Leverage Cycle Tourism: My Trip to the Other Side
The IMF is famous for holding back emerging economies by enforcing anti-growth policies. But not everything the IMF does or says is wrong.
Consider this logic from a recent IMF statement, which provides a good introduction to the leverage cycle:
Recessions associated with financial crises have [...]

Dear Crisis Strategy Alert Member,

Brazilian oil major Petrobras (NYSE:PBR), a new edition to the CSA portfolio, is still plugging away offshore.
Just this week, we got confirmation of how much oil and natural gas Petrobras has access to offshore.
This from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:
Brazilian state-run energy giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR), [...]

Dear Crisis Strategy Alert Reader,
The G20 met last week and came up with a ‘solution’ to the emerging market problem: a $1.1 trillion bailout fund.
Currencies reacted as you would expect: the dollar moved down and the euro moved up. But this pattern didn’t last long.
The European economy is in dire straits. And we [...]

Dear CSA Member,
Bear market rallies are strange creatures.
They come at times when it makes the least sense. After all, why should the market move higher when the overall economic outlook is so gloomy?
The rally we saw for the past two weeks was led by the financials and rode on the back of [...]

Dear Crisis Strategy Alert Member,
It’s time to place a market order to sell the remainder of your position in the Direxion Financial Bull 3X Shares ETF (NYSE:FAS).
We are selling our position to avoid further market weakness and capture a gain of 8%.
As always, let me know how you did by sending an email to info@crisisstrategyalert.com. [...]

Dear CSA Member,
I’d like to begin this week’s Crisis Strategy Alert
update by going over some very useful emails from CSA members.
First, this from a Crisis Reader:
I would like to follow your recommendations, but my broker (Scottrade) does not trade CUSIPS, not on the U.S. or Canadian Exchanges. Can you [...]

Closeout Recommendation – Sell 50% of FAS

Dear Crisis Strategy Alert

Reader,
Place a market-order to sell 50% of your position in the Direxion Financial Bull 3X Shares ETF (NYSE:FAS).

We are selling half of our position to capture a 3-day gain of 25%.
As always, let me know how you did by sending an e-mail to info

info@crisisstrategyalert.com

The thing with [...]

Dear Crisis Strategy Alert Reader,
Place an order to sell your position in the PowerShares DB Gold Double Long ETN (NYSE: DGP) as soon as possible.
The price of gold has been slammed as of late. Considering this is a leveraged position, it would be prudent to take any gains off the table now.
By getting out today, [...]

I would like for you to take a good look at the chart below.

I believe it highlights an opportunity that most investors are too fearful to see for themselves.
It shows the price movement of crude oil going back to March 2006 (the red line).
It also shows crude oil’s 20-week moving average in blue.
This is basically [...]

The ”Lost Decade” Nobody’s Talking About
My colleague Charles Delvalle sent me a chart yesterday. It shows that the U.S. has just experienced a “Lost Decade” of its own.

This shows that if you had put $1,000 in a Dow Jones index fund in 1997, you would be up about 5%. After inflation, however, you would be [...]