Love Trade Cools as Central Banks’ Gold Demand Heats Up

Sunday, August 19th, 2012

Love Trade Cools as Central Banks’ Gold Demand Heats Up

By Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer, U.S. Global Investors

The two largest gold buyers in the world that largely drive the Love Trade, China and India, underwhelmed the metals market with their subdued demand for the yellow metal during the second quarter of this year.

According to the World Gold Council’s (WGC) quarterly Gold Demand Trends report, total demand was 990 tons, which was about 7 percent lower compared to the second quarter of 2011. When you break down demand and look at the jewelry sector, you can see that Chindia remains about 50 percent of the world’s total gold demand. However, this quarter’s jewelry demand of a little more than 400 tons makes it one of the weakest periods in two years.

Total bar and coin demand was also weak in China and India compared with the rest of the world.

As we discussed earlier this year, India has been facing a number of economic challenges, resulting in a dramatic decrease of 30 percent in jewelry demand for the country over the second quarter compared to this time last year. The country’s “unsupportive environment” for gold included a slowing GDP growth, record high gold prices because of its currency, rising domestic inflation, high interest rates, and fears of a poor monsoon season, says the WGC.

China’s gold demand has been affected by a slowing economy as well as a “lack of clear direction in the gold price,” says the WGC. However, during the WGC’s conference call, Managing Director of Investment Marcus Grubb said it would be wrong to think that China is entering a period of extended weakness. If you look at Chinese demand for gold over the first half of 2012, the level was 410 tons—about the level that it was this time last year over the same period.

As we enter the Love Season for gold, we’ll look for any indications from government policies that might spur the continuation of the long-standing tradition of gold buying for weddings and Diwali in India, along with gold gifts for weddings and births that take place in China during this auspicious Year of the Dragon.

Although the Love Trade is on ice for the period, a relatively new gold buyer has been warming up to gold.

The official sector continued its gold buying spree this quarter. The WGC reported that central bank purchases hit a record high since the official sector became gold buyers three years ago. According to Mr. Grubb, if this trend continues over the remainder of 2012, central banks will be entering a “new territory” of gold buying that has not been seen since the early 1960s and since the end of the Bretton Woods System in 1971.

According to the firm’s quarter-end data, official sector institutions purchased 158 tons of gold in the second quarter—or about 16 percent of the quarter’s total gold demand. During the first half of 2012, central banks have acquired 254 tons of the metal, which is about 25 percent higher than the same period last year, says WGC.

Central banks from developing markets led the buying trend once again. The WGC says Kazakhstan indicated that it is “targeting an allocation to gold of 15 percent of its foreign exchange reserves” and one way it plans to build up its allocation is to purchase “the country’s entire domestic production over the next two to three years.”

Other emerging countries with central banks increasing their allocations to gold include Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. According to Mr. Grubb, central banks have been motivated to add gold mainly as a currency hedge. Central banks want to increase their weightings in reserve asset portfolios and diversify away their dependence on U.S. dollars—and possibly the euro. There’s also a belief that sovereign debt is no longer considered to be a “risk-free” asset, says the WGC.

During his quarterly conference call, Mr. Grubb elaborated on this up-and-coming trend that we’ve been watching take place over the past 12 to 18 months. He believes gold is being “reintegrated into the fabric of the financial system” as a use of collateral. Mr. Grubb noted how “many exchanges are making gold eligible, with a haircut somewhere between sovereign debt and equities, as a collateral asset in all kinds of financial transactions.” The CME Group in the U.S. has already accepted gold as collateral, and just today, the European clearing house, the CME Clearing Europe, announced that gold bullion is now considered an “eligible collateral type.”

When it comes to collateral and capital requirements, “gold is being brought back into the fold as an important asset,” says Mr. Grubb.

Strike While Gold’s Not Hot?

There’s been a lot of discussion from market pundits wondering where gold is heading. I say investors should use math to their advantage. Similar to card counting strategies used by blackjack players, count historical trends to discover inflection points.

Gold appears to be at one of those inflection points right now. Using the last 10 years of data, if you plot the 12-month rolling return, you can see that gold has reached an extreme low, registering a -2 sigma.

The last time gold reached this point was in August 2008. You can see below the yellow metal’s significant climb after hitting that standard deviation low.

Just recently, the gold price has moved above its 50-day and 100-day moving averages, which is another indication of potential strength for the metal and an additional reason to believe that gold may be an attractive entry point.

I’ll be talking about gold and natural resources at the Chicago Hard Assets Investment Conference on September 21.  If you’d like to learn more about attending the free event and when I’ll be speaking, send me a note at editor@usfunds.com.

Tags: Central Banks, Chief Investment Officer, Chinese Demand, Domestic Inflation, Dramatic Decrease, Economic Challenges, Frank Holmes, GDP Growth, Gold Buyers, Gold Demand Trends, Gold Price, Gold Prices, Government Policies, Grubb, High Interest Rates, India, Metals Market, Monsoon Season, Russia, Trade China, U S Global Investors, World Gold Council
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Which Way Will the Pendulum Swing for Gold?

Saturday, August 11th, 2012

Which Way Will the Pendulum Swing for Gold?

By Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer, U.S. Global Investors

One of the most fascinating aspects when watching a sporting event like the Olympics is the historical statistics highlighting the tremendous advances in athleticism over the years. In the spirit of the events this summer, BTN Research compared gold’s advancement from the beginning of the games in Beijing to the London Olympics.

On the day of China’s auspicious opening ceremonies on August 8, 2008, gold was $857.80 an ounce. By the time the world watched the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games, the precious metal had climbed to $1,617.90 an ounce. This represents a remarkable increase of 89 percent in four years.

Athletes are often asked if they can keep improving their outstanding performance; I’m asked if gold can continue climbing. As I like to remind investors, gold isn’t always on an upward path. When looking at the average monthly returns over the past decade, you can see that short-term setbacks are normal throughout the year. The yellow metal has historically declined in value in March and June; gold stocks see much greater fluctuations from month-to-month.

So while gold has its monthly ups and downs, you can see that, on a historical basis, we have arrived at gold’s peak performance period of the year. Based on 10 years of data, gold bullion has historically increased 2 percent in August and 4 percent in September.

Gold stocks, as measured by the NYSE Arca Gold BUGS Index (HUI), have historically performed even better in these two months. Over the past 10 years, gold companies have climbed 8 percent and almost 3 percent in August and September, respectively.

Since the beginning of August, gold and gold stocks are already following their historical pattern, as we’ve seen just a hint of an increase in the price of gold, but a significant bounce in gold companies.

Spot gold has only climbed 0.4 percent, compared to the HUI, which has increased about 5 percent since August 1. This boost in gold stocks helps to close the gap between gold companies and their underlying commodity, as I discussed last week. I indicated that the disparities meant that the cheapest resources are not found in the ground—they’re listed.

Since then, it was announced that Endeavor Mining would purchase Canada’s Avion Gold Corporation in an effort to consolidate the West African gold space. This acquisition represented a 56.4 percent premium to the trading day prior to the announcement and illustrates how extremely undervalued gold companies have been.

“Beaten-down gold stocks are an incredible fundamental bargain,” says Adam Hamilton from Zeal Intelligence. His research indicates that gold companies are “super-cheap” relative to not only the price of gold, but also on a price-to-earnings basis. When he weighted the price-to-earnings ratios of the stocks in the HUI by market capitalization, he found that gold stocks are at the lowest levels than they have been during gold’s entire bull market. Gold companies are also cheaper than the overall stock market, as “a dollar of gold-stock profits costs investors $12, but the same dollar is going for $18 in the general markets,” according to Zeal’s research.

Hamilton says, “Like the rest of the markets, sentiment flows and ebbs in the gold stocks. Sometimes investors love them and bid them up to dizzying heights as greed reigns. But then the great sentiment pendulum starts swinging towards the opposite extreme of fear. And gold stocks are crushed to ridiculous unsustainable lows like we saw last month. Realize neither excessive greed nor excessive fear can persist for long.”

There is a caveat for gold stock investors in the short-term, though. As Investor Alert readers know, I frequently look at presidential cycle trends to determine where stocks may be heading. From 1984 through 2008, the performance of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Gold and Silver Index (XAU) has historically been weak during the year of a presidential election. The silver lining is that the year following the election, the XAU has historically bounced back.

So which way will the pendulum swing this fall for gold and gold stocks? The market may wait to see the policy actions by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. Credit Suisse thinks it will likely “be critical in determining the path of the U.S. dollar and equities, and by association, gold.”

If the market sees progress on structural and fiscal reforms from Europe and additional easing from the Fed, these actions would have the “potential to be powerfully bullish for equities” and might “drive renewed investor enthusiasm for gold that could see the metal trade up to and beyond the $1,700 mark,” says Credit Suisse.

Copyright © U.S. Global Investors

Tags: August Gold, Chief Investment Officer, Frank Holmes, Gold Bugs, Gold Bullion, Gold Companies, gold stocks, London Olympics, London Summer, Nyse Arca, Olympic Games, Pendulum Swing, Performance Period, Price Of Gold, Remarkable Increase, Spot Gold, Summer Olympic Games, U S Global Investors, Ups And Downs, Upward Path
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“Did Somebody Repeal The Laws Of Mathematics?”

Sunday, August 5th, 2012

From Grant Williams’ latest Things That Make you Go Hmmm

Remember late-2010? When Spain wasn’t a problem, but merely a potential problem? I do:

(FT, November 17, 2010): For some of the world’s biggest hedge funds, typically regarded as the savviest traders in the market, there is now one big question facing the eurozone: what is going to happen to Spain?

While Europe’s politicians are grappling with the crisis unravelling in Ireland, hedge fund managers are already turning their attention to the issue of how – and if – a peripheral crisis in Ireland could leap via Portugal and Spain to become a systemic crisis for the eurozone as a whole.

“The Irish problem will be contained,” says Guillaume Fonkenell, chief investment officer at Pharo, one of Europe’s biggest and most successful macro funds, which specialises in trading on macroeconomic events and trends. “For us contagion is the issue … If the market loses confidence in Spain, then all bets are off. Spain is too big to bail.”…

Back then, the general opinion was that if the contagion spread to Spain the game was over because there wasn’t enough money with which to bail out an economy the size of The Kingdom of Spain. I’m not sure exactly what happened— maybe I wasn’t paying attention—but suddenly, almost two years on and in an environment where even the rich nations of Europe are seeing an undeniable slide towards recession, there is no talk about Spain being ‘too-big-to-bail’ anymore.

Did somebody repeal the laws of mathematics?

Presumably, if the contagion reaches Italy that would be OK too now, I guess.

As it first hit the headlines as a potential problem, Spain made a presentation to potential investors that highlighted how strong the country actually was despite the conjecture amongst market participants. The presentation is highly educational and can be found in full HERE, but as a taster, here’s one particular slide that caught my eye:

Oh, to hell with it… here’s another:

Some opportunity.

* * *

Full letter:

Hmmm 05 Aug 2012a

Grant Williams
Portfolio & Strategy Advisor at Vulpes Investment Management Private Ltd
2 Battery Road #26-01, Maybank Tower Singapore 049907
http://www.vulpesinvest.com/

Tags: Bets, Chief Investment Officer, Conjecture, Contagion, Enough Money, Eurozone, Grant Williams, Guillaume, Hedge Fund Managers, Hedge Funds, Kingdom Of Spain, Macroeconomic Events, Market Participants, Mathematics, Paying Attention, Pharo, Politicians, Recession, Systemic Crisis, Taster
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The Race for Resources

Sunday, August 5th, 2012

The Race for Resources

By Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer, U.S. Global Investors

The world watched in awe as American swimmer Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian of all time. I’ve read he’s been training in the pool for an average of 6 hours a day, 6 days per week, which equates to about 30,000 hours since age 13 and about 10,000 calories burned during a training day. It’s inspiring to see the incredible results of his tremendous sacrifice and commitment.

Investing in global markets requires the same sort of stamina, especially at times like this week, when the month’s reading on the manufacturing industry was not encouraging. The J.P. Morgan Global Manufacturing PMI of 48.4 for July was the lowest since June 2009.

However, I believe there are encouraging pockets of strength to energize and inspire investors.

For example, we’re coming up on the anniversary of the first stimulus move that kicked off the global easing cycle. On August 31, 2011, Brazil unexpectedly cut rates by 50 basis points, and since then, ISI says 228 stimulative monetary and fiscal policy moves have been initiated across several countries, including the Philippines, China, France, and Colombia.

In June and July alone, there were nearly 70 moves—the most since the world began this massive easing.

Generally, by the time central banks make a fiscal or monetary easing move, economic deterioration has already occurred. Even with these moves, it still takes several months for the stimulative measures to take effect and work their way through.

But while the world wades in the shallow end of the pool waiting for the economy to warm up, Asia has taken a deep dive into the energy space as they’ve recently announced acquisitions of Canadian resources companies.

In my presentations, I’ve discussed how resources companies have significantly underperformed their underlying commodities. During 2009 and most of 2010, the performance between oil and the S&P 500 Oil & Gas Exploration and Production Index was closely correlated. By the middle of 2011, oil and oil stocks started to separate, with crude continuing to rise while stocks deteriorated. Even with the recent drop in oil prices, oil stocks have continued to lag.

I’ve also discussed the strikingly similar trend occurring between gold and gold stocks. There’s been a spectacular pop in gold stocks recently, but it hasn’t been enough to catch up to gold’s performance.

The disparities mean that the cheapest resources are not found in the ground—they’re listed, and it’s been confirmed by recent energy company acquisitions.

Chinese oil company CNOOC put in a bid of $15 billion to purchase Canada’s Nexen. This was at a 61 percent premium to Nexen’s share price on July 20, according to Bloomberg. As you can see below, not only did the takeout announcement close the gap, now the company is outperforming the price of oil.

If CNOOC’s deal is approved, the state-run oil giant gets even bigger, gaining access to significant energy stores in several areas of the world, including Canada, the Gulf of Mexico, Colombia and West Africa, as shown below.

With a rapidly growing middle class and rising urbanization, Chinese leaders know they need to fill their country’s tremendous energy demands and are continually finding innovative ways to keep their country powered. CNOOC’s acquisition is one way China continues to acquire not only the resources needed to power the country, but also the technological innovations that come from countries with free markets and lower barriers to entry. According to The New York Times, China “has been garnering advanced production technologies to better draw oil and gas from nontraditional areas like deepwater fields and hardened rock formations.”

The other announcement came from Malaysia’s state-owned and natural-gas giant Petronas, which will purchase Canada’s Progress Energy Resources Corp. Petronas is one of the largest producers and shippers of supercooled LNG fuel in the world. According to the Vancouver Sun, the company is “anxious to increase its market share in Asia, where analysts expect demand to surge 75 percent by the end of the decade.”

After Petronas’ original bid was announced, Progress increased 74 percent—a record gain for the company, says Bloomberg. As shown below, Progress now dramatically outperforms the underlying commodity.

Ready to be a Buyer like Asia?
If you’re contrarian investor, there may be an additional reason to jump into the market today. According to research from J.P. Morgan, institutional investors have become extremely negative, as hedge funds “essentially short the market,” meaning that their expectation is that stocks will fall.

J.P. Morgan looked at the rolling 21-day beta of macro fund returns compared to the S&P 500 Index returns and found that the ratio is at an extreme level of -0.26. Research shows that the last two times the ratio fell this low—in September 2010 and February 2012—stocks rallied. In 2010, the S&P 500 climbed 26 percent in five months; in 2012, stocks rose 8 percent in two months.

These signs the market is sending out make it an especially attractive time to “mine” for investment opportunity. In July, we began to see energy stocks and oil get recharged, as the energy sector in the S&P 500 was the second best performer, increasing 4.17 percent and crude oil rose 3.68 percent. Unlike the start of an Olympic race, in investing, there isn’t a signal sounded to let you know when to dive off the starting block into the markets. Just make sure your portfolio is poised to participate in the race for resources.

Tags: American Swimmer, Basis Points, Canadian, Canadian Market, Canadian Resources, Central Banks, Chief Investment Officer, Deep Dive, Economic Deterioration, Frank Holmes, Global Markets, J P Morgan, Manufacturing Industry, Michael Phelps, Monetary And Fiscal Policy, Pmi, Policy Moves, Stamina, Stimulus, Training Day, U S Global Investors, Wades
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What History Suggests About the Future of Stocks

Thursday, August 2nd, 2012

by Seth Masters, Chief Investment Officer, AllianceBernstein

Some experts today argue that the world has entered a “New Normal” condition in which stocks have permanently lost their return edge. We’ve heard this before. It was wrong then, and we think it’s wrong now, too.

In 1979, BusinessWeek published a cover story famously called “The Death of Equities.” Then, like now, stock market returns had lagged 10-year Treasury returns for a decade, although for somewhat different reasons.

Stock returns had been dragged down by the bursting of a bubble (the Nifty Fifty) and bleak economic conditions. OPEC had unleashed its second oil-price shock in five years. The so-called misery index—the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates—was 20% in the US, double its level today (because inflation is now very low). And corporate profits were very weak (today, they are very strong).

BusinessWeek was capturing widespread sentiment about the economic and market outlook. Nonetheless, stocks handily beat bonds over the 10 years starting in 1979.

As the ubiquitous legal disclosure says, past performance does not guarantee future returns. Indeed, performance often reverses sharply.

Between 1901 and the onset of the recent credit crisis, there have been 11 10-year rolling periods in which bonds beat stocks, all of them coinciding with the Great Depression or the stagflation of the 1970s. And after each and every one of them, stocks beat bonds for 10 years—on average, by 5.8%, as the Display below shows.

Because we are human, we all tend to expect the future to resemble the recent past—to become “anchored” in our recent experience. It takes guts to buck the trend. But at a September 1983 client conference, we cited good fundamental reasons in making “The Case for the 2,000 Dow.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average was then slightly below 1,300. It reached 2,000 in January 1987, about three-and-a-half years later.

Today, our median annual return projections for global and US stocks are about 8% over the next 10 years, far ahead of our projected 2% median return for 10-year Treasuries. At that rate, the Dow could hit 20,000 in five to 10 years. In the same time frame, the S&P 500, a more representative index, could hit 2,000. (It’s now around 1,300.)

Our projected stock returns may sound optimistic. They’re not. They are well below the long-term average for US and global equities, and are based on conservative assumptions about economic and market conditions.

Still, many pundits argue that stocks today are overpriced. My next blog post will assess stock valuations.

The views expressed herein do not constitute research, investment advice or trade recommendations and do not necessarily represent the views of all AllianceBernstein portfolio-management teams.

Seth J. Masters is Chief Investment Officer for Asset Allocation at AllianceBernstein and Chief Investment Officer of Bernstein Global Wealth Management, a unit of AllianceBernstein.

Tags: Businessweek, Chief Investment Officer, Corporate Profits, Credit Crisis, Different Reasons, Dow Jones, Dow Jones Industrial, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Fundamental Reasons, Future Returns, Great Depression, Inflation Rates, Legal Disclosure, Market Outlook, Misery Index, Oil Price Shock, stagflation, Stock Market Returns, Stock Returns, Stocks Bonds
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Challenging the Paradigms of Investing

Sunday, July 29th, 2012

Challenging the Paradigms of Investing

By Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer, U.S. Global Investors

It’s been an exciting and educational time this week. I’ve been in Vancouver at the Agora Financial Investment Symposium speaking to hundreds of investors who are eager to learn how to grow and protect their wealth. This year’s theme, “Innovate or Die,” fit well with my presentation, as the conference challenged attendees to adapt their investment strategies just as empires and enterprises adjust to changing circumstances.

When I wasn’t behind the podium, I was sitting with the audience, soaking up new ideas from speakers, including Gloom Boom & Doom Editor Marc Faber, historian Niall Ferguson and Editor of Outstanding Investments Byron King, who surprised me and challenged my current way of thinking.

Back at the office, our analysts and portfolio managers continue their daily meetings as always to discuss and digest the mountains of research that cross our desks each day. We question what we read, analyze statistics and hypothesize on what we see happening across the global economy. As much as emotions and biases take a role in investing, our goal is to make decisions not based on groupthink that discourages creativity, but founded on a collective wisdom that encourages critical evaluation of the economy and markets.

Global investors constantly need to be watchful of individual biases, impaired thinking and emotional reactions that can have an adverse effect on a portfolio. That’s why we created this weekly Investor Alert which thousands of readers have come to rely on. One of our values at U.S. Global Investors is to always be curious to learn and improve, and the Investor Alert was borne from a belief that shareholders want to understand the very subtle nuances of biases and misconceptions.

My presentation attempted to address a few cognitive dissonances I see in the markets these days and I was pleased to have several attendees approach me afterward, remarking how they thought differently after seeing the slides.

See previous presentations and be surprised.

As much as I’d love to share all of the visuals here, in the interest of space, I selected only a few that I believe challenge the paradigms of investing.

1. For all the hype over recent tech initial public offerings, did you know that investors have lost more money in Groupon and Facebook than the entire assets in all of the gold funds? With the endless coverage leading up to Groupon and Facebook’s IPO, the stocks appeared to be positioned to the public as a mainstream investment. However, I believe people were unaware of the risks involved when they purchased shares.

As you can see below, since its price peak on November 4 through July 26, Groupon has lost $15 billion in market capitalization. Facebook has lost even more in dollar value in a shorter amount of time: From its intraday high on May 18 through July 26, the market cap of the company has dropped $34 billion. These losses pale in comparison to all the money invested in gold funds in the U.S. combined.

2. Did you know that the overall market has historically been more volatile than gold? Take a look at the rolling 1-, 3- and 12-month volatility for the S&P 500 Index, Bank of America stock, gold bullion and gold equities. As with any investment, price action over the short term can rise and fall, but what surprises many investors is that gold has had less rolling volatility than the overall market, gold stocks and a big bank stock like Bank of America (BAC). In fact, looking over the past five years, BAC has seen more volatility than gold, the overall market and gold stocks!

3. While Warren Buffett bashed gold, did you know that Berkshire Hathaway has underperformed the metal over the last 10 years? Gold has been on an incredible bull run over the past decade, and while Berkshire Hathaway kept pace for the first six years, it has struggled to maintain gold’s rise since 2006. In his last shareholder letter, Buffett dismissed gold, comparing the rise of the yellow metal to the tulip mania in the 1600s and claiming that gold only “enjoys maximum popularity at peaks of fear.”

As long as I’ve been in this business, there have been naysayers who question the inclusion of gold in portfolios. However, because the precious metal typically is not highly correlated with other financial assets, holding a small allocation—5 to 10 percent—in a traditional portfolio of stocks and bonds has historically added diversification and reduced volatility.

4. In today’s low yield environment, did you know that inflation causes investors of Treasuries to lose money? Treasuries are seen as a “safe haven” investment, but as of the middle of July, the 10-Year Treasury had fallen to less than 1.5 percent. Yet inflation burns off at a rate of 1.7 percent. This leaves investors with a loss of about 0.2 percent. I believe better opportunities exist.

As I’ve discussed recently, there are plenty of dividend-paying resources stocks with yields much higher than the 10-year Treasury, as well as municipal bond funds that have a higher 30-day SEC yield on a tax-equivalent basis than long-term Treasuries.

Always Be Surprised
Among the millions of people around the world who will watch London’s Olympics, many will stay glued to their flat screens to see firsthand the element of surprise. We want to see the rising star who was considered the underdog, the athlete who takes a record number of gold medals or the team that pulls off an unexpected win. These are memorable moments in the making, like track and field star Jesse Owens, who changed history when he overcame adversity and infuriated the Nazis when he won four gold medals during the 1936 Games. Just like the Olympics, I encourage investors to always stay curious and watchful because you never know where the market’s opportunities will be.

Tags: Adverse Effect, Biases, Chief Investment Officer, Collective Wisdom, Critical Evaluation, Doom Editor, Educational Time, Emotional Reactions, Financial Investment, Frank Holmes, Global Economy, Groupthink, Investment Strategies, Investment Symposium, Investor Alert, Marc Faber, Outstanding Investments, Portfolio Managers, Subtle Nuances, U S Global Investors
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Looking Past Negativity to See Opportunity

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

July 13, 2012

Looking Past Negativity to See Opportunity

By Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer, U.S. Global Investors

This week, I spoke at FreedomFest in Las Vegas along with the world’s best and brightest minds, such as Steve Forbes, Senator Rand Paul, and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. I discussed the growing global demand of resources and gold to a crowd of 2,000 (including the world famous Willie Nelson). Half of the group was attending for the first time, which demonstrates to me a growing curiosity to learn about macro trends shaping the world and affecting our investments.

Among investors these days, a fellow commodity bull is about as rare as finding a positive story in the media, especially when you look at the results of metals and natural resources during the first half of 2012. Only four commodities on our periodic table pulled off a positive return. Wheat grew the most, rising 13 percent, followed by single-digit rises from corn, gold and copper. On the negative side, coal lost more than 19 percent, followed by crude oil (-14.1 percent), nickel (-13.6 percent) and lead (-12.3 percent).

See the Decade of Commodity Returns on our Periodic Table

Fears of slowing global growth and how it will affect commodities have caused many investors to dig their heels in the ground and resist owning natural resources. Perpetuating this negative investor sentiment is the constant 24/7 news cycle punctuated with pessimism.

During a natural resources conference, Jeremy Grantham of GMO pounded the table for an investment in resources, but you wouldn’t know it by reading the headline of the CNN piece that covered the topic. In its article called, “Our planet will truly be toast,” CNN discussed Grantham’s comments on a global commodities shortage, saying he was “bearish on human resources…but bullish on natural resources investments.”

His argument focused on the swelling population in China, and the fact that the world has experienced a “great paradigm shift” around 2000, when commodity prices, which were negative for decades, “abruptly reversed course.” He told the crowd, “in the long run, you can’t afford to miss this opportunity.” We agree.

As you can see on McKinsey & Company’s chart above, the past decade shows a clear tipping point for resources. In 2000, I became the chief investment officer of U.S. Global Investors at a time when no one wanted to touch resources. We recognized the significance of China and Eastern Europe ushering in free markets, believing this to be a positive change, with emerging markets as big beneficiaries of this massive shift.

I like to use the metaphor of an ice cube to explain how new equilibriums can have significant effects. We all naturally understand what happens when you take ice out of the freezer. It changes form, from solid to liquid, but it’s still made up of hydrogen and oxygen.

A change in something the size of an ice cube does not have much impact—it’ll only leave a puddle of water on your counter. Instead, picture a glacier unthawing and how this huge chunk of ice drastically affects the world’s ocean level.

Or take H20 in steam form. At 211 degrees, water is way too hot to dip a finger, but it’s still one degree below the boiling point. As explained in the motivational book, 212: The Extra Degree, “Applying one extra degree of temperature to water means the difference between something that is simply very hot and something that generates enough force to power a machine.”

The significance of the changes in states of matter—whether it’s a chunk of melting ice or a steam engine—is that there is a tipping point that significantly alters the dynamics.

Tremendous population growth, changes in government policies, development of new technologies, urbanization trends work the same way. It’s what Grantham called “the great paradigm shift” and they have equally dramatic effects on how we invest in commodities, change opportunities and adjust for risk.

Smart investors look past the rampant negativity in the media to see these patterns and anomalies to determine where the opportunities and threats lie. Americans can see how shale gas technology has changed the dynamics of oil and natural gas. The chart from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook 2012 shows how consumption of petroleum and other liquids in the U.S. have significantly changed while production has been rising. Consumption rose throughout the 1980s until about 2005, when it dropped off. Meanwhile domestic production was declining. Between 2005 and 2010, a significant change happened: consumption dropped, then leveled off and the rate of production shifted higher. The EIA estimates that because of these shifts, net imports will decrease to 36 percent in 2035 from about 49 percent today.

As Brian Hicks, a portfolio manager of the Global Resources Fund (PSPFX) pointed out in a Smart Money article, when oil prices rise, people put more resources into getting the commodity out of the ground. He says, before the oil-price boom, these reserves would have been unprofitable, “now they’re anchoring ‘a gold rush.’”

Similar to higher production in the U.S., Iraq production is on the rise, Libya supply is climbing and demand remains tepid. Morgan Stanley Commodity Research believes that the “path of least resistance for oil is down.” The firm estimates OPEC spare capacity at the end of 2011 and 2012 to be around 4 million barrels per day with a global consumption level estimated at 89 million barrels each day. This compares to today’s spare capacity of around 2 million barrels each day. “If OPEC production continues at today’s levels, stocks would build above normal through 3Q and supply would outstrip demand in 2012,” says Morgan Stanley.

This is why diversification among natural resources is vital. Because there’s always an ebb and flow of commodities, both seasonal and cyclical, it’s important to anticipate these global trends to know how to participate.

The key is to adapt to external elements like the way oil production adapts to excess supply. Usually the easy answer, such as staying on the sidelines, isn’t the best answer, though. Take a look at today’s yield on a 10-year Treasury—it’s 1.49 percent. Meanwhile, inflation is at 1.7 percent. This means that after you factor in what you’ve lost from the destructive force of inflation, you’re left with a negative return.

Instead of being stuck with this potentially losing proposition, we believe there are plenty of opportunities out there. Last week, I discussed dividend-paying resources stocks: Of the companies in the S&P 500 Index, materials pay an average yield of 2.3 percent, utilities pay an annual rate of 4.1 percent, and energy stocks pay a dividend yield of 2.2 percent.

And if you need to park some money for a few years, you may have noticed that 3-year certificate of deposits offered at a bank are yielding about 1.34 to 1.42 percent. These CDs lock up your cash for three years and generally come with a penalty for early withdrawal.

There may be better yielding alternatives out there for those that can take on some risk as they seek higher returns. For example, U.S. Global Investors’ Near-Term Tax Free Fund (NEARX) had a higher 30-day SEC yield on a tax-equivalent basis based on a 35 percent tax rate as of June 30, 2012. Also, the fund invests in bonds that have an average maturity of just over 3 years, which is about the same holding period as a 3-year CD.

While the fund is not FDIC insured, it does provide the flexibility of daily liquidity that comes with a mutual fund.

Could this four-star fund work for your portfolio? To find out, you can talk to one of our Shareholder Services team members Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. (CST) at 1-800-873-8637 or click here to send us an information request.

I’ve rarely been more excited to talk positively about how investors can take advantage of the anomalies and trends in the market. In a few weeks, I’ll be presenting these ideas at the Agora Financial Investment Symposium in Vancouver. Hope to see you there!

Tags: Ceo John Mackey, Chief Investment Officer, Cnn, Frank Holmes, Freedomfest, Global Commodities, Global Demand, Investor Sentiment, Jeremy Grantham, John Mackey, Lead 12, Macro Trends, Natural Resources Conference, Population In China, Senator Rand, Steve Forbes, U S Global Investors, Whole Foods, Whole Foods Ceo, Whole Foods Ceo John Mackey
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Are You Limited by Linear Thinking?

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

July 06, 2012

Are You Limited by Linear Thinking?

By Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer, U.S. Global Investors

Is your portfolio limited by linear thinking? We believe so.

Many linear thinkers believe that to solve a problem, you need to follow a simple, logical path, a step-by-step sequence involving two variables. One and one is always two. Here’s a diagram depicting the progression.

When it comes to solving today’s social, political and economic ills, linear thinkers believe the solution is more regulation and government intervention. To wit: the thousands of pages piling up from the solutions of Sarbanes-Oxley, the Volcker Rule and Dodd-Frank.

There’s a danger with this line of thinking because life is much more complex. Government policies are necessary for a level playing field for businesses, but they require a nonlinear way of thinking. Consider how scientists, mathematicians, psychologists and meteorologists have had tremendous success when they step outside the stiff boundaries required by linear thinking. Nonlinear math equations and systems have been used to explain weight loss, the spread of happiness, strength of metals and hurricanes. Millions of Americans’ lives have been improved by a deeper level of understanding of these issues.

This nonlinear line of thinking needs to be adopted by policymakers. As we enter a critical period in the U.S. election cycle, Americans deserve thoughtful regulations that maintain the spirit found within the Declaration of Independence. These are lofty, but attainable goals, as long as we have leaders who are brave enough to fully consider how their actions affect job creation, social stability, economic prosperity, trust, and free markets.

Prohibition is an obvious example of extreme regulation in American history. With all the good intentions of improving the lives of Americans by eliminating the perceived source of corruption, crime and poverty, politicians outlawed the making, transporting and selling of alcohol. Politicians did not anticipate the extent of unintended consequences, as the illegal commodity only encouraged bootlegging, speakeasies and the mafia.

If you’re older than 21, raise your glass to the repeal in 1933 and the more practical and balanced approach that followed, as states chose their own drinking ages until the 1980s, when the need to reduce drunk driving fatalities led to the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984.

Investors today are the unintended victims of the linear thinking that has permeated through today’s government policies. A friend of mine shared his parents’ experience with me that many retired workers can relate to. After years of working hard and prudently saving for retirement, my friend’s parents felt that their nest egg was large enough to retire and live off the interest. At the time, their accumulated savings of $500,000 was invested in long-term Treasury bonds yielding roughly 6 percent. The annual interest of $30,000 satisfied their needs.

Fast forward to this year, when 30-year and 10-year government yields have been so manipulated by the Federal Reserve that the rates have been reduced to near-record lows. This knocks the interest income on the retirees’ half a million dollar nest egg to only $5,000 per year.

By regulating yields, the Fed had the good intention of allowing people to borrow money at low cost to stimulate the economy, but the unintended consequence was a huge tax on retired people, forcing many to go back to work to supplement today’s meager earnings.

Think Nonlinearly: A Time to be Resourceful

Don’t be limited by linear thinking in your portfolio. As an alternative to low yielding Treasury bonds, consider resources stocks that pay dividends. We’ve found that most materials, utilities and energy stocks in the S&P 500 Index pay a dividend higher than the 10-year Treasury: Materials and utilities companies yield an average of 2.3 percent and 4.1 percent, respectively, while energy stocks pay an average yield of 2.2 percent.

Nonlinear thinkers have historically benefitted from the inclusion of natural resources as part of a balanced portfolio. Financial Planning found that, when included in a diversified portfolio and rebalanced annually, of natural resources funds with 10 year returns, the Global Resources Fund added the most return.

Tags: Attainable Goals, Chief Investment Officer, Critical Period, Economic Ills, Economic Prosperity, Election Cycle, Frank Holmes, Free Markets, Government Intervention, Government Policies, Linear Thinkers, Logical Path, Math Equations, Meteorologists, Sarbanes Oxley, Social Stability, Step Sequence, Strength Of Metals, Transpo, U S Global Investors
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Unmasking the Asian Giant

Monday, July 2nd, 2012

Unmasking the Asian Giant

By Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer, U.S. Global Investors

Chinese operas have been keeping audiences enthralled for hundreds of years with mythical characters, enchanting stories and elaborate masks that add drama and mystery. While this fantastical treatment is appreciated in the theatre, it isn’t in global markets. Investors don’t like mystery—think of how uncertainty has spooked markets in recent years.

Global investors are rarely privy to every detail about the economy; that’s why it’s necessary to rely on multiple data and research to make decisions and be cautious of extreme views that unnecessarily arouse suspicion, skepticism, and criticism. These opinions may grab headlines, but rarely do they help investors’ portfolios.

A recent article in The New York Times raised doubts about the quality in China’s macroeconomic reporting. The Times pointed to evidence from “prominent corporate executives in China and Western economists” who say that “local and provincial officials are falsifying economic statistics to disguise the true depth of the troubles.” The author alarmed many of our readers, so we immediately contacted numerous analysts—many of whom have front row seats to Chinese economic data—to get their reaction.

Some analysts preempted our request by independently sending out a rebuttal, including CLSA’s China Macro Strategist Andy Rothman, in his Sinology report titled, “Lies, Damned Lies…” Since 2006, global investors have come to rely on this company’s coverage of China because of its ability to “independently monitor mainland economic activity.” See Andy’s insightful views on China from a recent webcast.

Don Straszheim from ISI also emailed his view on the veracity of Chinese data. (We note that Don was correct on a recent call on China. When he visited our office at the beginning of June, he correctly predicted the interest rate cut, which China made two days after his visit.)

We’re all influenced by emotions, of course, and when used to our advantage, can help guide how we invest. However, we need to be aware of how outside biases can influence our judgment. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman writes about a mechanism through which biases flow called an “availability cascade,” a term coined by Cass Sunstein and Timur Kuran. Kahneman says the availability cascade is a “self-sustaining chain of events, which may start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action.” The vicious cycle goes like this: As people begin to worry, they seek more information and are attracted to similar news reports, which encourages additional coverage. The “availability entrepreneurs” are the ones who deliberately want to keep the negative news flowing.

This may not have been the intention of the Times—and other China bears—but its business is selling newspapers.

Kahneman focuses his discussion on how policies should take into consideration a combination of “experts’ knowledge with the public’s emotions and intuitions.” This thinking also relates to investment decisions, which is why our SWOT model is designed to help us review a variety of sources, along with emotion and intuition, and categorize the results in terms of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

We encourage our readers to take this approach: Read the Times article and analyze it alongside what analysts are saying:

It’s not breaking news that China’s data is less-than-perfect. Analysts have been saying this for years. CEBM says simply that the Times article is “a true but not new story,” while ISI believes “the shortcomings of China data is a topic every China macro journalist writes on every year or so – with small variations and supporting anecdotes.”

Part of the reason the topic of China’s “disguise” keeps coming up stems from the fact that the country has not had a very long history of “professional independence from the political machinery in Beijing,” says ISI.  Unlike developed countries, ISI believes China’s data system continues to be opaque and primitive. The countries’ inadequacies are relatively common among emerging markets, as numerous analysts have pointed out.

This fact does not release China from its responsibility to make sure that investors have accurate information. Rather, because the country has become an economic powerhouse, it is under greater scrutiny, which means it needs to improve its checks and balances. CLSA says the central government has been aware of how local officials inflate their data and “has been taking steps to mitigate the problem.” For example, more than 700,000 companies now report their data directly to the National Bureau of Statistics, rather than the local governments. NBS data is typically used to forecast consumption of key commodities, says CLSA.

The Times discussed how electricity production and consumption is “a telltale sign of a wide variety of economic activity” and is a “gold standard” for finding out how the economy is doing. A few months ago, U.S. Global’s analyst, Xian Liang talked about how important electricity consumption was as a measure of activity—some commercial banks that lend to small companies would physically check the meters themselves.

As shown in the chart below, over the last few years, China has reported electricity consumption that was much more volatile than real GDP data. Noting the extreme at the end of 2008, it’s likely that GDP fell more than was reported, and at the end of 2009, GDP likely rose more than publicly reported, says ISI.

However, the logic of the Times article to think that local officials are “overstating” data seems misguided. According to Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, China’s local officials have little incentive to over-report the use of energy because “Beijing imposes increasingly restrictive regulations on energy use per unit of GDP on local governments.” Also, since 2011, many local officials have been trying to encourage the government to ease tightening measures, so it is not in their interest to over-report power data to mask a slowdown.

What’s needed before investing in any emerging market is an ability to decipher the mountain of data and use informed judgment.  Because “all data in China are not created equal,” ISI bases its opinion on data, giving more credibility to data that is independent and discounts data that is confusing or biased. Data including purchasing managers’ index, export and import volumes, auto and vehicle sales and production, transportation and People’s Bank of China are generally high-quality and credible, says ISI.

There’s no denying the importance of China. Take a look at McKinsey’s map showing the rapid shift in the world’s economic center of gravity. Beginning in AD 1, for nearly 2,000 years, the economic center of gravity was in Asia because population growth and migration were slow. Industrialization and urbanization in Europe and the U.S. quickly shifted the economic power west for the next century. Now, “China is urbanizing on 100 times the scale of Britain in the 18th century and at more than ten times the speed,” says McKinsey.

In fact, in the past three years, a combination of lower growth in the developed countries, combined with the fast urbanization of the emerging world, the economic power has reverted back toward the east at the “fastest rate of change” in history.

Here’s another way to visualize China’s reversion to the mean, which we showed a few days ago:

All the World’s Not a Stage
China is far from perfect: While actors can perfect their lines and use masks to captivate an audience, smart investors know better to use a wealth of information across numerous sources to guide investment decisions. Weigh the evidence and judge for yourself. As my friend, Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald recently said in an interview, “A powerful China is coming, and we have two choices. Either we’re at the table, or we’re on the menu.” To him this means, “Good news from China is good news for the U.S.; bad news from the Chinese economy is bad news here.”

Tags: Chief Investment Officer, chinese data, Chinese Operas, Clsa, Corporate Executives, Economic Data, Economic Statistics, Extreme Views, Frank Holmes, Front Row Seats, Global Markets, Insightful Views, Mythical Characters, New York Times, Provincial Officials, Rothman, True Depth, U S Global Investors, Veracity, Western Economists
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China Eases the Way

Sunday, June 10th, 2012

China Eases the Way

By Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer, U.S. Global Investors

Following negative data last week, investors were clearly concerned about global growth and anxiously anticipated government actions. While Europe and the U.S. disappointed investors, China surprised on the upside by cutting interest rates. The market reacted positively, as the S&P 500 Index increased 3.7 percent.

It’s clear the government’s tone in China shifted this week with the rate cuts. The government appeared to be comfortable with slower growth, but that position seemed to change as the country took steps to avert a hard landing and cut interest rates to stabilize the economy.

Over the past decade, there were only two periods when the government reduced rates: once in 2002, and several times at the end of 2008. This time, rates were cut by 25 basis points each on lending and deposits. The one-year benchmark deposit rate is now 3.25 percent and the 1-year lending floor rate is now at 6.31 percent. Historically, easing rates have been positive for the MSCI China Index.

As we often say at U.S. Global Investors, government policy is a precursor to change. While there has been quite a bit of negative news lately, government policy is making a significant step toward growth. We believe now’s not the time to be bearish.

Analysts are only beginning to see signs of increased infrastructure spending, which should help spur growth for the remainder of the year. If you’ll remember in 2011, China deliberately tightened its credit policy to stem inflation and slowed financing to local governments, says J.P. Morgan. As a result, fixed asset investment growth in infrastructure decelerated considerably, and railway investment was completely halted, decreasing nearly 20 percent on a year-over-year basis during the second half of 2011, says J.P. Morgan.

The decline in infrastructure and real estate investment on a year-over-year percentage change is clearly seen in CLSA’s chart, and it’s what Andy Rothman has attributed to slower growth in the world’s second-largest economy:

Highway infrastructure spending “increased sharply” from January through April, particularly in Western China, says J.P. Morgan. The research firm says that the economic growth rates in the Central and Western areas of the country “already outpace those of more developed coastal provinces.” Fixed asset investment for infrastructure, energy development and water projects in the Central and Western regions has grown at a faster clip than in the Eastern region on a year-over-year basis.

Rail infrastructure has also picked up. As of the end of 2011, the Ministry of Railways received a credit line of more than $300 billion from banks, and plans on issuing additional railway bonds, seeking investments by pension funds and encouraging the private sector to invest, says J.P. Morgan.

With fixed asset investment in the rail sector growing 34 percent on a month-over-month basis, this government support is “starting to be translated into action,” says Macquarie Commodities Research. If we see spending in railways continue to increase, China will be able to meet their full-year target, according to Macquarie.

China’s GDP during the second quarter is likely to be about 7.5 percent, and the expectation for 2012 remains at 8 percent. While the country’s GDP is lower than its 2010 high of 12 percent, it is helpful to put this in context with global growth. “Comparatively, it looks like strength—not weakness,” reiterates ISI.

What’s important for investors to realize is that the combination of a ramp up in targeted fiscal spending combined with broad-based monetary easing is a positive dynamic not only for China—but for the global economy as a whole.

John Derrick contributed to this commentary.

Tags: Asset Investment, Basis Points, Benchmark, Chief Investment Officer, China, Clsa, Frank Holmes, Global Growth, Government Actions, Government Policy, inflation, Investment Growth, J P Morgan, Local Governments, Msci China Index, Negative News, Percentage Change, Precursor, Real Estate Investment, Time Rates, U S Global Investors
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