Wealthwise BLOG

Don't Give Up on Gold and Silver (9/3/08)

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:18:18 -0500

I can understand why investors are selling their large-cap gold stocks. They aren’t making any money — at $900 gold! And they’re trading at 20-50 times earnings. Still, while the rising cost of producing gold is trouble for gold stocks, it is also one of the most bullish factors underpinning gold values.
Effectively, $700 gold would be as catastrophic for the industry today as $300 gold was in 1999.
With jewelry demand alone, the supply side is already tighter than it is in oil.
I was looking for reasons to buy gold that have not been widely discounted. Therefore I have listed Top 10 Reasons to End Cheap Gold
• Cost inflation slows down the development pipeline, hence future production growth in mining will be curtailed.
• Political risks in frontier countries also shrinking available supplies
• Faltering global economy persuading central bankers to abandon tightening plans
• Soaring government deficits
• Saber rattling between Iran and Israel and other geopolitical tensions heating up
• Another GLD ETF just listed on Hong Kong Exchange
• Some countries already experiencing crackup and heightened gold demand
• Shrinking official gold supply
• Seasonal trends turning bullish again into the new year
• Large producer Anglo has yet to cover all its hedges.

So if you own some gold mining shares hang on they are a long term investment.

Why Are We Growing Corn? (9/2/08)

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:47:20 -0500

“The sun will change the way we power the country, just not the way you think it will. There’s another form of solar power. In my opinion, it’s more potent -- and could be even more life changing than the cheaper next-generation solar panels in development at this time.
“The big idea is to farm massive amounts of algae and harvest the plants for their oils. Internet communities are abuzz, and the technology has the support of numerous academics. That’s right -- universities, venture capitalists and even the government are all racing to squeeze valuable oil out of pond scum…
“Algae are the fastest growing plants in the world. They’re vital to water ecosystems worldwide and consume more carbon dioxide than any other plant. As they grow, algae produce lipids, or vegetable oil. In fact, they produce a lot of oil …
“Let’s put this into perspective. One acre of corn can yield about 28 gallons of oil in one year. In more tropical regions, an acre of palms can yield about 6,700 gallons of oil per year. But algae are in a class all their own. An acre of algae can yield anywhere between 20,000-100,000 gallons of oil per year. This is possible because algae really do grow like weeds. An alga plant can completely reproduce up to six times per day. Try doing that with corn.”
So do your homework and find the companies that have the patents on the algae processing.

Quote of the Day (9/1/08)

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:12:37 -0500

Since most schools are back in session -

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.
- Bill Beattie

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1917 - 1963

Politics (8/29/08)

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 06:49:03 -0500

After President Truman retired from office in 1952, he was left with an income consisting of basically just a U.S. Army pension, reported to have been only $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an "allowance" and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year. When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, "You don't want me. You want the office of the president, and that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale."

Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, "I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise." We now see that other past presidents, have found a new level of success in cashing in on the presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Obviously, political offices are now for sale.

Good old Harry Truman could have been correct when he observed, "My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference. I, for one, believe the piano player job to be much more honorable than current politicians."

The Spice of Life (8/28/08)

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:38:02 -0500

Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor.
- William Cowper, 1731 - 1800
This is the original quote for "Variety is the spice of life."
So today as people keep trying to invent new and better things most of which become and are accidents.
Even in the 19th century people were inventing things and what they came up with was different than what they intended the outcome. The following is such a story.
It was on this day in 1837 that John Lea and William Perrins, successful chemists (pharmacists) at Worcester, England, began commercial manufacture of Worcestershire sauce. Early in the decade they had attempted to make a curry sauce for some noblewomen who missed the flavors they had come to know while in India, but the results were inedible. Somehow a barrel of the nasty, fishy sauce ended up in storage, and after quietly fermenting in the back of the warehouse, it turned out to be a winner. Lea and Perrins' fermented anchovy elixir became Worcestershire sauce. No where near the taste of the curry sauce they were trying to develope.

Laws of the Universe (8/26/08)

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:05:11 -0500

1. Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease your nose will begin to itch or you'll have to pee.
2. Law of the Workshop: Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.
3. Law of probability: The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.
4. Law of the Telephone: When you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal.
5. Law of the Alibi: If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire.
6. Variation Law: If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will start to move faster than the one you are in now. (works every time).
7. Bath Theorem: When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.
8. Law of Close Encounters: The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.
9. Law of the Result: When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will.

Correcting Gold and Oil - Has It Bottomed? (8/25/08)

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:11:46 -0500

What’s going on with gold and oil?
Here’s what we know. Prices for both gold and oil were moving upward for most of the spring and well into summer. Then prices hit a peak. Gold touched $980 per ounce. Oil topped $146 per barrel. Now prices are falling.
High oil prices have caused big changes in patterns of consumption. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Energy just announced that U.S. oil demand fell by about 800,000 barrels per day during the first half of 2008, compared with the same period last year. This is the biggest volume decline in 26 years, since the recession of the early 1980s.
Sure, some headlines describe what’s going on as something like the “oil bubble” or “commodities bubble” popping. Some people are talking and acting as if we were going back in time to the last era of cheap energy, cheap gold and cheap commodities. But don’t believe it. Don’t bet on it. And don’t play the markets that way.
A Correction Was Due
What’s going on? We are in the midst of a short- to medium-term correction in the trends for energy and resources. Keep this in mind: This is a CORRECTION, not a fundamental change in the long-term correlation of things.
The long-term trends are still upward, in terms of value and pricing. But for now, the money is leaving energy and resources for pastures that look greener.
What pastures are greener? Well — speaking of green — the U.S. dollar is strengthening. It turns out that the euro is not the powerhouse currency that a lot of people believed it was. So the dollar has been strengthening against the euro for the past couple of weeks.
The Euro Can Go Down
And it turns out that euroland has its own economic problems. In fact, the euro can go down against the dollar, as well as up. That’s exactly what has happened. Euro down, dollar up. So in consequence, we are seeing the dollar going up, and oil and gold going down.
There is more to the equation. The economists are describing a recession occurring in parts of the euroland economic space. Germany — with Europe’s largest economy — has been hard hit, so there’s been quite a bit of drag on the euroland economy.
And then there are indications that the long-awaited U.S. recession is finally just around the corner. Really, we are just in the middle innings of the banking meltdown and housing crash in the U.S. The recent stock market turnaround may just be the seventh- inning stretch. I expect to see more large banks and investment houses either fail or get bailed out before the end of 2008.
So with two of the world’s largest economies about to enter the doldrums, world markets are seeing demand for energy and commodities slacken.
Thus, we have monetary issues with the dollar. And there are demand issues with economic slowdown in two of the world’s largest economic blocks. Prices for benchmark items like gold and oil are falling.
But looking in the long-term gold and oil are headed back up, for all the familiar reasons. Really, it’s not like anyone is finding new large gold or oil deposits out in exploration land. Indeed, a whole lot of looking is leading to not very much finding in the exploration patch.
The big gold miners are pulling ore out of the ground. But generally, they are not replacing their mined reserves through reserve growth or resource expansion. To the extent that the mining companies are expanding reserves in the short term, it’s by digging deeper. And that raises the cost structure for production.
Rising production costs are eating into profitability. So in the medium to long term, the big guys will have to find new reserves by digging on Wall Street, if not on the TSX Venture Exchange. There is already some takeover activity occurring, but it has been hamstrung by the broken world banking system.
It’s the same thing with the large Western oil companies. It’s a rare oil company that replaces its annual output with new reserves.

Taxes - Candidates Proposals (8/24/08)

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 07:45:10 -0500

DATA ON TAXES
Proposed changes in taxes after the 2008 General election:

CAPITAL GAINS TAX

MCCAIN
0% on home sales up to $500,000 per home (couples). McCain does not propose
any change in existing home sales income tax.

OBAMA
28% on profit from ALL home sales
How does this affect you? If you sell your home and make a profit, you
will pay 28% of your gain on taxes. If you are heading toward retirement and
would like to down-size your home or move into a retirement community, 28%
of the money you make from your home will go to taxes. This proposal will
adversely affect the elderly who are counting on the income from their
homes as part of their retirement income.

DIVIDEND TAX

MCCAIN 15% (no change)

OBAMA 39.6%
How will this affect you? If you have any money invested in stock market,
IRA, mutual funds, college funds, life insurance, retirement accounts, or
anything that pays or reinvests dividends, you will now be paying nearly
40% of the money earned on taxes if Obama becomes president. The experts
predict that 'Higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains would crash
the stock market, yet do absolutely nothing to cut the deficit.'

INCOME TAX

MCCAIN (no changes)
Single making 30K - tax $4,500
Single making 50K - tax $12,500
Single making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 60K- tax $9,000
Married making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 125K - tax $31,250

OBAMA (reversion to pre-Bush tax cuts)
Single making 30K - tax $8,400
Single making 50K - tax $14,000
Single making 75K - tax $23,250
M arried making 60K - tax $16,800
Married making 75K - tax $21,000
Married making 125K - tax $38,750
Under Obama, your taxes could almost double!

INHERITANCE TAX
MCCAIN 0% (No change, Bush repealed this tax)
OBAMA Restore the inheritance tax
Many families have lost businesses, farms, ranches, and homes that have
been in their families for generations because they could not afford the
inheritance tax. Those willing their assets to loved ones will only lose
them to these taxes.
NEW TAXES PROPOSED BY OBAMA
New government taxes proposed on homes that are more than 2400 square feet.
New gasoline taxes (as if gas weren't high enough already)
New taxes on natural resources consumption (heating gas, water, electricity)
New taxes on retirement accounts, and last but not least....
New taxes to pay for socialized medicine so we can receive the same level
of medical care as other third-world countries!!!

You can verify the above at the following web sites:
http://money.cnn.com/news/specials/election/2008/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/issues/issues.taxes.html
http://elections.foxnews.com/?s=proposed+taxes
http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourworld/politics/articles/mccain_obama_offer_different_visions_on_taxes.html
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/candidates/barack_obama/
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/candidates/john_mccain/

Finding Cheap World-Dominating Stocks (8/23/08)

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 07:40:47 -0500

Today, I'm going to let you in on a technique the world's greatest investors use to safely make 20%-plus returns for decades.
If you understand this simple idea, you'll know how to spot and buy stocks that do well in any market, at prices that'll help you make and keep a lot of money.
All you have to do is answer one question: What is a world-dominating company really worth?
I found the answer. The market has made it very clear to anyone who cares to look.
A world-dominating business is generally the largest, most powerful company in its industry – like Wal-Mart, the largest retailer, or ExxonMobil, the largest oil company.
Most world dominators can raise prices to stay ahead of inflation, like Coca-Cola or Procter & Gamble. Or, like Wal-Mart and Exxon, they can use their enormous size to keep costs lower than everyone else in the industry.
Raising prices or being the lowest-cost provider means these world dominators tend to crush the competition. So they often generate enormous amounts of cash. This free cash flow is the money left over after paying all the bills, taxes, and interest payments.
Using three corporate buyouts of world-dominating businesses over the last three years, I've arrived at a general ballpark valuation. Different world dominators will certainly be worth less, some more. But this benchmark is a highly useful tool, one that can give you a clear competitive advantage in the market for big, consistent returns on stocks. Take a look...
In 2005, Procter & Gamble bought Gillette for about 30 times trailing free cash flow. Gillette is a huge brand. It has a 90% market share by value in some countries. Schick is a good competitor... But it'll always be a distant No. 2 to Gillette. Every day, 2 billion men wake up and most of them shave. Most of them choose Gillette.
Earlier this year, the Mars Company offered William Wrigley & Co a price that was also right around 30 times trailing free cash flow. Wrigley is the world's biggest maker and seller of chewing gum, and one of the most well-known brands on Earth: a true world dominator.
A few months after the Wrigley deal was announced, InBev offered to buy Anheuser-Busch. Anheuser's ticker symbol says it all: BUD. Budweiser's U.S. market share is around 48%, nearly half the U.S. beer market. It also owns other popular brand names like Michelob, Bass, Beck's, Kirin, Rolling Rock, and Lowenbrau.
Guess how much InBev's $70-a-share offer for BUD turned out to be... 28.4 times free cash flow. A bit shy of 30 times, but close enough.
The valuation of stocks isn't a science. It's an art built on numbers. So the general ballpark of 30 times trailing free cash flow is as close as we need to get.
Why 30 times free cash flow? Why such a high price?
The answer is simple. These businesses aren't likely to look very different a decade or two from now, because they dominate their markets. And though they're very large businesses, the chances are excellent they'll deliver enough growth to make the seemingly exorbitant price of 30 times free cash flow worth paying. If you can pay just 15-20 times free cash flow for these businesses, you're setting yourself up for years of incredible returns.
You should avoid just about every stock on the market today. But not the world dominators. These are the greatest businesses in the world, the stocks Warren Buffett buys and holds forever. Buffett owned Gillette when Procter & Gamble bought it, and now he owns Procter & Gamble. He owned BUD when InBev bought it, and he's becoming a minority equity holder in the Wrigley deal.

Quote of the Day (8/22/08)

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 06:42:37 -0500

Do you know who said:

"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

See below.

Gold aned Silver are into a Bottom (8/21/08)

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:56:30 -0500

Plunges caused by forced liquidation don't usually last long, because the fundamentals simply aren't there to justify prices so low. Usually the smart investors, who have cash on hand, recognize the opportunity and pounce on it. For this reason, I expect a rebound will occur fairly quickly. Gold is a buy under $800, with little downside risk and tremendous upside potential.
The same can be said for gold stocks, many of which are now trading at near or below market multiples -- a clear sign that investors have grown out of touch with what's happening in the world today. For example, Barrick (ABX) is now trading at 15X earnings -- likely the lowest it has in history. To justify gold stocks being this cheap, the world would have to be safer than it ever has been. We would have to be sailing into incredibly calm and benign economic waters. Yet all you need to do is open a newspaper to see that the world is actually more dangerous than ever.
The only explanation I can see for gold selling off is forced liquidation and oil going down to $110. And like other bargain hunters, I am ready to take advantage of the liquidation sale within the next week or so. I doubt we'll ever find a buying opportunity this good again.
Of course, nothing in this business is ever a sure thing, but the opportunities I see in gold today look as promising as any we ever have.

Words of Wisdom from Napoleon (8/20/08)

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:31:12 -0500

A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.

An army marches on its stomach.

Circumstances - what are circumstances? I make circumstances.

It requires more courage to suffer than to die.

Men, in general, are but great children.

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

We must laugh at man, to avoid crying for him.

- All from Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769 - 1821

Gold - Will History Repeat Itself? (8/19/08)

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:47:29 -0500

Gold is in a similar funk as oil. The spot price took a nasty dip to $775 late Friday, but has since rebounded alittle.
“The present situation reminds me of August 1976,” reminisces GoldMoney’s James Turk, “just weeks before the Democratic National Convention confirmed Jimmy Carter as that party's presidential candidate. Gold slid down to $100 per ounce even as the inflation and economic outlooks were worsening. Gold looked dirt-cheap back then, even though its price had risen threefold from just a few years before.
“By the end of 1976, gold had climbed 32.3% from its August low. By the end of Carter's presidency four years later, gold climbed more than eightfold. I wonder where gold will be at the end of the next president's first term in office?”

Quotes for the Day (8/18/08)

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:24:42 -0500

Shmuel Gelbfisz was born at Warsaw, Poland on this day in 1882. While living with relatives in England he adopted a less imposing name, Samuel Goldfish. He moved to the US in 1899 and became a very successful glove salesman, but ended up making movies - over seventy of them. Five years after his first picture he adopted the name we recognize: Samuel Goldwyn. Between his high energy and English being his second language, he said some wonderfully absurd things. Some are just absurd, some manage to be profoundly true in their absurdity.

Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

I paid too much for it, but it's worth it.

I read part of it all the way through.

Flashbacks are a thing of the past.

If I look confused it’s because I’m thinking.

Our comedies are not to be laughed at.

There is a statue of limitation.

What we need now is some new, fresh clichés.

- All from Samuel Goldwyn, 1882 - 1974

Silver vs Gold (8/17/08)

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 06:22:39 -0500

Alot of gold and silver stocks are less today than you would like them to be. We have been loading up on the metal stocks all during the rally into June. Gold and silver have had a very good correction which plays wonderfully into the next leg of the metals bull market which will start in September.
So lets look at the ratios of gold to silver.
Many “silverbugs” out there use a common price ratio between silver and gold to predict silver’s future price. Here’s why you shouldn’t only use that…
Think about shares of a company. A single share of Company ABC could be $2 per share, but that doesn’t mean that company is only a $2 company. If Company ABC has 100 million shares outstanding, that would make it worth $200 million. That’s its market value. And that is exactly how you should look at precious metals.
We’re talking about the market’s value for all the gold and silver in the world. According to Theodore Butler, contributor to SilverSeek.com, that number is quite telling.
In 1900, there were one billion ounces of gold in the world, and gold had a $20 per ounce price tag. That made gold’s market value $20 billion. There were 12 billion ounces of silver in the world with a price tag of 65 cents. That gave silver a market value of $7.8 billion. It led to a ratio of only 2.6.
Today, gold’s market value is $3 trillion, and silver’s is only $12 billion. Here’s how Butler figured that out:
The amount of gold has gone up five-fold since 1900, yet the amount of silver decreased from 12 billion ounces to only one billion ounces, because silver has many industrial applications like electronics and batteries, while gold’s only use other than wealth storage is jewelry.
That mere fact makes this ratio so astronomical. While the price ratio has only shifted from 30 to 56 over the past 108 years, the real market value ratio has jumped from 2.6 to 281.
That means that silver’s price has been suppressed for far too long. The ratio doesn’t have to correct the whole way back to 2.6 for you to make money off of silver. Even a slight drop is big money in your pocket. You also don’t have to store a bunch of silver bars in your house to get rich off of this anomaly either.
One of the most effective ways to profit from a precious metals rally is leveraging the rise in price by investing in junior miners. We’ve talked about this before. During the last big rally in gold and silver, junior miners beat every other investment with gains of 2,464%, 3,987%, and even 13,025%. We may have a chance to see those kinds of gains this time around.