"This Looks Like The Market Peak"

News & Current Events Public News & Current Events
,
1

Stocks, houses, commodities, Bitcoin – the price of nearly everything is up double digits vs last years pre-coronavirus highs.

Have the trillions in stimulus ushered in a new bull market in, well, everything? Or have they helped blow the biggest asset price bubble in history?

Macro analyst Wolf Richter suspects the latter. And he doesn’t think we have much time left before it bursts.

While Wolf concludes we’re seeing a mania that will likely pop in the same manner as all that have preceded it, he has another reason for expecting lower asset prices ahead.

We are clearly heading down the path towards much higher inflation. And in Wolf’s eyes, that will eventually force the Federal Reserve to start tightening at this point – something that seems unimaginable to many today’s market participants, who have come to see the Fed’s 10+ years of easing as an eternal constant.

But regardless of whatever laughably low number is reported by the government’s CPI (the usefulness of which was thoroughly debunked in our recent interview on the Chapwood Index), inflation and its impact on prices is starting to run rampant.

You’d have to be blind not to see it looking at the housing market:

<img class=“aligncenter wp-image-614625 size-full” src=“https://peakprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/case-shiller.png” alt="“Case-Shiller National Home Price Index” width=“500” height=“465” />

Wolf reminds us that inflation is bad for banks and ultimately bad for the fortunes of the top 1% (the twin powers running the current system), and once they start feeling enough pain, they will apply tremendous political pressure for the Fed to tighten – something he sees could potentially happen within the next year.

And that, along with the accompanying higher interest rates, would wreak havoc with today’s highly-stretched valuation multiples, over-leveraged zombie corporations, and the ballooning federal debt.

Which is why Wolf agrees that now, more than ever, is the time to partner with a financial advisor who understands the nature of the market risks in play as well as the opportunities, can craft an appropriate portfolio strategy for you given your needs, and apply sound risk management protection where appropriate:

Anyone interested in scheduling a free consultation and portfolio review with Mike Preston and John Llodra and their team at New Harbor Financial can do so by clicking here.

And if you’re one of the many readers brand new to Peak Prosperity over the past few months, we strongly urge you get your financial situation in order in parallel with your ongoing physical resilience preparations.

We recommend you do so in partnership with a professional financial advisor who understands the macro risks to the market that we discuss on this website. If you’ve already got one, great.

But if not, consider talking to the team at New Harbor. We’ve set up this ‘free consultation’ relationship with them to help folks exactly like you.

SCHEDULE YOUR FREE CONSULTATION

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://peakprosperity.com/the-looks-like-the-market-top/

2

And the rising of prices of everything is actually a marker that value is being sucked out of our currency. All the fiat currencies. In a coordinated manner.
Remember that the Zimbabwe stock market went way way up during their hyperinflation. It was not a market crash that was so bad, but the rising markets which signaled the money’s value was being destroyed.
From Chris’ latest piece at Investment Watch


But the bloodletting of our money is hidden from view as our fiats are compared with other fiats, all of which are being exsanguinated together in a vampire orgy of “stimulus.”
Even more significant than the danger of a market drop (in my mind) is having the juice sucked out of our money, signified by the rising of almost all markets.
Only a few escape avenues for this process, and none are perfect.

  • Prepaid phone cards
  • cigarrettes
  • Gold
  • Bitcoin
  • a house
  • land
  • staples purchased ahead of time
One person I know uses Bitcoin as a savings vehicle for long term funds. (He already has a house, land and a subsistence income stream that he can live off of.)
3

liquor. Post collapse Russia ran on vodka

4

I’ve often thought If I leaned to distill alcohol in reasonable sized batches I’d be as well liked as any doctor in a post collapse world. Planting some fruit trees finally this year. Maybe Ill practice on store bought fruit in the meantime

5

Thank you Sand Puppy for putting together what is going on with fiat and how to adapt.
On this same topic I want to point out that friends and family are the key to prosperity, not by paying money to a financial expert who will out-think the bankers on our behalf and preserve value of our boomer IRAs from erosion by predatory banking machinations. The reason we love this site is because we are like family and hold keys that can be used by others to help unlock their future opportunities.

i. Dave had a legal problem re: his formal agreement with the new owner - he could have asked for help from the several attorneys in the group
ii. many of us go to PP for friendship and informal help with our resilience activities - we can do this via a weekly zoom meeting. Why not? If we truly are an exceptional self selected group we should be caucusing each week by video to discuss our common interests and to help each other out.
I dont want to be part of a give-money-to-one-place-and-receive-enlightenment-in-exchange financial advice group. Or to pay money to hear a selected unchallenged view from a partisan on a topic. There are tons of such financial advice groups that already exist and cost less. Greg Mannarino is a good example.
If you have a problem with details of energy production/water purification/soil building etc. there are excellent sites that specialize in such topics that are much superior. This PP group is a meeting point for comradarie, encouragement and discovery of truth, - in particular the wonderful analyses by our truth scout, who has been missing. iii. If I paid Adam and Chris 30$ a month as a member since I joined in 2009, I would be out over 4000$ by now instead of the ca. 400$ I spent for occasional membership, in order to hear the same message over and over: buy gold. I want to support this internet blog service. But I pay much less than this for other sites that provide such service. I cant afford 300$ a year for reading just one website. If on the other hand, someone is trying to monetize friendship and comraderie, well that is an interesting discussion to have with Adam, the formal, sole manager of the site according to public legal documents.
iv. I bought 25 DVDs for 50$ from Chris (and gave away) when he was just starting to get his message out. There was a time when money was not directing people`s behaviors and relationships at Chrismartenson . com/PP. I think that as the world currencies collapse, the love of money, and reformatting one's life to enhance fiat income is less and less appealing. We should build a commensurate communications structure.
I would like to participate and pay money for the privilege to find truth here at PP. With the exception of a philosopher (Charles Hugh Smith), the invited speakers have their own biased points of view and are often misleading, perhaps based on fiat motivations (buy their book!, visit their website! and often concluding with a pitch for Harbour Financial to give a percent of your retirement savings to. I benefit more from the excellent analyses made by posters here who are not paid (and lack fiat motivation) such as the environmental scientist Mark, Sand Puppy, VT, many others, even Mohammad. Generally one can get closer to truth or reality elsewhere than paying money to hear a talking head opining on his pet beliefs. Maybe Chris will take over and enhance that function, or maybe someone will start another group that is not so focused on out-thinking the bankers.
6

Great interview as always. In the past few weeks, I’ve been in touch with former and current consulting clients (two in particular I’ve spent a bit of time with 1) trucking industry and 2) steel industry). Inflation is here. They basically said there is no way what is being reported (whether CPCE or CPI) is REMOTELY reflective of what their businesses have been experiencing in recent months. The Fed’s solution IMO (and sorry if the conspiracy angle enters)? More lockdowns. It’s not a coincidence we are seeing A LOT of articles about rising Covid cases / covid variants IMO. Also not a coincidence that CDC head is in tears discussing the dangers we still face (with 100 million vaccinated and a survival rate for those under 60 with no comorbidities of 99.9999%. Fed knows fully opening up (which is what is in the best interest of public health) could really put them in a very tough position. If we add $100+ oil within 3 months to current inflationary environment, Fed would have to begin tightening well before they want to. Thus, inflation IMO would be modulated with rolling lock-downs.

7

In PEI there is a distillery using potatoes. Cheaper than fruit.

8

One of the key tenets of investing is that no one can successfully time the market.  And yet, we indulge in all these prophecies and predictions about where the market is going to go and when it’s going to do it.  Seems rather contradictory to me.  Haven’t we learned by now that whether it peaks, bottoms out, goes sidewise, gets choppy and sloppy, zigs and zags, or turns upside down or inside out, we should position ourselves to be reasonably buffered from any eventuality?  Sometimes financial commentary strikes me like the written version of Groundhog Day.

9

“many of us go to PP for friendship and informal help with our resilience activities - we can do this via a weekly zoom meeting. Why not? If we truly are an exceptional self selected group we should be caucusing each week by video to discuss our common interests and to help each other out.”…an interesting idea, Mots. For many of us, community is the toughest resource to find.

10

Thanks CapeSurvivor
At least a couple people here have been making an email list for these purposes. If anyone is further interested they can contact VT Gothic (who stated such thing) or email me from yugeshima.com or from here if this blog PM entry point continues to work.
Every other Friday 7PM New York time some of us discuss electronic wiring on zoom. Although the group ostensibly requires purchase of my book to enter, I am happy to put anyone in touch with an electronics engineer or electricity savvy guy to show (using their own two hands, not another lazy reference to a website) how to hook up two wires. hook up a solar panel, install a solar panel etc. Time is flying by and we really need to get this stuff done.
Dont hesitate.
best and warm regards

11

Yes, the big crash is right around the corner. Just need to wait a little bit longer. LOL! …buy gold and silver too.

12

Nice interview. I’m impressed by the amount of effort put into the questions and analyses by both Adam and Wolf. I read Wolf’s blog regularly. He is one of the best.
With bi-flation it seems like things are setting up for ever more people to lose ground. Many on the current winning side of the divide could find themselves on the other side. The practical measures New Harbor guys are putting together for their clients are a good idea. Super tough to be them right now. They appear to be a bit frazzled.

13

Actually yeah. Things have never been this weird in recent memory and it is beginning to echo 2008. Remember that one?

14

This inflation thesis is predicated on the assumption that the world economy will roar back into life post pandemic because of all the stimulus measures. If that doesn’t happen, for what ever reason, and there are many that I can think of, then we will have deflation. Deflation is also positive for asset prices because it means that central banks will have to pump more money into the system.
We are destined in bringing future GDP into the present at an ever greater rate. What else can we do? Eventually the future will catch up with the present, and boom, we fall off the cliff (the Seneca cliff). Then the net energy from our stored energy reserves (fossil, legacy reneables and nuclear) will sink inevitably and relentlessly down to zero by the end of this century.
Enjoy life now, never take it for granted. Be fit, be slim, be healthy, don’t have kids.
 

15

I had the same car insurance company for 12 years, it was on “set it and forget it” payments in my mind, even though my life situation and geography have changed a lot in that time. Luckily, no accidents or problems. I started thinking about seeing if they would reduce my rates as I drive minimally these days. Going to their website, I started reading the reviews. They were pretty bad. This got me worried. I found out my credit union would give me a much better deal on a better policy with a better company and a really nice agent. I am paying about half as much as I was.
I am readying my garden, containers and beds, to plant when the freezing nights are over in a few weeks. I am a pretty minimalist gardener, but I like to see things grow, and I put in flowers for the bees and butterflies. I am eating strictly keto, now, so I grow mostly sprouts and leafy greens that I harvest often. It basically will keep me in fresh salads so I don’t feel a need to shop in town more than once a month.
Sensible fasting, which I am incorporating more, is healthy and saves resources. Fasting one day a week saves over a month and a half of food in a year.

16

BTC is an inflation hedge and should do well in an inflationary environment, which we are currently are not in (it’s now on the order of 1.5%, which is to say “non-existent”).
There is zero chance the Fed will allow ST interest rates to rise.
Shortages in selected areas are either one-off (due to COVID issues, which will wane soon) or in anticipation of massive infrastructure projects on all those shovel-ready jobs that do NOT exist) or due to low interest rates (ie., increased prices for assets which is the kind of inflation asset owners love).

17

VTGothic is collecting personal contact information because we may not have this site forever to make connections with each other. Please send him as much information as you dare: name, email address, physical home address, telephone number. The day may come when we can’t communicate via PP.com because it’s gone, or dare not because we don’t trust it.
In the last 6 weeks I was communicating with another member here via Private Messages. S/he went to respond to me and got a message saying s/he “didn’t have permission” to respond to that thread. So now we communicate via personal email and telephone calls. Unlike Evie, my assumptions are:

  1. The Private Message system here is completely transparent to and under the complete control of the site administrators.
  2. If they choose to do so, which they almost never do, they can review all of our Private Messages.
  3. If they choose to do so, which they almost never do, they can turn off your ability to use THEIR Private Message system, in whole or in part.
    Let that sink in. Does that ring any bells in your head?
    ”They” don’t own us or our personal connections, but they have hosted them. We are vulnerable to losing our connections if we are completely dependent on PeakProsperity. Best to have at least one backup. Isn’t that what resiliency is all about?
     
18

Oh, Chris’s article was from December 2020. I mistakenly thought it was more recent. Is there any news on his return? I know he made a comment about a week ago that that was happening but…?

19

Take the middle way.

20

LOL, Im going to patent that term. It refers to the tangled mess that results in the end stages of a command and control economy. That point where all of the market signals have been captured and manipulated to direct markets higher and higher to the point where the signals themselves begin to reflect the opposite of what they’re supposed to.
So higher interest rates no longer reflect the reality of a higher value of money due to increased market demand [ due to increased economic activity ], they reflect the result of increased money printing…the REDUCED value of money [ due to the attempt by central controllers to spur slower economic activity ]. Interest rates are supposed to be a function of the supply and demand for money, not the whims of a central bank. As an indicator of our economic bearings, it is now useless. Its used to send false signals and manipulate markets.
These signals reverse, crisscross and ultimately become unreadable. Real price discovery becomes impossible when all of the constants by which we measure reality have been stripped away;
The CPI is a great example. When it showed inflation rising too quickly for the controllers, they simply changed the calculation, and added “hedonic revision/substitution” schemes to manipulate the numbers. The CPI is now meaningless as a measure of inflation.
When they reached the “debt ceiling” [ a limit that was created to gauge and control debt ] they pushed it up. When that limit was reached they eliminated the debt ceiling completely. It was inconvenient to have an indicator that would show when debts had gotten too high.
When GDP was too low and threatened to expose that even the rigged inflation numbers were too high…they changed the calculation to make GDP a little higher.
Gold was often called the “canary in the coal mine” in that it would indicate when a rigged economy was in the danger zone. This was another inconvenience that wouldnt be tolerated. So, create a paper market that dwarfs to physical market and use it to suppress prices. People sometimes say they ‘killed the canary in the coal mine’ so nobody can tell if the air was getting dangerously thin. But they did worse than killing the canary…they killed him, stuffed him, and made him into a hand puppet. Now they can put their hand inside the canary and blow his whistle to simulate inflation.
We are on an airplane with the windows blacked out, the dials that read altitude, pressure, speed, direction and location have been ripped out and replaced by fake replicas. We dont know [ and cant know ] if we are going up or down, fast or slow, east or west, north or south.
The only thing we can perceive is that the people in charge seem to get wealthier and wealthier, more and more powerful. The things we have to pay for [ sometimes by force ] always get more expensive while the things we own seem to go up and down but never quite keep pace. DIS-DE-INFATION, the confused and unreadable state of a rigged and controlled economy where none of the measures of reality are reliable.