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-- Posted Sunday, 30 July 2006 | Digg This Article
US stocks rallied Friday on news that economic growth was sharply lower during the second quarter. The decline can be attributed to lower consumer spending. Consumer spending makes up more than 70% of the US’s GDP, so when consumer spending falls it has a really big impact on the overall economy. It’s no surprise that economic growth is slowing down. It would have been surprising if it didn’t. The US real estate market is busy melting down and as I have said many times in the past, the real estate bubble kept the US economy afloat during the past five years. What is surprising is that stocks are rallying upon the release of weak economic news. The reasoning is that slower economic growth will cause the Federal Reserve to stop raising interest rates and since lower interest rates are generally good for stocks, any news that could mean that interest rates will stop rising must therefore be good for stocks. They say the stock exchange does not ring a bell at the top of the market. Well, I can hear all sorts of bells ringing: when investors buy stocks because they believe the economy is slowing down it is a sign that we have reached the top of the market. The news that was widely ignored Friday was that while economic growth slowed in the second quarter, inflation (as measured by price increases) picked up. The government’s price index for personal consumption rose to 4.1% after rising 2% in the first quarter. I thought Ben Bernanke wanted to fight inflation -- if inflation is increasing is he really going to stop raising interest rates? It seems the economy is slowing while prices are rising and that means the Fed is caught between a rock and a hard place. Regardless, I don’t see how a slowdown in the economy can be good for stocks, or for base metals for that matter. But when it comes to base metals I have heard numerous people say that the escalating war will be good for base metals demand. The theory is that the US government will build war machines and that its demand for metals will offset any decline in demand from slower economic growth. I think that is nonsense. The Third World War is unlike the First or Second World Wars in terms of war machines, and defense spending will not create much demand for metals. During WWII the US had 95,901 tanks, 220,689 fighter planes and 1,446 naval vessels that, in total, weighed about 75 billion pounds. Today the US has 8,290 tanks (8.6% of WWII) and 6,501 planes (2.9%). What they have a lot of, which they did not have during WWII, are missiles -- the US has about 67,534 missiles. But missiles do not weigh that much nor do they require as much metal as tanks or planes. The total weight of current war machines we could identify, including missiles, comes to 9.9 billion pounds. That is only 13% of the metal used in WWII. Today the military spends a lot more money on scientists and engineers and far less money on brute force. The United States will not build a whole lot more tanks, ships and planes since it is more cost effective to build missiles and bombs and since these require insignificantly less metal than the tens of thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of airplanes that were built during WWII, I do not think we will see any material increase in metal demand from the current military buildup. On a different note, I will be speaking at the Resource Investors’ Forum in St. John’s, Newfoundland in September but unfortunately I will not be able to make to the Las Vegas conference. For more information about upcoming conferences where I will be speaking, please visit http://www.paulvaneeden.com/conferences.php. Paul van Eeden If you enjoy reading these commentaries I suggest you go to my website at http://www.paulvaneeden.com/commentary.php and register to get them by email. Rest assured that I do not sell or rent any of my subscribers’ email addresses. Paul van Eeden works primarily to find investments for his own portfolio and shares his investment ideas with subscribers to his weekly investment publication. For more information please visit his website (www.paulvaneeden.com) or contact his publisher at (800) 528-0559 or (602) 252-4477. Disclaimer This letter/article is not intended to meet your specific individual investment needs and it is not tailored to your personal financial situation. Nothing contained herein constitutes, is intended, or deemed to be -- either implied or otherwise -- investment advice. This letter/article reflects the personal views and opinions of Paul van Eeden and that is all it purports to be. While the information herein is believed to be accurate and reliable it is not guaranteed or implied to be so. The information herein may not be complete or correct; it is provided in good faith but without any legal responsibility or obligation to provide future updates. Neither Paul van Eeden, nor anyone else, accepts any responsibility, or assumes any liability, whatsoever, for any direct, indirect or consequential loss arising from the use of the information in this letter/article. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice, may become outdated and will not be updated. Paul van Eeden, entities that he controls, family, friends, employees, associates, and others may have positions in securities mentioned, or discussed, in this letter/article. While every attempt is made to avoid conflicts of interest, such conflicts do arise from time to time. Whenever a conflict of interest arises, every attempt is made to resolve such conflict in the best possible interest of all parties, but you should not assume that your interest would be placed ahead of anyone else’s interest in the event of a conflict of interest. No part of this letter/article may be reproduced, copied, emailed, faxed, or distributed (in any form) without the express written permission of Paul van Eeden. Everything contained herein is subject to international copyright protection.
-- Posted Sunday, 30 July 2006 | Digg This Article
Previous Articles by Paul van Eeden
Paul van Eeden is an independent investor, analyst and newsletter editor.
Born in South Africa, Paul graduated from university with a degree in chemistry and applied chemistry with additional credits in accounting, economics, business economics, philosophy, statistics, mathematics, biochemistry and physics.
Paul's first business was an African art distributorship, of which he acquired a 50% interest during his first year at university in 1985. He has experience, either as an owner, manager or director, in plastics manufacturing, food supplements and cosmetics distribution, advertising & marketing as well as the manufacturing and distribution of gas detection equipment.
Paul van Eeden left South Africa in 1994. He joined Yorkton Securities in Toronto as a stock broker in 1995 and moved to Global Resource Investments in Carlsbad, California in 1996. In November 2002, Paul decided to leave the brokerage industry and joined Doug Casey as co-editor of the International Speculator (www.internationalspeculator.com) newsletter.
His investment approach was shaped by the ideas of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd so Paul is always on the search for tangible value that can be bought at a reasonable price. That can usually be accomplished only during the trough of a market, which is currently not the case for general US equities.
Therefore Paul decided to focus on the natural resources sector, specifically gold. The period from 1996 to 2001 was a trying time - the bottom of the worst bear market in gold in twenty years - but, of course, it was also a time of opportunity.
At the San Francisco Gold Show in November 1998, Paul van Eeden introduced his original thesis that the gold price in US dollars is driven by the US dollar exchange rate, and that traditional commodity style analyses would not yield predictive results when applied to gold. He showed that a dollar-only view of the gold market is inadequate: understanding the gold price requires a global view, incorporating exchange rates across many currencies. This novel line of thinking is now ubiquitously accepted.
In 2003 Paul went further, showing that the price of gold in US dollars is tightly correlated to the expansion of US monetary aggregates (M3) and that an analysis of gold as money not only clarifies the gold price from 1971 to the present, it has other implications that are still unforeseen by most financial and commodity analysts today. One of these is that the gold price will soon exceed $1,000 an ounce. Another is that, aside from operational differences, not all gold mining companies will benefit equally from this increase in the gold price.
Paul van Eeden not only does his own research on the fundamental drivers behind the gold market, he also takes a hands-on approach to investment analysis: interviewing management, studying exploration projects and visiting mining operations. Whilst investing in mining and exploration companies is inherently risky, value is never far from his mind and features forcefully in his selection criteria.
Most of Paul's time, now, is devoted to finding investments for his own portfolio.
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Bells Ringing
