Capital Flow Analysis


The clarify, in the Gulf War the USA was the aggressor and thus the capital flows moved away from the dollar. This was contrary to World War I & II and other Middle East events where the USA was not the aggressor. In the current situation, provided the USA does not engage an invasion of Iran, then the risk may lie initially more with Europe given that the Iranian cell groups have infiltrated Europe and are already there. A decline in the dollar appears more likely post-2022.

Understand What is the Repo Market


QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong and thank you for what you are doing for us regular people. For my first ever question for you, would you please explain as simply as possible exactly what the REPO market is and how it works and how it affects our multi-faceted financial world.
I am truly grateful for your work and communication.
GLH

ANSWER: The REPo Market is where banks will post AAA securities and borrow against them for the night. Normally, the big banks like J.P. Morgan provide over $300 billion in liquidity daily which allows banks, hedge funds, and institutions to raise cash for the night. When the banks withdrew from lending into the Repo Market, the Fed was compelled to inject cash and thereby lending into the Repo market to prevent the short-term interest rate from rising as it did to 10% on September 17th, 2019.

A Reverse Repo (RRP) injects the purchase of securities with the agreement to sell them at a higher price at a specific future date. The party selling the security to raise cash in the market agrees to repurchase the securities (repo) from the lender at a future point in time which is known as a Repurchase Agreement (RP). Repos are classified as a money-market instrument, and they are usually used to raise short-term capital.

This is not a market that is open to the public. However, it is the basic market where everything else is factored on top of this rate. If the Fed did not intervene, then short-term rates would rise and instead of the consumer paying even 20% on a credit card, it would have jumped as must as 10%.

QE was where the Fed was trying to lower long-term rates after the mortgage-backed crisis hit in 2007 so they were buying 30-year bonds. This is the short-term which has nothing to do with QE. Here the Fed is trying to prevent short-term rates from rising rather than lowering long-term rates which they can only “influence” since the Fed posts only short-term rates like the discount rate (wholesale rate) which banks can borrow at.

Here the economy is not declining and unemployment is back to the 1960s. All the talk about QE makes zero sense for these people do not understand what is taking place and it takes professionals in the field to grasp this issue and they cannot speak since they are under confidentiality agreements.

California Media Discuss New Water Usage Laws In Effect – 55 Gallons Per Day or $1,000 Fine…


Yikes.  According to new California laws on water use: you can take a shower or you can do a single load of laundry, but you cannot do both.  55 gal per day limit, or face $1k fine.

Gold & the Future


QUESTION: Marty, you laid out gold’s forecast back in October 2018 which has been amazing long-term. While you said if gold would rally after the Pi turning point from a bounce off the downtrend line, then it should rally into the bottom of the ECM. Will you now publish the gold report? I know you have been really busy. But it would be nice to hear from you. Socrates has been bullish since that turn back in 2018. That has been great. It would be nice to see a report with gold in all the currencies.

Happy New Year
LM

ANSWER: Yes it is getting time to do the Gold report. Let us see if that forecast proves correct since we are approaching the target.

Snow in Thailand


A reader from Thailand has sent this in. Maybe the first White Christmas in Thailand

Gold & Socrates


COMMENT: Marty, just wanted to say thank you for Socrates. It has been great on gold and even in the miners it has distinguished the lagers like Barrick from Newmont without worry of who is getting paid to pitch what stock.

Can’t wait for the sector overviews.

Happy New Year

PB

REPLY: It is tracking over 1,000 instruments each day. I do not have the time to write about everything. I am working on the sector overview. That should be ready with the turn in the ECM. I am so glad people are getting the hang of Socrates. I do have an expiration date and have no desire to write forever.

HAPPY New Year to All.

Bangladesh Death Toll from Extreme Cold – A Warning to us All!


Bangladesh has a subtropical monsoon climate characterized by wide seasonal variations in rainfall, high temperatures and humidity. The three distinct seasons in Bangladesh are hot, humid summer from March to June; a cool, rainy monsoon season from June to October; and a cool, dry winter from October to March. The summer temperatures generally range between 30°C (86 degrees Fahrenheit) and 40°C (104F). April is the warmest month in most parts of the country. January is the coldest month, when the average temperature for most of the country is about 10°C (50F).

While the cold snap has been to 4.5 degrees Celsius (40.1F), the cold weather in such a tropical climate has resulted in disease spreading including influenza which has resulted in 50 people dyingso far. This may not sound like something that drastic, but it is indicative of the risk with Global Cooling. It has been dipping down to even the 40F in northern Florida at night. The same cold has impacted even Thailand creating an unseasonably cold period.

There is a serious risk that even NASA has warned that the upcoming solar cycle (25) will be “the weakest of the past 200 years.” This correlated to previous solar minimums of prolonged periods of global cooling. Right now, our computer is projecting a very cold period ahead into 2025. Intensifying swings-in-extremes are in the weather globally has been a correlation of a historical shift to solar activity going into a minimum phase.

Scientists have been launching cosmic ray balloons since March 2015. The results obtained reveal atmospheric radiation is has been moving to historic highs in sync with the decline in solar activity. This has also resulted in an astonishing and spectacular outbreak of polar stratospheric clouds around the Arctic Circle. Keep in mind, that during solar minimums the sun’s magnetic field weakens and the outward pressure of the solar wind decreases. It is during solar minimum when the Earth is bombarded with more cosmic rays and it is believed that these rays penetrate the inner solar system as well as our planet’s atmosphere and may be the cause of the increase in volcanic activity from a correlation perspective.

Everything seems to be getting quite interesting. Our biggest problem has been the propaganda being spread by Greenpeace’s Jennifer Morgan and Al Gore which has everyone looking at Global Warming and then taking credit for the extreme cold periods claiming, without any evidence, that this is all due to CO2 along with the bush fires in Australia. They seem to be setting the world up to be totally unprepared for the real devastation of Global Cooling and how that historically has not just toppled empires, but has on a few occasions resulted in a 50% decline in population