Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 The Numbers Really Look Bad in Private Payrolls Where the  numbers really start  to get bad is when you look at the private payrolls.  There, they were expecting 150,000 private sector jobs created. The private sector jobs are far more important than the government jobs.  The private sector jobs are self-sustaining. The tax payers are on the hook for paying the salaries of the government workers and the private sector employees, by and large are actually productive.  They're making our lives better. Manufacturing is Very Weak They were looking for 150,000 private sector jobs; we got just 96,000 jobs. AND, they revised last month's private payrolls down from 148,000 to 131,000.  Manufacturing - very weak: they were looking for 8,000 jobs - instead, we added just 3,000 manufacturing jobs in August and last month, July, they originally said that we created 16,000 manufacturing jobs and we only created 4,000 manufacturing jobs. 34,000 Jobs Created in Category "Government" Now if you actually look at the breakdown of all the jobs that were created, 34,000 jobs were created in the category of "government".  So, of all the different job categories, the one that added the most was government - 34,000 jobs. I think about 20,000 of these people were temporary hires associated with the 2020 Census. Where's the money coming from to pay for these government jobs?  It's being borrowed. We're borrowing more money to hire more government workers.  Of course, ultimately the taxpayers are on the hook for paying all these salaries, for paying interest on the money  borrowed, to pay all these salaries. Slowest Job Growth in Private Sector Creation in 8 Years In fact, if you look at the private sector job creation so far in the Trump Presidency, this year, 2019, is on track to have the slowest growth in private sector job creation in 8 years. Trump is out there talking about how this is the greatest economy ever - he's the greatest jobs president ever.  We've got the manufacturing sector, the weakest it's been in 10 years, we have the slowest growth in private sector payrolls in 8 years - this is a disaster!Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 Silver DID Join Gold's Party Back in mid-July I titled my podcast, "Is Silver Finally Joining Gold's Party?". Well, I think we know the answer to that question. Since I recorded that podcast about a month and a half ago, the price of silver is up another 15%.  In fact, it's up better than 30% since the end of May. Silver having a sterling performance today. As I am recording this podcast, it's about an hour after the close of the U.S. market, we're up almost 90 cents an ounce. We're at 19.22. Gold Still Meeting Resistance at $1,550 Gold, not quite having as strong a day as silver; gold isn't making a new high.  It's up $19.50 on the day: $1548.  Still having some problems with the $1550 resistance area. GLD, the exchange-traded ETF did make a new high for this move, but the spot market did not register a new high - but I think that's just a matter of days - if not hours - before that happens. Silver is Leading the Charge Because silver is leading the charge. It's leading gold higher; pretty much the way I said.  A week ago, I titled my podcast, "Hi Ho Silver, Away" and that prompted a number of people to comment that somehow I had just capped the silver rally by getting too optimistic on silver.  Well, that was a week ago.  We just hit $18.00, we're now over $19.00, and I said on that podcast, I thought we would have a pretty quick move up to about $20, and once we take out $20, I think this thing could really, really take off. Overdue Move Down in the Dollar What is going to be the catalyst, I think, for a much bigger move up in both gold and silver is going to be the long overdue move down in the dollar. Paradoxically, when the dollar starts its decline, it is even possible that gold and silver take a bit of a breather, or maybe pull back a little bit, in terms of dollars, but pull back even more in terms of other currencies. Remember, as strong as gold has been in dollars, it has been even stronger in other currencies.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

  Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 Let's Debunk Andy Yang's Platform I decided to take a little time out on my Labor Day to record a podcast debunking Democratic Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang. I've been getting a lot of emails about Yang; especially since he did the Joe Rogan Podcast about six months ago.  He said a lot of things that certain people find appealing, so I've been asked to comment on him and I've seen other notes about Andy Yang and I wanted to talk about him because, number one, he is rising in the polls. He's now in sixth place among the Democratic candidates; he's polling at about 3% ant that puts him ahead of established politicians like Cory Booker, Beto O'Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, so he's gaining in popularity and I think the trend is going to continue. Yang Rising in the Polls The next Democratic Debate is coming up in about a week and a half and they're no longer going to have two debates; they've narrowed it down to just ten candidates and Andy Yang is one of those 10.  I think as there are fewer candidates in the race, Yang is going to get more and more attention from the media and I think he is going to rise in the polls. Attractive Among a Bunch of Democratic Socialists To me, he is like the Bernie Sanders of this campaign. Sanders, and "Feeling the Bern"… he was popular in the 2016 campaign, mainly because he was the only alternative to Hillary Clinton, who was extremely unpopular.  So, given that matchup and there was only two choices, it made it very easy for Sanders to gain a lot of support.  He's having a much harder time galvanizing that support this time because people have a lot of alternatives. If you want a Democratic Socialist, there's a bunch of them to choose from. Clearly a Smart Guy… But But a guy like like Andy Yang, a younger guy, and clearly a smart guy.  I had not watched his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience until just yesterday.  I decided to watch it, and that's the motivation for doing this podcast. Once I heard him talk about his ideas, I spent a lot of time on his website looking at a lot of things he didn't discuss with Joe Rogan.  One thing is certainly clear to me: he's a smart guy.  Clearly, if you gave an IQ test to all of the Democratic candidates, Yang would win.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded August 30, 2019 Don't miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 Waiting for Hurricane Dorian When I recorded my last podcast on Tuesday evening, we were getting ready for Hurricane Dorian, which was supposed to pass by the south coast 0f Puerto Rico on Wednesday.  But when I woke up on Wednesday morning, the meteorologists had the hurricane pretty much coming right over my house. It had changed course and had moved north, and it was supposed to come right through Puerto Rico, rather than just go by it to the South. But then the hurricane kept moving north, and it ended up missing Puerto Rico completely.  We were here, the kids were home from school, everybody was battened down waiting for what at that time was maybe a strong tropical storm… maybe a category 1 hurricane. Puerto Rico Spared from Hurricane But we didn't even get a rain drop. Not even a gust of wind, as the hurricane just missed Puerto Rico to the north. I think it did go by the U.S. and British Virgin Islands - didn't really do much damage, there, because the store hadn't intensified but Puerto Rico's gain will be Florida's loss. The storm did not go over Puerto Rico, and initially it was supposed to go over the Dominican Republic, and the mountains there, it's a much bigger island, and it would have really beaten up the storm, but because the storm was really uninterrupted, and it has been over water the entire time, now it looks like it will be a category 4 when it hits somewhere along the Florida coast. It looks like a pretty powerful storm. Broken Window Theory You're going to hear, as is always the case, economists are going to be saying, "Oh, well, this is good for GDP." Whenever there's a hurricane, people say, "Oh, look!  We have to spend all this money repairing and rebuilding everything that was destroyed."  But that is not good for the economy. If you haven't heard the "Broken Window Theory", Henry Hazlitt does a very good job of explaining that and refuting the Keynesian idea that disasters are somehow good for the economy.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded August 27, 2019 Real Significant Action in the Market: Gold and Silver The real significant action today was in the gold & silver market. I wanted to mention today that on Friday, the U.S . dollar sold and then today we're back at 98. So the dollar is not weakening against other foreign currencies. In fact, most people are still talking about the strong dollar. Even Donald Trump talks about the fact that we have a strong dollar.  Now, Trump is bothered by the fact that we have a strong dollar, and he wishes it wasn't as strong, but he keeps talking about the strong dollar and everybody acknowledges that the dollar is strong. Silver is a Great Buy The problem is: the dollar is not strong. The price of gold going up shows you that the dollar is not strong. Gold was up $16 an  ounce: we closed at $1542.50. This is the highest close in over 6 years for the price of gold; but the real star today was silver. Silver was up 53 cents - $18.17. It's been a while now since silver was above $18. If you have been listening to my podcasts, you know that I have been pounding the table on silver. I've been telling people that silver is the key; it is really cheap relative to gold. In fact, it was better than 90:1. You needed more than 90 ounces of silver to buy a single ounce of gold. That was an all-time record low for the price of silver. Now we're at 85.  The ratio has moved back in silver's favor, but you still need 85 ounces of silver to buy one ounce of gold. That is historically extremely cheap. In fact, the only time it was cheaper was when it was 90. So it's still a great buy. Cash in some Gold to buy Silver I have been telling people, even at SchiffGold - we have actually been calling clients who we know own gold and have them sell us back their gold and buy silver, because you can get so much silver for your gold right now that it is a real bargain. Silver has never been this cheap, and so if you have gold and don't have any silver, it makes sense to buy some silver with your gold. Even after today's move, I would still say that that trade makes sense.    Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded August 23, 2019 A Bad Day for Everybody Except the Democratic Candidates If you are one of the Democrats running for President, today was a pretty good day for you. But it was a bad day for just about everybody else; I guess other than gold investors, which I clearly am, but I'm also an American and I hate to see bad things happening to my country, even though I know bad things are going to happen.  I would just rather be among those who profit from these events than suffer additional monetary loss in addition to the losses you endure as an American citizen as a result of the ensuing chaos and loss of liberties. President Trump Lost It on Twitter Today, President Trump really kind of lost it. On Twitter.  Real time.  Maybe what Trump needs is somebody to be his official Twitter filter. Maybe there should be a policy where when Trump wants to tweet, there is like a one or two hour cooling off period where the tweets get reviewed, maybe edited, maybe someone gets to talk a little sense into him before he tweets.  But today's tweet storm probably really indicates that the White House, I think, is in disarray. I think the President realizes that the air is coming out of this big, fat, ugly bubble.  That he's not going to get out of Dodge. CBO Revised Up Budget Deficit Estimate Again He's trying to pretend that the economy is in great shape, yet we're hearing rumors that we need a payroll tax cut, we need stimulus for the economy.  Why would you stimulate an economy that's doing great? If we have the greatest economy in the history of America, why does it need even more fiscal stimulus? After all, we already have the most fiscal stimulus ever. We have the largest budget deficits in history.  In fact the Congressional Budget Office this week came out and revised up again their estimates for the deficit.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded August 20, 2019 The Day the Yield Curve Inverted I am finally back in the United States - well, in Puerto Rico, technically is part of the United States, it's a territory - after my extended trip through Italy. I recorded that one podcast, and on the very next day, we had probably the most volatile day in memory. What happened that morning was that we got some weak economic data that came out of China and then we got some more weak economic data that came out of Germany and that immediately caused yields to drop around the world. In the United States, for the first time, the yields on the 10-year treasury dipped below the Fed funds rate. So the entire yield curve, out to 10 years was inverted. In fact, the 30 year yield hit a new low for this whole "quantitative easing - zero percent interest rate" cycle. The 10-year did not quite do that yet, but the 30-year did, and as soon as this happened, as soon as the curve inverted, I think it triggered a lot of sell programs in the stock market. The Media was Waiting to Flip the Narrative Stocks got clobbered, in fact, by the end of the day the Dow Jones was down 800 points; one of the worst point drops in Dow Jones history - not one of the worst percentage drops, but 800 points is a lot of points. And of course, as soon as this happened, the media began to cover the possibility of a recession to a much greater degree than they had in the past. If you remember, I said that this was coming. I said that I thought that maybe the media was waiting to flip the narrative on Trump, which is exactly what they've done. Fake News? All of a sudden, a media which was pretty much buying the booming economy narrative now is questioning whether the economy is actually strong. In fact, now you have Donald Trump accusing the media of being involved in some kind of conspiracy to make the economy look bad. In other words, a lot of the data that's been coming out indicating that the economy is weak, that it is slowing, that this is just Fake News.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Catch Peter on Simon Black's podcast, "Sovereign Man" recorded yesterday in Italy. https://www.sovereignman.com/category/podcast/ Catch Me on Sovereign Man There's been a lot of action over the last couple of days in the U.S. stock market.  In fact, the market just closed a few minutes ago, as I am recording. It is now after 10pm in the evening here in Italy. If you don't already know by now, I am out here in Italy with my son, and that's why I'm not recording as many podcasts as I normally would.  Although, I did record a podcast with my friend Simon Black, of Sovereign Man. I'm actually staying with Simon and some other guests of his for a few days in Umbria.  We leave tomorrow for Florence, then Venice and then home. So I recorded a podcast with Simon yesterday.  We talked for about an hour.  So if you want more material, just go ahead and have a listen to that.  You'll get over another hour discussion. Check out my Debate with Art Laffer on YouTube Also, I put up the YouTube video this morning that I meant to put up a couple of weeks ago. I uploaded Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded August 6, 2019 Trade War: New Tariffs and Accusation of Currency Manipulation Yesterday was the worst day of the year for the Dow Jones.  At one point, we were down about 950-odd points.  I think we closed down under 800; 767 points.  But it was a follow-though from the weakness that we had on Friday and the news, too, that we had on Friday about the escalation of the trade war, where Donald Trump announced the imposition of new tariffs on China. Normal Movements in a Currency Market But what happened overnight in China was the yuan went below 7:1 against the dollar. This is the first time it has been that low since China started to allow its currency to appreciate against the dollar. It had been appreciating… now 7 is not that much weaker than it was when Donald Trump became President.  The Chinese yuan is only down 2-3% since Trump took office. That's not a whole lot, when it comes to a currency. Everybody is up in arms; now Trump is upset that the Chinese are weakening their currency, when the currency has not weakened very much.  In fact, the U.S. dollar is down about 2 or 3% against the Swiss franc since Trump became President. So what's the big deal? Switzerland isn't accusing the United States of manipulating its currency, just because the currency dropped a few percent. These are normal movements in a currency market. Dow Trading Higher after China Blinks? But the minute the yuan dropped below 7:1, everybody was saying, "Currency War!"  and "Who knows how much further the yuan is going to drop?" And so that sparked a lot of selling in the Chinese market.  And so the U.S. market went down… I think the futures went down maybe about 300 Dow points or so before we opened.  But then, as soon as we opened, we sold off hard and we did have a little bit of a rally into the close, so we closed off the lows, but as soon as the U.S. stock market closed, the futures sold off again. I think at one point last night, the Dow was off another 4-500 points before reversing on the Chinese yuan having a fix, I think, that was a little bit higher than the markets were worried about, so that caused the traders to breathe a little sigh of relief that the yuan didn't fall again. So that sparked a rally.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded August 2, 2019 July NonFarm Payroll Report: Great? Not so Great This morning we got the release of the July NonFarm payroll report, and the general consensus among the analysts seem to be that it was s strong report, a solid report. I saw Larry Kudlow this morning on Fox Business talking about another "solid performance" in job creation.  But once again, once you look beneath the surface, and you don't have to look too deep, this is not a good report. The Bar Was Set Pretty Low First of all, the bar was set pretty low.  The consensus was 151,000 jobs.  That's not a lot of jobs, so it's not that hard to beat it, and we did.  We got 164,000 jobs.  But the reason we beat it was because we created more government jobs than the market expected. For private payrolls, the consensus was 160,000 jobs and we only created 148,000 jobs.  So we created 12,000 fewer private sector jobs than had been expected and we made up the difference by creating government jobs, whether they are for the Federal government or state government. Public Sector Jobs vs Private Sector Jobs But there's a very big difference between private sector jobs and public sector jobs, in that the taxpayer isn't on the hook to pay the salaries of the private sector workers. They're working in companies that are generating profits, so the salaries are paid for by the profits that the businesses generate. The Government Does Not Generate Profits The government doesn't generate any profit. It just has to suck up tax revenue; we have to pay for these.  So it's not a good thing that government gets more bloated and hires more people.  Especially since a lot of government bureaucrats tend to complicate things. They make everybody less efficient.  If we're hiring more regulators to slow down the economy and get in everybody's way, that's not a good thing. I'd rather have a lean, mean government. Of course, that's not going to happen.  Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded August 1, 2019 Trifecta Podcasts this Week I hadn't planned on recording a podcast today; I did one yesterday and I figured I'd wait until Friday, get the … payroll numbers and finish up the week with a Friday podcast.  But so much action in the markets today, that I just couldn't resist.  I knew there would be a lot of people who would be excited to get a podcast today, so we're going to have a trifecta - we're going to have three days in a row of podcasts. Nobody on CNBC saw the Rate Cut Coming… But I Did Before I even get into a lot of the market action today, I want to talk a little bit about what I heard on CNBC this morning. They're still talking about the rate cut that we got yesterday and the host said, "Six months ago, nobody could have possible predicted… nobody would have believed that we'd be here today and the Fed would be cutting rates. And nobody could have possibly believed that the Fed would be ending the quantitative tightening program, because it's now over!" So, according to CNBC, nobody could have possibly predicted this, yet it happened anyway. Wait a minute: what about me? I predicted it. I said it was going to happen.  I didn't say it on CNBC because they won't let me on, but I said it on my podcast.  I even said it on their competitor network, Fox Business. Maybe if they watched Fox Business they would've known about this. I Predicted, Live, That December Hike Would the Last Hike So, really, what they meant is nobody on CNBC saw it coming. None of their anchors, none of their regular guests saw an end to quantitative tightening. None of them saw the rate cut. But I did. Not only did I predict that the Fed would cut rates, I predicted, live, that the December hike was the last hike. and that the very next move by the Fed would be a cut. And that is exactly what they did.  Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

I Bet an Ounce of Gold that Fed would Cut Rates Today I officially won an ounce of gold! I am referencing a bet that I made back in January of this year. During a panel discussion, I said that I though that the Fed was more likely to cut rates in 2019, than hike them.  I was the only person on the panel who believed that.  Everybody else thought that the Fed would be raising rates, which pretty much was the conventional wisdom in early January. Check out My Forecasts in December and January on YouTube So today, the Fed cut rates, which is what I have been saying they would do.  In fact, not only did I put up a small YouTube video of that bet, as well as a video of the entire panel on my YouTube channel. But I also cut a minute or so segment from my interview on the Monday in December 2018 the week the Fed raised rates, 2 days later on a Wednesday.  That was the final hike where the Fed went from 2% to 2.25%, to 2.25% to 2.5%. Fed Cut Rates by 25 Basis Points I was interviewed by Liz Claman- by the way I will be on Liz Claman's show tomorrow - they've renamed the show it is the Claman Countdown. But when I was on Liz' show back in December I made the forecast then: If the Fed raised rates in December that week, which, I thought they would, (everybody believed they would - they wouldn't want to disappoint the markets) I said that it would be the last hike, and that the very next move that the Fed would make would be to cut rates. And that is exactly what they did today. They cut rates by 25 basis points. December's Rate Hike Erased So they basically took away the last rate hike and the rate is now where it was prior to the December rate hike. Now, I believe that cutting rates was a mistake.  I think the Fed should have already raised rates by more than they have. Not because the U.S. economy is in great shape, because it's in lousy shape. It is a gigantic bubble.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Two Camps: Inflation vs Deflation I did the first live stream a couple of weeks ago; that was on bitcoin. I got a lot of feedback on that one and a lot of people were coming up with potential topics for the next one.  I think the most common request was for inflation or deflation: which one is it going to be? Because there are a lot of people out there who see the world similar to the way I do, as far as the problems that are confronting the U.S. economy in particular but the global economy, but everybody seems to fall into two camps as to how it is all going to go down; whether it is deflation that is coming - we should prepare for that, or whether it is inflation that's coming and you should prepare for that.  Now I am an inflationist.  I am in that camp. Other people in that camp may be, like Jim Rickards or Jimmy Rogers or Marc Faber - there are a number of people who would be in the inflation camp. Deflation would be guys like Robert Prechter, Harry Dent, there are a number of guys that are looking for deflation. Defining Terms Now before I really get into it, I want to talk a little bit about the terms, so we know what we're talking about.  Let's define the terms.  What is inflation? What is deflation? The actual definition of inflation, the actual meaning of the word, is an expansion of the money supply. What does "Inflate" Really Mean? That's what inflation is; it's not about prices.  If you think of the word, "inflate" - what does inflate mean? It means to expand. You inflate a balloon; when you inflate a balloon, it expands. Prices don't expand - they go up, they go down; they don't expand. What expands?  Money supply. When the government creates money, the money supply expands, like a balloon.  It blows up. So that's what inflation is, it is an expansion of the money supply. What is Deflation? Deflation is the opposite; it is a contraction of the money supply. Now when you inflate the money supply-you create more money - you have more money bidding up prices. So inflation will result in prices going up. But prices going up is not the inflation they are the consequence of inflation.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Participate in my next YouTube Live Challenge next Monday, July 29, 9pm EDT The Topic: It’s Inflation, NOT Deflation What is Really Happening to Corporate Profits? Both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ rose to all-time record highs today; nominal highs, of course.  The Dow Jones didn't quite make it to a new high, it did close better than 50 points higher - 27,192.45, but probably the most interesting thing about the record high, is what's actually happening to corporate profits. I'm talking about operating profits, which are profits before you subtract interest and taxes.  I'm looking at some new statistics that came out today.  There were some revisions that came out from the government; some of them on the GDP, which I will get to a bit later in the podcast. Corporate Operating Profits Moved Sideways Since 2014 Just looking at corporate operating profits, it turns out that operating profits actually peaked in the third quarter of 2014.  That is while Obama was still President, a few years before Trump was President. So corporate profits - operating profits peaked in Q3 of 2014.  And they basically have been going sideways ever since, although they have been dipping recently.  If you take a look at the last quarter, operating profits are now the lowest they've been since 2011. Profits Have Gone up - but Not Operating Profits Now, the Dow Jones finished 2011 at about 12,000  - 12,200, I think was the end print. Well, we've more than doubled since then, but operating profits haven't gone anywhere. How are you doubling stock values when the profits are staying the same?  Now, of course it's not the profits - profits have gone up - but not operating profits. But operating profits are really more important if you want to look at what's going on in the companies in these averages. Operating profits is how much money the companies make from operating their businesses. Tax Cuts Boosted the Stock Market So, actual profits have risen even though operating profits have not. Why is that?  One: we got the big tax cuts. Corporate tax rates went way down so that enabled after tax earnings to rise. So that provided a boost to the U.S. stock market. But these corporate tax cuts are temporary. They are not permanent; corporate taxes are going to be raised.  Especially if I'm right about Trump being a 1-termer; the Democrat who succeeds Trump is going to raise corporate taxes.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

  Participate in my next YouTube Live Challenge next Monday, July 29, 9pm EDT The Topic: It's Inflation, NOT Deflation Not to Praise the Tea Party but to Bury It President Trump originally won the Republican nomination by appealing largely to what used to be the Tea Party. A lot of Tea Party Republicans ended up embracing Donald Trump; in fact I think a lot of the support that might have otherwise gone to Rand Paul (a Tea Party favorite who went to Washington in 2010 as part of the Tea Party movement); a lot of his thunder was stolen by Trump, who appealed a lot to Tea Party Republicans. Even Tea Party Corpse Seems to Approve of its Demise When Trump went to Washington, he wasn't exactly praising the Tea Party, but few people expected that he went to Washington to bury it, either. But that's just exactly what he just did by agreeing to this budget deal with the Democrats.  The Tea Party is dead! President Trump just put the final nail into the coffin, lowered it in the ground and covered it in dirt. The irony is, nobody seems happier about this than the corpse itself! The Tea Party Republicans are not up in arms against the Commander-in-Chief. Everybody still loves Donald Trump. Where is Rick Santelli? Even the father of the Tea Party, Rick Santelli, (he is credited for getting it all going) where's Rick? Where are his tears, where's the eulogy as his child is being buried? Again, no criticism, everybody thinks Trump is great… As I said, I was back at Freedom Fest, which they should have just re-named "Trump Fest". Continuation of Policies Once Criticized by Candidate Trump Donald Trump is simply continuing all of the policies that he once criticized in order to become President. When he was running for the Republican nomination,  he was extremely critical of the big deficits under Obama. He was even critical of the big deficits under Bush. That was one of the things I liked about Trump. He was criticizing big spenders of both parties. He was supposed to be different. He was rising above politics.  He was going to drain the swamp. And draining the swamp meant putting an end to the deficits.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A Podcast from Freedom Fest in Las Vegas I'm still here in Last Vegas at Freedom Fest, but I wanted to take some time out to come up to my hotel room here and record a short podcast - otherwise I'd have to wait until Tuesday.  There's been a lot of stuff that's happened over the last few days, so I definitely wanted to record something; the quality might not be up to snuff.  But I figured I'd talk a little bit about what's been going on in the market. The Action Was in the Metals Markets Really, the stock markets - not much action.  All the major markets finished the day and the week lower; bond prices a bit higher.  The real action, though, was in the metals markets.  You wouldn't really know it to look at the price of gold, which was only up maybe about a dollar or two on the week, although we did have a big $20 rise yesterday, followed by a $20 drop today. I'll get into why that happened in a minute. Strength in Silver But the real action was in silver, which finished the week better than up 90 cents, I believe.  So, a very strong week for silver - even on days when gold was down, silver was up. In fact, even this morning, silver was up for a while while gold was down. I titled my last podcast, "Is Silver Finally Joining Gold’s Party?" and, as of now, it really looks like the answer to that question is yes. We've see a lot of strength in silver. Clarida Shakes Markets with Rate Cut Comments In fact, we had the biggest two-day gain, going back several years, in the price of silver. The big jump that we has yesterday really was set into motion by some Fed comments, although that probably was just a catalyst; it probably would have moved up anyway. But in particular, we had Clarida came out and he said that the Fed should not wait for the data to turn before cutting rates. Meaning that, "We should cut rates, anyway, even if we don't get negative data; even if it doesn't look like the economy is going into recession, we should just preemptively cut rates."Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

See Peter at the Las Vegas Freedom Fest – July 17-20 https://www.freedomfest.com/ Save $50 using promo code SCHIFF 93 Ounces of Silver for One Ounce of Gold I think the most interesting development today in the market was in the metals market. I've been talking on the podcast for some time about the spread between gold and silver, and the fact that silver has never been this cheap, in terms of gold. The spread got to almost 93:1, where you can buy 93 ounces of silver for one ounce of gold - which is incredibly cheap. Some Silver Stocks up 10% or More on the Day It's a great time to be buying silver, and I've really been pounding the table on people buying silver.  I recommended it again last night last night on my live YouTube event, I recommended it to my Managed Account clients on our last webinar, encouraging people to contact their brokers and maybe buy more silver stocks. In fact we had silver stocks today; some stocks up 10% or more on the day. Very, very significant jump up in the price of silver stocks, even thought the price of silver itself did not have that big a move. It was only up 19 cents. Silver Up as Price of Gold Fell But the significance of the move is that gold was down $8. So not only did silver have a relatively large move, although not large enough to normally cause silver stock to rise by 10%, but what was significant about it was that it rose as the price of gold was falling. This could signal - and it was looking to me technically that we saw some indications of this last week (I added to my own silver stocks last week  - but it looked to me like this trend was about to change.  We're still above 90:1. We're close to getting back to 90:1 even. But this is still an incredibly good opportunity to buy physical silver; to buy silver oriented stocks. But what I think this is showing me is that the bull market in gold is getting ready to kick into a higher gear.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

First Live YouTube Event Welcome to the Peter Schiff Bitcoin Challenge. First of all, I have to make a confession. I really was not familiar with YouTube live streaming and live chatting, and so the way I thought about this in my head; I thought that people were going to be able to talk. Like a Skype group conversation. People would be able to actually engage me and make their case in their own voice, and to be able to have a little back and forth. Post a Cogent Argument I didn't realize that the way I had to do this was with a chat, where people who want to make a point have to do it by chat. So I'm going to try my best.  Hopefully, this format can work. There are so many chats going by, it is hard to keep track of them. But I want to see if people can put together a cogent, concise argument.  Think of it like you're composing a tweet. I can try to address each point, and try to take in what you're trying to tell me as to why I'm wrong about Bitcoin, and why I should actually be embracing it as digital gold. Don't Forget to Subscribe to My Podcasts So, what I'm going to try to do is to see the best points that are being made on this chat, then read it out loud, and then address it, make a statement and the person who authored that particular text listens to what I have to say, if they want to do a follow up or something, they can do that, and hopefully I will see that follow up. I'm doing this chat in my home studio in Connecticut. I'm in the studio where I normally do my video blogs, so if you're new to this channel, you should subscribe it.  Two or three times a week a do these video blogs (podcasts) where I talk about all sorts of things that are relevant to people who buy Bitcoin.    Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

  Tune in to my first live YouTube event Monday, July 15, 9pm Eastern time U.S. Call in and convince me that I’m wrong on bitcoin! DJIA Record High Today Dow Jones set a record high today, closing above 27,000 for the first time ever.  We added 227.88 points on the day.  We closed at 27,088.08.  The record high, 27,088.45 set just before the close. You know, we added to yesterday's gains, the S&P 500 was also up again - not taking out the record that was set yesterday, but we did, for the second day in a row managed to trade above the 3000 mark, although we have yet to close above it - ever so close today: 2999.91. But a very small percentage gain for the S&P, not even a quarter of 1%. Russell 2000 Down .5% Broader market was weaker.  The NASDAQ was actually down slightly - 6.5 points.  The weakest index being the Russell 2000, down almost a half of a percent. It was lower during the day.  Again, the Russell 2000 is the index that is most sensitive to the domestic economy. I've pointed out on this podcast many times that it is the index that is the weakest, and is not even close to making a new high. And I don't believe it will. I think the broader market is going to roll over, and the small caps are going to lead the way. Traders Weren't Paying Attention to Bond Market In fact, if the traders were paying attention to what was going on in the bond market, we probably would have seen a bigger selloff today. I think we still have some euphoria left over from the two-day "Dove Fest" where Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was up on Capitol Hill basically green-lighting the July rate cut, which is coming up in a couple of weeks. Remember, when we got that better than expected nonfarm payroll report, the odds of a rate cut in July went down from about 100% to maybe 91%, and the odds really came down for the probability of a 50 basis points cut. So it was pretty much 91%, I think, 25 basis points, and that was it. Odds of Rate Cut in July Back up to 100% But after Powell released his prepared remarks, before he even made it up to Capitol Hill - just merely when the markets got a look at his prepared testimony, the odds of a rate cut in July immediately went back up to 100%, and, in fact the odds of a 50 basis point cut went back up to 20%.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

  Tune in to my first live YouTube event Monday, July 15, 9pm Eastern time U.S. Call in and convince me that I'm wrong on bitcoin! More Market News after Powell's Congressional Testimony The markets have been pretty quiet over the last couple of days, so I really don't feel like spending a lot of time on today's podcast talking about the markets.  I probably will have more to say, maybe on Thursday when I'll probably do another podcast because Jerome Powell is making his way up to Capitol Hill tomorrow and Thursday to testify before the House and the Senate. My guess is that some of his comments may move the markets; the currency markets, the gold market, maybe even the stock market. I'll probably have more market-oriented commentary to give you on Thursday. Laffer Curve for Dummies But there are a few things on my mind, which is why I wanted to take some time today and record this podcast.  One has to do with Art Laffer. Of course, Art Laffer gained fame back in the Reagan era. He came up with the "Laffer Curve" that he supposedly sketched out on a napkin one day and showed it to Ronald Reagan.  The Laffer Curve basically says that when you reduce taxes, or lower marginal tax rates, you actually end up collecting higher tax revenues because you incentivize people to work more, they earn more, and then they pay more taxes even if they are paying taxes at a lower rate. Obviously, the Laffer Curve bends at some point, because if taxes are zero, you collect no revenue and if taxes are 100%, you also collect no revenue.  Because if you're going to tax somebody 100% of their income, they're not going to work at all. Nobody is a complete idiot - they're not going to work for nothing. So at a 100% tax rate and a 0% percent tax rate the government collects exactly zero taxes. So somewhere along that curve is an optimal point where you would have the tax rate that generates the most amount of revenue.  Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

See Peter at the Las Vegas Freedom Fest – July 17-20 https://www.freedomfest.com/ Save $50 using promo code SCHIFF Markets Up on Low Volume A lot of people on Wall Street probably took today off; after all yesterday was the Fourth of July, the market was closed.  On Wednesday they closed the markets early in preparation for the July Fourth holiday.  So when you have a Friday where the markets are open, but you have a Thursday when they're closed… most people probably left for the Hamptons on Wednesday afternoon, and so were not in their offices or down at the stock market when we released the nonfarm payroll numbers today. ADP Disappointing Number Teed Up Low Expectations The June number, highly anticipated, as always, especially with a rate cut on deck now by the Fed. Most of the people who were probably handicapping the jobs number thought that it would probably come out weaker than expected. After all, most of the data we've been getting has been weaker than expected.  In particular, the jobs numbers, including the ADP report that came out on Wednesday, on that holiday-shortened trading session.  We got a disappointing number.  The consensus for private-sector employment for ADP was 140,000, and we ended up with 102,000.  So we had a significant miss in the ADP numbers. Back-to-Back Declines in Small Business Jobs But also, look at the employment components of some of the other numbers that also came out weak on Wednesday, like the ISM non-manufacturing index.  It printed 55.1 versus an estimate of 55.8.  The employment component of that index was notably weak, especially for small businesses which had major reduction in jobs, no only in this month but the previous month. In fact, I read a tweet by Dave Rosenberg who pointed out that he hasn't seen back-to-back monthly declines like this since February/March of 2008. That was the year of the Financial Crisis. He basically said that small business job growth is the weakest it's been in over 9 years. Bigger Decline in Factory Orders Now, small business job growth, that is the heart of the job market. That's where most of the jobs are created. So, if you look at a lot of the other data that has been coming out that might reflect on employment, you might have thought that there might have been a weak number. Look at the factory orders number that also came out on Wednesday. They were looking for a drop of .5% in factory orders, and instead, the orders dropped by .7%. So a bigger decline.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded July 2, 2019 See Peter at the Las Vegas Freedom Fest – July 17-20 https://www.freedomfest.com/ Save $50 using code SCHIFF Markets Worried About Slowing Domestic Economy If you just looked at the U.S. stock market averages, you would conclude that not much happened today, but you would be wrong. Even though the S&P and the Dow and the NASDAQ were only up about a quarter of a percent, or maybe .3% - pretty small days.  Although, as has been typical recently the Russell 2000 was down .6% and the Dow Transports down .8%.  So the market, contrary to all the hoopla that  you hear about how great the U.S. economy is, the markets are more worried about the slowing domestic economy than they are the global economy. Strongest Economy in U.S. History? In fact, the Cheerleader-In-Chief, for how strong the U.S. economy is, of course, is Donald Trump. He is constantly up there tweeting about how strong the U.S economy is.  In fact, today, he proclaims that we currently have the strongest U.S. economy in history.  Now, I remember, when he used to tweet about h0w strong the economy was, that we had the strongest economy in history, he would say, "Oh it's probably the strongest economy in history…" I mean he would qualify it a little bit.  But now, no more qualifiers.  He is emphatic. Without a doubt, this is the strongest economy is U.S. history. Fake News Of course, I don't like hypocrites.  One of the things that Trump does, is he calls out the media for spreading fake news. The problem, is, he spreads fake news, too. When he is talking about how we have the strongest economy ever, that's fake news! So you can't live in a glass house and then throw stones and that's what the President does. More Weak Numbers In fact, if you look at the economic data that came out this week, the data was weak!  The ISM manufacturing number and the PMI number were weak . In fact they weren't as weak as they were expecting, but they were expecting weak numbers and we got weak numbers. Just not quite as weak. Although, the construction spending number that came out yesterday was considerably weaker than had been expected. Now, the Atlanta Fed is still at 1.54% .    Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

See Peter at the Las Vegas Freedom Fest – July 17-20 https://www.freedomfest.com/ Save $50 using code SCHIFF Recorded June 28, 2019 Dow Jones Had Best June Since 1938 U.S. stocks finished a down week on an up note, but the gains were not that large today. But of course, they were very big for the month of June. In fact, the Dow Jones just had its best June since 1938. That was during the Great Depression. S&P, not as big a record; you only have to go back to 1955 to find a June where the S&P did better than June 2019.  So these are big moves up. Percentage-wise, though, I think it's about 7%, approximately, maybe a little bit less. Stock Market Actually Lost Value In Terms of Gold Now the price of gold was up 8% during the month of June. In other words, while the price of stocks went up in terms of paper money - dollars - in terms of real money - gold - stocks actually lost value during the month.  Now, the first half of the year also comes to an end today, as does the second quarter, and this is the best first half of the year in 22 years. the S&P was up about 17.5% or so, the Dow about 14%. I think I'm counting dividends -  I'm just talking about the appreciation, so the total return would be a little better when you throw in the meager dividends that you can collect on U.S. stocks. NASDAQ was up about 20% - not much in the way of dividends there. Russell 2000 was up about 9%.  This is on the first half of the year. Stocks Recovering From Worst December Since Great Depression I'm sure you're going to read a lot of tweets from Donald Trump about how great the stock market is in 2019; how great the month of June is and why we should thank him for this spectacular performance in the stock market.  But the only reason that the market has done so well this year is because it got destroyed in the 4th quarter of last year. Remember, we had the worst December since the Great Depression, as well.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

See Peter at the Las Vegas Freedom Fest – July 17-20 https://www.freedomfest.com/ Save $50 using code SCHIFF Gold: Six-Year High Overnight Overnight the price of gold rose to a six-year high.  We almost got to $1440.  I think the high I saw was maybe $1438 - 39… we were up about $19 at the high point. Then it became a very volatile session overnight into the wee hours of the morning.  But I think by the time we got into the New York time zone, gold was still up about $10-$12-$13 dollars on the day and it was up about that amount when the U.S. stock market opened for trading. Before Today, Gold Stocks Up 20% Gold stocks initially had a small rally, but nothing big. Then they spent most of the day on the downside.  Obviously the gold traders are still very cautious.  As I have been saying, this gold breakout, even though we did see pretty big moves in gold stocks, I think the GDX, not counting today's losses, (the GDX was down about 2% today) but not counting today, we were up 20% in the month of June. So, still, a very big rise.   But really not nearly as big a rise as it should be, considering, I think, the significance of this gold breakout.  Except, of course, if people don't believe it.  If they're cautious about it, so they're reluctant to bid up the price of gold stocks. Investors Still Reluctant on Gold and Silver - Why? The same thing with silver. In fact, silver never had much of a rally today, and it actually settled down, I think 8 cents on the day, even though gold ended up finishing up $4 - well off the highs. But it didn't close negative. At one point during New York trading, the price of gold was negative on the day, but it managed to bounce back for the close. Silver, I think, ended at 15.33.  The gold/silver ratio that I spoke about on the last podcast now, I think is close to 93:1.  Again, I think investors are reluctant to buy up silver because they are expecting the price of gold to roll over.  Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded June 21, 2019 See Peter at the Las Vegas Freedom Fest - July 17-20 https://www.freedomfest.com/ Save $50 using code SCHIFF S&P Record High: Why? U.S. stock market averages finished an up week on a down note. In fact, the S&P 500, before closing negative on the day made a new all-time record high. The S&P is the only major index that did make a new record high this week, in fact Donald Trump tweeted about the record high in the S&P twice yesterday.  As soon as the market gapped open at a record high, Donald Trump tweeted out a reminder that the S&P opened at a record high, and then when it closed at a record high, he sent out a second tweet to remind everybody that the stock market closed at a record high. Fed's Lower Rates Behind Stock Market Highs The idea is that he's taking credit for it.  The stock market is doing so well because Donald Trump is President, and if anybody else were President, the market would be collapsing. That's the impression that Donald Trump is trying to convey. But, of course, the reality is the opposite. The reason the market made a new high is because investors are relieved that the Fed is going to cut interest rates. So, it's lower interest rates that is behind the record high in the S&P - not anything Donald Trump has done. Low Interest Rates Needed to Bail out Economy Now, Donald Trump is saying, "Hey I've been telling the Fed to cut rates!".  So maybe he can claim credit for the fact that the Fed is cutting rates because he beat them up so much, but that's really not what he is trying to claim. He's trying to claim that the rising stock market is indicative of how great the economy is under his presidency. But, it's not because the economy is great that the Fed is cutting rates, it's because it's lousy! Heading for Recession The Fed is cutting rates because the economy is headed for recession.  So if that's the only reason the stock market is going up, that the economy is so bad that the Federal Reserve has to abort their rate-tightening campaign, and they have to come to an emergency rescue mission, they have to try to bail out the economy with rate cuts, is that really something that Donald Trump should be bragging about?Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Visit me at the Benzinga Trading Conference, NYC tomorrow Fed Tweaking Language to Officially Adopt Easing Bias Keeping with its tradition of having a tendency to act incrementally, the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee today announced that it was leaving interest rates unchanged - which was the consensus. There was an 80% probability that the Fed would leave interest rates unchanged.  The other 20% was that they would cut rates. So there was a zero percent probability that the Fed would increase rates.  But before delivering an official rate cut, what the Fed wanted to do was to prepare the markets in advance and take one step in that direction, which was to tweak its language to officially adopt a bias toward easing, which is exactly what the Fed did. Fed to Sustain "Expansion" The Fed basically acknowledged that the economic data had been weakening and that they wanted to do what was appropriate, or that they were willing to do what was appropriate to sustain the expansion. Now, they didn't come right out and say that the economy is headed for a recession; even though that is exactly what is happening. They said they wanted to see more data before they moved. But after they failed to cut rates, the probability for a rate cut in July, which is the very next time the Fed meets, rose to 100%.  So they took the 20% probability for the cut in June, since we didn't get it, the markets added that to the 80% probability of a cut in July. Looking Toward Negative Data Which means the markets are convinced that whatever data the Fed sees between now and the July meeting in going to be bad. It's not going to be good (positive) data. Of course, it IS going to be bad data. The data has been bad.  The economy has been weakening. We've been seeing a series of weakening economic data.  The economy is not just slowing down, it is headed to a recession. That is something that the Fed will never admit.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded June 14, 2019 Gold: Up Today When I recorded my podcast last Friday, I speculated that the price of gold might gap up the following Monday above $1350/oz., but that didn't happen because over the weekend Donald Trump managed to tweet out a face-saving way in which to not impose the tariffs on Mexican products that may have gone into effect on Monday.  The markets breathed a sigh of relief. So, instead of gapping up. the price of gold went the opposite direction and gapped down. Fourteen Month High This morning, we got the gap. It was on the last day of the week, not the first day of the week, but gold gapped higher on the day.  It was actually trading as high as $1356 or $1357 earlier this morning. That was a 52-week high in the price of gold.  In fact, it was a 14-month high.  We were actually up even before we got any economic data.  I think the high of the day might have been before the U.S stock market opened, when we were up about $15 or so. The Key is Above $1350 What happened was, at 8:30, prior to the opening of the U.S. market, we got some economic data that was a bit stronger than expected.  And that stronger than expected data rained on the gold rally parade, sending the price of gold down on the day. It only closed down about a buck or so, but we did not hold above $1350.  Now the key level is not really $1350 - it's a little bit higher up, because the price of gold has been above $1350 twice before, I think, in the last six years, not counting today. But it wasn't able to hold. That's the key. We need to see the price of gold get higher.  Maybe close above $1375. Gold the Favorite Trade for the Next 12-24 Months There's a lot of noise.  That's where all the resistance has been coming in - between $1350 and $1375. But nonetheless, I think, as I said in the last podcast, the more times we knock on this resistance door the more likely it is that the door is going to open. In fact, the buyers continue to come in to the price of gold. I was listening to an interview with Paul Tudor Jones.  He was asked what his favorite trade was for the next 12-24 months, and his answer was gold. And a lot of smart people are now coming out and saying that, "Yeah, gold's going higher.  Gold's got everything going for it, and they want to be involved.  And of course I think if the price of gold does what I think it is going to do, and what some other smart people think it's going to do, well then the price of gold stocks are going to do even better.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded June 10, 2019 Tariffs Off, Gold Gapped Down On Friday's podcast, I speculated that potentially we could see a gap up in the price of gold, gapping above the $1350 resistance level that has capped every gold rally for the past 6 years.  But gold actually gapped in the other direction.  It gapped down about $13 and it was down all day - never filled that gap. Catalyst for Sell-off The catalyst for the gold sell-off was Donald Trump calling off the tariffs that were supposed to go into effect today.  The five percent across the board tariffs on Mexico.  That announcement came out on Friday, pretty much right after I finished recording my podcast, we got the news.  So I immediately knew that that forecast probably was not going to come to fruition, or that speculation, potentially. Because I knew the markets would react positively to this news. After all, everybody was rightly worried about the negative impacts that those tariffs would have on the U.S. economy, in particular.  They weren't as worried about Mexico, at least when it comes to the gold market, but they were worried about how it would impact the U.S. economy. One Less Thing for the Fed to Worry About And of course, one of the reasons (of course there are many) that the Fed is talking about cutting rates is because of all the uncertainty that is being created because of tariffs. If there aren't going to be as many tariffs, if the Mexico tariffs aren't going to actually happen, well then that's one less thing to worry about, and maybe that's one less reason for the Fed to cut rates. Mexican Tariffs are a Sideshow Of course, cutting rates is part of the reason that people have been buying gold; the reason we had that big 8-day rally, which came to an end today. What's been powering the gold rally is the talk of Fed rate cuts. Now I don't think today's sell-off is going to be significant.  It's just one more time we knocked on that resistance door and it didn't open, but it is ultimately going to open. Because at the end of the day, the Mexican tariffs are a sideshow. The main event is that the U.S economy is going into recession anyway, and the rate cuts are coming.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded June 7, 2019 Dow Finished the Week with a 4.7% Gain The Dow Jones soared 263 points today, although at one point the index was up better than 350 points. But it managed to finish the week with a 4.7% gain. That is the best showing for the Dow Jones Industrials in 6 months and in fact we snapped a six-week losing streak this week.  All of the major averages had positive weeks.  The NASDAQ -  the best gainer on the day; up 1.7% - not quite as strong on the week because it took a shellacking on Monday with the FANG stocks leading the way down - but up about 3.7% on the week.  Similar gains for the Russell 2000, the Dow Transports, the S&P 500 not quite as strong as the Dow - I think up about 4.2% on the week. What was the Catalyst? But why? What was the catalyst for this big move up in the U.S. stock market? Was it better than expected earnings? Not really.  Some companies beat estimates. Take a look at some of these recent IPO's like Zoom Video. Zoom Video was up 18% today because it earned 3 cents a share instead of the one cent that Wall Street was expecting. Now, 3 cents per share is not a lot of earnings when you're a $94 stock, but that's where the stock is. Beyond Meat to Infinity and Beyond Even more ridiculous is Beyond Meat, which is beyond sanity as it's going to infinity and beyond. Now, Beyond Meat was up almost 40% today, $138.65.  The high was $149.46.  This stock is already more than tripled its IPO price - or quadrupled, I can't really tell.  Now they're still not making money at Beyond Meat, so they still haven't moved beyond losses.  The company lost $6.6 million on the quarter; that's 95 cents per share. But it is an improvement, because a year ago, in the same period, they lost 98 cents a share. If you adjust it, if you back out a lot of other stuff, like stock-based compensation and things that nobody likes to count, then they only lost 14 cents per share, which was better than the 15 cents a share loss that Wall Street was expecting.  So clearly that's worth an extra 40% on the price of the stock.  I forget what this thing is trading; 100+ times revenue.  It is a crazy multiple, but at least the stock has a viable product.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded June 5, 2019 Volatility Led by NASDAQ There's been a lot of volatility in the stock market since I recorded my last podcast on Friday.  In fact, on Monday, the tech stocks in particular got beaten up.  The NASDAQ dropped by better than 150 points, led lower by the so-called FANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google).  Google and Facebook, the biggest drop - I think it was something like 6-8%.  Part of that had to do with the Justice Department investigating Google. Enlisting the Power of Government in the Marketplace Of course, I don't think that we should be involved at all in anti-trust.  Almost all of the companies that have been broken up or that had been put through the ringer by the U.S. government achieved whatever type of market dominance they had based on just being good competitors, delivering the best quality at the lowest price. And government just came in and really what they were doing was advocating for competitors that were having a problem competing.  It wasn't because the consumer was getting ripped off; in general the consumer was being rewarded with low prices and high quality.  But companies that couldn't compete, since they couldn't win in the marketplace, enlisted the power of government to work for them.  So government, really is not about preventing monopolies - they create monopolies. The government comes into a market and legally gives a company a monopoly and uses the power of government to make sure that nobody competes. This is all a bunch of nonsense that we need government to "keep the markets free". Moving Away from Risk But, in general, if you look at what was happening to the markets on Monday, there was a huge movement from growth stocks, momentum stocks, speculative stocks, riskier stocks, to defensive stocks - value oriented stocks. The Dow Jones was actually positive on the day - it wasn't up a lot, but it was up, even though you had a 150 point drop in the NASDAQ. I think that is an important key, because this is something that needs to happen and it is long overdue, that investors start to get more defensive in anticipation of a weakening economy. Dividend-Paying Stocks More Attractive You have all of these high-multiple stocks, their P/E's are going to have to come down to earth.  And, of course, people are looking at a slowing economy, they are looking at lower interest rates - they believe they are going to get lower interest rates, so it makes sense that dividend-paying stocks would be more attractive in a falling-rate environment.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Sell in May and Go Away U.S. stocks closed out the week and the month of May with heavy losses; the DJIA down 354.84 points.  Pretty much going out near the low of the day. That's a drop of 1.4%. NASDAQ also getting killed - 114.57 down - that was a 1.5% decline on the day.  The Russell 2000 continues to melt down.  That index falling 20 points - down 1.35% on the day.  But the biggest losses continue to be in the Dow Jones Transports. That index was down almost 2% - 1.9% - 188.4 points.  This is the worst May for U.S stocks since 2010. The Dow is down about 7% just in the month of May. Remember, "Sell in May and go away"?   Well it hasn't worked in a while, but this was a great time to sell May first! Russell 2000 and Dow Transports Weakest Indexes Again, I told everybody that I thought the bear market rally was over based on the Fed not being as dovish as the markets expected, and it's been down hill from there.  If you look at the Russell 2000 and the Transports, these two indexes did not make new highs. Remember the Dow and the S&P, the NASDAQ made new highs. Now, they're all down considerably - the Dow is 8% off those highs now. But the Russell 2000 and the Dow Transports did not make new highs, and now they are the weakest index and now the Russell 2000 is down just under 16% from its peak, and the Transports - over 16%.  So both of those indexes are about 4% points away from being officially back in bear market territory, which means 20% from the highs.  We could easily be there next week,  on these stocks. Debacle du Jour: Gap Now the other indexes have further to go, I mean the NASDAQ is only down about 9% from its peak.  So 1% away from what Wall Street would officially call a "correction".  The retailers continue to also be hammered.  The Debacle du Jour was Gap, which gapped down by about 15% on the day on weaker than expected sales. The stock managed to rally most of the day, so it only closed down a little over 9%.  But still, it closed better than 47% below its 52-week high. Domestically Focused Stocks Weakest But, when you have the Russell 2000 and the Transports the weakest part of the market, those are the most domestically focused stocks. Those are the stocks that are the weakest.  So everybody who keeps talking about how great the U.S. economy is, if they look at the market, the market is telling you a different story.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded May 29, 2019 The End of the Bear Market Rally Back on May 1, when I did my podcast, I officially called for the end of the bear market rally that so many people had confused for a new bull market, and the impetus for that call was the Fed coming out and not living up to Wall Street's expectations for just how dovish the Fed was. Remember, the market was starting to factor in rate cuts, not just an end to the tightening cycle, but the beginning of the next easing cycle. And Jerome Powell basically threw cold water on that by talking about how low inflation was transitory, and how he expected it to go back up, and all of a sudden the markets were starting to think that the Fed wasn't going to cut rates and the market went down a bit. The Fed Giveth and the Fed Taketh Away I thought that given that the rally was built based on the Fed, that what the Fed giveth by being more dovish than the markets expected the Fed had finally taken away by being more hawkish. Even though I didn't believe that the Fed was as hawkish as the markets believed, I believe the Fed is far more dovish than the markets believe.  But once Powell dashed those hopes, that was enough, I thought, to take the wind out of the sail of the rally. Throwing Down the Gauntlet on Trade And then, of course, Donald Trump, himself, pulled the rug out from under the market when, the following weekend, he basically threw down the gauntlet on the trade war; tweeted out that he was going to be imposing 25% tariffs across the board on Americans who want to buy any Chinese products.  And then the markets really started to fall. Although, I said at the time, that if the markets really perceived how great the threat was, they would have been down quite a bit more. But we now have two back-to-back better than 200-point declines in the Dow.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded May 22, 2019 Low Inflation is Transitory Today we got the release of the most recent minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee, and I guess it was a bit of a mixed bag for people who were looking for whether the Fed was going to be more hawkish or more dovish with respect to its next move on interest rates.  One thing that was revealed in the minutes that the governors still maintain, they are still saying that they feel that this "low inflation" that we've been experiencing is transitory.  What that means is that it's temporary and the low inflation is going to go back up toward their 2% target.  This is supposedly a hawkish statement, because if the Fed were worried that low inflation was going to persist, then they would do something about it to save us from the horrors of not having the cost of living rise at a fast enough clip. When It Comes to Inflation Fighting the Fed Is All Bark and No Bite But, as far as I'm concerned, none of this even matters, because a) they are right, inflation is transitory, and b) it's not even as low as they think because the CPI is not accurate. So inflation is already higher than what the official numbers reveal. But even if it is transitory, which it is, and even if the numbers go north of 2%, which they will, the Fed is going to do nothing.  People still don't get it, that when it comes to inflation fighting the Fed is all bark and no bite. "For Some Time" Means Forever But then if you look at what the Fed said in the same minutes with regard to their "patience" with respect to the next rate hike, remember, the Fed went from pretty much auto pilot - they were raising rates, they were tightening - to being "patient", and being "appropriate", and now, if you read what they said, they said that it is going to be appropriate to remain patient "for some time".  Now what does that mean - "for some time"? Basically, it means forever. What the Fed is basically saying by saying that it is appropriate to be patient for some time, meaning, "you don't have to worry about any rate hikes".Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Don't miss the movie, "The Housing Bubble" premiering June 26, 2019 Back in Puerto Rico I am finally back in Puerto Rico, after having spent 8 long days in Las Vegas for both the SALT conference and The Las Vegas Money Show.  I really do enjoy coming back to Puerto Rico, I miss it quite a bit while I'm away.  A lot of people who are thinking about making the move to Puerto Rico to take advantage of the tax benefits that exist here… One of the reasons that people are reluctant to come down here is that they don't want to uproot their family and move to a place where they really don't know anybody, they leave their friends, they leave their family members… I'll tell you, for me, personally, probably the best thing about being here, other than the tax breaks and the beautiful weather are the people that you meet when you come down here.  It is an incredible group of people that have moved here.  I think we're building a great community of quasi-ex-pats here in Puerto Rico.  So, if you're worried about not having enough friends and not having enough to do, that's the least of your worries. So I certainly would recommend that more people would consider making the move to Puerto Rico. Visit Me at the Freedom Fest in Las Vegas July 17-20 But I am also looking forward to going back up to Connecticut, I'm going to be spending most of the summer there.  We'll be leaving the weekend of Memorial Day. By the way, if you didn't have an opportunity to come to any of the events in Vegas, I will be back in Vegas again in mid-July for the Freedom Fest. Appearing at the Premiere of "The Housing Bubble" I will also be in New York City on June 26 to attend the premier of the movie, "The Housing Bubble" on June 26.  You can buy tickets at the website letusdisagree.com. The movie is a documentary about the 2008 housing bubble, but it features a lot of people who were predicting or warning about the bubble before it popped, and warning about the financial crisis.  Of course, I am one of those people who was issuing those warnings, but I'm not the only one.  It's a very good documentary; I'll be there.  I think there's going to be a Q&A period with me and some of the other people who were featured in the movie at the event. So it would be great, if you're in the New York area this summer, June 26, go on letusdisagree.com and buy yourself some tickets.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW May 13 – 15, 2019 https://conferences.moneyshow.com/…/4532d84bf…/peter-schiff/ As Noted on My Last Podcast… As I suspected on Friday's podcast, the 400-point reversal that saw the Dow move from down 300 points + to up 100 points on the close was in fact, reversed today, and the Dow Jones actually closed below the Friday low, which is a huge negative, technically for the index.  The Dow was down 617 points; that's about 2.4 %.  But the real carnage was in the NASDAQ.  That was down 3.4%.  The Russell 2000 also down better than 3% - 3.2%, showing that domestically focused stocks are actually getting hit harder than the multi-nationals. Lyft and Uber Still Sinking More trouble again for the recent IPO's, in particular, the ride-hailing companies Lyft  - down again, another 5.8% off the lows of the day - the lowest $47.17, closed at $48.15.  The Uber disaster continues.  Uber was down almost 11% today.  At one point, it was down 12% - the low was $36.08.  We closed at 37.10. Remember we came public Friday. This is only the second trading day.  Uber came public at $45, and now it is at $37.10, and as I said again on last week's podcast, these types of stocks are going to get particularly hit hard if the market carnage continues, which I think it will. China: No Deal I think the bear market rally is over - I've been saying that, "Long live the bear market". The Bear market rally is dead.  We are going a lot lower.  The catalyst today was also something that I was pointing out on my podcast last week, and that was the fact that we are not going to get a deal with China. I've been saying for a long time, that even if we got a deal, it would be, "buy the rumor, sell the fact". But I also said that it was becoming obvious that Trump had so over-promised the "great deal" that it was almost impossible to have a deal without disappointing the markets. So, I think Trump made a calculated decision that no deal is better than a deal that disappoints, especially since he had already goosed the market up to new highs.  So even if we sold off, Trump could say, "Well, this is some short-term pain; it's necessary for the long-term gain." and it may, in fact be the catalyst that causes the Fed to cut interest rates and launch QE, which is what Trump wants.  Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW May 13 – 15, 2019 https://conferences.moneyshow.com/moneyshow-las-vegas/speakers/4532d84bf93311d3a5dd00104b96e7b5/peter-schiff/ Recorded May 10, 2018 Why Escalate Trade War If Negotiations Are Going so Great? The U.S. stock markets finished off the worst week of the year with a gain despite the fact that, as expected, the trade talks between the United States and China broke down today, and no deal.  The new tariffs went into effect at 12:01am this morning.  Despite the fact that Trump is now retaliating by escalating the trade war, he still claims that the discussions are going well, that they are making a lot of progress.  None of that makes any sense. If things are going well, and you're making progress, you don't escalate the war. That makes no sense. All that is going to do is piss off the Chinese. So, if everything is going so well, you would not want to do that. Maybe Trump Would Rather Have the Tariffs This shows that things are breaking down, that there is some desperation and Trump feels he has to turn up the pressure in order to try to force the Chinese into a deal.  Although, I am not even sure Trump believes a deal is actually better than the tariffs.  First of all, I don't believe that Trump is going to be able to deliver the type of substantive, game-changing great deal that he has been promising. So, from that perspective, if Trump actually believes that tariffs are good for the U.S. economy because it means we're going to get some kind of windfall, that the Chinese are going to be sending us all this money, well then maybe he prefers the tariffs to a deal that does not live up to the hype. Tariffs Are Simply Another Tax on the American People But, of course, Trump is wrong if that's what he believes. The tariffs simply represent taxes on the American consumer.  They are just one type of tax.  You can have a sales tax, you can have an income tax, you can have a tariff.  All the taxes are paid by American people.  It doesn't matter what you call them or how you want to levy them, that's where the money is coming from. So, if you think lower taxes are good, then you can't think tariffs are good. Unless you're going to offset the tariffs by cutting taxes someplace else and say, "We're going to fund government through tariffs as opposed to funding government through another source. But the tariffs in and of themselves do not deliver a benefit to Americans.  They simply make products that are subject to the tariffs more expensive to buy.  So Americans have a choice: pay the higher price or don't buy the product.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

See Peter at the SALT Conference at the Bellagio, Las Vegas May 7-10, 2019 https://www.salt.org/bio-schiff-peter Market Volatility I just arrived in Las Vegas, where I will be spending the next 8 days - I actually have 2 conferences heres; I have the SALT Conference (SkyBridge Alternative Asset Conference) that really kicks off tomorrow, though there is a welcome reception tonight, and then I do the Las Vegas Money Show, which kicks off on Monday.  So I'm here for quite some time.  I haven't even unpacked my bags, though.  I wanted to record a short podcast to comment mainly on the market volatility. Buyers Bought Dip on Monday The stock market was way down on Monday morning.  Of course,  the selloff started in the futures market on Sunday night, where the Dow futures was down over 500 points at one time. But by the time we opened, the Dow was only off about 450 and the dip buyers came in, and they bought the market all day, and we closed near the highs.  It couldn't close positive - I think the Dow was only off about 70 points.  So the buyers came in as they are trained to do.  They bought the dip. Trump's Tariff Tweets What caused the initial selloff was a pair of tweets; the two tweets were related. A lot of times, when Donald Trump sends out a tweet, he has a lot of stuff in there. or he will send out 2 tweets to make the same message. And, what happened is he basically said that he was going to impose more tariffs on China. He tweeted that, by this Friday, he is going to "up" the 10% tariffs to 25%.  So Americans who are now being taxed 10% for buying some Chinese goods, if they buy those Chinese goods starting on Friday, they will have to pay a 25% tariff on those goods. New Additional 25% Tariffs He also tweeted that he was going to apply the 25% tariff to goods that right now aren't paying any tariffs. So there are still a lot of Chinese goods that Americans could buy without being subject to tariffs, but now Trump is saying that now that is going to go away. At the end of this week, he's going to hit those goods.  So Americans buying pretty much any Chinese products are going to have to pay a 25% tariff. Additional Tax on American Consumers Now, of course, Donald Trump thinks these tariffs are great, because he believes the Chinese pay them, which, of course, is not true.  The tariffs are added on here in the United States, so it is the American consumers who pay those tariffs. Now, it can hurt China because if the higher prices cause fewer Americans to buy Chinese goods because they don't want to pay the higher price, then China doesn't sell its goods in America.  Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded May 3, 2019 See Peter at the SALT Conference at the Bellagio, Las Vegas May 7-10, 2019 https://www.salt.org/bio-schiff-peter Jobs Surge in April, Unemployment Rate Falls Today is Jobs Friday; the first Friday of the month, that we get the nonfarm payroll number.  I don't know if the markets anticipated more or Donald Trump, because of course he's ready to send out a tweet when we get a better than expected number.  That's what happened today; we got another number that was better than expected.  Certainly the headline number - they were looking for an increase of 180,00 jobs, which would have been a bit of a reduction over last month's 196,000 jobs - which was revised down slightly to 189,000. We ended up getting 263,000 jobs, so another number with a 2-handle - a much bigger number than had been anticipated, and the unemployment number, also surprisingly dropped. Two tenths, from 3.8% to 3.6%.  Hispanic unemployment actually hit an all-time record low. I expected Donald Trump to tweet about that, because obviously he's being accused of being a racist.  Clearly, if he can show that, "Well, look, Hispanic unemployment is at an all-time record low, how are my policies racist, if we have a record low in unemployment among Hispanics?" He did tweet about the jobs numbers and the low unemployment numbers. Which Numbers are Fraudulent Now? But again, I reminded Trump (not that he actually ever reads my tweets, he gets so many) that when he brags about how low the unemployment rate is, the official rate, I always remind him, "Wait a minute, you are the person who accused these numbers of being fraudulent, fakes, phonies, a scam - Donald Trump as a candidate was very critical of Barack Obama's phony recovery mainly because Obama was hiding behind (what Trump said were) fraudulent statistics. Well, these are the same statistics that Donald Trump is embracing - the same statistics that he criticized.  So, I guess the President no longer about all of the discouraged workers who are no longer looking for work, he doesn't care about all the people who are working part time, but would prefer to work full time, but they can't find a full time job, so they settle for a part time jobs.  These are the people who are not included in that 3.6% unemployment rate.  The President cared about those people when he was a candidate.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded May 1, 2019 VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW May 13 - 15, 2019 https://conferences.moneyshow.com/moneyshow-las-vegas/speakers/4532d84bf93311d3a5dd00104b96e7b5/peter-schiff/ Market Looking for Validation of Expectations Today was the conclusion of the FOMC meeting in which the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged, and that is exactly what the market was expecting.  Nobody expected the Fed to hike, and nobody expected the Fed to cut. But apparently, a lot of people expected the Fed to be more dovish with respect to its outlook for a potential future rate cut. Remember, the Fed Fund futures are showing that the next move is likely to be a cut and that maybe the Fed will cut by 50 basis points by the end of the year, so the markets are probably looking for some reassurance from the Fed that the market's expectations of lower interest rates are valid, and that's not what they got today from Chairman Powell. Inflation Below 2%.  Who Cares? 'In fact, he was actually asked, point blank, by CNBC's Steve Liesman - it was one of the first questions asked, maybe it was the first - whether or not the Federal Reserve was going to do something about persistently low inflation, because, after all, the official inflation rate is slightly below their target. I mean, if the target is 2%, we're at 1.7%, 1.8%… Who cares?  But somehow this is an emergency, this is a disaster - we're not hitting our 2% target, even though we're pretty damn close.  But, is the Fed going to do something about it? And instead of saying, "Oh, yes, we're going to do something about it, we're going to cut rates to make sure that we have 2% inflation", what Powell said was, "Well, yes, we acknowledge that inflation is lower than we would like and its lower than our goal, but we're not worried, because we expect it to be transitory." In other words, we're not worried about inflation being too low, because we believe the inflation rate is going to rise, and so there's nothing to worry about. In fact, what Powell said was that the Fed will be patient, but as of right now, they can't see a reason why they should hike or they don't see a reason why they should cut. Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded April 26, 2019 VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW May 13 - 15, 2019 https://conferences.moneyshow.com/moneyshow-las-vegas/speakers/4532d84bf93311d3a5dd00104b96e7b5/peter-schiff/ Q1 GDP Expected at 2.3% Today we finally got the first estimate for the U.S. GDP in the first quarter of 2019, and typically the first quarter of the year has been rather weak.  That has been the experience pretty much going back through the Barack Obama administration.  And the consensus was for a 2.3% rise in Q1 GDP, that would have been just a slight improvement over the 2.2% number that we got for the 4th quarter of 2018. Expectations Were Low If you remember, way back, a couple of months ago, everybody was really low. You had a lot of people who were looking for Q1 GDP to come out with a zero handle. But they had been ratcheting up those expectations now to a consensus of 2.3%.  A lot of it had to do with the fact that the trade deficits had come in a lot smaller than people thought. I think the reason for that is because the trade deficit really ramped up in the last couple of quarters, probably because businesses were trying to front-run the tariffs that were supposed to come in at the end of last year. That might have caused extra imports to try to get things in under the gun before they were subjected to the tariffs.  So because we pulled all that forward, imports weren't as much in the first quarter, so they did not subtract as much from the GDP. Inventories Continued to Build Also, the inventories continue to build, but most importantly, because they weren't selling. Goods weren't selling as much - inventories were building.  That ended up helping. We ended up getting a number that was much bigger than consensus.  We actually got 3.2% GDP growth for Q1. Delaying the Day of Reckoning Now, before you get all excited, "Aha, Peter, you were totally wrong on this, you were looking for a weak number…" - first of all, a lot of people were looking for a weak number.  It wasn't just me. But I do believe that we simply delayed the day of reckoning by a quarter.  I think this time, it's going to be the second quarter that will be a big disaster.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW May 13 - 15, 2019 https://conferences.moneyshow.com/moneyshow-las-vegas/speakers/4532d84bf93311d3a5dd00104b96e7b5/peter-schiff/ Easter and Passover I hope everybody enjoyed their Easter holiday, in fact, today is Easter Monday, so many parts of the world are still celebrating, including here in Puerto Rico.  We are still in the holiday of Passover, so hopefully everybody who celebrates Passover, myself included, is still enjoying that holiday. In fact, this year, the first night of Passover coincided with Good Friday; a rare occasion that unites the two religions.  We generally end up celebrating both. Removal of Sanction Exemptions Drives Oil Prices Up The markets have been quiet around the holidays.  The big story today in the markets was the price of crude oil - up about $1.60/barrel.  We're now at $65.71 per barrel.  This is a new high for the year. Today, the catalyst was the Trump administration announcing that they would be withdrawing the exemptions that allow certain countries such as Japan, India, China - a number of countries currently buying oil from Ira. Now we're saying no more exemptions.  They're saying, if you buy oil from Iran, then you're going to get sanctioned.  Generally, what that means is the U.S. is going to shut you out of access to the dollar-based financial system - wiring and using the resources of the Fed.  Considering that most of the world still transacts internationally in U.S. dollars is a very very serious punishment that the U.S. is able to dole out to any nation that does not do its bidding. Effect on our Trading Partners? Now, of course, this angers our trading partners who do not like being dictated to by the United States, they do not like the United States being able to tell them who they can and cannot do business with, and to punish them if they do not do what the United States says. Of course, this is all a function of the U.S. dollar being the reserve currency, which certainly gives nations like China, or like Russia or any other nation an incentive to try to move away from the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded April 16, 2019 VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW May 13 - 15, 2019 https://conferences.moneyshow.com/moneyshow-las-vegas/speakers/4532d84bf93311d3a5dd00104b96e7b5/peter-schiff/ Tax Day Yesterday was April 15th - Tax Day, or as my father, Irwin Schiff used to say, "April Fool's Day". My father thought it was April Fool's Day because he believed that that was the day on which Americans basically voluntarily paid a tax that no law required them to pay and voluntarily filed a 1040 tax form that no law required them to file.  Of course, my father ultimately went to jail and died and jail because of those beliefs.  I have been paying my taxes, although now that I live in Puerto Rico it's not nearly as painful as it used to be when I lived in Connecticut. 16th Amendment A lot of people don't realize that April 15 was not always Tax Day; a little bit of trivia. When the income tax first passed, or reared its ugly head in 1913 - although that's not the first time we had an income tax.  We had an income tax during the civil war. The North imposed the tax and when the war ended, the income tax went away. It came back again, and it was declared unconstitutional, correctly, by the Supreme Court in the Pollock Decision.  Then they resurrected it with the 16th Amendment, and following the 16th Amendment in 1913, the original Tax Day was March 1. Income Tax Why is that? Because the income tax is a tax on your income for an entire year. So, we are now in 2019 and we're paying our income taxes for 2018.  But you don't know what your income is in 2018 until the year is over. You may have earned a lot of money early in the year - you could lose it all back on the last day of the year and end up with no income at all - end up with a loss.  So the idea was, if you're going to tax your income, then we have to wait until the end of the year, and then we have to give you some time to add up your income and figure out what you owe and then pay the tax.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded April 10, 2019 VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW  May 13 - 15, 2019 Lyft Sinking I began yesterday's podcast by pointing out the weakness in shares of the recent IPO of Lyft.  In fact, I mentioned that Friday's close above the IPO price (the first time it closed above that price since the day of the IPO) the fact that it couldn't hold on to that rally, I thought that meant the stock looked even weaker, technically. And we got a big follow through today.  Lyft sank about 11%, it closed near the lows of the day, 60.12.  In fact, we did trade as low as 59.75 on the closing minutes of trading.  We're now down about 32% from the opening print, after it went IPO on that day.  We're 17-18% below the IPO price.  If you happen to get the IPO price and you still have the stock, you're almost in a bear market from that purchase price. Catalyst: Uber News The catalyst today was the news that it looks like the Uber IPO is going to happen sooner than everybody thought. Maybe they will be filing as early as this week, and the IPO is going to be bigger than people initially thought, as far as how much stock they're looking to unload on investors.  Although, they're taking the valuation down from maybe $90 to $100 billion.  I think initially they were talking $110-120 billion, and they're going to look to unload about 10% of the company - $10 billion. Now, you would think, "Wait a minute, if Lyft is doing so poorly, what is the rush to bring Uber to the market?  Doesn't it seem like a bad time?"  But if you think about it, I think what Wall Street is worried about, is if they wait even longer, the price of Lyft will sink even further.  So it's a mad dash to get this thing out there before it really hits the fan, because this is showtime for all of these unicorns.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

VERY IMPORTANT PODCAST! Please share with everyone you care about. Ray Dalio: Please start at 29:52 Extreme Inequality Is Not a Function of Capitalism I agree that wealth inequality is a problem, but it is a problem that is created by government - created by the Federal Reserve. I was warning years ago, when the Federal Reserve first launched Quantitative Easing, that this was going to happen! This policy would only benefit assets at the expense of the overall economy. I've been warning about this for years. The government is doing this, not the market. So, yes, I want the government to do something about wealth inequality by getting out of the way. I want Capitalism to do something about inequality.  Now, of course, there's always going to be inequality - that's part of capitalism. People are not going to be equal, because peoples' contributions are not equal. What is not normal right now is the extent of the disparity. That extreme inequality is not a function of Capitalism.  if we enjoyed Capitalism, there would be less inequality. We Need to Embrace and Re-Discover Capitalism Ray Dalio recently replied to a recent Tweet of mine, referring to his appearance on 60 Minutes, stating that if the only solution Ray Dalio has is to raise taxes on the rich, and to hope the government spends the money productively, then he has no solution.  So then he referred me to his article, which I read, word for word: Why and How Capitalism Needs to be Reformed, parts 1 and 2. Again, Capitalism does not need to be reformed. What needs to be reformed is Democracy. We need to embrace and re-discover Capitalism and what needs to be reformed is all of the Socialism that has been interjected into Capitalism. Government Makes It Difficult for Small Businesses to Hire Young People I told Ray Dalio that I would read his article and I read it and made some notes and I'm going to go over my thoughts now. Number one, right off the bat, Dalio talks about all the jobs he had by the time he was age 12. He came from humble beginnings, he wasn't born wealthy, he is a rags-to-riches story, an American Dream story. By the time his was 12, he made money delivering newspapers, mowing lawns, caddying, and he invested the money he earned in the stock market. The first thing that grabs my attention is, "how many 12-year-olds today have jobs?" Very few young people today have jobs. Why is that? one of the reasons is because the government has made it so difficult for small businesses to hire young people -  minimum wage laws, and workmen's comp, disability, unemployment make it difficult for young people to get jobs.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW May 13 - 15, 2019 https://conferences.moneyshow.com/moneyshow-las-vegas/speakers/4532d84bf93311d3a5dd00104b96e7b5/peter-schiff/ Rebound Expected in Jobs Report Stock market in the U.S. continued to grind higher today, although I still believe that this is a bear market rally.  The Dow added a little better than 40 points; the NASDAQ up about 47, so a bigger percentage gain there.  The S&P was up about 13 points.  This was following the release of the March Nonfarm Payrolls numbers - aka the Jobs Report. There was a lot of hope that we would see a rebound in the month of March.  Remember, in February, they initially reported just 20,000 jobs created, which was well short of what had been expected.  It was probably something close to 200,o00 jobs.  And the consensus for March was for 170,000 jobs and we actually got 196,000 jobs. Pretty Weak Number That's the first look. So that is, what, 26,000 jobs better than had been expected.  The February number was revised upward, but just to 33,000, and I think I remember when this number first came out, that there were a lot of naysayers who were saying, "This is crazy, there is no way this is true, let's wait for the revisions".  Well, we've got a revision, and all we did is revise it up to 33,000. So it seems like the number was legitimate. We did have a rebound in the month of March, but 170,000 is not a lot of jobs, considering how few jobs were created in February.  In fact, if you average the two months, it's a pretty weak number. Weakness in Labor Force Participation Rate The official unemployment rate, that held steady at 3.8%, but the labor force participation rate, which I know a lot of people have been encouraged by, because they see that number notching higher, it dropped back down .o2, from 63.2% to 63%. So that's some weakness there.  Also, if you look at the manufacturing jobs, they were looking for a gain of 10,000 jobs.  Instead, we got a loss of 6,000 jobs.  They took the February gain, which was originally reported at 4,000, and we only gained 1,000. So the markets were looking for an improvement over the original estimate for February; instead, not only did we take February's number down, but instead of improving, we actually went in the other direction and lost manufacturing jobs. Average Hourly Earnings Posts Sharp Slowdown If you look at the average hourly earnings, they were looking for a gain of +.2 and we got half that of +.1, and that is a sharp slowdown from the gain the prior month, which was +.4, which was better than had been estimated at the time.  So now you average them out, and, again, we're not getting much in the way of earnings growth, although we are seeing a rise in the cost of living. Average Work Week Up The average work week was up; it ticked up from 34.4 hours to 34.5 hours. Nonetheless, most of the coverage of the jobs numbers was that is was a good report.  It was better than estimates, because they were looking for 170-whatever and they got 190-something, so it was better than estimates.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW May 13 - 15, 2019 https://conferences.moneyshow.com/moneyshow-las-vegas/speakers/4532d84bf93311d3a5dd00104b96e7b5/peter-schiff/ Recorded April 2, 2019 February Durable Goods Order Declined Slightly Less Than Expected We had a quiet day in the U.S. stock market today.  Not much reaction from a slightly weaker than expected February Durable Goods Orders number that came out before the market opened.  They were looking for a weak number; the consensus was for a decline of 1.8% - we got a decline of slightly less than that: 1.6%. They revised the prior month down from +.4% to +.1%, so we declined less, but from a lower number. Overall, slightly weaker.  In fact, the Core Capital Goods number was also slightly weaker.  They were looking for a rise of .2%; instead, we had a drop of .1% - although they revised the prior month up from .8% to .9%.  Still a little weaker on the day. Lyft Hitting Lows But the market still seems to be oblivious to the weak data, in fact later in the day we did get the auto sales numbers that were disappointing, as well. A lot of bad news is being routinely overlooked by Wall Street.  Lyft, the company that went public on Friday: I discussed the lackluster performance of that IPO on Friday.  In fact, most of the commentary that I listened to or saw was positive.  They were describing the Lyft IPO as a big success… everything went great… the stock went up… But what concerned me about the stock was not how it went up, but how weakly it closed. It pretty much closed on the low of the day.  It had sold off pretty much all day, following the pop on the open. Lyft Sank into Bear Market on Day 2 The stock came public at $72 and it immediately traded as high as $88.6, but closed the first day of trading at $78.29. Still above the $72 opening, but anybody who bought the opening print was down.  Then it got clobbered on Monday and it fell again today.  It only closed down slightly.  It closed relatively near the highs of the day, but the low was $66.10.  That's 25% below the peak price on Friday. So that's a bear market.  In fact, officially Lyft sank into a bear market on its second day as a public company.  So that bear market got even worse today.  The stock is now better than 8% below its IPO price.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW May 13 - 15, 2019 https://conferences.moneyshow.com/moneyshow-las-vegas/speakers/4532d84bf93311d3a5dd00104b96e7b5/peter-schiff/ A Gift from the Federal Reserve The Dow Jones closed out its best quarter since 1998 with a 211 point gain: 25,928.68 was the close.  The Dow, on the quarter up 10.3% - the broader averages doing even better.  The S&P 500 rose 12.3% on the quarter. The Russell 2000 - 13.8%, and the NASDAQ 15.6% gain on the quarter.  of course, the entire rally was a gift from the Federal Reserve. Had the Federal Reserve stayed on its course, indicating that more rate hikes were coming; 3 or 4 this year; had the Fed continued with its planned auto-pilot reduction in the size of its enormous balance sheet, the stock market would be considerably lower.  In fact, we probably would have added to the losses experienced in the 4th quarter of last year with additional losses this year. But the Fed, as I had been predicting for many years, reacted to the weakness in the stock market and the weakness in the economy by reversing course. Bigger Cuts Ahead then the Market is Currently Pricing In Now the Fed hasn't actually cut rates yet, although the markets are already anticipating rate cuts and not additional rate hikes. Where the markets got it wrong is that there will be much bigger cuts than what the market is currently pricing in.  I think the market is looking at maybe 25 or 50 basis points of cuts. In fact, we're going all the way back to zero. A reduction in interest rates of 25 basis points or 50 basis points would do absolutely nothing. Quackery: Substituting a Bubble for the Illusion of Economic Growth I think the Fed, again, is going to have to go all the way down to zero once it decides that's what it's going to do. But had the Fed not changed course, the markets and the economy would be quite a bit weaker. Although not weaker - more air would have come out of the bubble. That's all the Fed has been doing with its monetary policy is sustaining a bubble.  Allowing the bubble to get bigger and bigger, while preventing the underlying structural problems from being solved.  Even though those solutions involve some short-term pain, as a trade-off for long-term gain, it is a very healthy process that would be good for the economy in the long run.  But, instead, the Fed has interfered with the market's medicine and substituted its own quackery - substituting a bubble to create the illusion of economic growth as the economy is actually worsening.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW May 13 – 15, 2019 https://conferences.moneyshow.com/moneyshow-las-vegas/speakers/4532d84bf93311d3a5dd00104b96e7b5/peter-schiff/ Recorded March 26, 2019 Feigned Attempt to Shrink the Balance Sheet I am finally back on land, having spent 9 days at sea, at the Investors Summit at Sea.  I've been doing this annually now, this is my 7th time doing that. I am now back, technically one calendar year older.  I want to catch up a little bit on what happened in the market later last week.  I did do that one podcast from the ship following the complete capitulation on the part of the Federal Reserve, basically calling off all of the rate hikes that anybody thought may have been coming for the remainder of the year.  Also calling off their feigned attempt to shrink the balance sheet - quantitative tightening.  The balance sheet will barely shrink between now and the end of the summer, when it will stop shrinking altogether; if they can even keep up the pretense for that long. Nobody Appreciates What the Fed Has Done If you remember, when I was forecasting that this was going to happen, at the very beginning, in fact even before the Fed began to shrink its balance sheet, before the Fed raised rates for the first time, I said that if they ever tried to normalize interest rates, if they ever tried to shrink the balance sheet, they would ultimately abort the process - that they would fail in their mission. They could not complete the journey. It would create a huge problem for the Fed, which up until this point, it hasn't happened yet. Nobody really appreciates what the Fed has done. There Will Be an Excuse A lot of the people in the investment community are still buying at face value what the Fed is saying. But remember, when I said the Fed was going to announce that it was going to stop the rate hikes or call off quantitative tightening, I said at the time, that they were going to come up with an excuse. That the Fed was not going to tell the markets the truth about why it had aborted this mission - it was just going to make up an excuse. The Fed had to pretend that they could actually do this - that they were going to normalize interest rates, that they were going to shrink their balance sheet but something prevented them from doing it.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy