Eoin Treacy's view

 A link to today's video commentary is posted in the Subscriber's Area.

Hope you are doing well. I just thought you may find interesting this Financial Times story on gold - 

In particular, it has a chart showing that “the correlation between the growing volume of negative-yielding bonds and the rising value of gold is striking.” And, also, “Gold as a zero-yielding asset will look even more attractive versus an asset that is guaranteed to lose money,” said Paul Wong, a former senior portfolio manager at Sprott Asset Management.

Eoin Treacy's view

Thank you for this link and I am enjoying some warmer weather by playing tennis with my children in the afternoons. It’s a been a long cool spring in Southern California and considerably wetter than any we’ve seen since we moved here. It looks like the long winter of discontent with precious metals is over too.

One of the best ways to think about gold, in an environment where an increasingly large chunk of global sovereign debt is trading with negative yields, is as a zero-coupon perpetual bond. It rises in value as yields decline and most particularly as the risk of competitive currency devaluation becomes more realistic.

To complicate matters, Americans are suffering buyer’s remorse with China. Washington, or at least much of its national security leadership, long believed that China would not buck the US-led global order because they were such beneficiaries of it, either through a liberal trade regime or, for example, through the constraints the United States forced on regional rivals in Asia such as Japan. “The United States has always had an outsize sense of its ability to determine China’s course,” wrote Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner, who both moulded Asia policy in the Obama administration. “Again and again, its ambitions have come up short.”

Washington’s policy was based on a series of misjudgements, many of them quite reasonable at the time. Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton’s late national security adviser, for example, depicted China in a speech in June 1997, as being a divided country, “with conflicting forces pulling in opposite directions: inward-looking nationalism and outward-looking integration”. In truth, China’s integration with the world has always been tailored to reinforce the nationalist narrative at home. In the words of analyst Tanner Greer, the ‘let’s engage China to make it a responsible stakeholder’ policy was not as stupid as it is now portrayed. “What should have been an opening gambit became a stale dogma,” said Greer. “But it was a good strategy initially, one that terrified the Party leadership, so they took action to defeat it.” 

The Americans overrated their intrinsic attractiveness and strength as a benign, inclusive, unassailable superpower, especially in the post-Cold War glow of victory against the Soviet Union, another rival communist state. More to the point, they underestimated the Party’s equal and opposite sense of its own exceptionalism. “We wanted to believe that we could convince China that they would be better off with us in charge, and that somehow, with more interaction and engagement, the Chinese would come to believe that, ‘I like to be told what to do by the United States’,” said Oriana Skylar Mastro, of Georgetown University. The United States also failed to understand, says Ms Mastro, that China felt compelled to build up its military. China’s leaders never “felt safe surrounded by the US military, and … at some point, if they could, they would reduce US military presence in their periphery”. 

Eoin Treacy's view

I don’t think voters had any conception of how the big bet on civilizing China was been collateralised. We know the decision was made to allow China into the WTO based on the assumption that if GDP per capita reached the magic $3500 level it would miraculously become a free and open society and a willing partner in the spread of rule of law and good governance. What is never discussed is this bet destroyed several million US jobs and at least an equal number in Europe, Canada and Australia.

Regarding the Allen Brooks piece on Climate change. I have to say I find the benign conclusions of the report totally unconvincing. Over the years I have read widely on the subject and have been especially impressed by the publications and books of one of the most eminent climate scientists whose work goes back more than 50 years. I refer to Professor James Lovelock. In a recent BBC interview, he suggested that global warming may be entering an acceleration phase. As I write this reply a news story has just announced that a high-pressure dome is due to affect the Eastern states of the US with predicted city temperatures likely to exceed 40 deg C. The simple fact is that you cannot expect hydrocarbons that have been trapped in the Earth’s crust over many millions of years, to be exploited by man over a few decades with the bye products going into the atmosphere, without grave consequences.to follow. Globally we have just experienced the hottest June ever and significantly Siberia has been 7 deg C above normal for the time of year. I mention this in respect of the melting permafrost which is now releasing methane in significant amounts. A gas thirty times more significant than CO2.as a greenhouse gas Of course this topic is an extremely emotional one, simply because the decisions made now on how we collectively proceed could not be more important. On balance I think I would go with the IPCC and James Lovelock. His books on Gaia theory, by the way, are worth reading

Eoin Treacy's view

Thank you for this email which may be of interest to others. Higher median temperatures and more humid conditions in some areas than we are accustomed to are a fact. Coral bleaching and marine calcification are also facts we cannot dispel. Pollution of our rivers, lakes and oceans, desertification following logging and rapid expansion of cities to accommodate billions more people all represent significant challenges that need to be dealt with.

Eoin Treacy's view

One of the most commonly asked questions by subscribers is how to find details of my open traders. In an effort to make it easier I will simply repost the latest summary daily until there is a change. I'll change the title to the date of publication of new details so you will know when the information was provided. 

Eoin Treacy's view

There will be a memorial concert for David at the Royal Festival Hall on October 5th. It looks like we will have a room at the Royal Festival Hall for an hour before the concert for a memorial. Wine and canapes will be served. Afterward we will retire to the Benefactor's Lounge where Tim Walker, Chairman of the LPO will dedicate the concert in David's memory. The concert will be from 7:30 to 10pm. If anyone would like to attend the concert in addition to the memorial there will be a box to tick on the booking form which I will provide as soon as I have it.   

Since this is the 50th year of The Chart Seminar we will be conducting the event on October 3rd and 4th to coincide with the memorial on the Saturday.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, would like to attend, or have a suggestion for another venue please feel to reach out to Sarah at sarah@fullertreacymoney.com.  

The full rate for The Chart Seminar is £1799 + VAT. (Please note US, Australian and Asian delegates, as non-EU residents are not liable for VAT). Annual subscribers are offered a discounted rate of £850. Anyone booking more than one place can also avail of the £850 rate for the second and subsequent delegates.