this is where I get confused. Was there ever a time since EJ called the 2007 crash where someone striving to base their investments on itulip forecasting would have gone back into the stock market? My general recollection of the itulip view was something like:

2007: Market crash incoming! Buy some gold and treasuries
2008-2014: Doom and Gloom, no real recovery (maybe do some private equity deals if you can)
2014-now: Crystal ball unclear ask again later or no change in outlook since 2014. Recent downturn is a fake crash.

Am I mistaken in my memory?

So when would someone have gone long in order to sell before the next crash? If the plan is to simply short the market every 5-10 years and then wait I suppose that could work, but damn, that's a nerves of steel strategy. In my humble view that's about the farthest thing from a reasonable strategy for a person of modest means.

[Polish_Silver]

Itulip

I agree, but as I said, I have no assets in need of managing. I stumbled onto EJs writing via the chapter he wrote in "America's Bubble Economy" and his writing was light years ahead of the rest of the book. I read his 2010 book and I've been subscribing since then because I just like reading what EJ writes. He's not really writing any more, so I have little reason to subscribe. Maybe when I find myself with assets in need of investing some day... but for the near term I think the obvious thing for me to do is pay down debt.

It helps to build up your knowledge over the years. But you could do that without subscribing---reading the free parts of Ej's essay.

Also a word of caution . EJ's record is not perfect. His gold prices estimates were wrong several years in a row, and oil prices have stayed low longer
than he and others thought (PCO is further out than people thought).

Ej's expertise is not in geology, yet geology can play a role in macro-economic outcomes.

[verdo]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

See this is where I get confused. Was there ever a time since EJ called the 2007 crash where someone striving to base their investments on itulip forecasting would have gone back into the stock market? My general recollection of the itulip view was something like:

2007: Market crash incoming! Buy some gold and treasuries
2008-2014: Doom and Gloom, no real recovery (maybe do some private equity deals if you can)
2014-now: Crystal ball unclear ask again later or no change in outlook since 2014. Recent downturn is a fake crash.

Am I mistaken in my memory?

So when would someone have gone long in order to sell before the next crash? If the plan is to simply short the market every 5-10 years and then wait I suppose that could work, but damn, that's a nerves of steel strategy. In my humble view that's about the farthest thing from a reasonable strategy for a person of modest means.

What im talking about Spencer is simply identifying and avoiding the assets that are in sustained bear markets (stocks for the most part since 2000) and identifying assets that are in sustained bull markets, which in my view have been commodities from 2000 to 2011. They've come down in price since 2011, but im not sold on the commodity story being over quite yet. Gold in particular has done quite fine since EJ started buying in 2001, as its still outperforming the market since the beginning of its bull run. I mean, im curious to know how you personally invest. Buying things when they're cheap and selling them when they become overvalued on a historical basis seems pretty sensible and straightforward to me. As i said, the difficulty comes from actually picking the next bull market/figuring out the next trend, recognizing those absolute tops, etc. You don't need to be perfect, and that part of the video was simply identifying what one should strive to do as an investor....not how well one should be expected to perform over a 40 year period. That is especially true when you're living in a period such as this one with central bank manipulation of markets. But the overall premise to investing isn't difficult to understand...not for me anyways. And being on Itulip over the years would have helped you dodge quite a few bullets

[vt]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

March, 2000- Sell stocks and buy 30 year treasuries.

2001- Take 15% of funds in Treasuries and buy gold around $250

December, 2007 Sell stocks, market will decline 40%.

If you had followed this you would probably have beaten virtually all money managers on a risk adjusted and non risk adjusted basis.

EJ also said to sell Silver at around $50 in April, 2011. Note gold also topped at the same time but EJ saidhe didn't want to sell and pay long term capital gains as he thinks cold could be a lot higher over the next decade or two.

2010- Buy multifamily real estate through the private fund he mentioned.

Now if you would have shorted stocks on the two major sell signals, or even shorted silver you would have likely done much better.

EJ is not a stock picker or an investment letter, but if one reads carefully what he says there were opportunities to not only preserve capital, but to also add to capital.

The above is what I remember from his work. Where ever I was incorrect please provide the places.

As ICM63 states: you only have to right a few times at major turning points to have the opportunity to really prosper. There is far more value than any monetary gain; it's understanding what is really going on in the global economy, which is priceless.

[Chomsky]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

verdo: I'm sure I will subscribe again, but with EJ posting so infrequently, it'll probably be just for a month a year or so. I don't know. The best thing I could do for myself financially in the short term is blow less money and perhaps better develop my career and get a new, higher paying job. I'm really underachieving in my career as an IT manager.

I didn't want to write what I wrote... I was planning to just silently slip away, but then I thought better of it. I thought I should speak up in case anyone else was doing what I was doing... just reading for the pure knowledge of it. I really like to know true things, and EJ is someone who goes to great lengths to speak the truth. I greatly respect that. So while I said I felt like a fool... mostly I don't. I'm glad to have played a small part in financing such a great seeker of truth. I just can't justify the yearly rate at the moment.

I am in your position. I am here just for the thrill of reading brilliant analysis. I found EJ around the time of his Harper's essay and became an instant fan. I haven't subscribed to iTulip in over two years, and prior to that I only subscribed on a monthly basis as needed, when new material was posted.

[icm63]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

.."In my humble view that's about the farthest thing from a reasonable strategy for a person of modest means."..

This is a macro site, for macro thinkers.

[GRG55]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

I agree, but as I said, I have no assets in need of managing. I stumbled onto EJs writing via the chapter he wrote in "America's Bubble Economy" and his writing was light years ahead of the rest of the book. I read his 2010 book and I've been subscribing since then because I just like reading what EJ writes. He's not really writing any more, so I have little reason to subscribe. Maybe when I find myself with assets in need of investing some day... but for the near term I think the obvious thing for me to do is pay down debt.

You said you were a participant in a Teacher's retirement pension scheme?

Did you only teach your students what they needed to manage? Or did you teach them how to be curious about what is going on around them, and why? This is a most unusual time in the global financial system...

Having said that, iTulip isn't necessarily the only place to go, nor is it for everybody so I understand.

[davidstvz]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

GRG55: I'm not a teacher, but just work at a university as a professional employee (IT work). I think I had a choice to do something else when I started, but that was 7.5 years ago. The teacher's retirement system is no longer an option for me unless I change jobs. They take 8% of every check but I don't pay anything into social security. Supposedly if I work full-time for 40 years I will end up with a retirement equal to the average of my 3 highest paid years (if less than 40, then some percentage of that). If I change jobs within 20 years, I can actually pull out my 8% per year (no interest of course) but until then, I'm locked in.

[DSpencer]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

What im talking about Spencer is simply identifying and avoiding the assets that are in sustained bear markets (stocks for the most part since 2000) and identifying assets that are in sustained bull markets, which in my view have been commodities from 2000 to 2011. They've come down in price since 2011, but im not sold on the commodity story being over quite yet. Gold in particular has done quite fine since EJ started buying in 2001, as its still outperforming the market since the beginning of its bull run. I mean, im curious to know how you personally invest. Buying things when they're cheap and selling them when they become overvalued on a historical basis seems pretty sensible and straightforward to me. As i said, the difficulty comes from actually picking the next bull market/figuring out the next trend, recognizing those absolute tops, etc. You don't need to be perfect, and that part of the video was simply identifying what one should strive to do as an investor....not how well one should be expected to perform over a 40 year period. That is especially true when you're living in a period such as this one with central bank manipulation of markets. But the overall premise to investing isn't difficult to understand...not for me anyways. And being on Itulip over the years would have helped you dodge quite a few bullets

Of course the overall premise of investing isn't difficult to understand. The premise of golf is easy too.

The reason that most money managers can't beat their benchmark by more than their fees is because it is hard to do. One of the main reasons that assets would be be "undervalued" in the first place is because valuation is difficult.

You said earlier that you've been short the market since Jan 1 and expected it would go down at least 20% more. Then EJ says the crash is fake and you then consider going cash or even going long. How can you be so fickle and so confident all at once? Less than 100 words convinces you that instead of shorting a precipitous drop you should ride the S&P up for a while?

[verdo]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

Of course the overall premise of investing isn't difficult to understand. The premise of golf is easy too.

The reason that most money managers can't beat their benchmark by more than their fees is because it is hard to do. One of the main reasons that assets would be be "undervalued" in the first place is because valuation is difficult.

You said earlier that you've been short the market since Jan 1 and expected it would go down at least 20% more. Then EJ says the crash is fake and you then consider going cash or even going long. How can you be so fickle and so confident all at once? Less than 100 words convinces you that instead of shorting a precipitous drop you should ride the S&P up for a while?

Firstly, my short term trades are NOT where i hold the bulk of my money. I would never put the bulk of my money in something that i felt was clearly overvalued and overly manipulated. I'm not a trader, but i do it anyways for experience, especially when i see decent opportunities to make a little profit on the side, and the reason why im here is to learn from people more experienced than i am. Eric is light years ahead of me when it comes to investing, so when he speaks and backs up what he says, i don't blissfully dismiss it. This is literally the third time im saying this...but the difficulty with investing is actually figuring out when the true tops and bottoms are, and when the right time is to pivot in and out of an asset class. Again, for the third time, this is what i believe the value of Itulip is again, this is the reason why i value the site because it actually helps with the real difficult part of investing.

There's a reason why we have a fairly inactive short-term trades section on the forum. It's not really what itulip is about. We're more focused on macro trends here but we do trades from time to time anyways. You should know that already. Honestly though Spencer, im not here to try to convince you of anything. You are free to believe i am wrong...but i do not wish to continue squabbling with you over this as its not what I'm really here for. You've made your point...we disagree...lets leave it at that.

[Chris Coles]

Re: 2013 Review and 2014 Forecast - Part I: The Last Bubble - Eric Janszen

verdo: I'm sure I will subscribe again, but with EJ posting so infrequently, it'll probably be just for a month a year or so. I don't know. The best thing I could do for myself financially in the short term is blow less money and perhaps better develop my career and get a new, higher paying job. I'm really underachieving in my career as an IT manager.

I didn't want to write what I wrote... I was planning to just silently slip away, but then I thought better of it. I thought I should speak up in case anyone else was doing what I was doing... just reading for the pure knowledge of it. I really like to know true things, and EJ is someone who goes to great lengths to speak the truth. I greatly respect that. So while I said I felt like a fool... mostly I don't. I'm glad to have played a small part in financing such a great seeker of truth. I just can't justify the yearly rate at the moment.

iTulip is a classic family, gosh, we even fall out with each other sometimes. It is composed of a very wide range of free thinking individuals, from all corners of the planet; each giving, from time to time, their view of their local economy. You can ask questions, place your own views up for debate; even, if you wish, create your own thread to elaborate your own thoughts and ideas. We all arrived here because a very far sighted individual, EJ, set the whole thing into motion and sparked us to accept the role of strong debate amongst ourselves as much as with himself. Yes, lately, just like any of us, his attention is elsewhere; his head is turned to what he sees as an opportunity not to be missed. He may be right, or wrong; we will all know the answer sometime in the future.

Over the years I have been here, I have, through reading others comments, discovered so much new knowledge, it almost defies belief. Let me give you some suggestions, and remember you must follow your own instincts; what they tell you is by far the most important aspect of life; be your own man.

Place your email address into the Bank of England and read the likes of this which has just surfaced. http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publi.../2016/875.aspx

You do not have to agree with any of it, indeed, if you so wish, why not write a response and place it up here for everyone else to debate?

Again, I place a lot of credence to the papers placed up by Daniel Amerman http://www.danielamerman.com/ Particularly his paper on US unemployment http://danielamerman.com/articles/2012/WorkC.html that as you will see, directly contradicts a large part of the above paper from the BoE.

By having access to debate, it gives a multiple viewpoint of the same events.

The best way to get value from iTulip is to treat it exactly like a family; instead of sitting at the breakfast table in silence; strike up a conversation; spark debate and smile.