Marc Faber June 2013 Market Commentary

Marc Faber has just released the June 2013 monthly market commentary (MMC) entitled "The Hidden Dangers of Political Correctness" on gloomboomdoom.com.

Marc Faber first explains "Political Correctness" (PC), which has become the outcome of a distinctive 'turn' in Leftist politics. There's a list of things one must think or say together by the elites, and goes against the right of the individual to establish his or her own beliefs. He goes as far as to say PC "is indeed a purely totalitarian concept, and it asserts the fight of those in power to suppress all but the party line's official lies."

Moving on to deal with to asset markets, Mr Faber explains bond yields have been rising all around the world, and this may negatively affect equities. Based on that fact and several technical indicators, he believes there's significant downside right for stock markets worldwide, and at least it's much more risky than perceived by the crowd of investors.

Marc Faber also mentions one investment he's done recently: gold stocks, as Gold and Silver mining stocks have the potential to rebound by between 30% and 40% following the dramatic slump experience in the last few months.

There's one attachment to this MMC:

• "The Importance of Being Diligent" by Shinya Deguch, working for Star Magnolia Capital, which provide details about fraud at Bayou Management.
  The report is also available on Slideshare.

If you want to access the full Monthly Market Commentary (MMC) by Marc Faber, it is available for 300 USD per year.  

Gold - Long Term Chart Says Buy Now!

Since 2001, Gold has been behaving very nicely and stayed in a narrow range in its logarithmic chart. So If Gold has gone down for an extended period of time and suddenly drop at level not seen for a while, or alternatively if it has gone up for a long time, and makes new highs, I like to have a look at the logarithmic chart since the bull market started in 2001, and see is we've hit the higher or lower bound of the trend

(Source: Boursorama)

Guess what, we've just hit the lower bound last Friday. Assuming long term fundamentals remain the same (debt issue, money printing...), Gold is likely to go up over time, and this could prove to be the right time to buy. The 14-day RSI is at 30 (and hit this level 3 times) which means Gold is oversold short term. So it looks like a long and short term buy at this level.

The only thing that bothers me is that is has mostly corrected through time, and not really through price (it only lost 15%) which means it keep it amazing record of 12 positive years. Which is probably why Georges Soros recently lightened his position, and Jim Rogers said he would not buy at those levels. however, Marc Faber still continues to advice buying every month.

The Gold chart may also indicate it's a good time to buy Silver which has gone down by over 40% since the $50 it hit in 2011, but it's still not technically oversold (yet).

5 Typical Mistakes with Gold Investments

Axel Merk has published a new whitepaper entitled "Fools Gold: Five
Common Mistakes with Gold Investment" that deals with poor Gold investments decision or understanding.

5 investment advices are summarized below:

1. Gold Stocks Ain’t Gold - Gold mining stocks, on aggregate, have significantly underperformed the price of gold.
2.  There is Only One Real Thing - Other precious metals, including silver, may not perform as well as gold in times of economic duress.
3. Beware of Premium Over Spot - Make a note of the spot price of gold per Troy ounce, so that you can calculate the premium the dealer is asking for (be sure to include any delivery, administrative, insurance, or related fees) before making a final decision
4. Don’t Overlook the Expenses - Before you buy physical gold, you have to carefully consider the related storage and insurance costs.
5. Make Sure Gold is Really There -  If you buy a Gold ETF make sure to read the prospetus, and be wary of large amount of "unallocated gold", and the ability to lease gold.

The full report is available for download on Merk Funds website.

Marc Faber January 2013 Market Commentary

Marc Faber has just released his January 2013 market commentary entitled "A Great Attitude Creates a Happy Future" on gloomboomdoom.com.

This month, Marc Faber discusses about what may constitutes the best investment: Education of one's children in the greater sense of the word including morality, generosity,. From one investor perspective, the best returns are achieved with "boring" stocks with lower volatility., and the very best way to even lower volatility further is to hold a diversified portfolio of different assets: properties, equities, bonds, precious metals, and cash.

The monthly market commentary including one attachment:

• “It’s time to ‘Bet the Farm’ on farming and farmland” by Coast Sullenger. founder of GAIA Capital Advisors.

I could not find the report online, but GAIA capital advisors provides GAIA farming index and GAIA/ EFG Tracker Certificate.

If you want to access the full Monthly Market Commentary (MMC) by Marc Faber, it is available for 300 USD per year. 

Eric Sprott: Smart Investors Are Flocking to Silver

Sprott Asset Management published their monthly newsletter Market at Glance (December 2012) entitled "Why are (Smart) Investors Buying 50 Times More Physical Silver than Gold?"

Eric Sprott explains that demand for Silver relative to Gold has dramatically changed since 2008. The table below shows the US Mint gold and silver sales in ounces over the last few years:

Each year there's about 130 million Gold ounces and 1 Billion Silver ounces available per year, but due to use for industrial applications, the annual availability for investment purpose is respectively 120 million and 350 million ounces. Therefore, the ratio of physical silver availability to gold availability is roughly 3:1.

Investors are choosing to buy silver at a ratio to gold that is well above what is available. The silver price is currently mainly set in the paper market where the daily average trade on the Comex is approximately 300 million ounces. An outrageous number when you compare it to the daily mine production of about 2 million ounces, and the current price is most probably where it is because of market manipulation.

Sprott believes the current investment trend into silver is likely to continue.

The full version of the newsletters is available at http://sprottasset.com/markets-at-a-glance/why-are-%28smart%29-investors-buying-50-times-more-physical-silver-than-gold/

5 New "Jim Rogers" Commodities ETNs: RGRC, RGRA, RGRE, RGRP and RGRI

This week, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has added five new ETNs to its offering, giving exposure to commodity indexes created by Jim Rogers:

• RBS Rogers Enhanced Commodity ETN (RGRC)
• RBS Rogers Enhanced Agriculture ETN (RGRA)
• RBS Rogers Enhanced Energy ETN (RGRE)
• RBS Rogers Enhanced Precious Metals ETN (RGRP)
• RBS Rogers Enhanced Industrial Metals ETN (RGRI)

RGRA is the ETN equivalent to RJA ETF, RGRC is the equivalent of RJI ETF and RGRE is equivalent to RJN. ETN and ETF are structured differently, but I assume the 3 new products I've just mentionned should provide similar returns to the existing ETF, unless there are important ost differences between managing those 2 different types of financial products.

The real novelty is with RBS Rogers Enhanced Precious Metals ETN and RBS Rogers Enhanced Industrial Metals ETN, which as far as I know do not have equivalent ETF products.

Time to Buy Commodities Again?

Commodities have gone down by nearly 30% (CRB Index) since Q2 2011. If you are a believer that money printing by central banks will eventually increase commodity prices despite the poor economy, it may be a good time to buy again.

Let's have a look at the CRB index chart (Source: stooq.com) since 1994 and draw a trend line.

This is a "dumb" method to time your investments, but it can be terribly efficient. Since the start of the bull market in 1998, the CRB index has rebounded 3 times on this trend line, and we are now very close to hitting it again. We have about the same buy signal has we have on Gold and Silver. So it might be a really good time to increase exposure to commodities (or get back into commodities).  Although the bull market is getting old (14-year), many projects have been cancelled or delayed in 2008 which should give more legs to the bull market on top of money printing by central banks.

For individual investors, the easiest way to get exposure is to buy commodities ETFs such as RJI, or funds composed of commodity stocks such as Carmignac Portf Commodities A. As usual check the chart of the ETF or mutual fund against the index tracked over at least 2 or 3 years to make sure you are not scammed into paying high fees and that the financial product you plan to buy suffer from excessive decay.

Marc Faber April 2012 Market Commentary

Marc Faber has just released his April 2012 market commentary on the gloomboomdoom.com website.

This month report is entitled "He had been one of those People who was greatly improved by Death".

This month, there are 2 MMC attachments:

• Stocks, Bonds, and the Efficacy of Global Dividends by Jim O´Shaughness, chairman, and CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management,
• Value Subjectivism and Monetary Instability by Ron Hera,  founder of Hera Research, LLC.

The first report by Jim O'Shaughness is available as a free download at http://osam.com/research.aspx (January 2012 research paper) after registration. In this report, Jim O'Shaugness looks at bonds and stocks investing as well as global dividend investing. He compares different strategies over a long(-ish) period of time. Here's the conclusion of this study:

Bonds seem poised for low single-digit returns and, potentially, negative real returns. A conservative analysis of historical equity returns leads us to believe that equities could see mid to high single-digit nominal equity returns, though still below average. Dividend investing has historically been a reliable strategy producing superior excess returns in both U.S. and foreign markets. Expanding the universe of potential investments to include a global framework provides a greater opportunity set of high-quality, cash-rich multi-national companies with strong dividend yields.

Dividends are historically a significant component of total equity returns during low-return environments. When applied to pre- and post-tax income investors, a high-yield dividend strategy not only offers protection of purchasing power but also growth of income on a real basis.

The second attachment "Value Subjectivism and Monetary Instability" is an article published on Goldseek.com where Ron Hera pinpoint 15 fundamental issues with fiat currencies.

If you want to access the full Monthly Market Commentary (MMC) by Marc Faber, it is available for 300 USD per year. Sometimes, Summaries or highlights are available on the web, I'll repost it here if one become available.

Eric Sprott: The Recovery Has No Clothes

Sprott Asset Management published their monthly newsletter Market at Glance (March 2012) entitled "The [Recovery] Has No Clothes".

Eric Sprott and David Baker explain that although Greece has been papered over, and many people are now bullish, very little has actually changed for the better, and it's too early to declare a new bull market has started.

Among all the cheer-leading with "good" indicators, they give some counter examples of not so good indicators:

1. Although the BLS announced an unemployment rate of 8.3%, the Gallup survey showed unemployment increasing to 9.1% in February (8.6% after seasonal adjustments) versus 8.6% in January.
2. US food stamp participation has reached an all-time record of 46,514,238 in December 2011, up 227,922.
3. Europe's 9.7% year-over-year decrease in auto sales
4. 100bp drop in the March consumer confidence index
5. 5 consecutive months of manufacturing contraction in China
6. 0.9% drop in US February existing home sales.
7. In February 2012, the Treasury reported $103.4 billion in tax receipts, versus $110.6 billion in February 2011.

They also commented on the Federal Reserve stress test on large US banks:

The test used an almost apocalyptic hypothetical 2013 scenario defined by 13% unemployment, a 50% decline in stock prices and a further 21% decline in US home prices. The stress tests tested where major US banks' Tier 1 capital would be if such a scenario came to pass. Anyone who still had 5% Tier 1 capital and above was safe, anyone below would fail. So essentially, in a scenario where the stock market is cut in half, any bank who had 5 cents supporting their "dollar" worth of assets (which are not marked-to-market and therefore likely not worth anywhere close to $1), would somehow survive an otherwise miserable financial environment. The market clearly doesn't see the ridiculousness of such a test, and the meaninglessness of having 5 cents of capital support $1 of assets in an environment where that $1 is likely to be almost completely illiquid.

They also mentioned that Dexia, a Belgian bank, passed the European stress test, only to fail 3 months later.

Then Eric Sprott and David Baker turned to their specialty: Precious metals.

Our skepticism would be supported if not for one thing - the recent weakness in gold and silver prices. Given our view of the market, the recent sell-offs have not made sense given the considerable central bank intervention we highlighted in February.

After the good performance of Gold and Silver in January and February, both markets were hammered on the 29th of February, as Ben Bernanke gave a speech (QE3 not needed) and the European central bank flooded the market with another €529.5 billion with the second part of Long-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO).

QE3 is not off the table, just delayed, and Gold and Silver price drop was exclusively due to a sell-off on the paper market with the equivalent of 173 million ounces of physical silver exchanged between 10:30 am and 11:30 am. Compared that to the yearly production of Silver (730 million ounces), almost 24% yearly silver production exchanged in 1 hour.

An analysis of the paper-silver market shows that Silver is  traded 143 times higher in the paper markets versus what is produced by mine supply compare that to crude oil (14.3 X), Aluminum (46.8 X), Gold (69.4 X) and Copper (75.1 X) and they conclude:

The prevalence of paper trading in the silver market is what makes the drastic price declines possible by allowing non-physical holders to sell massive size into a relatively small market. It's not as if real owners of 160 million ounces of physical silver dumped it on the market on February 29th, and yet the futures market allows the silver spot price to respond as if they had.

The Gold market also looked suspicious with $3 billion of physical gold dumped into the market in a short time, and this was probably not done by speculators or investors.

They conclude as follows:

If we are right about gold and silver as currencies, and if they we are right about the continuation of central bank printing, both gold and silver will continue to appreciate in various fiat currencies over time. If there is indeed some sort of manipulation in the futures market that is designed to suppress the prices for both metals so as to detract from the mainstream investor's interest in them as alternative currencies, then both metals are likely trading at suppressed prices today.

...

The equity market rally that began in late December appears to be generated more by excess government-induced liquidity than it does by any raw fundamentals. We continue to scour the data for signs of a true recovery and we are simply not seeing it.

...

We would also expect the precious metals complex to enjoy renewed strength as the year continues. One bad month does not change a long-term trend that has been building over 10 years. Gold and silver will both have an important role to play as the central bank-induced printing continues, and we expect more on that front in short order.

The full version of the newsletters is available at http://sprott.com/markets-at-a-glance/the-%5Brecovery%5D-has-no-clothes/

Jim Rogers on Crude Oil, Gold, Silver and Agriculture Commodities

Lots of media appearance by Jim Rogers this week. Here's an awesome interview by VisionVictory, where they discuss crude oil, precious metals, commodities, the future of the US dollar and potential civil unrests.

Mike Maloney Interviews Jim Rogers

Mike Maloney, of goldsilver.com, interviews Jim Rogers on the 20th of March 2012. They discuss about  about markets, Bernanke, the East/West Cycle and more...

Marc Faber: Beware of The Unintended Consequences Of Money Printing

Interview with Marc Faber and Chris Martenson (March 16,2012) about the unintended consequences of money printing by central banks.

First they discuss about the Greek default which does not matter according to Marc Faber, then they focus on central banks, the fact that they will never reduce their balance sheets as they have embarked on the path of money printing, and how the lower purchasing power of money particularly affects low and middle income people.

When Chris Martenson mentions the high price of oil, Marc Faber explains that consumers of Oil (mainly western economies) are suffering, but producers (Russia,. Saudi Arabia...) are benefiting.

Finally, they talk about Gold and Silver. Everybody should own precious metals as an insurance policy against a financial meltdown. Gold is not particularly expensive according to Marc Faber, although he still think we are in a correction phase. Having said that he won't sell his Gold as long as Obama (or a republican) is in power because they won't address the problems.
Marc Faber eventually sees the full financial system become an MF Global (he said some people got all their money whereas some didn't) and for that reason you should keep your Gold in a safe deposit, not in the US, but rather at some airports such as Singapore.

Silver and Gold Next Buying Opportunity: $25 and $1500

All markets have started to correct including Gold and Silver. Let's see if we can analyze trends to find entry points for the precious metals. I should note that If you have little exposure, any time is a good time to buy physical Gold and Silver simply to protect yourself against financial apocalypse, even if the possibility is remote. Simply view it as an insurance and one where you are likely to get your premium back !

First, let's have a look at Silver which have been correcting since April 2011 after nearly hitting 50 USD. (Charts: Boursorama.com)

We can clearly see a descending channel since April 2011 and if the trends continue, we should see Silver close to 25 USD where it should be another good time to aggressively add to your positions. Now let's see a longer perspective with a 15-year logarithmic chart.

The long term trend is clearly on the upside and the interesting is that the lower line of the channel is around 25 USD. That means that if you believe in the long term fundamentals of Silver (central banks will have to monetize debt, shortages etc...), you should really be an aggressive buyer below 26 USD.

Now let's have a look at Gold with a chart between October 2010 and March 2012 which shows Gold peaked in September 2011 and have been correcting since. If the trend continue we could reach about 1500 USD.

If we look at the long term chart, here again there is a clear uptrend channel with the lower line just below 1500 USD and it would again be a tremendous buying opportunity like in October 2008 or August 2005.

To conclude based on the trends mentioned above, we could be close to a multi-year buying opportunity for both Gold and Silver. There is no way to tell for sure, but if the chart continues their trend, those opportunities should occur in April or May 2012. There is always the Iran war scenario (where precious metals would just go ballistic), but I very much doubt that Obama would go to war against Iran before the presidential elections in November 2012.

There is An Obvious Bubble in Gold (or Not?)

CrushTheStreet.com has interviewed pedestrians in California following the Gold Bubble talks and asked them if they purchased Gold in the last year(s).

There were too few people in this video to make it statistically relevant, but still, none of the persons interviewed purchased Gold, although some bought Gold stocks (which they already sold) and one bought Silver.

It's quite difficult to have a bubble when there are few buyers. In 2000, during the Nasdaq bubble, individual investors' behavior was much different. I remember Marc Faber saying that during a new year party in 1999/2000, a woman asked him what he would buy. He answered that he liked treasuries, and the woman replied that treasuries would only return around 6% per year, whereas she could get 10% to 20% day-trading on tech stocks.

Related articles

• Why Fear Gold? (lewrockwell.com)
• Trading Physical Gold: Is Gold In A Bubble? (zerohedge.com)

Jim Rogers: Gold Going Much Higher In This Decade

ET Now interviews Jim Rogers on the 23rd of January 2012.

They asked him about commodities following the monetary easing by China, and he replied that natural resources such as silver, rice and natural gas usually benefit during periods of massive money printing. If the world economy gets better, there will be shortages, if it does not, they will print money. He owns more precious metals than base metals however.

If there is a conflict with Iran, everything will go down initially, except maybe crude oil, but this would be positive for Gold in the long term. He sees many people in Washington want to do something about Iran, and it looks like something will happen even though it's sheer madness.

David Morgan $60 Silver AND $2,500 Gold for 2012

Interview with David Morgan of http://www.silver-investor.com/ and VisionVictory (Youtube), where they discuss the Silver and Gold markets and David Morgan expects Silver to reach 60 USD and Gold 2500 USD in 2012.

Time to Buy Gold and Silver Again ?

Following up on my previous post "Is it Time to Get Back into Gold and Silver ?" at the end of September, it looks like we may again be at interesting levels for both Gold and Silver.

Let's see the Gold chart between June 2006 and December 2011. (Source: Boursorama)

The gold chart recently broke the trend it started in 2008. Having said that it is currently oversold according to with an RSI-14 of 27.50. This could then be a buying opportunity, but since gold broke the trend there may be more downside. How much downside? Let's see the 11-year chart to provide a forecast.

In that time frame, gold is still in an uptrend, and the level line of the channel shows support (around 1350), so Gold could potentially down to around 1400 USD. Currently is around 1570, so it would be approximately another 10% drop. So the downside is limited (provided the long term fundamentals and trends stay intact), it appear it could be a good time to buy more gold even though more downside it likely. It would however become a screaming buy around 1400 dollars. On another note, Gold price evolution may be linked to the S&P 500, as if the index falls below a certain level, say 1000, we are likely to see further quantitative easing (or similar).

Let's now study Silver. Here's the silver chart (via SLV ETF) between June 2006 and December 2011.

Silver has also just broken the trend it started in 2008, it is however not yet in oversold territory with a RSI-14 of 33.8. If SLV cannot rebound quickly, it could easily go back to the low 20s with a very strong support at 20. This kind of level would also mean Gold between 1200 and 1300 which I don't think we'll get to.

To conclude, if we don't go through a major market panic in the next few weeks, it might be a good time to buy some Gold and Silver, especially if you are fine with a potential further 10% correction in Gold and over 20% in Silver in the short to medium term and are confident in the long term fundamentals of precious metals.

Marc Faber: Equities better than Bonds

Great 30 minutes interview of Marc Faber on Bloomberg Radio on the 26th of November 2011.

They discuss about government debts, equities, gold, the global economy and politics.

Some random quotes:

• "I would rather buy Italian government debt at 7% than US treasuries at 2%".
• "The best would be to break up the Eurozone ..with local currencies and the Euro co-exisiting..."
• "You're better off investing in equities rather than in bonds or cash over the next 10 years"
• "It's beautiful, wherever you look there are problems..."
• "I'm very concerned about the slowdown in China"
• "I own some companies like Hang Seng Bank and Sun Hung Kai Properties" and he doesn't invest directly in Chinese companies.
• "I'm fully prepared to have less money over the next years" (due to higher taxes).
  
• "It's my biggest worry, that eventually we'll have war".
• "People that have deposit in the bank may lose money, who knows" in reference to MF Global and other companies that play with clients' money.
• "Nothing will be done, the entitlement will continue, the government finance will continue to deteriorate and one day the government will go bust. Before that they'll print money..."

8 Investment Ideas for 2012

2012 is coming soon, and we can start to consider some investments ides for next year.
2012 is likely to be cursed with the same problem as 2011 with western debt crisis in Europe, the US, Great Britain and possibly Japan. As now, there will be a "fight" between market forces which want to liquidate the debt and the central banks & governments who want to print money to avoid deflation at all cost. There are also talks about a debt bubble in China, but their citizen and government have savings and reserve, so although they will suffer as well, they should be OK.

We know that the US, UK and Japanese central banks have done quantitative easing, and will probably do it again, although there is political pressure not to do so. The ECB has not (officially) done quantitative easing yet. The US and UK are in the worst possible position since both their government and citizens are heavily indebted and have trade deficits. The Japanese government has a lot of debt, but has a current account surplus and not much private debt. Europeans are in the middle.

In the next few years, peak oil (and peak everything) will also have a serious impact on your investment, so I'll also give some longer term investments ideas to try to preserve capital.

Here are eight investment ideas I have for 2012 in no particular order:

1. Rice and agricultural commodities:

   I like rice for 2012 as last year, it has not performed very well and there is currently a global glut due to Indian rice production that largely offsets the issues due to the floods in south east Asia. For individuals investors, it relatively tricky to invest in Rice. For people who have access to the French stock market, you can buy RICEF PI OPENN (FR0010606509 - 1377N). Read Investing in Rice for other options and more details.

   Longer term, agricultural commodities should perform well due to rising global population, aging of farmers worldwide, reduction of arable land and possibly massive money printing by central banks.

   The good news is that there are plenty of options to invest in agricultural commodities via ETF such as DBA, RJA and ELEMENTS Rogers Intl Commodity Agri ETN (RJA), PowerShares DB Agriculture (DBA) and iPath DJ-UBS Agriculture TR Sub-Idx ETN (JJA). If you prefer agricultural stocks, you could invest in Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF (MOO)

2. Crude Oil

   This is both a short term and long term investment. Many pundits explain that today, oil costs around 70 USD per barrel to produce. For 2012, if you see crude oil (WTI) go below 70 USD, you can consider investing massively in the commodity, even though it may go much lower. In that case, production will slow considerably until prices go above 70 USD (and more) again.

   Since peak oil is inevitable and the IEA says reserves are declining by above 6% per year, so we'll have a supply problem even if the economy is in recession and demand collapses. A US military report also says that surplus may disappear in 2012, which serious shortage occurring in 2015.

   First, I'll explain how not to invest in crude oil namely United States Oil (USO), iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil TR Index ETN (OIL) and the likes as they have an horrific decay and their target is zero after numerous reverse splits. I'm not kidding. If you invest in a commodity linked ETF always try to compare it with the tracked commodity for a period of at least 2 or 3 years. Actually, it does not hurt to do it for any ETF you plan to buy.
   

   Unless you have access to oil futures, it also difficult to invest in crude oil for individual investors and you cannot easily store the thing like you do with Gold and Silver. You invest in Crude oil (WTI and Brent) via ETF such as ELEMENTS Rogers Intl Commodity ETN (RJI) or a fund like Barclays Capital Funds - Global Commodities Deltafor Singapore/ Hong Kong investors. Those follow Jim Rogers commodity index, so they are composed of a basket of commodities and only 40% is actually invested in crude oil. If you have better alternative that do not involve buying an oil tanker, I'd appreciate.

   An alternative way to invest in commodities is to buy stocks in the middle east, for example via Market Vectors Gulf States Index ETF (MES).

3. Gold and Silver Bullion and/or Coins

   Gold and Silver have had a tremendous run for the last 10 years, but as long as we have negative real interest over the world they should perform relatively well. Having said that, an 11 year bull market, with no negative year (for Gold) is not very common, so I would not be surprised if we have 1, 2 or 3 years where Gold does nothing. I would also not be surprised, if Gold and Silver become bubbles as the central banks print money to try to save the system. You can invest in gold via GLD or PHYS ETF and silver via SLV or PSLV. PHYS and PSLV are managed by Eric Sprott, so I'd trust those more than GLD and SLV. If you are afraid of default risk by third party, then simply buy physical Gold and Silver and store them at home. If you are a US citizen and are not afraid of default by your bank, google "celente mf global".

   Finally, gold stocks are cheap relative to gold bullion on an historical basis. You can read The case for Gold Miners vs Gold and Eric Sprott: Time to Buy Gold Stocks for details. Hong Kong investors may have to make their own Gold stock portfolio, see Hong Kong Gold Mining Stocks and Gold ETFs for a list of Gold stocks in the Hang Seng.
   

4. US Natural Gas

   Over the last 5 years, US natural gas is down 39% (Source: Indexmundi) at 128.30 USD per 1000 m3 and at the same time, Russian natural gas is up 20% at 435 USD per 1000 m3 and Indonesian natural gas is up a whopping 160% at 377.22 USD per 1000 m3.
   

   Usually, commodities trade similarly over the world, but natural gas is different since it is difficult to transport. The reason for the decrease in the US is fracking, a technology breakthrough, which dramatically increased recoverable natural gas reserve in North America.
   

   This may not be an investment that rewards investors by 2012, but with such a large price difference between the US and the rest of the world, there will certainly be people who will work on liquified natural gas (LNG) and terminals are planned in the US.

   Once again commodity investing is difficult, and products such as UNG should be avoided like the plague. Actually, I could not find a proper way to invest in natural gas, except by buying natural gas stocks, please read Investing in Natural Gas for details. If you have ideas, let me know.
   

5. Short long dated US Treasury Bonds

   If has been tried unsuccessfully over the years, so the timing is uncertain, but the fact that long dated US treasuries bonds will be much higher at some point in the future is a certainty.

   The US is the worst offender in term of debt: high government debt, high private debt, low saving rate and massive trade deficits. It can't get worse than that.
   

   The federal reserve is also committed to print money to avoid deflation at all cost, this means the US dollar will lose value and investors will sell their low yielding treasury bonds (10-year to 30-year) and find assets with better value.

   If you can't short treasury bonds directly, you can invest in TBF ETF, although it decays a bit you may be able to keep it a few years, contrary to TBT or TMV. Read How to short US treasuries for more information.

6. Alternative Energies

   With peak oil and pressure against coal use due to climate change, alternative energy will have to be developed if we may to keep living a good life. Investments in solar, wind, (alternative) nuclear, cold fusion and more will be made and there will be a lot of failures, but it's likely some companies will have an amazing success. Alternative energy stocks are very depressed at those levels after the 2008 bubble.
   

   This is a long term investment (5 to 10 years) and 2012 may not be the right time, but who knows. Avoid investing directly in alternative energy stocks, as you are more likely to lose a lot of money and invest with ETF or mutual funds instead. Since we don't know which technology will prevail, I'd also avoid investing in Solar fund or Wind ETF independently, but rather find a funds that covers a broad range of alternative source. If I had a gun on my head, I'd rather invest in wind energy rather than solar energy, as the former has a better EROEI.

   Based on the comments above, you could invest in ETFs such as Market Vectors Glb Alternatve Energy ETF (GEX) or First Trust NASDAQ Cln Edge Smrt Grd Inf (GRID) as well as mutual funds such as BGF NEW ENERGY.

7. Water

   Companies related to water such as water treatment, pipes and valves manufacturers... will benefit of the water issues around the world. For example, I can feel some investments are needed in the water infrastructure in Thailand and with climate change and rising population, better water management is needed for agriculture.

   This is also a long term investment and unlikely to pay off immediatly in 2012 but you can invest with PowerShares Water Resources (PHO) and PowerShares Global Water (PIO) , read Invest in Water with ETF for details.

8. Buy the Euro
   

   This may seem counter-intuitive with all the bad press and talks about the end of the Euro, but the truth is Europe is trying to take care of its debt problem now and the ECB is reluctant to print more money to further help the indebted countries thanks to pressure from Germany.

   The US and UK central banks seem to be happy to print as needed, and the Japanese Yen seems overvalued as investors take refuge in this currency.
   So if you are a holder of US dollar, British pound or Japanese Yen you may consider buying Euros, especially if it seems the debt crisis is resolved, European government keep implementing austerity measures, private investors take their losses on bad investments and the European central bank is not involved in printing currency.

   The best way to safely (without leverage) invest in the Euro would be to open a fixed deposit in Euro if your bank/country allows it. If it is not possible, you could also invest in a currency ETF/ETN such as CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE) or iPath EUR/USD Exchange Rate ETN (ERO).
   

That's it for 2012 investment ideas. Do you agree with my choices? Do you have a different opinion? Please let me know in the comment section.

Jim Rogers: The US is Becoming More and More Dictatorial

Very interesting 40 minute interview of Jim Rogers by Alex Jones (prisonplanet.com).

They talk of the current economic situation in Europe and US, why Jim Rogers has move to Singapore (for is daughters), the loss of freedom in the US, Jim Rogers current investment themes (commodities), his views on Silver and Gold and more.