Are Americans Waking up to Gold?

It's a rare day indeed when Money Daily sources information from CNBC, because the on-air talent are generally stock-pumping cheerleaders for equities, but today's information presented by Steve Liesman, who offered up the results of CNBC's All-American Economic Survey in various spots on the network throughout the day, had heads spinning and eyes and ears popping when he revealed that of the 836 respondents in the survey, 37% found gold to be their preferred investment, followed by real estate at 24% and stocks a distant third, at 19%.

What this says about the stock market and American attitudes towards it partially explains the low volumes that have been a dominant feature for many months, implying (and there are numerous studies to back this up) that individual investors have nearly completely soured on stocks as stable investments due to a variety of factors, including, but surely not limited to, the financial collapse of 2008-09, the flash crash of May 6, 2010, a general distrust of Wall Street and the Federal Reserve and various other market events, such as the recent IPO failure of BATS.

What did not come out of the CNBC segment below, led off by Liesman's comment that he was "floored" by this finding, is that gold (and silver and platinum) are not only tradable investment vehicles that can be instantly redeemed for cash or bartered for other goods and services, but that the precious metals are tangible assets that not only appreciate, especially in light of dollar debasement, but are a store of value and wealth at a time in which there's an oversupply of skepticism pertaining to the management of currencies worldwide and yields on "safe" investments, such as money market funds or Treasuries are returning less than the rate of inflation.

(Note on this video: the first 6:15 covers the gold story; the remainder is on other topics.)



These stunning survey results are indicative of Americans' growing displeasure of a system which they rightly assume is unfairly slanted in favor of Wall Street fat cats and DC politicians, who engage in insider trading and other market-rigging activities with nearly universal disdain for the average American and small investor. It also destroys the notion that Americans are stupid when it comes to investing, as the "muppets," as some Goldman Sachs executives refer to their clients, appear to be more concerned about lasting value rather than quick, day-trading profits.

It was truly a pleasure to watch and listen to the various and mostly wrong CNBC commentators as they scrambled for explanations to somehow blunt the contrarian thrust of the message. Americans are not stupid and they don't like being cheated; there are two good reasons right there why more and more Americans are keeping a safe distance from stocks and Wall Street and putting their investment dollars into tangible assets, like gold.

As for the markets, todays was definitely a "risk off" event, with stocks and commodities both feeling the heat. Of course, in a yo-yo economy such as we have, one day does not make anything even closely resembling a trend, though the losses today and on Tuesday took a lot of the punch out of Monday's rally.

With just two more trading days left in the month and the first quarter, some shaving of profits should be expected prior to what are traditionally strong market up-moving days: the end of quarter "window dressing" by te fund managers expected on Friday and the first trading day of the new quarter, come Monday, April 2nd.

Dow 13,126.21, -71.52 (0.54%)
NASDAQ 3,104.96, -15.39 (0.49%)
S&P 500 1,405.54, -6.98 (0.49%)
NYSE Composite 8,188.34, -51.03 (0.62%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,764,716,250
NYSE Volume 3,854,093,750
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2033-3584
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 144-46
WTI crude oil: 105.41, -1.92
Gold: 1,657.90, -27.00
Silver: 31.83, -0.78

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Evacuation Nation: Traders Flee in Final Hour; Fed Buys Euro Bonds

Dudley also said the central bank holds a very small amount of European sovereign debt and that he sees a “high bar” to additional purchases.

That line came from this story on Bloomberg and it leads off today because buying sovereign debt - other than US debt - is not in the Fed's charter.

Not that it will matter at all. Our brain-dead congress probably won't even notice, but it does raise some questions, like:

1. Aren't there enough buyers for all that Euro-debt?
2. How much did the Fed buy, and in what denominations?
3. With its balance sheet already over $3 trillion and stuffed full of MBS and Agency Debt, why are they buying ANY euro sovereign debt?

The most basic question, still, is, "how desperate are the world's central bankers?"

Probably pretty desperate.

Other than that, oh, and Case-Shiller showed that residential real estate values have fallen again, for the 9th straight month, bringing median US home prices back to 2003 levels (talk about a "lost decade," just a guess, but home prices have a lot more downside in them).

ON Wall Street, stocks meandered along the unchanged level most of the day (except for the NASDAQ, which had a small gain thanks mostly to Apple (AAPL)), but dropped like a rock in the last hour of trading.

Volume was dismal, but that's been the case for so long, everyone just thinks it's normal. (it's not)

Lastly, this blog's editor posted this comment over at Zero Hedge and it got some attention:

I'm 58, making me a baby boomer. I like Ron Paul, but I know he's never going to get elected, so nix that idea.

Most of my friends are BBs as well, and, as a group, they're idiots. They say things like, "we need at least $80,000 a year just to maintain our standard of living," while they have $800K in stocks and investments.

So, instead of retiring early and taking their money out of their 401ks, IRAs or whatever - many of them are past 58 1/2 - they keep on working, padding their "nest egg."

The folly of this is that by the time they retire, the world as we knew it will have ended. It already has. They'll lose in the next market downturn and keep working until they're 70 or longer to "make up the difference."

Me, I've been semi-retired in my own business since i was 43. After my business went bank-o - with plenty of help from asshat employees and dishonest corporate competitors - I decided the rat race just wasn't worth it.

I am now happy, though not content, make enough to get by and even save a little - PMs, cash, tools, necessities - and figure that I'll work my 4-5 hours a day at my own pace until I die.

Retirement, like a lot of other stuff thrown at us by the MSM, is a myth. People relying on pensions and especially SS are going to be sorely disappointed. I've already been disappointed, so it doesn't matter to me.

As for the younger crowd, they're nothing but wage-slaves. That covers about all of the demographics in America. We're royally screwed, but don't even know it and continue to keep thinking it will get better at some point.

This country has some severe deficits - in education, imagination, entrepreneurism and free-thinking. As far as I can tell, it's all been downhill since Duane Allman died, but, like I tell anyone who whines, be a warrior, and a happy one. You have to fight for everything these days. Might as well enjoy the fight.

My sister has three girls in high school and they all plan on going to college. They're all so screwed, but they don't listen to me much unless there's a crisis, so I don't talk to them much, though I do give them silver on their birthdays.

I have a feeling they'll be seeking out my counsel as time goes on.

Dow 13,197.73, -43.90 (0.33%)
NASDAQ 3,120.35, -2.22 (0.07%)
S&P 500 1,412.52, -3.99 (0.28%)
NYSE Composite 8,239.28, -49.51 (0.60%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,637,697,375
NYSE Volume 3,474,379,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2214-3380
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 359-24
WTI crude oil: 107.33, +0.30
Gold: 1,684.90, -0.70
Silver: 32.62, -0.13

Timing the Market with Fed Chair Ben Bernanke

Timing the market is a difficult enterprise, according to just about any trader or analyst, or even the sage Bob Brinker of syndicated radio show Money Talk fame.

However, timing has gotten easier if you just follow the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke around and watch for the proper signals, which, unless you're deaf and blind, are hard to miss.

The signals are easy to discern, even for those not well-versed in matters of the economy, as is our fearless Chairman.

Here you go:

Ben opens mouth, speaks. Buy stocks.

That's it, and that's what happened today when Mr. Bernanke - he of the printing press and money-dispensing helicopters - spoke at an early-morning gathering of the assemblage at the National Association for Business Economics (NABE). It didn't really matter what Bernanke said - he says pretty much the same thing all the time - but, rather, how Wall Street interpreted his words, which they interpreted exactly the same way they have his last eight or ten speeches: He's printing more, not raising the federal funds rate for a long, long time and QE3 is on the Fed's rader. Buy, buy, buy. Don't look, don't analyze, just buy.

And it worked like a charm. The dollar was down, the euro up, but, most importantly, stocks eviscerated all memory of last week's worst-in-2012 decline. Done. Easy. Inflationary. Profit.

Dow 13,241.63, +160.90 (1.23%)
NASDAQ 3,122.57, +54.65 (1.78%)
S&P 500 1,416.51, +19.40 (1.39%)
NYSE Composite 8,288.80, +108.74 (1.33%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,625,670,875
NYSE Volume 3,467,794,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4326-1350
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 409-28 (Thanks, Ben!)
WTI crude oil: 107.03, +0.16
Gold: 1,685.60, +23.20 (Yes, thanks, unca Benji!)
Silver: 32.75, +0.48 (Zounds, Ben, thank YOU!)

March Market Madness: BofA's Own to Rent Plan; Apple Flash Crash, BATS batty IPO

College basketball's 68-team NCAA national championship tournament (AKA March Madness) has nothing on US stock markets in terms of sheer insanity and hair-raising antics.

Just when you think it can't get any weirder in our manipulated, over-hyped markets, along comes a day like today to convince you that the absurd is now the new normal.

To start things off, Bank of America announced a plan to "invite" roughly 1000 homeowners in default on their mortgages the chance to rent the home they formerly owned.

Think of it. BofA can now use the catchy, "Rent a Piece of the American Dream" as the tag line for what they're calling, subtly, the Mortgage to Lease Program. No lie. The bank that bought Countrywide Financial and all their horrible sub-prime, Alt-A, no-doc and NINJA loans, now wants to slither out from under the rock of the robo-signing scandal, fraudulent mortgage documentation and a host of other evils, by forgiving the original loan and renting the house back to the (former) mortgagor.

The absurdity of this plan, whereby people who can't afford their mortgage payments, are somehow supposed to be able to afford rent, or even want to, in the very same home they've been living in for free for two or three years or longer, is so over the top, some people might even buy into it. The Bank of America plan is to take title to the homes, tear up the old documents (supposedly before said homeowners rush to the nearest federal courthouse, documents in hand, and file fraud charges), pay the property taxes, rent the property back to the homeowners (or squatters, if you like), at - get this - rent that's less than the original monthly mortgage payment, then flip the house, along with the paying (below market rates) tenants to some investment gang. Are there real estate investors that dumb out there?

There are so many flaws to this abhorrent plan that it is hardly worth discussing, though actual landlords - real people who own and manage rental properties - have been laughing about it all day long. And, of course, the bank won't sully its pristine reputation by dirtying its hands with the mundane tasks of landlording, like maintaining the lawns, fixing leaks and making modest improvements. No, for that, they'll hire professional property managers, adding even more cost.

The plan is supposed to roll out shortly in the states of Nevada, Arizona and New York as a pilot program. Pilot, indeed. This plan is going to crash and burn on the runway. All of this sound and fury is designed for only one purpose: to save face and costly lawsuits, now that people have awakened to the criminality and fraud that Countrywide started and Bank of America openly perpetuated. They'd be much better off and propbably millions of dollars ahead if they'd just give the properties to the people living in them and simply walk away.

With that as a background, the housing market made more ugly noises on Friday when the Commerce Department reported that new home sales fell for the second straight month, dropping 1.6% in February, despite unusually warm weather, great for home-hunting and generational low mortgage rates.

Then there was Apple's flash crash, blamed on a fat-finger trade for 100 shares well below the market price on a trading platform known as BATS, which, incidentally, went public today, but after all of one trade, shut itself down due to technical difficulties, canceling its IPO indefinitely, which, if today's performance was any indication of the quality and integrity of its service, will likely be forever.

As if that wasn't enough, today marked the absolute thinnest volume in the last ten years. It was completely dreadful, yet stocks still finished with meagre gains, though down for the week. Ouch!

Dow 13,080.73, +34.59 (0.27%)
NASDAQ 3,067.92, +4.60 (0.15%)
S&P 500 1,397.11, +4.33 (0.31%)
NYSE Composite 8,180.05, +38.72 (0.48%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,400,164,125
NYSE Volume 3,395,163,250
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 3848-1709 (that's WACK!)
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 133-28
WTI crude oil: 106.87, +1.52
Gold: 1,662.40, +19.90
Silver: 32.27, +0.93