Golden Alpha

The beautiful thing about the stock market is that there is a never-ending source of opportunity.

Trillions of dollars are constantly on the hunt for one thing: alpha.

Alpha is known as the return of a portfolio over a benchmark.

Searching for the next source of alpha can lead to massive profit windfalls for hedge fund managers and their clients.

These sources are exploited as fast as possible and the investment strategies which reap this alpha are treated like wartime trade secrets.

Today the stock markets are supposed to be efficient.

This means that stock prices accurately reflect publicly available information.

Sometimes, however, there are exceptions.

When these exceptions last for long periods of time, they are known as market anomalies.

The “January Effect” is a Market Anomaly

Money Printing Gone Off the Rails – James Turk

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

Renowned gold expert James Turk says, “Federal Reserve money printing has gone off the rails, and they are in a situation of inflate or die.”

Inflation is not the only problem because as the money loses buying power, the general public loses liberty.  In Turk’s new book “Money and Liberty,” he lays out a direct link between sound quality money and liberty.  What we have now is basically increasing inflation, or a decrease in the quality of money, and increasing tyranny.  Just look at what has been happening with the CV19 pandemic.  Turk explains, “In the system that we have, in order to make it work, you need inflation and regimentation.  When you have regimentation, that means cutting back on liberty. . . .

Bitcoin Touches New Milestone With 90% of Total Supply Mined

Ninety percent of all bitcoins have been mined as of Monday morning, according to data from blockchain tracker Blockchain.com. The feat means 18.89 million bitcoins – of a maximum of 21 million – are now on the open market.

Reaching the milestone took nearly 12 years since the first bitcoins were mined on Jan. 9, 2009. However, the remaining supply is not expected to be mined until February 2140, based on network activity estimates and Bitcoin’s halving schedules.

Prices have mirrored the increasing supply as demand for newer bitcoin heats up. The asset exchanged hands for less than $0.10 when 10% of the supply was mined in early 2010, and hovered at $7.50 when 50% of the supply was mined in December 2012. As of press time, bitcoin trades at over $49,000, having declined 28% from its peak of $69,000 earlier this year, as per data from CoinGecko.

Ignore the Crypto Sell-Off

Last week, the markets got hammered…

As of last Friday, the S&P 500 was down 1.2%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped as much as 2.6%. And individual companies like DocuSign have crashed as much as 45.8%. (Since then, we’ve seen quite a rally.)

The crypto market wasn’t spared either…

Bitcoin and Ethereum saw pullbacks of as much as 19.7% and 19.2%, respectively.

I’ve been warning my readers of a pullback in stocks and cryptos for a few weeks now.

And told them not to worry when it happens…

If you listen to the media, the main causes of this sell-off were fears over the omicron variant of the coronavirus… the supply-chain crisis… and profit-taking by investors before the end of the year.

The truth is no one really knows why the market sold off…

Biggest Mess I’ve Ever Seen: Used-Vehicle Wholesale Prices Spike to Ridiculousness. Just Wait till they Hit CPI Again

Supply suddenly jumps, Thanksgiving weekend gets credited.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Prices of cars and trucks sold at auctions around the US jumped another 3.9% in November from October, according to Manheim, the largest auto auction operator in the US. These crazy prices have now spiked by 44% from the already sky-high levels in November 2020.

But underlying market dynamics began to soften just a tad in November from the white-hot activity in October, and Manheim figured that auto dealers “remained more aggressive in buying than is typically the case in the fall, but were less aggressive than in October.” In October, prices had spiked month-to-month by the most ever (9.2%). So slightly less extremely crazy?

The Market from Hell Arrived Today: Dow Soars then Plunges in 1,000 Point Intraday Range

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 1, 2021 ~

Frightened Wall Street TraderIf you’re a stock market watcher you might want to invest in a neck brace if today’s whipsawing action is any gauge of what’s ahead.

Just this morning we warned our readers to buckle up for the unwinding of the massive stock market bubble that Fed Chair Powell has been feeding with his keys to an unlimited, electronic-money printing press and his zero-interest-rate policy.

As if on cue, the Dow Jones Industrial Average put on a firework display today, first zooming to an intra-day high of 35,004.64, then plunging to a low of 34,006.98. By the closing bell, the Dow was down 461.68.

The decline in the Dow began shortly after 11 a.m. – almost three hours before the news broke that the first case of the new COVID variant, Omicron, had been reported in California. An Associated Press report was aired by Fox News at 1:52 p.m. indicating that the reported case came from a fully vaccinated person who had returned from South Africa on November 22, according to the CDC.

This Growing Industry Is Already Worth $130 Trillion

By Andrey Dashkov, analyst, Casey Research

How do new industries start?

Through visionaries seeing a trend or problem to be solved…

Creating a company… and being well-connected or lucky enough to secure funding…

And things growing from there.

What if I told you that something new is being set in motion right now?

Something that’s attracting trillions of dollars of investment… and can create immense wealth for early investors?

In a moment, I’ll tell you about a whole new trend that needs to be part of your portfolio.

If this is your first time reading the Dispatch, welcome. If you’ve been here before, welcome back.

At the Dispatch, we have two goals:

Buying 40,000 Acres in West Texas

By Steve Sjuggerud

A year ago, I put 40,000 acres of land in West Texas under contract.

My plan was to buy it with a couple of friends. I couldn't believe our good fortune...

Oil was incredibly cheap and hated at the time, which you know is exactly what I want to see. It was selling below $40 per barrel, or below the cost of production. Also, nobody was drilling for oil back then... The number of active oil rigs in the entire state of Texas had dropped to an all-time low of 100 in August 2020.

So I went to Texas looking for opportunity.

One bank (out of the many we talked to) said it would lend to us with no money out of our pockets, because the appraised value of the land was so much higher than the purchase price. The 40,000 acres were highly productive... They were home to producing oil wells, agriculture, livestock, contracts for solar power, and more.

3 reasons why Bitcoin’s drop to $56.5K may have been the local bottom

By Marcel Pechman

The absence of cascading liquidations, 25% delta skew and the margin lending ratio all suggest that Bitcoin price bottomed at $56,500.

3 reasons why Bitcoin’s drop to $56.5K may have been the local bottom MARKET ANALYSIS

The first rule of Bitcoin (BTC) trading should be “expect the unexpected.” In just the past year alone, there have been five instances of 20% or higher daily gains, as well as five intraday 18% drawdowns. Truth to be told, the volatility of the past 3-months has been relatively modest compared to recent peaks.

Whether it be multi-million dollar institutional fund managers or retail investors, traders new to Bitcoin are often mesmerized by a 19% correction after a local top. Even more shocking to many is the fact that the current $13,360 correction from the Nov. 10 $69,000 all-time high took place over nine days.