The Inflation has Landed
The media has recognized and confirmed what we have been warning about for some time, that inflation was on the way. Well it is finally here.
‘The accommodative/bailout policies of Greenspan and his protégé Bernanke as figureheads of federal intervention and involvement into financial and monetary affairs and their ability to arbitrarily yield federal power have done nothing more than turn market participants into Pavlov’s dogs. The money they have materialized and forced fed into the global financial system without any commensurate increase in production in their economies is money in search of mischief and is very likely to find it…in the form of very serious inflation.’ https://theimpartiallens.com/the-further-back-you-look-the-further-forward-you-can-see/ March 2015 & 2020
‘The powers that be have had to intervene in every crisis we’ve had since the 1980s. and since The Great Financial Crisis of 2007, we now realize that we can never ever stop printing money. It is inflate or die’. https://theimpartiallens.com/the-devil-is-in-the-details/ February 2021
Source: S&P Global Platts
Cost-Push Inflation
The only people who can’t see the inflation are the authorities who are printing the money. They use the corrupt and decades old revision of the CPI. Meanwhile inflation is rampant in the real world. We mentioned in the following piece https://theimpartiallens.com/the-further-back-you-look-the-further-forward-you-can-see/ that inflation manifests itself in different ways. It can go into stocks, bonds, foreign countries, oil, crypto, your health costs, your housing costs, educational costs, etc. The powers that be can live in denial and it’s not a river in Egypt. But the inflation we warned about that is now taking shape, the one they fear, the one that will bring about the revolutions, is cost-push inflation, especially food price inflation. They will try to disguise it for a while longer with shrinkflation, but when the masses realize that they are spending the same, but their kids are still hungry…watch out!
One of our favorite investment themes ie. Real Assets has finally caught a bid since the summer of 2020 as we can see from the performance of the following ETF’s:
Agriculture (DBA) +45%
Commodities (DBC) +72%
Base Metals (DBB) +69%
Agri-Business (MOO) 75%
Uranium (URA) 112%
WTI Crude Oil (DBO) 111%
Water (FIW) 64%
Palladium (PALL) 61%
Brent Crude Oil (BNO) 117%
Rare Earths (REMX) +172%
Copper Miners (COPX) 300%
Lithium (LIT) 148%
Cannabis (YOLO) 150%
Time to Rebalance Portfolios?
No harm in taking SOME crypto gains off the table if one’s portfolio is dominated by crypto and buying some real stuff! Gold, Silver & the mining companies look interesting here. We went long the following six ETF’s in March/April 2020 in anticipation of upcoming inflation: GDX (Gold & Silver Miners), GDXJ (Junior Gold & Silver Miners), WPM (Gold, Silver, Palladium, Cobalt), WTR (Water), GLD (Gold), COW (LIvestock).
‘Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.’ Bernard Baruch
“Art is making something out of nothing, and selling it.”
― Frank Zappa