Posts filed under 'General'
Yes, there is no typo in the headline of this article. Today there is still an unbelievable opportunity to invest in gold that will disappear over the next several years as this monetary crisis deepens. Despite the general widespread sentiment of Western financial advisers that they have missed the run-up in gold and now it is too late to buy, this is not true at all. In fact, to illustrate how little people understand about the reasons to buy gold, of all my friends that I urged to buy physical gold more than six years ago when gold was less than half of its current price, I only know of one that has bought any gold, and it still took five years of my prodding, four times a year, for this single person to purchase gold. This is how incredibly misunderstood an asset gold remains today despite its enormous run higher in the past 8 years. This brief anecdote aptly illustrates the bias against gold and the foolish belief that gold is a bubble that persists today due to the massive propaganda and disinformation campaigns waged by bankers against gold. It is ironic today that public mistrust of bankers can be at such a high level at the same time that the public is still enormously willing to follow all of the bankers’ propaganda about gold. This great twist of irony illustrates just how powerful the bankers’ century long misinformation campaign about money and gold has been. Few people even understand how money is created let alone why gold is a protector of people’s rights. Read more …
December 15th, 2009
Last week, many analysts that were looking for some clue as to whether the CFTC will establish reasonable position limits in gold/silver futures markets and additionally not grant bullion banks (i.e. HSBC and JP Morgan) exemptions to these position limits in the near future were encouraged by the below CFTC press release.
Washington, DC – The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission today announced that it is withdrawing two no-action letters that provided relief from federal agricultural speculative positions limits set forth in CFTC regulations (17 C.F.R §150.2). “I believe that position limits should be consistently applied and vigorously enforced,” CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler said. “Position limits promote market integrity by guarding against concentrated positions.” In CFTC Letter 06-09 (May 5, 2006), the agency’s Division of Market Oversight (DMO) granted no-action relief to DB Commodity Services LLC, a commodity pool operator (CPO) and commodity trading advisor (CTA), permitting the DB Commodity Index Tracking Master Fund to take positions in corn and wheat futures that exceed federal speculative position limits set forth in CFTC Regulation 150.2. Subsequently, in CFTC Letter 06-19 (September 6, 2006), DMO granted similar no-action relief to a CPO/CTA employing a proprietary commodity investment strategy that includes positions in Chicago Board of Trade corn, soybeans and wheat futures contracts. Among other things, DMO’s no-action position in both cases stated that any change in circumstances or conditions could result in a different conclusion. DMO has previously stated that the trading strategies employed by these entities would not qualify for a bona fide hedge exemption under the Commission’s regulations. DMO will work with each of these entities as they transition to positions within current federal speculative limits. The withdrawal of these no-action positions is very specific and limited and does not affect any other no-action or regulatory positions taken by the CFTC or its staff with regard to these entities or other market participants. Read more …
August 25th, 2009
Often, during confusing economic times, people turn to icons in the investment world such as Warren Buffet and bond king Bill Gross for direction and blindly absorb the opinions of such men as their own without any critical analysis. To allow a handful of prominent men to guide the direction of public debate regarding our global financial and monetary crisis is an extremely dangerous and counterproductive habit, for a great many of these men possess ulterior motives that drive the vast majority of their public actions and statements. Consider if you owned hundreds of millions of shares of a single stock (Warren Buffet reportedly owns more than 300 million shares of Wells Fargo stock). Would you not be inclined to make statements that supported a rosy an outlook as possible for Wells Fargo if you were aware that your public statements held enough weight to move the stock higher? Read more …
May 7th, 2009
More than 2-½ years ago when I predicted a global stock market crash on my investment blog, even foreshadowing the duration and the severity of the impending crisis by naming it the Peak Investment Crisis, many called my predictions ludicrous and far-fetched. In that article, I specifically stated that the declines in global stock market indexes could easily “dwarf the pullbacks that caused a 10% decline in the London FTSE, a 35% decline in the Indian markets, a 30% decline in the Brazilian markets, and 20% decline in the Japanese markets over a several week period in 2006” and that “it [was] a potential disaster that 99% of people [were] unaware of.” Today, I foresee another enormous disaster with far wider-reaching and more serious implications than even our current global financial crisis. Read more …
May 6th, 2009
In the past three years, while banks all over the world and Wall Street were imploding, while some $40-$50 trillion of capital was being destroyed in global stock markets, one financial market kept growing. That market is the financial derivatives market. According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the global Over the Counter (OTC) derivatives market has grown almost 65% from $414.8 trillion in December, 2006 to $683.7 trillion in June of 2008. On the BIS’s own website, there are no updated figures for the notional derivatives market since June 2008, so we can likely assume, with some margin of safety, that this market has now grown to more than $700 trillion now. Comparatively speaking, the total market cap of all major global stock markets is approximately $30 trillion.
Before I discuss how financial products could grow more than 65% during a time period when financial companies were imploding all over the world, let’s review the definition of a derivative, because this will explain how this market of financial products keeps becoming more valuable at a time when the value of many capital assets are sinking like a rock in an ocean. Read more …
April 17th, 2009
January 21, 2008
In six weeks, my book Confessions of a Wall Street Insider, A Zen approach to making a fortune from the coming global crisis will be available at Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. However, if you wish to purchase it before it is available on those two sites, you may do so right now at http://www.lulu.com/content/1844087. In fact, you can even preview the first 10 pages for free at that website.
In the meantime, here’s a brief description of the book’s contents below:
Disenchanted with the sales oriented environment of Wall Street firms, J.S. Kim left the corporate world to launch his own companies, SmartKnowledgeU™, an investment research & education firm, and Blue Ocean Investing™, an investment consulting firm. Before leaving the corporate world, J.S.’s diverse work experiences included managing money for some of the richest people in the world at Fortune 500 companies and developing healthcare programs for some of the poorest Americans at a community healthcare corporation.
Since leaving the corporate world and no longer clouded with the deception of Wall Street firms, J.S. Kim’s proprietary investment strategies have led to amazingly accurate calls including calling for gold to hit $850 by the end of 2008 in September of 2007 (gold reached $850 an ounce on January 3rd, 2008, only three days off of J.S.’s prediction!). In October, J.S. predicted that a recession would hit the United States. Furthermore, in November of 2007, at a Crisis Investment workshop at the Pan Pacific in Asia, J.S. called for triple-digit down days in the U.S. Dow Jones Industrial Read more …
January 21st, 2008
November 23, 2007 - The coming dollar crisis, like the Asian Currency Crisis in 1997, and the U.S. Great Depression of 1929, will catch the overwhelming number of investors off guard and unprepared as it destroys wealth worldwide. However, during crises, there is always great opportunity. The less than 1% of the investment population who is savvy will build great fortunes during this time.
As with previous economic crises, governments always try their best to hide any brewing crisis. This is why seemingly rosy economic outlooks can seemingly turn desperate overnight. Think of the month prior to the great depression when U.S. stock markets were at an all time high and unemployment, at less than 1%, was at an all time low. Then the bottom dropped out of the market. How could great wealth and security literally be destroyed overnight and blindside so many investors?
The dollar crisis that has finally reached its tipping point has been developing for at least the past decade. Learn not only how to preserve your wealth, but how to build great wealth when this crisis begins. Learn more about the workshops in Los Angles and Orange County next month, December 10th and December 11th, 2007 regarding how to make a fortune from the coming dollar crisis.
November 23rd, 2007
October 25, 2007 – Here’s another story that belongs in the “More Worthless Manufactured Key Economic Indicators Released by the Government” statistic. Out of Washington D.C. at 10 AM this morning, this story was released
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – Sales of new homes (in the U.S.) rebounded in September from summer sales levels that were much weaker than previously reported, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. Sales increased 4.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 770,000 from a revised 735,000 in August. Previously, August’s sales had been reported at a 795,000 pace. September’s sales were slightly higher than the 758,000 pace expected by economists. The three previous months were revised sharply lower, which means the housing market was much weaker in the middle of the year than previous believed. Sales of new homes are down 23.3% in the past year.
Now the consensus was for new home sales to come in around 760,000 to 780,000 which was about spot on as the reported figures came in at 770,000. Now that would have been a decline from previous month figures at 795,000 and more bad news for the housing market. So how do you spin bad news into good news that the sheep herd will follow? Read more …
October 25th, 2007
23 April 2007 – Hello, just a quick note today about a change in the format of our newsletter. I noticed that some of you have signed up multiple times for our newsletter, probably thinking that you were not “signed up” when you did not receive your weekly newsletter. Instead of sending out a weekly newsletter, we will be sending out a bi-weekly or a monthly newsletter only, depending upon global market conditions and significant developments in global stock markets. Furthermore, we will be changing the content of our newsletter to exclusive content not offered anywhere on our blog. So for more regular updates on global market conditions and investment education tips, please access our blog. For special content, please refer to our bi-weekly/ monthly newsletter. If you are not signed up already, our newsletter, for the time-being, is still free. You can register either by following the link on this page or by directly visiting our homepage.
April 23rd, 2007
Q: Who’s Right in the Mark Cuban/ David Stern NBA Feud?
Time once again for our non-investment Friday blog. For those not familiar with my Friday blog, every Friday, I essentially blog about non-investment related topics, often business related in some sense, but sometimes not at all.
Recently, David Stern fined NBA franchise Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban U.S. $100,000 for criticizing NBA referees on his blog, blogmaverick-dot-com. For those unfamiliar with this feuding duo, David Stern is the reigning commissioner of the National Basketball Association and Mark Cuban is the outspoken billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks who made his fortune during the dot.com boom by selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo. I like Cuban for a lot of reasons. (1) He’s probably the only billionaire that the I could hang out with and feel at ease with; (2) He’s got a big mouth; and (3) He’s bitingly sarcastic. Read more …
December 8th, 2006
Q: Welcome New Readers From???
This is a continuation from a previous casual Friday blog in which I mentioned my goal was to attract readers from 100 different countries. In the past two weeks, readers from 21 new countries and 4 new territories have accessed the ZOI blog as follows:
Denmark, Ghana, Iceland, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Armenia, Oman, Slovenia, Romania, Macedonia, Costa Rica, Guinea, Tanzania, Ecuador, Czech Republic, Guatemala, Lebanon, Cote D’Ivoire, Togo, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Virgin Islands, Mauritius, and the Mariana Islands
The ZOI blog has now attracted readers from 75 separate countries, so I’m still 25 countries short. Below is the map that shows all the readers from just the previous day, with the largest centres of readership indicated by the larger circles.
The top 10 countries and territories that visited us this past week were as follows:
United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Thailand, India, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Japan, & Hong Kong
And the top 7 cities/regions from this past week were as follows:
Ontario, Canada; Alberta, Canada; Bangkok, Thailand; London, UK; Singapore; Cataluna, Spain (region) & Maharashtra, India
November 30th, 2006
Q: What Blog Entry Needs No Question?
I guess that latest blog entry wasn’t so light hearted as is the norm with my casual Friday blog entries, so here’s a late addition that should make you smile. This blog entry has no question because the picture to the right says it all. Recently, at a global economic summit in Vietnam, U.S. President Bush, Russia President Putin, Chile President Bachelet and Canadian PM Harper all donned traditional Vietnamese garb for a photo-op. And they all look more ridiculous than Bruce Lee in a Cowboy hat with a lasso.
November 25th, 2006
Q: An Update on ZOI Readership?
Regarding my goal of obtaining readers from 100 different countries on a consistent basis, here is the update for readers of my blog from new countries for this week (though not all are consistent readers):
43. Peru
44. Latvia
45. Sweden
46. Venezuela
47. Austria
48. Republic of Malta
49. Libya
50. Portugal
51. Kenya
52. Democratic Repulbic of Congo
53. Hungary
54. Kenya
55. Netherlands
I’m now up to readers from 55 different countries. Maybe my request to you, the reader, to spread the word about my blog really did work because I really don’t expect to add 13 new countries every week. So thank you.
Here are the top ten countries regarding readership of my blog:
- U.S..A.
- Canada
- Switzerland
- India
Read more …
November 16th, 2006
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